Rurrenabaque- Pampas

After a god nights sleep. i had to get up at 4:30am in order to make my way to the airport. I had been such an idiot. Lazyness got the better of me the night before after the choro trek, so i didnt bother going to get some more money out of the bank! HUGE mistake. In the moringn, woke up late, had to call for a taxi. didnt have enough money to pay my hostal, so had to leg it to the cash machine... no easy task at 4000m, then run back pay fro my room, then jump in the taxi to the airport. Luckily the ride to the airport only took about 15mins, not 30 as i had been warned. but this meant i turned up only 5 mins later than i should have. Got in the queue to check in.. it doesnt move till 6:50am which is our departure time!! We start walking to the plane and i almost burst out laughing. As it turned out it is a TINY plane. Max about 20 passengers. It was also very cool never flown in such a small plane. You could see right out the cockpit, and see what all the pilots were doing etc. Very funky. As we began our flight we flew through the mountains. Literally with the peaks at our eye level.. and the winds causing loads of turbulance there. the views were ablsolutly stunning. The flight was slightly traumatic, because the windows had holes in them, so the air pressure was crazily low, causing some kids on the plane to cry all the way. The flight was pretty short... just to find us decending to land on a mud track, with just a kid directing the plane from the ground and a small shack for an airport.
Luckily transport was provided by the airline to the town centre, direct to the door of the travel agency i had booked my tours with! Perfect.
I was just standing around minding my own business when i got a tap on the shoulder. There was a guy who had vaguely agreed to come with me, in a severly drunken state before i went to choro, and had loads of my DVDs. This was pretty cool. Someone i know with me.... but means i needn't have carried all the books and magazines i had brought. We set off in a minivan. JESUS CHRIST! between the seats there was about 20cm... way too small for my gringo legs, and the guy who i was travelling with is 6ft5"... this was a crazy bumpy, painful 3.5 hours on a dirt track road into the pampas. We were so annoyed because the short little bolivians took all the seats with the leg room, and we had to keep switching positions just to cope with the pain of squeezing in our legs!
Finally we arrived by the river. We got into a small cannoe type of boat, and set off down the river. I thought that this was going to be a pretty boring trip, but literaly within seconds we see aligators, turtles and the giant hamster animals. There were hundreds of birds around, and also we saw pink dolphins. Me and Jim the dutch guy i was traveling with were having photo competions, trying to take the best pics.. but the 4 hours passed by pretty quick. We got to our camp, which was a huge dorm with about 50 beds, CrAzy! but the most annoying thing was the bolivian doorways, meaning we had to bed over everytime we went through a door. We then went to watch the sunset from the mirador... it was stunning, but then some crazy auzzie started walking towards the aligators sat on the riverbank below us... We all thought he was going to get attacked any second, he was trying to grab the croc's tail.!! Luckily the gaiter was more scared of him and legged it. Otherwise we would have had nasty accident! We ended up with an early bedtime, as in the morning, we were going to see the sunrise, not before getting the wonderful surprise whilst brushing my teeth, that the water was the brown river water... mmmm lush!
Woke up at 5:30am... got in a boat and went downstream to a giant field. It was really wierd, beacuse i thought pampas was meant to be a kind of jungle, but it was much more like a safari. The landscape honestly resembles that of a safari. We watched the sunrise over the 'safari' which was pretty amazing. Then we returned to our camp and after breakfast we headed anaconda hunting. we walked for about 45 minutes through marshland. looking for anacondas! We were successful!!! It was wicked. It was only a baby one though i think. About 3metres long.
After our sucessful anaconda hunt, we returned to camp for lunch, and a power nap, before heading back out into the river . This time we were going to brave it and swim with the dolphins! BUT.. this also meant we were swimming with the aligators, pyranas, and the snakes! Mmmm lovely! What was more disconcerting, was that although our guide told us that GENERALLY people didnt get attacked by any of the animals, was that as we pulled up in the boat to the swimming spot, i watched a big aligator dive down in the water....!!!! SCARY! But i got in, and it was fine. We were fairly unlucky beacuse none of the dolphins came particularily close, but i had one a meter away from me. They are scary looking creatures. Unfortunatly wasnt able to get any pictures, because they were so quick at moving. They are quite pinky, and have a wierd hump on their back, not quite a fin, and their noses are higher up than on a conventional dolphin. Very freaky!
This night, me and Jimme and some crazy canadians we met, all requested to be taken downriver to the sunset bar. On the way we did some aligator watching.. which is basically shining a torch in their eyes. And then they glow red! When we got to the bar, one of the guys jumped out the boat and stright into this nasty clay/mud and just started sinking! It was hilarious. The bar itself was dead apart from 2 Israilis. So we ended up listening to the Canadians crazy stories and sittting in the hammocks swinging into eachother.. seeing who can spill the least beer! - One of the best stories they told was of a flight in Venezuela. It was raining, and the plane still took off. Then water started dripping into the plane, not only all over them, but all ove the instruments in the cockpit. Then the pilot couldnt see where he was going, so he opened the window and was poking his head out the window as he flew.!!! (obviously.. the plane wasnt very high!)
Day 3, we woke up at a human hour after a freezing night... luckily a fairly late breakfast before heading out to the river.. ONCE AGAIN... for pyrana fishing. I have to admit i had a lot more fun than i thought i would. I managed to catch 4 pyranas. We were told that whatever we caught we could eat.. but they were all pretty small, so we just threw them back. One of mine was saved for dinner though, becasue i managed to catch it right through the eye, so everyone decided we should eat it! Everyone in our group did pretty well at catching pyranas, apart from one guy who managed to catch 6 catfish!
After the fun morning we had lunch.. unfrtunatly not our pyranas.. and set off back to Santa Rosa by boat, from where we took our favourite minibus back to Rurrenabaque.
Overall it was a wicked trip. Saw loads of animals. Managed not to get too bitten by Mosquitos.. and was very happy!
Unfortunatly the day came to a poor end. We went out for dinner... and Jimme was served something he didnt order.. then we went tot he night club, where they only played raggeton and the DJ wouldnt stop talking over the music. I actually asked him 4 times to stop talking.. but he just laughed. However, we did find the best hostal, we got the penthouse suit, with unbelieveable views of the sunset and the town!