Amazon Adventures – Part 1
In the pampas you can see a huge variety of animals including, but not limited to, caiman (like an alligator), piranhas, pink dolphins, monkeys, birds, capybaras, sloths, snakes, bugs and if you’re really lucky the great anaconda.
As it was the wet season we didn’t like our odds of seeing all the animals, but none the less we booked a trip.
We booked our tour with Mashaquipe. It is definitely a lot more expensive than many of the other tour companies, like twice the price.. However after reading other company’s reviews on Tripadviaor about how their staff treated the animals and the environment we decided to go with the more expensive option and booked with Mashaquipe.
Mashaquipe is great as it is run solely by individuals who grew up in small jungle communities and really respect and look after the animals and their surroundings. It is a large family owned business running tours in the pampas and the jungle.
We left La Paz Thursday midday via a plane bound for Rurrenabaque, locates in the Bolivian Amazon basin.
We were all a little worse for wear (why did we decide to drink last night…) and extremely tired. After our plane was delayed for almost 2 hours we were taken to it. We all walked across the runway and couldn’t help but laugh. We were flying in a plane no bigger than a standard 4 bed dorm w/ ensuite…. Except the plane didn’t have an ensuite, and we weren’t even able to stand up inside.
We took our respective seats, the 3 across the back row. It was just like a bus…. but way smaller. The journey was roughly an hour, and the view from the window was pretty amazing going from the snow capped Andes to the green jungle below. Once resigned to the fact that we (probably) wouldn’t die, and there was nothing we could personally do about it anyway, the journey was okay. And much better than a 24-48 hour bus ride along landslide affected roads.
We landed, roughly, and were taken from the runway into town via a bus from the airline Amazonas. The bus dropped us at our hostel, where we had a swim before walking into town for lunch.
We’re leaving for our 3 day/2 night Pampas tour with Mashaquipe tomorrow. Hopefully we see lots of animals!