The Amazon Basin

Big cities, small towns, high mountains, rolling hills, white beaches, palmed islands, volcano lakes, Caribbean waters, red deserts, salt flats, cloud forests, ancient ruins...

Been there. Done that.

We've even seen our share of the jungle, mostly in Central America. But this, this is the Amazon Basin and it's on another level.

Getting In

Transportation in Bolivia is always an adventure. To get to the jungle we had to get to Rurrenabaque, and from there take a boat 3 hours down the Beni River to the reserve we had arranged to visit. We'd been warned previously that the road from La Paz to Rurre was a difficult one, a friend of ours got stuck between 2 landslides and what is supposed to take 16-18 hours took him 40.

But we were naively convinced by the gentleman at our tour office that the unpaved road is in better shape now as rains have eased, and the ride would arrive in a normal-ish window. Being well-seasoned bus travelers by now, and reasoning that the 1-hour flight was not worth the extra $70, we opted for the more “local” route.

We left an hour late on the clunker of a bus, but that's standard Bolivian procedure. About four hours in we knew there was no chance in hell we'd make it in 16 hours. The road is an unpaved, one lane, cliff hanging adventure, passing the occasional wood hut village or small cement town. We rumbled along hot and sweaty, with the same 8 songs being played on a loop over and over at full blast – an amazing torture mechanism to be used for the entire journey. When a car or truck was coming the other direction, we all had to stop and back up to the nearest corner to create enough space for more than one car at a time to pass. At midnight, 12 hours into the trip, a truck broke down in front of us and we were forced to wait 6 hours at a standstill. The drivers laid out a tarp outside and went to sleep, as if this was a normal occurrence. To be honest, it probably is.

27 hours after leaving, we arrived dirty and exhausted in Rurre, having missed our boat to the reserve. It was the craziest bus journey we've experienced, but it beats the 42 hours it took the Aussie couple we'd meet a few days later. We arranged to leave on the boat the next day, and settled up for the night.

Rurre is a pleasant town, set up for tourist trips to the jungle and dotted with all the jungle staples: plantains being sold in the streets, coconut palms, banana trees, the works. It felt like we were back in Honduras. We were happy to take a full night's sleep, and the next morning we were fitted for rubber boots and took the 3-hour ride down the Beni River to Serere Nature Reserve, our home in the Amazon Jungle.

The Experience

Just in case the bus ride wasn't fun enough, we walked waist-high through muddy water from our boat to the trail to the reserve – these are the blessings rainy season travel bestows us. It also bestows mosquitoes. As soon as we were off the boat we were most certainly in the Amazon. The mosquitoes attacked in droves, the muddy trails wound through gigantic palms and unbelievably dense plant life. We would be at war with the mud and mosquitoes for the next two days, but our 100% deet and our rubber boots would serve us well.

We arrived at our lodge at the Serere Reserve, which is a private reserve for Madidi Travel, who does great conservation work in the area. The lodge consisted of a large main cabin that had the kitchen and dining table downstairs and the glorious hammock room upstairs. Our room was a private cabin a little further into the jungle. One of the reasons we chose the company is because our king sized bed, table, shelving unit, and bathroom were walled in only by mosquito screens, allowing us to more fully experience the sounds of the jungle at night. It also allowed the surroundings to experience us, as we found the first night when we caught a peeping possum chilling by our door.

Since the cost (and generally Kendra's hatred toward mosquitoes) prohibited us from spending an extended time in the jungle, we hit the ground running and packed as much in as possible. The first day we canoed out in a lake to search for wildlife and were rewarded with our first spotting of monkeys, birds, and pirhanas (although the pictures show Rich holding it, Kendra actually caught the fish and then dropped it in the boat swearing off the idea of any further contract with the thing). After an amazing steak dinner, we took off on a night walk and spotted giant spiders and a coral snake, which is apparently “muy toxico!”. The following morning, Rich braved the pouring rain for another walk and Kendra opted to make jewelery out of local seeds and nuts.

We both took another afternoon walk and spotted the elusive howler monkeys which fill the jungle with low grunting rumbles, and also tempted a huge tarantula out of its nest. Unfortunately we also made acquaintances with the local fire ant population. We were amazed by our guide who grew up in the jungle and could replicate animal calls to draw them nearer. As we walked, he would call jaguars (which thankfully didn't respond), wild pigs, a variety of birds. The most impressive calls he would make was to the monkeys. We saw five different types of monkeys and he could communicate with each of them. The final day, we were in a canoe in a lake and he called out a spider monkey family. He started by making the sound of a distressed monkey baby, and when they appeared from the trees he actually talked with them until they climbed all the way down to the nearest limb and started to swing around playing.

The whole experience was incredible. While we had been to jungle-like areas, nothing we had seen before compared to the Amazon Basin. In addition to the aforementioned creatures we also saw butterflies, moths, a jungle squirrel, giant dragonflies, a crocodile, colorful caterpillars, a leech, giant wasps, bats, tiny frogs, huge bullet ants, and these giant rat looking creatures the size of a large dog. We ate seeds, fruits, and termites (seriously!), saw towering trees covered in vines, and spotted the occasional vibrant flower. Everything in the jungle is jungle-sized... massive.

It was on our boat ride out that we had one of the most unique animal encounters. We were tired and muddy, and the ride was taking a particularly long time back since the river had risen with the recent rain and the current was swiftly against us. About half way back, we spotted a group of branches sticking out of the middle of the river. Hanging from one was a soaking wet sloth. The poor creature had fallen with a broken branch from the nearby shore and was too slow to swim back to shore in that current. Our guide took his machete and chopped the branch off, lifting it with the hanging sloth into our boat. We rode over to the shore and placed him back in his home, although it was the slowest homecoming we have ever seen and we struggled to keep the boat near the tree as he meandered over. It is one thing to see a sloth in the zoo, and it is another thing to see a wild one two feet from you.

Getting Out

Given that our bus ride in was an over-adventure, we decided to take the easy way out and splurge for a flight. But moving from Point A to Point B in Bolivia is never as straightforward as it seems.

We, of course, booked with the cheaper airline, which, is owned by the military. When we arrived to check in for our 9:30am flight, we were simply told to come back in an hour. Apparently, the normal 50-seat plane had some problems. So instead, they were making 3 separate runs with a much cozier 14-seater, and we were going to be in the second group. The apparent normalcy of these types of circumstances continues to astound.

The 1-hour delay turned into 3 hours, after which we were loaded with our luggage onto a bus with a taped-together windshield and driven to the airport terminal, a wooden shack in a field. At that moment, the skies opened up and it poured down jungle-sized rain drops. This prompted both indifference and panic. Indifference on the part of our van driver, who let our bags get wet on the luggage roof, and panic on the part of the pilots who rushed to move the plain off the grassy terminal field so that it wouldn't get stuck in the mud, and onto the head of the runway.

That meant that instead of boarding the plane at the terminal, we all had to pile back into the van and be driven directly out onto the runway. Just in case the circumstances weren't already ridiculous enough, we were delayed once more when the gate along the road to the runway was padlocked, and nobody had the key. The airline officials got out of the van, looked at the locked gate with both bewilderment and lack of surprise, and called the boss in with the key. The boss-man, in his jeans and New York Jets t-shirt, finally opened the gate 30 minutes later. We boarded the 14-seat propeller plane and survived the 1-hour flight back to La Paz and relative civilization.

All in all, the delays cost us 6 hours... but compared to 27 on the way in, it was pure luxury.

Check out a taste of the bus ride, some hiking, the sounds of the howler monkeys, and a close encounter with some spider monkeys in the video...