5TH – 11TH APRIL

The flight to Rurrenabaque was pretty awesome once we made it out of the rainstorm. Basically because La Paz Airport is over 13,000 feet high and Rurrenabaque is almost at sea level we just took off, and were at cruising altitude almost straight away!! It was like getting a flight over the edge of a very high cliff and then descending to the bottom. The scenery changed pretty quickly and everything became a very lush green, with enormous rivers snaking across the rainforest as far as we could see!!

The area we visited forms part of the Amazon basin, a huge area at the bottom of the Andes where the various tributaries collect water and eventually merge together to form the Amazon river itself. Contrary to popular belief the Amazon stretches far further than just Brasil We had already seen the mountain in Peru from the Colca Canyon which is one of its major sources,

so we were looking forward to getting a closer look!!

Rurrenabaque was our starting point for two tours, one day and night upriver into the jungle area, and then two nights in the Pampas, further downriver. Firstly though we had to spend a night here in a room which we had negotiated to be included in our tour. We were met at the airport by a very friendly lady from Inca Land Tours, who took us back to her office and explained about the tours we would be doing. We were very lucky to have the jungle tour all to ourselves as no-one else had booked on it, and she said there would be a maximum of 6 people on the pampas tour. It was at this stage we were very glad not to have booked with the same agency as the Israelis, whose tour would be around forty people!!

We were given a pretty nice