Into the Jungle

After the disappointing Pampas-Tour we are anxious to go into the jungle with a good guide. We had booked a three nights, four days stay at Madidi Ecolodge before and they really did fulfill all our expectations. The lodge was small (4 rooms for up to 8 people) and beautiful, the food was pretty good (best breakfast so far in south america) and the guide had ecological conscience and did heir best to show us as many animals as possible without damaging the environment.

First we were picked up from the hostel and headed to the boats which would take us upstream for about 2.5 hours. After we arrived we had lunch and then went on an afternoon hike with our guide Henry. Unfortunately we didn't see any animals except birds but after we came home there was a big surprise waiting for us: Tonio. In August last year the guides found the little Tapir baby (whose mother has probably been killed by poachers), so they raised it by hand and he's now a juvenile and doesn't need protection anymore, but he still likes to come over and swim with the boys in the river. It's incredibly cute to watch and we even got to scratch him behind his ears a little bit.

On the second day we were very lucky and saw some black spider monkeys and a family of howler monkeys as well. In the afternoon they brought us a little way upstream and we then went down the river sitting in inflated truk tyres which was good fun.

At night we took a night walk were we got to see lots of discustingly big spiders, a little snake, a leach, a funny looking but poisenous caterpiller and lot of other bugs. it was very interesting.

On the third day we did a boat trip to a lake were we went piranha fishing. I didn't catch one, so Raul, one of the guides, caught them for me and I got to pull them out of the water, get the hook out and then release them again. (We had tried piranha one day before already, therefor we didn't want to cause any unnesesary death). Florian caught two but they jumped of the hook before he could pull them in, so I guess you can say, together we would make one good fisherman. Unfortunately if started to rain in the afternoon so the ride back to the lodge was not to pleasent.

On our last day we went on a final hike were we saw some Pecarys (pigs). Unfortunately they are very shy and fast, so we didn't manage to take any pictures.

We stayed one more night in Rurre and then took the bus back to la Paz. We were lucky again, no road blocks or landslides and arrived in the morning. As we didn't want to stay more time in La Paz, we took another bus that took us straight to Copacabana, on the shore of Lake Titicaca and we have surprisingly good internet, so we're uploading lots of pictures at the moment.

-sandra