MADIDI NATIONAL PARK - BRAVING THE BOLIVIAN AMAZON

We waved a sad good-bye to Chinina, the black spider monkey, her baby, the tapir that had come down to the river to see us off, and started on our motorcanoe trip back to civilisation. It seems that tapirs aren’t very good with good-byes, as this one started making high-pitched squeaks (definitely not a sound you would expect from a 200kg animal), jumped into the water and started swimming towards the boat with the obvious intention to climb in himself. The boatman had no patience for these shenanigans though and started the motor, so we quickly left the brooding animal behind. This was the end of our trip to Serere, an eco-lodge near Rurrenabaque in Bolivia, but as for the beginning

The Amazon is BIG, why Bolivia?

We had 3-4 options on where to visit the Amazon jungle during our trip, and while Bolivia has yet less reputation for being a top destination, I would definitely recommend it for an authentic and unspoiled jungle experience.

Manu National Park (from Cuzco, Peru): One of the most popular spots in South America, it is extremely convenient that you can start from Cuzco, which is a stop on most travelers’ agendas anyways; however, it is still a fair distance away from there. You can do 4-day trips (the first and last day of which is purely bus travel), but to be able to go deep into the jungle and see the truly amazing wildlife (including giant otters and tapirs), you need to count at least 6 days (of which 2-2 days are bus and boat travel). In our instance, there weren’t any longer tours starting because of the low season, and we weren’t convinced by the shorter tours. Prices start from 250 USD for 4 days in low season, although expect to pay around 350 with better / more responsible operators.
Madidi National Park (from Rurrenabaque, Bolivia): Smaller city smack-dab in the middle of the jungle, with much fewer tourists (meaning more basic infrastructure, but also less distance to be travelled before you’re actually in the jungle). Lots of wildlife, and much cheaper than Peru, although you do need to fly there from La Paz, or take a 20-hour bus ride. Prices start from around 100 USD for 4 days, but we ended up choosing an eco-lodge (more on that later) for 300 USD, where all the profits go the preservation of the park. We only went to the Jungle tour and not to the Pampas as the rumours that animals are caged and then released for the tourists on that one put us off - although we heard that you can see more animals, including the pink dolphin in the Pampas.
Iquitos (Peru): We didn’t actually pass by here, although we did some research in advance to decide where to go. Iquitos is a large city, so you would again need to travel quite far from it to start seeing real wildlife, on the plus side you would see the pink dolphins, and you would be on the actual Amazon river (and not one of its tributaries). In the end, we crossed it, as it would have been a detour from our itinerary, and we were somewhat pressed for time. Also, there is no malaria risk in Manu or Madidi, but there is from Iquitos (different type of mosquitos apparently).

Serere Eco-Lodge

We’d heard good things about Serere Eco-Lodge and Madidi Travel (their dedicated tour company) from one of Renata’s colleagues who has been there a few years ago, so we decided to give their offices in La Paz a look. We were swept away by their professional marketing materials, as well as their background story, so we decided to subscribe to spend our tourism dollars on a good purpose, rationalising that even if more expensive than the local Bolivian options, this was still the same price as what a tour in Cuzco would have cost while we would still see more wildlife.

The main building of the lodge from the lake

Serere is run by a larger-than-life environmentalist, Rosa Maria Ruiz, who also lives in the lodge whenever she can get away from her other business in La Paz. She (and the newly created national park) were featured in National Geographic in 2000 after she had successfully campaigned for the creation of the Madidi National Park by the government (and against a mega-dam which would have flooded half the park). She has since worked with the local indigenous communities to help them develop the skills they need to be able to benefit from the tourist potential of the area (such as speaking English or cooking to Western tastes).

