Back when we were traveling through Ecuador in February we started to research visiting the Amazonian Jungle, an area so large that it encompasses huge portions of Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil. I had visions of visiting a far flung, isolated tribal village whose people would welcome us in to learn about their ancestral traditions and their bond with the jungle flora and fauna. I seriously did research to find something like that and even got sucked into a Google hole reading about tribes who are considered “lost” because they have had little to no communication with outsiders. It was like I thought we were National Geographic reporters or something. After all of our research, and time spent mapping out our remaining months in South America, we finally settled on a visit to the jungle through Bolivia. In the end the decision wound up being right in front of us the whole time; we just followed what our friends Tim and Laina wrote about on their blog (Laina and Tim’s Jungle Post), which was what inspired us to go to the jungle in the first place, and booked ourselves on a 6 day tour with Mashaquipe Eco Tours out of Rurrenabaque, Bolivia.

We flew to Rurrenabaque, or Rurre as locals say, from Lima, via La Paz, Bolivia. The plane from La Paz was small, very small. It held only about a dozen passengers and landed us on a runway smack dab in the jungle. The airport staff threw our bags onto a rustic trailer towed by a motorbike, and then shuttled us in a van over to the one shabby shack ticketing/baggage claim area. From there we were transported into small, but lively and loud, Rurre. The town of Rurre doesn’t have any real sites and is really just a jumping off point for all sorts of jungle tours. The streets are lined with tour company store fronts, traveler-friendlly bars, loads of signs in hebrew (that’s a whole other story) and the traffic is all scooters and motorbikes. A tributary of the Amazon runs right through town and the jungle foliage, and heat and humidity, and bugs are all right there. Tour books describe it as an unremarkable town, but we thought it was great. We only had one night there before and one night after our jungle tour, and I enjoyed just watching the motorbike traffic whir by and observing local kids and families going about their business around town. All sorts of people from small villages along the river come to Rurre to do business and go to the market.

The first morning of the jungle tour we met our guide, Sandro, and the two other members of our small group, Natalie and Patrick from Germany. They were the best possible tour mates we could ask for, same age, same travel style, and same horrible (or according to Danny and Patrick, amazing) sense of humor. And Sandro, well he blew away our expectations. I thought I had to look deep into the jungle to find a native jungle man who would satisfy my thirst for jungle knowledge. I was so wrong! Sandro is Tacana, an ethnic group with villages scattered throughout Madidi National Park, the protected jungle area we visited. He grew up in the jungle, running barefoot through ant-covered terrain, poking around at all sorts of crazy bugs, learning how to spot and call every jungle animal out there, making crafts and roofs out of giant leaves and vines, mentally logging jungle herbs and plants with medicinal uses, and spotting edible plants, poisonous plants and which vines hold potable water. He has survived alone in the jungle for weeks at a time and explained to us that all he knows about the jungle he learned from his father and grandfather, and then he perfected his skills through being a tour guide. Although the Tacana now embrace some more modern ways of living and dress (Sandro has a cell phone and was wearing stylish jeans, a collared shirt and fancy shoes when we first met him), the villages still measure their size by the number of families and many commodities and buildings in the village are shared communally. Sandro was shy at first with the four of us but as our days together went on, he started to open up, and sure enough, he too had a sick sense of humor like the rest of us.

Our journey into the jungle started with a few hour boat ride up stream to the company’s eco lodge. The accommodations were very basic, with electricity for only a few hours a day and not completely sealed to be bug free, which is a losing battle in the jungle anyway. The staff was unbelievably nice, and the grounds were beautiful. For those of you who haven’t been to the jungle in this part of the world, one thing you have to understand is at all hours of the day, it is hot and muggy and there is a lot of sweating going on. Even at night, as we slept on our bed, on top of our sheets, under a mosquito net, the air was thick and we continued to sweat. Also, the mosquitos are always hanging around, and especially hungry at dawn and dusk. By the end of our trip, our arms and legs were lined with bites and I was sleeping with a tube of anti-itch Cortisone cream under my pillow. But it was without a doubt worth it.

