Down in the jungle where nobody goes...

After a few days discovering the witches and prisoners of La Paz, we flew into Rurrenabaque (still Bolivia) in a glorified tin can of a plane owned by TAM, which is the Bolivian Military's commercial airline.

Please don't touch

Rurrenbaque took us back to the jungle towns of Asia: hair-curling humidity, mal-nourished dogs and stalls selling deet, ponchos and dubious bottles of suncream.

When people think Amazon, they think Brazil. I know we did. Yet the Amazon basin covers nine South American countries meaning you don’t have to take an expensive tour in Brazil to see it. Our backpacking budget breathed a sigh of relief.

Our luxury cabin

With the Aussies, Tess and Adrian, and the Kiwis, Simonne and Mike, we had booked a 3 day jungle/2 day pampas tour with Mashaquipe tours. The pampas are the low, flat wetlands, teeming with caymans, dolphins, birds, monkeys and more.

It was jungle first, and so we took a well-worn wooden boat to a cooperative jungle camp organised by indigenous people of the Tuichi River area.

Following in the footsteps of pumas

It was jungle heaven: spacious, scented wooden huts, lazy hammocks and butterflies providing decoration across the camp floor.

Our guide, Billy, was a walking encyclopaedia of the jungle. We followed tracks and looked and listened for animals, stifling giggles when Billy did the most loud and amazing imitations of their calls. Sometimes, we actually heard the animals replying to him. Billy, the original Tarzan.

Hundreds of beautiful butterflies

We chased through the trees to find brown capuchin monkeys, listened to the raucous calls of the howler monkeys, saw poisonous frogs and beastly spiders on night walks, touched the mangled and spiked branches of ancient, gnarly trees, tracked a puma just ten minutes from camp and followed the footsteps of anteaters.

The jungle is so thick and lush that it's hard to spot animals without spending weeks in it's heart.

Then came survival fishing. After finding maggots inside sugar cane plants to catch small fish...and using the small fish to find the big fish...we waited for a bite. But none came.

Med gets peckish

Vultures and condors swooped and glided overhead, stretching out to their full 3 metre wingspan and wiggling their long fingers in the breeze. Yet still none came. Eventually Billy, our guide, caught three huge salmon in his net. We would not go hungry tonight.


We then spent a night on the jungle floor (quite literally - with just a roll mat and net), watching electric blue and red macaws at sunset from a lookout, eating an amazing feast by candle light with our ears swarmed by the sounds of the jungle - more alive than ever at night. Mosquitoes - 34, Sally - 0.

Double, jungle rainbow

After a testing night's sleep on the hard floor, we arose for a delicious breakfast of pancakes, dulce de leche, fried cheese, fruit salad and empañadas. The food was sensational at every meal time, even in the middle of the jungle on a single-ringed stove.

Before our raft started to sink

After more macaw spotting, we built a raft to take us back to the main camp. The building itself went quite swimmingly and we set off down the river. Then disaster struck: Mike and Billy stood on the same log at exactly the same time and it snapped, cleanly, in two.

Turtle tanning

At that same moment, Med dropped the paddle. We were, quite literally, up the creek without a paddle. Somehow we made it across rapids back to camp, and then jumped in the water for a swim as all our clothes were wet already from the half-sunken raft.

The next morning, we went by boat and car to Santa Rosa: the gateway to the Pampas. It was an eventful journey (I know no other kind in South America) involving us trying to tow trucks out of the thick mud, and failing, trying to fix someone's car, and failing, and watching a sloth move in a tree, and failing (because sloths don't move, I've seen it with my very own eyes).

Capybara and bird - best of friends

As we arrived to our river-side hostel, even before we got onto the boat we spotted some fresh water pink dolphins swimming around just ten feet or so away from us.

A red-bellied piranha (supper)

A long, thin boat with rickety seats and water pooling in the bottom was to be our transport for two days and soon enough we are floating along the muddy brown river, the sun beating down relentlessly on our shoulders, the river occasionally splashing us with a welcome spray of water.

On various river trips during the day, we got up close to an amazing amount of wildlife: tortoises sunning themselves on logs, birds of all shapes colours and sizes (egrets, herons, blue kingfishers, eagles and birds of paradise) skimming along the water or atop the trees, capybaras (giant, semi-aquatic guinea pigs - I joke not) and trees full of tiny yellow squirrel monkeys, black howler monkeys and brown capuchin monkeys.

Yellow squirrel monkey catching mosquitoes with his hands

Before sunset, we balanced in our boat on a laguna and held our fishing lines with lumps of meat on the end, shrieking at every tug and rejoicing when we caught something. We were piranha fishing - I had a unique technique that involved getting Tess and Simonne soaked and I nearly fell in when I pulled a big one into the boat where I sat.

Cayman lurking

At night we went cayman spotting, their beady eyes burning red by torch light near the riverbank. We came across a few babies in a nest too and our guide insisted it was perfectly fine to get out the boat and wade towards a group of three big caymans. When one disappeared, the girls made a quick dash back to the safety of the boat. We then turned off our torches and watched the fireflies sparkling in the trees.

Swimming with pink dolphins

The final day was my favourite of the five day trip: we went swimming with pink dolphins in the river. Perfectly safe, we were told, as the dolphins push away the sharp-toothed, blood thirsty caymans.

Once I had convinced myself I wasn't going to get eaten, it was a really special experience: dolphins big and small swimming close by, quite happy with human company. And noone lost any limbs.

Chasing waterfalls at Iguazú

Iguazú Falls took us by surprise. We had expected it to be beautiful, memorising and eardrum-bursting. What we hadn’t expected was the jungle excitement, the animals and the extreme drenching.