She was approached a number of years ago by the original owners of the land (which is just outside the national park), who wanted her to buy it; she was the only one who they knew would stand up to the poachers, loggers and decidedly non-eco tour operators who constantly trespassed on the land and were destroying the environment. She eventually agreed, and after a 5-year cleanup exercise (mainly collecting trash and reforesting hunter trails) which was helped by the community in Rurrenabaque, Serere eco-lodge opened for business in 2004. Twelve years later, animals of all types find refuge in its 6000 hectares, and there is actually more wildlife to see than in the national park itself, as the numbers of tourists are strictly controlled. All profits go towards maintaining the reserve and supporting Rosa Maria’s conservation work. It was truly fascinating to meet (once we were in the lodge) such a strong-willed and determined person, and see how much she’s accomplished against all odds through sheer perseverance!

Welcome to Rurre

We decided to take the soft option and fly for 35 minutes from La Paz to Rurrenanabaque (or Rurre). The alternative was a 20-hour bus ride over questionable roads which can get flooded in the rainy season, with replacement canoes called in for the final 3-hour stretch instead. Of course the flight itself has its charms too – our flight was delayed by the weather for 2 hours on the way there, and 4 hours on the way back. I strongly suspect the first delay was a lame excuse for a cancellation (there weren’t enough passengers to fill a plane), since they told us about it two days in advance, but the second one was genuine. The airfield in Rurre is a little dirt strip with no control tower that we could see, and the occasional piglet running across the landing strip, so clear weather is really required to land the plane. Naturally, the fact that the airport facilities are extremely basic doesn’t prevent both the airport and the city from charging their separate airport tax of 1 USD and 2 USD respectively - meaning you have to queue twice, but you also provide employment to two people (who each perform a net 30 minutes of work each day).

In the airport in La Paz, there wasn’t very much signposting or idiot-proofing. After passing through the gate, we wandered freely between the airplanes, trying to find which one we were meant to board. Naturally, it turned out to be the smallest one – on the plus side, no need to choose between window and aisle seats, as everyone on this 19-seater airplane got both! Boarding all the passengers took less than 5 minutes (including the pictures everyone wanted to take with the tiny plane), although I had to crouch to be able to crawl in. We even had a great view of what the pilots were doing, as the cockpit didn’t have a door! I took a power nap during the flight (no sense in worrying about the turbulence if you can’t influence it), while Renata spent the journey counting the minutes back on the rollercoaster ride.

Rurre is a small town in what seems like the middle of nowhere, entirely built upon jungle tourism (and extracting the jungle’s resources), but after we had returned from the jungle, even the most basic accommodation felt like a luxury hotel (wow, it even has electricity!) Our best find was the Panaderia (Bakery) Paris, which is owned by an actual Frenchman, and has the best pain-au-chocolat we’ve had on our trip so far!

Day 1 – We started off with a healthy breakfast of a small pizza and a pain-au-chocolat from the Panaderia Paris (our good-bye to civilisation for 4 days), collected the laundry we had gotten cleaned overnight and headed over the port to start our 3-hour boat trip to Serere. On the boat, we were given our carefully prepared lunch, sourced directly from the aforementioned bakery, consisting of exactly the same thing we had for breakfast – but at least we now had confirmation we had found the best breakfast in town!

During the boat trip, our driver kindly stopped and pointed out the different wildlife Renata and I stood no chance of spotting by ourselves. In this short trip, we saw two families of capybara, as well as a huge black caiman (with many butterflies on it!) and baby river turtles. After the boat trip, it was only a 30-minute trek through the occasionally swampy jungle to the lodge. Since it was already the low, rainy season, the only other guests in the lodge were an Australian / New Zealander family, so all our tours were practically private.

Our cabin’s construction was very interesting: it had mosquito nets instead of solid walls so we would be closer to nature (although plenty of spiders found their way through the nets somehow)! There was no electricity in the compound (the central fridge was improvised to run off a gas canister, something I had never seen before!) we used candles and flashlights to get around at night. The main building was 10 minutes away from the cabins to make sure it was sufficiently quiet. It took Renata a night to get used to the nighttime noises, she spent the first restless night trying to guess if the rustling leaves we heard around us, just a few meters away, were indeed caused by a jaguar (the guide later said it was a mid-sized rodent). I must say though, a single male howler monkey demarcating his territory does make a frightful racket, a bit like a pride of lions roaring non-stop! And jaguars are not stranger to the reserve either; while actually seeing one is incredibly rare, the staff heard one during the night, and our friend the tapir had a jaguar-induced claw wound on his back!

