Day 51 – La Paz to the Amazon Jungle

Today was the start of a three day boat ride into the Amazon Jungle, as has been typical over the last couple of weeks it was lashing rain as we were picked up at 5am and consequently the promised five hour bus ride to the river gradually got longer and longer and longer. There was six other people on the trip with us; two Canadians, three English and a Chilean as well as our guide, the cook and a couple of dubious looking helpers.

I would like to say it was a beautiful relaxing bus ride and I was able to leisurely read my book and contemplate the meaning of life and the greater universe, I found that impossible however as our driver would career around hairpin corners as I was left peering down 300m sheer cliff faces onto the raging river below. You can't imagine the joy I felt when we would come bumper-to-bumper with another bus or oil tanker and would then have to reverse back around the same bend. The Great Gatesby has never been read with such a feeling that the end of the book would never be reached.

In due course we made it to the Rio Beni river and the extreme terror of the bus journey was left behind to a more sedate sail along the river and into the jungle. Due to the lateness of the bus and the imminent setting sun we did not make it as far downriver as the campsite, so our guide was forced to haggle with an elderly native to let us stay in his village which was great, however, I made sure that the giant cooking pot in the corner was never put near the fire.

Whenever CIara and I find ourselves in a new tour group we play a game called Country Name Drop. The rules are simple, anyone who unnecessarily manages to crow-bar a country that they have visited into the conversation gets a point. It is usually won by people who have done very little travelling, people who are incredibly dull or Australians. Recently, we have heard such winning lines as 'This is the same kind of rain you get in Vietnam', 'This is not like the forest in Pananma'. Today we came across an English girl (Sally) who in the space of just seven hours managed a staggering 24 points – not even Pele can boast that strike rate – as anticipated, each story was tedious enough to bore a Buddhist into a life of debauchery.