rurrenabaque, bolivia - pt. 1

Rurrenabaque is a nice little town in the jungle of Bolivia. It has no mountains, a lot of fresh fruit and is located directly at the shore of the big Rio Beni. 
I arrived there some time in the morning and me and the only other foreigner on the bus went to look for a hostel together. I knew where I wanted to go, but I wanted to walk. My friend decided to take a taxi, which is here no more that a small motorbike. A quite interesting experience with a big backpack, as I would learn later myself. 
the hostel was small, and super nice. It had a kitchen (but no gas), clean rooms and a hammock area. And, what is most important, all the people there were nice. Right at the beginning I met a Russian girl, with who I spent a lot of time the following days. 
I spent part of my first day with collecting information about the tours that you can make here (which I really don’t like doing). There are a lot of different agencies that offer tours to the pampas (about 3 hours from Rurre) and the jungle (into the madidi National Park, which has one of the richest variety in flora and fauna in the world). 
But since the main reason for my coming to Rurrenabaque was to see the place, where a friend of mine had lived for 6 months, and meet the shaman that he worked with. So I also went to their office where they told me that I might be able to work there as a volunteer as well and help them out with a big group of people that was supposed to come for a diet a few days later. But I’d still have some time until then, so I kept thinking to do a tour but I couldn’t really make up my mind (as always). I spent the afternoon thinking, lying in a hammock, talking to the people at the hostel and I also went to the pool. There I kinda made my decision to go on a tour and work after that, so I went to the agency and told them I would be in for the next day. But for some reason that didn’t really make me happy, and I went to the office of my friend’s place (the cerro brujo) again and asked if they knew anything new. Which they did. They told me I could go to the lodges (10 minutes up river from the town) the day after, so I went back to find the guy from the tour agency to tell him that I had changed my mind. Luckily he was okay with that, and I was really looking forward to going to the cerro. 

When I woke up the next day it was raining. Not just a little bit, but a lot. I went to buy food and had to wade through the water on the streets, which was higher than my ankles. What I thought was pretty amazing was, that the people were still riding their motos through the water. 
After buying food I went to the office and waited there. But as I had already thought it was not possible to go to the cerro that day because the river was too high for the boats to go up. So I spent the day in the office, happy to have a computer and a dry place to hang out. For the first time in forever I read some news from Austria, and kept myself occupied that way. Sometime in the afternoon Daniel, the guy from the office, came and asked me if I had a camera with me. I may not be the typical tourist, but I’m still a foreigner and so I always do. And that was when I found out that just a couple streets away landslides had come down from the mountains and destroyed parts of the streets and some houses. Daniel wanted to go and take pictures, and I went with him. 
The situation was more than sad – houses were flooded or ripped down, everything was full of mud and people got injured. When I was there, there were also the local tv station and a lot of people saving what was left in their houses or starting to clean up. I almost couldn’t bear it, especially when I saw the tv interviewing someone who had lost part of their family in the landslide. If I would have known, that that had just been the beginning! 

I went back to the hostel to wait until it would be possible to go up the river. For some reason I didn’t even really mind and had a great time staying there. I had lots of time to read and talk to the people and one night we made huge barbeque and played Risk until late at night. I also went to a mirador with the Russian girl, to do at least something kind of productive, and walked around town a lot. I was just enjoying the people and the good spirits of the place. 
Still, I was eager to get to the cerro, and three days later it was finally time. I met up with Philip, the shaman, and two chilenean girls who wanted to stay there for the night. We took one of the long, narrow boats and arrived at the cerro shortly afterwards. 

After we had settled down and put our backpacks away, we decided to take a walk to a waterfall. When we left, we still had daylight and so going through the rivers, and over the trees that had fallen down, was okay. But after a while it got dark, and when we arrived at the waterfall we couldn’t really see much of it. Still, it was nice and a little different kind of a jungle tour. But the way back was not as pleasant - we were being followed by mosquitoes and I got bitten by a huge ant, which hurt a lot. And also finding your steps in the dark wasn’t easy, especially because every second tree is full of spines or insects. I was in a mood where I just wanted to get back to the cabins as soon as possible. After a while we saw a small light moving our direction – Ivan, the Argentinean volunteer, with a candle. I immediately felt better and knew that I would get along with him. 
We then had some dinner together and then I went to bed soon, all excited about finally being at the cerro and looking forward to the time I would be spending there. 

