We arrived in Rurrenbaque after a bumpy ride on the 9 seater aeroplane as we passed over the mountain ranges. As we were descending towards the grass runway we could begin to feel the heat and humidity building up, then as we disembarked the effects became stronger to the point we were sweating whilst standing still.

We were up bright and early the next day to get to the office for the start of our tour we booked yesterday with Indegina tours. After the Toyota Landcruiser was packed up we jumped in and met the other 3 members of the group and our guide Juan-Carlos. We started the 3 hour journey along the dusty and bumpy roads towards the Yacuma river where we would continue our journey in a long boat. Time flew by as our driver entertained us with the only music he had, The best of The Beatles and by stopping the jeep suddenly forcing everybody forward in there seats, something which was worse for the people in the back on the bench seats. At once our driver jumped out and started pointing at one of the trees. He had spotted a Two-Toed Sloth, which was slowly moving it’s way down the tree and moving out of sight of our cameras.

We ventured into the Mididi National Park to continue on the long boat where we had a scenic tour seeing lots of Capibara along the river banks and in the water, lots of Alligators including one which nearly rammed into the boat before performing a death roll and sinking beneath the water.

We sat for some tea and biscuits, whilst there JC came a told us this evenings activities (croc spotting with only a torch) would be postponed until another night when hopefully the weather would be better. Instead we relaxed in our hammocks beer in hand. Later in the evening after dinner another group also in our hut, four irish girls came a joined us on the table introducing us to some new drinking games…

The following day was Anaconda and Cobra hunting day! which started well when our guide JC found a poisonous snake by the boat, he grabbed a bit of wood to kill it and offered it to Mike to perform the killing, he declined graciously. After stabbing it in the water he dragged it up on to the bank to finish it off, performance over we headed to the Indegina camp site for the cobras. Along the way we saw more stunning wildlife, some Capuchin monkeys in the tree, storks, more cayman alligators and lots of turtles hanging on to tree stumps.

We joined up with the other group from our hut and started our walked across the fields, we thought we were going to be out of luck until one of the guides found an anaconda sleeping in the hollow of a tree and decided to pull it out to show us, after poking it with a stick from the other side to lure it out. At first it was very angry and a lunging at me and some of the other people in the group as we held it by the tail besides us, understandable if it had just been poked and pulled from it’s home, it slowly grew more tired as we were holding it. It’s skin felt slimy and you could feel the muscles in it’s body shifting around as it moved in our hands when we held it by the tail with it’s head a good distance from our ankles. The guide put the Anaconda back in its home and continued on our hunt. Later we came across a sleeping Aligator hiding in the bushes it’s eyes wild open and another Anaconda but no Cobras on this occasion.

After a spot of lunch we went Piranha fishing! The first to catch anything was Nina followed by Kev and by the end we had caught enough to have piranha for dinner, plus something else because there isn’t alot of meat on a piranha. After the fishing we waited for darkness to fall to see the aligators eyes at night, whilst we waited we grabbed a beer at the Sunset bar and someone suggested a game of bare foot football to which we obliged with a game of England v International’s after running around the pitch beer in hand we fought for a reasonable 1-0 win.

As we travelled along the river in Pitch Black the guide must know the route so well to drive it in the dark, as we shone our torches their eyes glowed red and then the guide pulled the boat to the side and shouted go grab that aligator to which we replied with a shock what how, so I jumped out and went to get it not having any idea how to handle it the guide got it behind the head and tail. it was so small and felt so fragile I could have snapped it whilst holding it, though it was nice to know whilst holding it if it had bitten my finger the pressure it applied when have taken it almost clean off.

We arrived back to our evening meal which included the Piranha we had caught earlier. Though the catfish we caught never emerged only the Piranha which didn’t have a lot of meat on the them arrived fresh from a frying.

We continued our evening by buying more beer from the bar and continuing drinking games from the day before, after running of beer we sent Mike and Masha to wake up the barman in the early hours of the morning for more beer. We finished our drinking games at 3 in the morning ready for our early start the following day.

The following day we were heading home, but not before we try to go swimming for dolphins and also get up and close to Pedro, the Aligator who whilst quite old and missing a few teeth still looked deadly. There weren’t any dolphins in the first spot so we headed back to get out stuff together and jump back on our long boat to the real world away from the Pampas. On the way back we had the opportunity to swim again, this time we were more successful with the dolphins baiting us as we swam closer to them they would move behind us. The rest of the journey was fairly relaxed Mike made some panpipes out of reeds and we sat drying out in the wind and getting sunburnt, we reached the shore jumped in the jeep the next 3 hours whizzed by as we drove the bumpy and dusty path back to Rurrenbaque.

Our trip back to la paz would not be as luxurious as the plane journey here - we decided to go for the significantly cheaper and longer, 18 hours instead of 45 minutes bus journey over the dusty and bumpy road, back along the most dangerous road into la paz. Though lucky for us our ride was a night which made it harder to see over the edge to where the bus could fall. However, after riding the bikes down not along ago we still had memories of what it looked like.