More Jungle Fun–Rurrenabaque

On the 30th June we boldly headed off to a small town in Northern Bolivia called Rurrenabaque (or Rurre for short – pronounced roo-ray). Rurre is a capital of a municipality but with just 8000 or so residents. It is located on the Beni river which lends it’s name to the entire Amazon region of Bolivia and is the gateway for tours to the Madidi National Park rainforest and tours to the wetland region known as the pampas.

To get to remote Rurre from La Paz, you can either take an 18 hour long bus journey which is apparently an uncomfortable hell across routes that are similar to Bolivia’s famous death road; or you can do as we did, and fly. Only a few airlines go this way, and we chose one that offered a 20-seater which flew us up and over the high peaks surrounding La Paz, across snow-capped peaks, and eventually, down over jungle-covered mountains to the tropical heat of Rurre.

We had already set up a tour with a jungle lodge that was the furthest into the jungle. 6 hours by boat. After being picked up at the airport we swung by the office, had a few of our questions answered, and were soon on our way, by boat, down the Beni and Tuichi rivers.

We had paid for 3 nights (4 days) and the boat trip there is certainly part of the experience. The murky brown water is home to many strange and wonderful fish, but it is the beautiful jungle scenery around you that really makes an impression. We did see animals, though, including turtles, egrets, herons, dwarf caiman, a large 2 meter long black caiman and even two families of capybara.

We stopped off for some lunch at a beach and Francesca and I immediately spotted a few different sets of clear and large jaguar footprints! Exciting! We saw tapir tracks, capybara tracks and jaguar tracks. The lunch was pretty good too – chicken and rice!

We arrived at the jungle lodge and wasted no time settling in. Accommodation was simply a tent with a mattress set up in the jungle under a protective wooden structure. Our tent was the furthest into the jungle, and one of the first things some of the guests who were there already told us over dinner, was that they had seen a jaguar a few days before on our side of the river, very near to the lodge. Awesome! And scary…we would have to walk ten minutes through the jungle to the tent after dark after every dinner time. Gulp!

The lodge we were at was called Berraco del Madidi, and it was clean and well run. The lodge had an excellent location and had excellent reviews online too. The food was great as well.

The next day we spent the morning on the boat, but did not see much, and in the afternoon, after lunch we went out with the owner of the lodge as our guide and were really lucky! At first, 5 minutes out of the camp we came across a giant anteater walking towards us on our trail. As soon as it saw us it ran off through the jungle and disappeared within 5 seconds – faster than I could get a photo!

Our next animal sighting was simply incredible – a pack of coatis (a kind of raccoon) were descending rapidly from the forest canopy, maybe 20 or 30 or more. I got a video, as they must have heard or smelt us and were spooked. They seemed to be raining down out of the trees, babies and all, and it was an extremely funny sight!

We next came across a pack of wild boar – our guide had an uncanny ability to hear them snuffling, snorting and aggressively clicking their teeth from over 50 meters away whilst we were walking. These creatures are a bit scary, as they have 8 inch razor sharp tusks and can be aggressive in large groups. We saw them, but as soon as they saw the three of us, they changed direction, as one, and disappeared within a few seconds. Phew!

We next spotted some Bolivian red howler monkeys high up in the canopy. Unwieldy monkeys, they have to move slowly so as not to fall, using their tails as a fifth limb to grip branches. They are the color of orangutans, and are pretty curious once they see us peering up at them. They were just a small family, and they were absolutely stunning.

We were pretty beat, and so we headed back for dinner. The other couple who were there told us of an ocelot they had seen! Lucky! We went to bed that night and slept really well in the tent. We heard various rustlings in the jungle around us, but were too tired to investigate properly.

Our second day was not quite as successful as the first, and we did not really see many animals. It was interesting to walk to a clay lick though, where animals, particularly peccaries, all hang out. We waited on top of a viewing platform but did not see anything at all. One group of boar were heard, but not seen, but we did manage to catch a fleeting glimpse of a beautiful trogon bird.

Back at the lodge for dinner and we spotted a large blue and green iguana, and we practiced shooting a bow and arrow at an orange (the fruit, not a lizard).

Another go on the boat did not yield up any further sightings, except some more jaguar prints, but the scenery was reward enough. That evening we did spot a fer-de-lance pit viper, which is the snake most responsible for snake bites in the region. They are rarely fatal but their venom is fast acting and can cause considerable damage to the body and even the memory.

A gecko made an appearance around the kitchen at dinner time, and after posing for several pictures, the harmless lizard was beaten to death by one of the staff members. This was totally unacceptable behavior for an eco-lodge, and they should be ashamed of themselves. We reported this matter to them afterwards, so hopefully it will not happen again.

We hopped in a boat the next morning for a trip upstream to walk to a larger clay lick. We certainly had more luck that day! After spotting some larger howler monkeys we saw some smaller brown-mantled tamarins. These cute little brown and black monkeys are really inquisitive, and just stared at us for ages, maybe contemplating their own evolution. They looked like little bears, and they were certainly my favorite animal we had seen.

A great walk to the larger clay lick allowed us to see many more monkeys in the trees, and when we arrived at the clay lick we spotted two groups of wild boar, including white collared peccary, and the more aggressive white lipped peccaries. Luckily none of them charged, and they all disappeared after the males gave us some angry stares and grunts.

We made our way back to the boat after a good few hours out in the jungle, and after we had lunch and collected our things, we headed back to Rurre as it was our last day. On the 4 hour trip back, we saw capybaras and also a bunch of vultures hanging with a king vulture that has a really weird head. We stopped about an hour outside of Rurre where there was a final trail to walk. This one was about a half hour walk to another clay lick, but one that was a natural cliff face. On the cliff face were several pairs of red and blue macaws which is where they nested. It was great to see the birds flying around, and hanging out. Macaws hang out in pairs as they mate for life – and to see them happily free out in the jungle was so nice – much better than unnaturally in captivity.

Once we got back to Rurre we headed over to the hotel on the plaza and rested for the night. We had changed our flight back to be the 4th July, so we headed back to La Paz. Our flight was beset with turbulence once we got over the mountains, and we could see the pilots working really hard and going through their checklists to keep us level.

Thankfully we got to the airport OK, and we landed fine, and headed for some food. Madidi was a lovely National Park with some fine scenery and awesome animal spotting opportunities. The Berraco del Madidi lodge we chose was good but it definitely had some room for improvement.