The South American Odyssey

The next phase of the travel was to go down to the amazonas and explore the jungle and the pampas. There are 2 options to reach Rurrenabaque (430 kms away) a small town know as the gateway to the Amazonas.
One is to fly. The flight is about 25 min in a small plane. There are 5 flights a day all flown by the same company Amaszonas. Since they are the only operator, the flight ticket prices are set as per their whims. The flight tickets on an average cost 550 b$. Which for Bolivia is a very high price.
The 2nd alternate is to go by bus. It costs about 100 b$ but the journey is at least 18 hrs in best case scenario with the bus descending from the high altiplano to the sea level amazonas.
We had not booked any tours in the amazonas so we decided to fly there in the afternoon flight. That would give us half a day to search for various options to take for our 5 days there. The thought being that the return could be done by bus.
We booked the afternoon flight (13:15). Having nothing else to do, we took a relaxed morning and woke up late. Had our breakfast and were ready to leave the hostel by 11:30.
We went nearby to the main road to catch a bus to the airport. We waited almost 30 min but only 2 buses went by, those too were full. Eventually, at 12 pm, it was getting quite a bit close so we decided to take a taxi. We negotiated the price down to 60 b$ which though quite cheap, was much higher than what we would have paid for the collective bus (3.80 b$).
We managed to reach the airport at 12:40. We went straight to the counter for checking in the bags and were told to hurry to the gates as the boarding was already ongoing. After the security check we ran to the gate only to find everyone else had boarded. We ran on to the tarmac to the plane and managed to get in about 5 min before it started to roll.
Then we were off to Rurrenabaque.Lue lisää