Near the main building, we met the resident companions, who ended up in Rosa Maria’s care usually after being rescued from poachers: two macaws, a family of black spider monkeys, and a pair of juvenile tapirs (apparently mature adults are 2-3 times as big!). The monkeys were incredibly friendly, each with their own quirks, one of them was ticklish, but always kept coming back for more, the other was just a baby who tried to climb up your leg but didn’t have the muscle strength yet, the third one wrapped his tail around your arm and took your hand to show you something and the fourth one liked to cuddle and to be swung around by his tail. They were all incredibly resourceful in finding holes in the mosquito nets just the size of a monkey hand, to reach in and sneak a banana out – the only difficulty was that as soon as a banana was halfway out, the monkeys started arguing over who would get it so it would keep falling back in!

The vegetable stock in the main building: monkeys` favourite through the little holes on the mosquito net behind

The residents of the lodge - one of the tapirs, the two macaws (one is too young to fly, the other has a broken wing and the fun spider monkeys)

After meeting our guide, Sandro, we headed across one of the lakes to spot some brown capuchin monkeys, baby caimans and the various bird-life (the reserve is also a prime spot for professional bird-spotters and photographers); we didn’t find the anaconda they had seen less than a week ago. We were then shown to the traditional method of agriculture, where a family clears a single hectare of land, plants a rotation of various crops and then lets the surrounding jungle reclaim the land afterwards – this is what the lodge was following as well, since they aim to be self-sufficient with as much produce as possible. From what we could see, drinking water, dirty laundry and foodstuffs they couldn’t produce on the spot were the main imports from Rurre.

Upon returning from the monkey-spotting trip, we met Rosa Maria, who also let us know that service would be a bit slow over dinner, as they had just apprehended some illegal loggers on the territory of the reserve and most of the staff had to go to help confiscate their chainsaws and canoes. She was also hoping they could find the stash of wood they had already cut down (to cause as much financial loss to the loggers as possible), but apparently the loggers stole back their canoe somehow and made off the timber overnight. It was really shocking to see how much of an everyday struggle it is to convince the local population to preserve the local environment and try to make a sustainable income from tourism as opposed to a short-term boost from cutting down the valuable trees (which usually end up as furniture in the developed world – so make sure you only buy wood from certified sustainable sources!)

Day 2 – We had a half-day trip to the Gringo Lake (another one of the five lakes in the reserve), after which we had to say good-bye to the vast majority of the staff who had to catch the afternoon supply boat back to Rurre to be able to vote in the previously mentioned referendum the following day (voting in Bolivia is mandatory if you are recorded in the electoral register). Since all kinds of traffic was banned on Sunday, they could only return on Monday with the same boat that we would leave by. The referendum was proving to be even more disruptive than anticipated… We couldn’t decide whether we missed our guide or the cook more, as everything was now in the hands of a skeleton staff, comprised of 2 staff who were left off the electoral rolls due to not being registered, 2 staff below the age of 18 and 3 European volunteers. In the afternoon we went on a smaller tour near the lodge, looking for animals and anacondas, but only found tracks, no live animals (except for the busy ant workers below, collecting leaves from the jungle) .

News update: At the time of writing, it seems that the constitutional amendment was rejected (although counting in some rural areas is still ongoing), so Evo Morales will not be able to stand for a fourth term in 2020 (he managed to get his current, third term by changing the name of the country from the Republic of Bolivia to the Plurinational State of Bolivia, and arguing that it was clearly a different country). Another interesting fact is that the indigenous people in Rurre were not at all supportive of Evo, since he is said to greatly favour his own Aymara tribe over anyone else in Bolivia, and also supports the construction of the previously mentioned dam over eco-tourism which would flood half the national park.

