DEliTOUR: Alligator, alligator, alligator

From Copacobana we got up before dawn, the bus was cancelled, so we took a shared taxi to a ferry crossing and then the fastest local 'collectivo' minibus in the universe to La Paz. The journey was my favourite so far. The lake, the mountains, the passes on the way into La Paz (at 4200m, the highest capital in the world) and then the sprawl of the outskirts before the vast valley of the city itself. We were early and by 1130 we were in the Amaszonas Airline office booking ourselves on the afternoon flight to Rurrenabaque, the jungle town at only 100m altitude, on the Amazon delta.

Rurre was stiflingly hot andn seemingly only existed to service the needs of young travellers going on jungle or, more likely, pampas excursions. We booked on for three days with the popular and cheap Fluvial tours after a long afternoon of visiting some of the 30 tour agencies and talking with all the other gringos doing the same. Of course we expected to be going bush away from civilisation. We didnt realise that all the agencies work for about 4 companies and all the 'lodges' are within a few hundred metres of each other on the same stretch of river 100km from Rurre - and that in the evening everyone (maybe 70 people) converge on the same river lodge because that it is the only one with cold beer! So all the toing and froing selection a tour was pretty pointless - well, not entirely - we ended up with Diego as our guide. His poor English, youth (named Guito, jnr guide, by the others) and inability to hold his liquor leading to us missing both the night and sunrise walks in the pampas did mean that we picke3d a turkey!

But on the upside the 4 hour jeep journey was fun; our group was the best group of course (with Mike and Anita, Matt and Jess from the other New Zealand, Steven and Lisa from Preston, and us); on the first trip up river we were blinded by thousands of alligators of all sizes from pencils up to 5m; we saw hundreds of the world's biggest rats looking very cuddly; lost track of the number of crazy birds we saw including the stunning Bird of Paradise; and we saw the cute pink river dolphins, which a bit disconcerting as they look like mini-monsters as they break the murky water's surface with their stunted fins (not a dig at my countrymen:)).

We had jungle huts at night, plenty of good food, went anaconda hunting the next day and eventually found them after 3 hours in driving rain. We were soaked but enjoyed every minute. On the last day we fished for piranhas and took photos as Mike and Steve got their legs teased by pink dolphins. We were sad to find that our the Dutch couple that we kept seeing everywhere, Michael and Anne, broke down and had a horrid 9 hour journey back. Meanwhile we continued to marvel at the memory of all those alligators.

We got back to find that the rain had washed out all the flights out of Rurre. Because it is in the jungle the airstrip is just mud so any rain renders it useless for days. We were in the third flight out but that could have been a week away. So, I got a motorbike backie to the bus station where Mike and Anita were also faffing over the choice of buses. We plumped for the next departure but had to be content with the back row - for the 17 hour journey to La Paz - along jungle tracks and then up the Andes along some crazy roads, up the replacement for the world's most dangerous road, which still feels pretty dangerous. We played silly games with the Zealanders and the time flew past. We had one stoppage to negotiate a part of the track that had actually been removed. We had to pile up the back of the bus and we rocked to near horizontal before making it.