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The trip to Rurrenabaque was long. First I caught a transport (to go on foot, pressed, in the trunk of a pick-up truck) to Yolosa. From there, I got a bus to Rurre (it is how they call Rurrenabaque here). We arrive there really early, at 5am, and we stayed sleeping in the bus waiting to day light up. When we woke up, we were to get our backpacks from roof of the bus and the backpack of a Scottish guy had been stolen. There are lots of robberies stories around here… I went to the hotel, I took a shower and an excellent breakfast in a restaurant close by. I confirmed my tour to the following day and spend the rest of the day doing nothing. It was happy in being in a hot place. Sometimes the cold tires me off.
The tour was a disaster. We left 2 hours late, then travel 4 hours to a small town called Santa Rosa. After waiting a long time for the food, that they did not have enough, we left for 3 more hours by boat in the river Yacuma to the campsite. The place is beautiful; we could see some alligators by the side of the river. We stop to bath in the river. There we saw a pink river dolphin.
We also saw diverse birds and a capybara. Unfortunately the boat was going too fast and the animals run away when we approach them. The ideal would be disconnect the engine and to try to get close to the margin without scaring the animals.
The second day, then after the breakfast, we went 20 minutes by boat to a kind of swamp to look for anacondas. O place was a great mud, with high weeds. We use old shoes that we found in the campsite. Times like this, I lacked the rubber boots up to the knees that I used in the jungle tour in Equator. After waking 2 hours in that stinky place, an English girl found an anaconda. Our guide, Luis, grabbed it and we all approach them to it. We took photos with the snake around the neck. The right thing to do is to hold its head and tail. Since I didn’t know I only held the head and it started to strangle me, going around my neck. I shout to my tour friend to take the picture fast. It was not a pleasant feeling.
The guide wanted to continue looking for a “cobra”. We were tired and wanted leave. With the guide, a group saw a very small yellow snake. The same king the English girls and I saw when we got there. Luis told them not to get close, because this kind of snakes were very poisonous and could kill somebody in 2 hours. It was good to know that, because in that distant place we would never arrive to a hospital in two hours. And as we could see the organization of tour, they did not have even food to everybody, for sure they wouldn’t have antiophidic serum. We went back to the campsite for lunch. Meanwhile, the engine of one of the boats fell in the water. The guides spend the whole afternoon trying to recuperate it. They had no success and we were 20 people with no boat. We had nothing to do in a campsite not comfortable at all for 20 people.
The third day, we wake up early to see the sunrise. My group, without guide and boat, was together with the other one. It was the first time that they had turned off the engine of the boat. That was excellent. We went back for breakfast and then continued to a boat tour. This time with a new guide and engine. It was very bad, the guide went too fast and we could not appreciate the landscape. We stop to fish piranha. An Israeli girl and I stayed by the shade of a tree while the rest of the group tried to fish. By then I already felt sick, nauseated, with pain in my stomach and diarrhea.
We went back to Santa Rosa and later, by car, to Rurrenabaque. The next the 4 days I was very sick. It visited the doctor every morning and spent the days reading and listening to music in the hammock.
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