Parque Nacional Madidi, Rurrenabaque, Bolivia - Day 69-72

It was time to head to the Amazon Rainforest. We flew north to the small riverfront town of Rurrenabaque, the gateway to Parque Nacional Madidi. Parque Nacional Madidi is the 2nd largest park in Bolivia, and is home to more protected species than an other park in the world. We opted to take the 45 min flight rather than the 24 hr bus ride, that is 24 hours if the road doesn't wash out. Traveling by bus between La Paz and Rurren is one of the most dangerous routes in Bolivia. Rurrenabaque is a nice small town with fruit trees and hammocks everywhere. Everyone in the town, and we mean everyone, drives a motorcycle, and their favorite pastime is doing laps around the plaza.

Because it's illegal to trek in the jungle unguided, and as we later found out, quite dangerous to do alone, we joined a 4-day tour with a company called Mashaquipe. All the guides are from small indigenous jungle communities and possess a wealth of knowledge about the flora and fauna of the rainforest.

Loading up on our long boat to head to the jungle.

This contraption is used by the indigenous people to extract sugarcane juice.

Mmm! Freshly squeezed (by us) pure sugarcane juice with a squirt of lime was delicious! Just 2 sugarcane stalks produced a 1/2 gallon of juice!

Chocolate fruit! We didn't realize how strange-looking cacao fruit is. It, along with many other tasty fruits that we had never seen before, grow wild throughout the jungle. It was great to have a guide show us which fruits we could eat.

Trekking through the jungle to our campsite. The trees that look like teepees are called Walking Palms, and their above-ground roots enable them to move up to 8 inches per year along the ground in search of sun and nutrients.

Everything in the Amazon must have a great deal of self-defense in order to survive, including this Devil Tree.

Our jungle campsite. It's too hot to sleep in a tent and the mosquitoes, spiders, snakes, and sand flies are viscous, so sleeping in a mosquito net is a must. The tarp above not only protected us against rain, but also against the constant fruit and branches falling from high above.

Their are so many different species of ants. These army ants are some of the least harmful. Kris found out the hard way how painful fire ants can be. We are so relieved we were not bit by a Bullet Ant, which are at least an inch long and causes tremendous pain accompanied by a fever for 24 hours.

Red Macaws are very common and their funny sounding squawks can be heard throughout the jungle. They, like all the other animals, are very difficult to see through the dense vegetation.

Tucan

Fresh jaguar tracks right next to camp! We never saw one, but we are sure they saw us. Jaguars are the 3rd largest cat in the world after tigers and lions.

We saw many tarantulas on our night hike. This one was the size of a hand fully spread out.

Red Howler Monkeys. Again, very difficult to get a clear close-up picture. Howler monkeys howls can be heard up to 3 miles away as they call out their territories for the day, and they sound like monsters.

We learned that armadillos are very blind and not intelligent. We found 3 of them that didn't even realize they were next to us. They act like they are drunk, constantly bumping into each other and falling over. It's very funny to watch.

Using banana tree leaves as umbrellas during our early morning hike in the rain

We built this raft from trees and rope to float down the river back to the lodge.

Floating down the river on our raft. It was great to get away from the bugs while we were on the water! We even went through some small rapids and everyone stayed on the raft!

Swinging on vines. Our guide showed us a different type of vine, called Cat's Nail Vine, that retains rainwater on the inside. We cut a section off and drank fresh water from it!

Kris shooting indigenous arrows used to hunt ground animals. The arrows are made of an extremely hard wood. Shortly after this, Kris hit the white sign to the right of the photo with a arrow and broke their sign...ops.

The thatched-roof building we slept in by the lodge