Road to Rurrenabaque

We normally take it in turns to drive each day, sometimes both driving if it’s a particularly long drive. But despite the fact that I’d driven us here, I was definitely the designated driver for the following morning. Lee nursed a sizeable hangover and a broken phone, which he had no recollection of breaking, as we headed towards the town of Caravani. We decided to bite the bullet and get Lee’s phone repaired straight away. We found a shop that offered us a genuine new screen for £75 or an aftermarket one for £50. After my previous experience with buying lower quality phone screens in Mexico, we went for the genuine one. 

While we waited for the repair, we wandered around the village square we had parked at in the new found heat and humidity that came from our proximity to the Amazon. We enjoyed some kind of baked item and some fresh orange juice and re-acquainted ourselves with what it felt like to be too hot again. Naturally the hour long phone repair took nearly twice as long but before too long it was done. Now we could go and try to get fuel. We parked up outside the fuel station and joined the lines of locals with their jerry cans waiting for fuel. Lee waited in the petrol queue, while I tried for diesel. I was second in the queue and I stood holding my jerry can as I waited. The person in front of me had theirs on the floor by the pump ready to be filled and as I stood patiently in the queue another lady arrived. She walked in front of me, put her can on the floor behind the person in front of me and then stood in front of me. Then she stared at me to see if I would say anything. I told her it was clear I was waiting in line. To which she turned around and ignored me. Then a man arrived and did the same thing. Even my inner polite queue loving English side couldn’t deal with that. I walked around in front of both them, moved their cans out the way and put mine in front. Then I barged back into line in front of them both. Behind me the lady gave me a slight nod and I felt like I had passed some kind of test. My tiny victory was short lived though when the attendant told me that they didn’t even have any diesel and I had to pick up my empty can again and leave. At least Lee had got petrol, which was much more important, and was in the process of filling up the tank.

Now we could continue on, heading for a pretty looking river spot a few hours away. We didn’t get far though before we ran into a problem. I thought the altitude was over and we would continue on winding through the green scenery as we drove further. As we turned out of Caravani though, we left the tarmac behind us and also the level roads. We climbed nearly a 1000m in the heat of the afternoon. This in itself would have been a challenge for the cooling system, but it was in fact the fuel system that gave out. As we rounded a fairly nondescript bend and continued to climb, the engine promptly died. It seemed that it was suffering from fuel starvation and the odd bubbling sounds coming from the fuel tank brought us straight back to Mexico and being unable to go up hills at altitude. After a short break and removing the fuel cap, we made it to the top of the hill. Something clearly needed attention but today wasn’t the day it was going to get it, we ploughed on. 

Now we had left the good roads behind and we drove on red raw dirt tracks that cut through swathes of nothing but forest. As we continued the weather declined too and by the time we turned off down to the river we had grey skies and drizzle. With this in mind, we parked up away from the river bank. A huge mud delta gave plenty of space to park with the misty green waters of the river completing a semi-circle around us. We let the cats out to explore for the remaining hours of daylight but as darkness fell we brought them both in. We decided that we would deal with Aimee’s incessant scratching at the windows over losing her again and that from now on, the cats would be kept in at night. 

What should have been a peaceful night's sleep was disturbed by a huge storm. Rain pelted down and between the flashes of lightning we tried to remember the last time we had truly felt rain. It had certainly been a while since we’d had much in the way of bad weather and I was glad to see that the pop-top was still weatherproof. Perhaps not as well rested as we could have been, we at least didn’t have to worry about Aimee being out. It was probably fortunate that the storm stopped us sleeping anyway as we didn’t care that she spent hours clawing at the windows throughout the night. Even though she would have been utterly soaking wet, she was determined that she wanted to be out there. It was always going to be a hard decision to take away some of her freedom and telling her that she was now an indoor cat at night wasn’t looking fun, but was definitely the best idea for both her safety and our stress levels.

With the grey light of morning, another wise decision of ours was revealed; that of parking up away from the river. The smooth green waters were replaced by a raging muddy torrent that had risen several metres closer toward us, we still had space to turn around and get out but if we had parked any closed we would have definitely woken up underwater and it was still raining. 

We squelched our way back to the main road and continued on a slow dirt road riddled with huge potholes full of water. Even with better road conditions, we wouldn’t have been able to drive much faster. A thick fog enveloped us and made the journey timeless with no sense of distance or end.

Our slowly dropping fuel needle assured us that we were making progress though and after several hours we dropped out of the mountains and the fog cleared. We neared our next destination, the small jungle town of Rurrenabaque. This seemed to be the base for the jungle tours that we were keen on doing and so we headed to the only campsite in the village as there wasn’t a whole lot of choice. 

While the main road is a lovely dual lane surfaced affair, any side road is dirt. After what had clearly been hours of rain the red clay was now slick. When I saw the turn off to the campsite was a steep cobbled road for the first hundred metres that then turned into a mud road, I wasn’t convinced but we make it up, but we thought we would try as it was only a short section. We turned off the main road and hit the side road at speed for a bit of a run up. As we got to the end of the cobbled section our wheels were already spinning on the wet polished stone. Momentum carried us a little further upwards and onto the mud section at which point the tread on our tyres instantly filled with clay and we slithered to a halt. It wasn’t as simple as just going back down as now the tyres were full of mud, we were sliding backwards now with the wheels locked. After some time we slowly inched our way down, Lee doing his best to control the van while I skated around outside in the mud trying to guide him on where to aim for and the position of the wheels. Another guy in a truck came past and offered us a tow but we declined. His wheels were spinning too and there’s no way his truck was going to drag us up this hill. We slowly got back down to a point where Lee had to let the brakes go and hope for the best, swinging it back off the road into a flat layby and pulling up just short of the fence. At least now we were pointing the right direction and off the mud so the rest of the descent was less worrying. It did mean though that we clearly wouldn’t be staying in the paved campground and so we headed to the only viable free option. 

We tucked ourselves away in a small space off the road behind some houses and a hotel. Our new neighbours said it was ok to park here and so with little other options, we left the car and went into town to enquire about tours. We tried a few agencies to get an idea of pricing. There were two options. You could do a tour into the jungle from here or a tour to the Pampas. The latter is a boat tour where you would be most likely to see the river dolphins and is also only for a day. The other option being a multi day survival-esque hike into the jungle. As awesome as that sounded, we had neither the money or the pet care facilities to do that and so we decided a day trip down the river sounded like a good compromise. After talking to several people it became clear that the river tour did not leave from this town, but Santa Rosa. The tours all wanted to sell us transport and lunch down there and were even happy for us to bring the cats. At over £100 per person though, it seemed like a lot when we already had bought lunch and a transport. We retreated to a nearby bar to use their wifi and re-evaluate.

A bit of research confirmed that we were indeed in the wrong place. It seemed we needed to head to Santa Rosa where it would be possible to directly hire a boat and also camp at a better location. It was another three hour drive though and therefore would have to wait for the next day. With our new plan we headed back to Ruby for the night and got ready for another big drive the following day. It was certainly a lot of effort coming out here, but I couldn’t wait to see the incredible wildlife that the boat tour promised us. I hoped it would all be worth it and that the road to Santa Rosa wouldn’t be too horrible either. Morning would tell.