Rurrenabaque - Madidi National Park - Jungle Fever

Here are some photos from our 4 day stay in the Madidi national park. It is a national park that forms part of the Amazon Basin. We opted to pay a little extra got off the beaten track a little, as the company we went through had exclusive rights to the area, all pristine forest, rivers etc.

The top two photos (hopefully thats how it will work when we publish this) are some of the animals we saw, the Capuchino (we think) monkey which travelled around the park in groups of about 30, and also a baby caymen (bit like a croc) whose mum we saw later on that night, a little to closely to our hollowed out log we were navigating the river in.

As you can see we also got on to some solid pirahana fishing (Ebs 4, Richo 3) which was crazy business. We used 2 week old beef, that had a fairly solid stink about it, and just handlines... and boys... it was on. Within 10 seconds of putting a freshly baited hook in the river, they would have either taken your bait, or realing one in. You were allowed to put your hands in the wat3er to wash them off for no more than seiously a second, otherwise you´d be bitten (as our Dutch mate Vin discovered). These things sense of smell are crazy.

Apart from the constant barrage of mosquitoes, and getting lost for four hours in the depth of the jungle as our trusty guide took us through a ¨short cut¨home. This short cut was necesarry as we were out on the river in our dodgy little canoe and we could see a storm approaching and decided to go to shore and walk the remaing ¨no more than an hour¨way home. This short cut involving hacking through walls of vegetation only to have to carefully retrace our stepps from the freshly machetteed folliage. (Richo´s dad´s compass again leading us home ... go Soul Patterson).

Having negotiated death road by mountain bike, we opted to fly back to La Paz, only to have the dodgy military plane fishtail all over the tarmac upon landing. We must be cats, and even if we are Bolivia is certainly taking its toll on our 9 lives.

We are now in Copacabana on Lake Titicaca, and preparing ourselves for a solid two days of Fiesta as it is the Festival of The Dead over here, and by the look of the street preparations it should be pretty sweet.

Thats all for now,

Ebs and Richo