Iguazú consists of 275 separate falls, extending nearly 2 miles in semi-circular shape, 80% of which are on the Argentinian side, which is the side we picked to visit. At it’s highest point it drops 83m, that’s 29m more than Niagara – a fact that prompted Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to sigh “Poor Niagara!” on her first visit.

While I knew this much before our visit, I had no idea just how big that would feel when stood before the falls. It's no wonder they've recently been made one of the Seven New Natural Wonders of the World.

With every world wonder, there's a story. According to local legend, a god planned to marry a beautiful aborigine girl named Naipí against her will. She escaped from him by fleeing with her mortal lover, Tarobá, in a hand-carved canoe on the river. The god flew into such a wild rage when he found out that he split the river into two and created all the waterfalls so that the two lovers would be condemned to an eternal 'fall'.

Or, it's the result of tectonic activity, but that's just boring. And the sheer size and beauty of the falls makes you to believe that something otherworldly played a hand.

So we started our day early, always happy to sacrifice (another!) lie in to beat the crowds. After a Disney Land-style welcome, we soon plunged into subtropical rainforest that is home to hundreds of rare and endangered species of flora and fauna. Before we had even heard the roar of a waterfall, we had seen rainbow-splashed birds, giant guinea pigs (capabarras), and delicately-striped coatis.
Within the Argentine Park there are three trails for you to follow; an upper, a lower and the trip to the Devil's Throat.

We began our day following the lower trail, a route that takes you much closer to the falls, where you could literally reach out and touch the water. You also feel much more like you are truly in the jungle on the Argentine side of the river, discovering the falls for the first time. Accompanying this feeling are the strange noises from the trees that you can't quite identify and the spray of moisture in the air. It is enchanting before you even get close.

And when you do, the view of the thick ribbons of water cascading down the dark rock is captivating, suspending you in a marvel of water, noise and balmy air. As we got closer and closer, the jaw-dropping view made us hurry along the trail faster and faster, with a dramatic change in scenery at every turn in the trail. First we were looking down on the strong sheets of water hurtling down the sheer drop, and before we knew it we were underneath them, feeling the spray on our face in the morning sun.

On the upper trail, we spotted so many birds, a huge pack of coatis with their long snouts and  an otter playing with death by swimming in circles near the edge of one of the falls. And still we were almost the only people there; the early bird catches the worm, and the otter.

As we headed to the lower trail we started to see more people and the famous Iguazú crowds were more believable. We spotted a vivid toucan at the start of the trail, followed by a tiny hummingbird and so many technicolour butterflies- we had gone from Disney Land to something straight out of a Disney film.

The gold at the end of the rainbow

This lower path takes you across scaffolded walkways, enabling you to walk over the smaller waterfalls, feeling and hearing them run underneath your feet as you look down. This was also our first glimpse of the most impressive part of the falls, the U-shaped cataract nicknamed Garganta del Diablo (The Devil's Throat), which has 14 falls plunging more than 350 feet.

It was so hypnotic looking at this powerful water falling and changing colour from the blue tranquil water at the top to bright green with white foam and spray as it falls over the edge. From here we could almost see all of the falls as they snake around, words cannot describe how formidable a view we had; photographs don't do justice to the energy and sheer might of what lay before us.

And then there were the rainbows, proving you don't need rain for a multi-coloured horseshoe in the sky. Protruding from the clusters of waterfalls were perfect, arching bows of red, yellow and blue on a backdrop of brilliant white and lush green.

We then caught a small boat across to Isla San Martin, putting on the obligatory life-jackets for the 60 second journey. The man on the boat gave me iced mate, the fresh, traditional tea supped constantly by Argentinians out of elaborate, patterned cups. It's surprisingly bitter and awful at first, but it gets more bearable with persistence.

As we climbed up the island, within minutes we had spotted our first armadillo, with it's tiered, shell-like back and thick, pointed tail. Then another, and then another. We arrived at the huge band of waterfalls known as Salto San Martin, Salto Mbigua and Salto Bernabe Mendez. From here, it looked like thousands of small waterfalls merging, with a huge rainbow in their mist.

Half of the island appeared to be closed off, but we saw some people walking past the broken 'Cerrado' sign. I'm glad we did, as along this less-trampled path we came across a huge congregation of vultures who glared down at us from their rocky fort beneath the falls.

On our way to catch the train to the Garganta del Diablo, we stumbled across another swarm of South American coatis – funny little animals who look like a cross between a raccoon, a possum and an anteater with a long nose and an even longer ringed tail. Not in the least bit shy, the animals zig-zagged their way across the busy trails, fishing half-finished packets of biscuits out of bins before staff members shooed them away. Strange and possibly cruel as it all was, having so much wildlife present reminded us that we were actually in a National Park – a park that is home to jaguars no less.

After cramming on a little train to take us round to the top of the falls, we crossed over a sedate, calm part of the Iguazú River, passing people going in the opposite direction who were soaked to their skin, but smiling nonetheless. Despite this warning, we were overwhelmed by the ferocity of the falls. The previous few weeks at Iguazú  had been particularly dry and so they had recently opened the dam to replenish the falls. While they are now helped by man, this part of the falls is a true reminder of what nature can do.

Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat)

Water thunders and pounds over the edge, sheet after sheet of white noise. We were deafened by the noise, soaked by the spray and entranced by its power. As it hurls over the precipice, the river looks more like a mountain-top avalanche than a waterfall and the resulting spray makes it hard to see anything more than a thick white mist and the occasional, suicidal sparrow that nose dives into the huge clouds of spray.

To finish our awe-inspiring day, we took a walk into the jungle and watched as black capuchin monkeys danced over our heads, putting on a swinging show from tree to tree.