Madidi National Park

First of all we should mention that the wrestling was actually a lot of fun.  I mean, we got to watch two hefty women in bowler hats beat up a clown.  How often can you say that?  The crowd and wrestlers threw a lot of tomatoes at each other and at one point that same clown sumersalted over the barriers and onto our laps.  Also you get to watch the crowd, with little old ladies leaping up and down giving the finger to wrestlers.  A show in itself.

Then we set off on the bus for Rurrenabaque.  It's a twenty two hour journey with no toilet on the bus, so we were a bit concerned but they actually make a few stops along the way.  The mud piles and wild sliding near the edges of huge ravines was a bit more worrying, but credit to the drivers they all just keep going and get there in the end.  The negative thing was that along the way our rucksacks had become soaked in petrol.  We mean really soaked.  This was sad and upon discovering the extent of it we ended up putting almost everything we had, including tent and rucksacks into a laundry place, who were very understanding and promised to do their best.  To be be completely honest we actually spent the first night in our tent before adding it to the laundry.  However such is life and we've been travelling long enough not to let such upsets take away from being near the Amazonian jungle!

The next morning after a delicious and restorative breakfast of stuffed fried yuca balls and tasty juice of unknown fruit, we boarded our boat for a three hour journey along the Rios Beni and Tuichi to the lodge.  There are many tour operators in Rurre, going to both the national park and the pampas wetlands.  We went with Madidi Jungle tours.  Three different peoples have shared access to the park and this group is ran by the indigenous community of San Jose de Uchupiamonas, which is the only settlement in the National Park.  It wasn't the cheapest but a number of groups have reports of abusing animals (especially in the pampas) and here the money stayed with this local community so we went with them.  Everything claims to be eco these days but the genuine article is often easy to tell.  So we went up river entering the park through a gorgeous moutain range

and arrived in time for lunch.  The food throughout our stay there was delicious, particularly the catfish cooked with ginger and herbs in a big leaf.  And yuca patties for breakfast.  Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

We went on two day walks, one night walk and had a relaxing float on innertubes down the river before we left the next day.  The forests were teeming with life; we saw peccaries (which are not subtle), black spider monkeys, red and green macaws, a variety of spiders, snakes, catepillars and butterflies, fer-de-lance, white hawk, capybaras and more.  But the forest itself was amazing, the symbiotic network of life, from walking trees, which when overshadowed let the roots most shadowed die and put out new ones in the direction of sunlight, thus "walking" for metres across the forest.

Or strangler figs which arch up for the forest like arboreal pythons to grasp and wind themselves around other trees, growing larger and wider until the surround and kill the tree within.  The living, tingling dynamic of the forest, where walking trees outrun stanglers and others have developed easily shedable bark to deter them, while yet other trees are the skyscaper of choice for fire ants, their hide pockmarked by nests and the sheen of vicious biting insects.

Our guide was very nice and knowledgable, and the whole thing was conducted in Spanish which makes us feel good about our language skills.  Out of big cities and in areas with more indigenous people you start to feel very smug and fluent, as they speak a clear Spanish which is often a second language for them too after their own.  Then you go back to a city and can't understand directions to a burger stand.  Hey ho.

We spent one more night in Rurrenabaque to wait for our laundry and boarded a bus back to La Paz - we went with a different company.  These guys were pretty on it and we were rattling along at a good pace, the roads much drier.  Sadly rockfalls do not pay heed to this kind of thing and one blocked the road causing us to be a full 12 hours late into La Paz.  But we were stopped next to a fried chicken shop and a beautiful river to cool off in so it wasn't exactly wilderness survival.

You can fly to Rurre.  It takes about an hour and a half.  But apart from the insane increase in price it just seems a bit strange, to take a short haul flight to one of the world's most delicate ecosystems.  Isn't that possibly self defeating and at best just selfish?  Also, you're going to the Amazon!  It should be an adventure otherwise it doesn't count.

Arriving so late back into La Paz we nonetheless caught the last bus to Oruro with seconds to spare.  This took us south again of places we have been and into new territory, a feeling we cherish.  And first thing in the morning from Oruro we started thumbing a lift (we had not yet done this in Bolivia which gives us the slightly irrational but very strong feeling that it doesn't really count as having traveled in that country yet).  We were headed for Sucre, the actual capital though everyone ignores it in favour of La Paz.  Two very friendly rides later, with no long waits, we are safely tucked up in a hostel in... Potosì.  In our defence, we have been hitching without a map a great majority of the time since Mexico.  And it has only now lead to this kind of confusion.  But its ok because we wanted to visit Potosì anyway and can just loop back around to Sucre afterwards.