3 day Pampas Tour in the Bolivian Amazon Basin

After discussion with the travel agent we decided to spend the extra money and fly to Rurrenabaque rather than rough it on the bus - 12 hours on a standard cattle class but with no loo and extremely rough roads didn't entirely appeal. Turns out it was a great decision, the flight was fantastic! One tiny little plane bouncing around in turbulence finished by a Schumacher-esque landing on the grass strip of Rurrenabaque. It was like a rollercoaster ride!

Once in Rurrenabaque we tried to escape the heat and humidity by using our free drinks vouchers and showed once again why we try to avoid playing pool.... we're rubbish!

Next morning saw the start of our 3 day trip to the Pampas and a 4 hour jeep journey. It was very hot, very bumpy and very dusty.

The next phase was a trip by motorised canoe down the river to our lodge, it was still hot and humid but not so dusty and all the animals kept us entertained. As there was only three of us in our tour group we had loads of room to stretch out in the sun and it meant we didn't run aground like the other boats so no need for us to get out and push :-) We were amazed at how much wildlife we got to see: dolphins, capybara, alligators, caiman, turtles, eagles, storks, egrets..... and not forgetting the monkeys including a friendly group of squirrel monkeys that mauled us when our guide got out a couple of bananas.

Day 2 started with a walk across grasslands to try to find anacondas, after searching trees and undergrowth for an hour or so our guide called us over to see a lovely 2m specimen. He was happy to keep searching for more but I'm afraid it was a bit too hot for us to agree to more hours of quite possibly fruitless searching. The afternoon saw us back in our canoe for a spot of piranha fishing; Bridget bagged the first one but after a while I managed to catch a couple myself.

Next morning saw stormy skies and impending rain. It was actually cold!!! After a quick trip to meet 'Pedro' an aged alligator we started the trip back to Rurrenabaque.