Madidi National Park // Pampas

To get to Madidi National Park for my tour into the Amazon Basin I first had to make my way to Rurrenabaque where all the tours started. I had heard absolute horror stories about the bus ride. 24 hours instead of 18 and busses that look like they may fall apart any moment. Only 2 people I met along my trip had actually taken this bus and they both said they thought they were gonna die. So for the first time I considered taking a plane instead. But as it turned out the flight was a lot more expensive and the nice lady from my travel agency in La Paz told me the busses and roads had gotten a lot better.
So I choose to go by bus and just hoped for the best. Unfortunately Natascha took another bus company so I had to take this first part of the trip by myself.
I had choosen the seat with "panoramic view" above the driver. It's my usual spot when it's still available but this time I actually wasn't quite sure if it was a good idea. The road was supposed to be really scary right on a edge that drops down without a barrier. Did I really wanna see that in full panorama?
The bus left about an hour late but other than I had read online there were no animals on the bus and every passenger had a seat. So maybe conditions had really improved?
From La Paz we first went higher up into the mountains before we started going down towards the jungle. I must say I was happy I chose this seat! The views were amazing. And most of the time the road actually did have a barrier towards the edge.
I don't wanna downplay it. It definitely was my least comfortable bus ride as most of the way was unpaved but compared to what I prepared myself for it was bearable. I even managed to catch quite some sleep and we made it to Rurrenabaque in only 14 hours.
As the agency for our tour was still closed I met Natascha and some more people going on our tour in a french bakery across the street. They actually had had 2 sheep on their bus! So maybe I just got lucky with my company.
The tour started with another 3 hour drive in a car to the point where we got onto the river. We were 2 groups of 6 people each. Natascha and me were in a group with 2 girls from New Zealand and a couple from Chile.
We spend about 3 hours in the boat to get to our accommodation while looking for all kind of animals. We saw our first yacaré caimans, monkeys, lots of birds and capybaras (huge rat or pig like animals). After getting settled in our room we went back on the boat to go to a big field where we watched the sunset.
We went back in the dark and tried to spot caimans. We used our flashlights that would reflect in their eyes. So the only thing you could see were red illuminated eyes everywhere! It was spooky but also exciting.
The next morning we got rubber boots to venture out into the wild to look for anacondas. Our guide told us to just grab them if we spotted one. Most definitely I wouldn't have done that. But unfortunately we didn't find any. Back at our accommodation we met Pedro. The caiman living here! He's used to people and I got to touch him 😯
In the afternoon we jumped back in our boat and went out fishing piranhas. We used actual beef for this. It wasn't the easiest task though as these guys were pretty good in eating around the hook. One girl of our group was really successful. But I only almost caught one 😅
We got the piranhas for dinner. But luckily not just the piranhas, as there was not a lot of meat on them. The food on the tour in general was really good. And always a lot. I was the only meat eater of our group and as they didn't really do meat for one person I always got a lot. One day it was fried chicken and grilled chicken and chicken salad just for me.
On our last day we went swimming with the pink dolphins! They were more grey with a slight shimmer of rose and also looked kind of strange because they only had a hump on the back instead of a proper fin but they were still dolphins. I was the first to get in the water but it wasn't to easy to find the dolphins as the water was not clear at all. The first dolphin I touched I accidentally kicked with my legs. But after a while they came closer and I touched a few on their backs. We brought an empty coke bottle for them to play and they really took it with them and played with it. It was a little weird to be in the water and see the caimans laying on the side. But our guide promised us they only go hunting at night.
After this we had our last lunch in the Jungle before taking the boat back to where our tour started. On this way we finally got to see an anaconda high up in a tree.
I must say I had expected a bit more from the river and the jungle around. Even though it was not the actual Amazon River it was within the Amazon Basin and I had expected it to be more impressive than the jungle I had seen so far on my trip in other regions. But maybe it was also due to dry season that everything wasn't as big and green.
But I still enjoyed the tour a lot. It was a really relaxed tour as we spend a lot of time on our little boat cruising along the river.Read more