hair-raising ride to the airport, due to all of the manic minibus drivers and a quick stop for the driver to top up his oil! The Bolivian military’s airport is not going to win any awards for its passenger services but we thought we wouldn’t be there for long so it didn’t matter too much that it was freezing cold and had very un-comfy plastic seats. Oh how wrong we were!!! Saying the airport was chaotic would be an understatement, nobody seemed to have a clue what they were doing or what was going on, they all just stood around talking and laughing. Our lady went up to the desk and waited and waited and waited. We were told nothing but we already knew that these planes were very unreliable.

After waiting for a couple of hours we asked our lady if she knew what was happening and she didn’t, she told us not to worry and that we were on the flight. Then horror of all horrors the airport was

suddenly over-run by a massive group of Israelis and this alone was going to throw yet more chaos onto what was already a very bizarre situation. As predicted the Israelis took over the whole airport and we found out that they were supposed to have been on a plane yesterday, but the flight had been cancelled so they were back today for another go at getting to the elusive Rurenabaque! It wasn’t looking good but our lady kept telling us everything was OK!

The other thing that struck us was the fact that there were now far more people than seats on the plane. Someone would be going home disappointed surely?! Time was now ticking by very very slowly and we were starting to get the feeling that this flight wasn’t going to happen. The problem is that the air strip at Rurrenbaque is grass, hence the planes having difficulty landing there and you having absolutely no chance if it has been