Rurrenabaque- into the jungle
After having to postpone our trip into the rainforest for a day because of the referendum in Santa Cruz, we finally made it to Rurrenabaque where we met the other guys joining us on the trip, Paul an Irish guy we had met in Sucre and Peter and Sofia, a Swedish couple Jodie and Andy had met in Argentina.
With everything organised we set off early the next morning on a 3 hour boat trip up the river into the rainforest to the Mapajo Lodge in the village of Asuncion, where we would be spending the next few days. Our accommodation was a wooden hut in the forest, basic but very comfortable and in a great location overlooking the river. After lunch we went for a really interesting walk in the forest where our guide explained how the people in the village used all the different plants we saw for everything from medications to building their houses. After the walk we went into the village for a game of football. Even the smallest, most remote villages in Bolivia seem to have a football pitch in the centre and it is a popular game for men , women and children. It was good fun and a nice way to meet people from the village. We were also introduced to a monkey that had been adopted as a pet by the village and was keen to play in goal during the game, but spent most of the time playing on the goalpost. We went back to the lodge for dinner then returned to the village in the evening for some traditional drinks, music and dancing. I have to say the drinks were horrible, alcohol mixed with a kind of coca leaf tea and fermented uka juice, which is similar to potatoes. But the music and dancing was really good anyway.
The following day we took the boat further up river to another village, Gredal. Near the village is a lake where we went fishing for piranhas for lunch. I failed to actually catch anything but between us we got enough piranhas and a surubi (a kind of cat fish). After a very nice lunch we went for another hike in the forest in an area where it is common to see parrots and animals including wild boar, armadillos and jaguars. Unfortunately it wasn´t really the right time of day for seeing anything so the best we could find were footprints and claw marks, but it was still a good walk.
During the night it started raining, and the next day it was still raining hard so we stayed in the lodge and were taught how to make rings and other things from nuts found in the forest. Then we had a really interesting afternoon in the village learning about all there traditional skills and trying them out. Things like, spinning cotton, preparing rice, weaving baskets, mats and material and hunting with bows and arrows. They made everything look really easy but it was actually really difficult, none of us managed to hit a coconut with an arrow from just a few meters away.
The next morning it was still a bit wet, but we decided to go for a walk anyway, to see the giant Mapajo trees. The trees themselves were really impressive, hundreds of years old and it was also interesting to hear the people see the trees as a kind of sacred place with many stories of things that have happened because of the trees. We then went to see the farming area of the village where we learnt about the crops they grow. The village is basically self-sufficient with oil being the only thing they have to buy from the town.
Then after lunch it was unfortunately time for us to leave and get the boat back to Rurrenabaque.
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