Off into the Amazon…where transportation alone is an adventure.

Well you can’t very well tour South America without making at least one trip into “The Mighty Amazon”, right?

This particular adventure started when we jumped into a “combi/micro” - a small Volkswagen van loaded with about 15 people - and headed out to the “rural” bus station on the outskirts of La Paz. After all, why pay $2 US for a taxi when you can pay $1.30 Bolivianos (25 cents) and mix with the locals?

From there, we pilled onto a bus/all terrain vehicle with about 50 other people (and again no bathroom, surprise, surprise) and headed towards Rurrenabaque in the province of Beni. With a gringo to local ratio of 1:2 we felt that we were at least a little off the gringo trail for the moment. The bus basically follows the same route as the “Most Dangerous Road in the World” that we had biked a few days earlier, but we had been assured that the “new road” that we were taking was much safer. Low and behold, the “new road” was, for the first four hours of the trip, both wider and paved, but for the remaining 18 hours, we reverted back to the same narrow, gravel, tightly curving road with incredible drop offs that we had ridden down. Only this time, instead of riding along on a compact bike, controlling the speed ourselves, we were in a full size bus and at the mercy of a “professional” driver.

The bus itself probably merits a few comments. It was the frame of a typical double decker bus, jacked up for clearance, with oversize (but pretty much bald) tires. The entire bottom level was loaded with supplies and backpacks so all of the seats where on the top level and you just about needed a ladder to reach the first step. Although this extremely high vehicle gave the appearance of serious (if-not slightly “top-heavy”) instability, Ian was kind enough to provide regular reassurance throughout the journey – i.e. during each curve when I held my breath and “gently” squeezed his knee (until it was blue).

While we weren’t able to get any clear photos from the bouncing bus, we thought that the dramatic scenery was worthy of sharing so we pulled a few pictures off the internet, after all, a picture is worth a thousand words…

Needless to say, Andrea had more than a few opportunities to practice her “relaxation techniques” along the way. It was one of the few times when she was thankful for nightfall and the darkness which prevented us from seeing exactly how close to the edge we were – sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

After a fairly uneventful 22 hour trip (Funny how your perspectives change, a 2 hour delay to repair the airbrakes and a monsoon which caused water to leak through the seam in the roof and drip on Andrea all night suddenly seemed uneventful compared to the emotions – reads “fear” - regarding what could have happened on that road), we found ourselves in the tiny town of Rurrenabaque.

We grabbed a fresh roll of toilet paper, a container of locally recommended insect repellent, a couple of bottles of water and a couple of pieces of banana bread from some ex-pat American who seemed to be a booming business selling homemade bread and brownies, and were immediately whisked away in the back of a Land Cruiser for another three hours on a rough, but wide, gravel road. After that, it was a simple 2.5 hour ride up river in dug out canoe to the middle of nowhere. I am not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point along the way we had both come to the decision that we were definitely flying back to La Paz.