Wildlife taster from the lake by the lodge

Day 3: The day turned out to be a bit more adventurous than expected… The plan for the day was to cross our lake and walk for an hour to visit the Pinkie Lake to catch some fish for dinner. First, we didn’t find the usual place to dock our boat, since it got covered by vines since they had last visited it. After walking for 10 minutes, our replacement tracker, Roberto, told us and our volunteer translator to stay there while he went and scouted ahead for the main path. After waiting for 40 minutes and yelling to find him, we decided to try to find our way back to the boat, which we did manage after some detours, taking a total of 30 minutes. We had a meagre lunch (half the food was with Roberto), but still no guide, so we decided to paddle back ourselves to the lodge and raise the alarm so a search party could be sent out – to find the guide who got lost in the forest! When we got back the skeleton crew quickly mobilised, and they all went out to find Roberto before it got dark, while we remained in the lodge with the remaining two volunteers and tried to rustle up some supplementary lunch for ourselves. It turned out that the rescue party did manage to find Roberto (he was waiting for the sun to start setting, so he could tell which way West was), but then they all got lost too on the way back to the canoe! When they found their way again, they decided it was getting dark, so it would be easier to walk back to the lodge and go back for the canoe the following morning. Roberto was feeling fine, the only thing he had lost was a bit of pride (he was the butt of jokes for some time) and his belt and bandana climbing up a tree trying to see which way the lake was. We were also very relieved to see them all back, as it would have been an uncomfortable conversation explaining to Rosa Maria how we lost all her staff!

As the stuff was out looking for the missing guide we decided to make some food for ourselves in the authentic kitchen

Finally, in the evening, we went caiman spotting by a full moon (they are more active at night, so they come out of the grass, onto the lake). It was incredibly easy to see them with a strong flashlight, as their eyes reflect the light; everywhere we looked we saw pairs of reddish eyes looking back at us, most of them were babies though, and when we got close enough to actually see them, they slipped below the water.

Day 4 – On the last day, we went on a final boat trip to see a serere bird nest. Serere (after whom the lodge got its name) are birds with a very funky hairdo that have been around since pre-historic times. They sound like an out-of-breath elephant, but their funniest trait is that when a nest of babies is frightened, they jump out of the nest into the water until danger has passed, and then climb back up the tree afterwards. We did manage to get up close to see the nest, and luckily (or unluckily) we didn’t frighten them enough to jump in the water, but it was still a very special treat! When I was walking back alone to our cabin, I even managed to spot the elusive red howler monkey! The other guests were a bit annoyed as they had been trying to spot one the whole time we spent there, and I am usually the last one to see any animals, so I even took a picture as a proof to make them believe me!

Serere and other birdslife by the lake

Afterwards, the staff made a gift of rings for the girls in the group from a nut they collected in the forest. The monkeys were more than willing to help, and it was a bit scary trying to keep all the paws (some of them baby-sized) away from the sharp saws. We said good-bye to all the animals; Chinina and her baby monkey were particularly cute when they wandered into our farewell picture, posed for the camera and then left.

There was also the story mentioned in the beginning with the tapir accompanying us till the boat. He apparently has a history of similar escapades: he tried to follow us whenever we went on a wildlife watching tour (but as tapir aren’t exactly stealthy animals and would have scared everything away, we distracted him with a banana and ditched him) and he almost overturned a previous group’s canoe trying to join their evening caiman-watching tour.

Even after only 4 days, we had developed a fondness for the tranquility of the lodge in the wilderness, and the other furry and feathered occupants that called that patch of the jungle their home too. However, we were equally looking forward to a day without mosquito-repellant, mosquitos (the very first thing our guide had told us with a big smile was that “This is the jungle, mosquito-repellant doesn’t work here”) and constant sweating. We were also eager to get back on the road to Peru for our final week there, to see Arequipa and Nazca before heading to Colombia for our last stop in South America!

On the way back to Rurra we were spoilt with the view of many sunbathing caymans