We spent 3 days exploring the jungle around the eco lodge location. Sandro took us, Patrick and Natalie on long morning and afternoon walks. Sometimes we were on a well worn trail and other times we would follow Sandro as he made his own trail with a giant machete. He wanted us to walk quietly so we could hear animals in the distance and every now and then out of our silence he would stop, hush us even more, and then make some hilariously loud animal call. It always made me laugh, but he was so good! The calls were legit and the animals would answer back or move so we would see something off in the distance, like monkeys high up in the trees. The jungle provides a soothing, constant symphony of birds whistling dainty tunes, frogs burping, bugs chirping, and at night the occasional distant jaguar hum. The trees and vines were just as I had imagined them, and the thick vegetation we walked through was lush and green. Sandro did such a great job of explaining the common plants and animals to us. He showed us a tree that has long roots and can walk, a dozen things named “Devil’s” something or other, giant palm leaves that he wove to make us water bottle purses (Danny looks fabulous modeling one below), and much more. The plants were really fun to learn about, as most of the animals were too far away to really observe, since they live so high up in the canopy. We did, however, see a handful of different types of monkeys, birds, spiders, ants and some really bright blue, green and red macaw birds. But the plants, amazing. There must be cures for every ailment in the world somewhere in the jungle. We chewed on leaves that made our mouths numb, like a local anesthetic, and saw leaves that help cure stomach ailments and many other maladies. Sandro showed us this plain looking green leaf that when rubbed together by hand for a few minutes creates a deep purple dye that locals use to paint their faces. We were jungle sweaty and sticky, with purple dye on our faces and hands, but even so, the long jungle walks were a huge highlight of our South America trip so far.

On the second night of our tour we actually camped out in the jungle, a half a day’s walk from the eco lodge. We hiked out to a simple, permanent camp area with raised wood platforms for sleeping with lines over head to hang our bug nets on. We stayed out at that camp with another group of 2 travelers, their guide, and a cook and his assistant. The cook, named Darwin, carried our dinner and breakfast on his back and even passed us on the trail, running barefoot, seemingly unaffected to the biting ants that constantly parade on the jungle floor! He is another Tacana who we also found to be very congenial and fun. Sandro took us on a night walk from the camp area to look for nocturnal animals, including the elusive jaguar. I was a bit freaked out by jaguar calls off in the distance, although some of the sounds could have just been Darwin back at camp messing with us. At night the jungle was pitch black except for our headlamps and somehow Sandro spotted a huge purple frog, a tarantula and a crazy flying scorpion bug that kept landing on a sort of wimpy guy from the other group. It was so dark and peaceful out there in the jungle that when I opened my eyes from a deep sleep in the middle of the night I couldn’t see a single thing, not even my hand in front of my face, and I wasn’t even sure if my eyes were really open!

While we were eating our breakfast at the campsite the following morning Sandro crinkled his nose and said “hogs”. It was something he did often during our jungle walks, but we could never actually smell what he was smelling. And we never saw the hogs, just bushes moving out in the distance. But on this fine morning, we finally saw, and smelt, the wild hogs. A big group of about 40 of them came running through camp, likely because they smelled our food. They indeed smelled terrible, like one step above the worst BO you could ever imagine. And they made loud clicking noises with their teeth as they crunched on large acorn-like seeds around our campsite. We saw, and smelled, the group of them pretty up close and personal!

That same morning we hiked out of the thick jungle to the river so that we could make a traditional raft with logs and rope to float back to the eco lodge. Really, Sandro made the raft and we held a few logs in place to try and help. It was very refreshing to strip off our sweaty jungle clothes and dip in the river in our bathing suits. And sure enough Sandro’s raft carried us perfectly downstream back to the lodge. Dozens of sand fly bites later, and a cold refreshing shower too, we took the afternoon off from jungle walking and enjoyed a crafting session. Sandro showed us how to make jewelry out of seeds and nuts found in the jungle. Danny and I made each other rings from some sort of dark brown seed that become shiny and black once we sanded it hard enough. We had a fun night of dinner and drinks with the group and Darwin (the cook) taught us how to play Loba, a Bolivian card game kind of like Rummy 500 but with seemingly flexible rules and no real way to win. Darwin was so excited we had a full deck of cards for everyone to play with, and when we found out his birthday was coming up, we made plans to buy him a deck of cards when we returned to town. During the card game he told us a really interesting story about how he was part of a small group that trekked incredibly deep into the jungle for 7 weeks, trying to make contact with jungle tribes who have had little to no contact with the outside world, but unfortunately, his group was unsuccessful. It was impressive, however, that like Sandro, he has the skills to survive in the jungle comfortably for weeks at a time.

We returned to Rurre by boat the next day, this time downstream, so the ride was a lot quicker. We had about 30 minutes to hang in town before beginning part 2 of our jungle tour, “the pampas”. But that’s a whole other post! So we bought cards for Darwin and arranged for them to be sent back up-river to the lodge. We hope he received them!

To see all of our jungle photos click here, lots of highlights below!