Amazon Basin

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  Rurrenbaque, Bolivia
Monday, April 11, 2011

After Sucre we headed to La Paz on an overnight bus to then get onto a plane the same day to Rurrenbaque. The plane was a Fairchild 227 (for those Plane geeks out there) and it was tiny, we couldn´t even stand up in it! Of course we travelled in seats 1A & 1C up front........only the best for us pair! There were no flight attendants and you could see the cock pitt which was pretty cool. We had great views of the Andes/Amazon and then landed onto the tarmac strip of Rurrenbaque. The runway used to be grass a few years ago and the captain has to drive down it to get to the ´Terminal´or probably the best term to describe it, is shed!
Rurrenbaque is quite a small town in the Amazon Basin and does not have a cashpoint, which is a bit of a nightmare but the town is set up for ´gringo´s´(tourists) with lots of agents. We organised a 3 nights/4 days jungle tour in the Maididi National Park with an eco-agency and set off down the Rio Beni to the eco lodge. We were lucky as we were the only people on our tour, so we were able to adapt things to what we wanted and it also helped with spotting things in the jungle, as we were quiet compared to a larger group. We spent the first day spending the afternoon with the local community and in the afternoon walking to a natural pool for a well deserved dip; the second day in the morning we walked around the jungle and down a cannon with lots of bats! and in the afternoon for a walk looking at medicine trees and animal traps that the community use; the third day we went on a 2hr boat trip into the National Park, in the afternoon we went for a walk in the jungle and did a night walk and on the fourth day we did another walk around the jungle and then headed back to Rurrenbaque. 
Over the 4 days we saw loved up Turtles, Aligators, a family of Capybara´s, Vultures, Red Howler Monkey, Brown Capuchin Monkeys, BlackFaced Spider Monkeys, Otter, Bats, Swine of wild pigs, Spiders, Tarantulas (even had a shower with one up the wall besides me), various birds and of course mosquitos!  In total James got 18 mozzy bites (15 in 1 day) and i got 2.....you can tell from the statistics who was the regimental one with applying the deet! 
After we left the Jungle, James had some food poisioning and from the pictures of before and after, you can see he was not up to his usual eating habits! 

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Club class...	Coming into Rurrenabaque!	Captain pleased with his successful landing!	The Field runway
Rurrenabaque International...   Comments!	Fred the Tarantula	Community house	Wheres the flat screen go?
The orange tree	The Domesticated pig!	Making Sugar Cane	Spider
Giant Ant!	Tarantula Eating a lizard!	Spider and its eggs!	The canyon
Humming Bird!	Bats in the Canyon!	The Bat!	Sarah hunting lunch!
Our digs in the jungle!	The digs!	On the way to the jungle!	Rat
Otter on the Rio Beni	Turtles on the Rio Beni	Sarah taking a break!	The jungle pig invasion!
Jungle pigs!	Pigs!	On the Job!	Butterflies
Rio Beni	Before Food Posioning...	After food posioning....   Comments!	Rurrenabaque Airfield!

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