When I woke up the following day, it was raining. Not too bad, but enough to make it impossible for the girls to leave. We spent the day playing games, reading, and in the afternoon Philip came to talk to me about having an Ayahuaska ceremony. I’ve heard about it a couple times on my way down to Bolivia, but I still didn’t know a lot about it and until that day I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try it. But when Philip asked me, I decided to take the chance for that experience and the decision felt good. 
In the late afternoon we all went to get some rest before the ceremony, since it would take up quite some time of the night. 

My Ayuahuaska experience was quite interesting, but since it’s very personal I’m not going to give details here. What I can say though, is that when I woke up the next morning, I felt great. The air was fresh and clean, and my body felt light and I was aware of the beautiful nature around me. We had some delicious fruit salad for breakfast and then talked about our experiences. 
But still, it wasn’t possible for the girls to leave. In fact, water had risen over night and even the trail to the temple wasn’t passable. They made an attempt to get back in the afternoon, but returned after a couple of hours, being completely wet and muddy. So it was another quiet day with not much to do. 
What I did do though, was that I cleaned the entire kitchen, which turned out being a big mistake. 

When I went to bed that night, the water had gotten quite high. Still, when the girls came to get me to go to another cabin that was higher up, I agreed but didn’t think it would be necessary. We also put our stuff up on some stairs, just in case the water would really rise to the floor level of the dorm (which I still didn’t think would happen). I should be proved wrong. 

In the morning we were flooded. Everything that used to be plain area was water. The bathrooms were nothing but water, my recently cleaned kitchen had water up to our hips and stuff floating around, and in the dorm, which is built on poles, the water was higher than our ankles. 
When I saw all that I just went straight back to bed. 
After a while, when the others started to wake up as well, one of the girls and I decided to go to the dorm to get some clothes and safe some stuff. We almost had to swim. Our companion was an inflatable boat, which we used to carry some stuff for the day, and the things we could find in the kitchen. Luckily, the gas and stove were safe, but we had lost some other things (like food, for example). But after the first shock, we actually started to have some fun, and I just felt like we were in a movie. 
We put the most important stuff on our cabin’s porch and, again, didn’t do much that day. None of us wanted to go back to the water, so we could do nothing but wait. Sometime in the afternoon Ivan showed up at our cabin. We all were relieved that he was fine, because his cabin was a little further up the trail, on the other side of a river, and we hadn’t been able to get there in the morning. 

The next day the water had gotten down a little, but we were still kind of trapped in the cabin. So the day passed by, just as the one before. It was dark inside the cabin, but raining outside, so I spent my time reading and sleeping, in a state of mind that was something between being awake and being asleep. We cooked once or twice a day, but since I had only brought food for myself and the other had not been planning on staying more than a day, we knew we couldn’t stay for too long before we would run out of food. I don’t really remember how many days we spent there, but either the next day or the one after that, the girls and Philip, backpack in the inflatable boat, made another attempt to leave, and this time they were successful. Ivan and I were going to leave the next day, mainly because we were hoping for the water to go down and the river to calm down a little more and because we still had a little bit of food. 

We got up in the morning, cleaned a little and then started the adventure of getting out of the jungle. We made it as far as to the temple before we realized that we had to cross one of the rivers swimming (even though the bridge was destroyed, you normally were able to walk through the river with water no higher than up to your knees). Ivan first went to find the boat, which was gone, and then we decided to put our stuff in one of those plastic things that are normally used for doing laundry. We put on life vests, and pushing our things in front of us through the water, we swam. Being cold in the beginning, the water was okay after we got used to it and we also were able to walk some parts of the trail. 
When we got to the little port, we saw the Rio Beni for the first time since the flooding. It was scary – the currents were rapid, the waves high, and it was full of wood and large trees. 
We sat down in the boat that was there to wait for one that would take us back to Rurre. Two boats passed, but they were going the wrong way. Time passed and nothing happened. After 6 hours, when we were just about to go back to the cabin and try again tomorrow, we saw a boat. It was going upriver as well but they saw us and waved at us that they would come back and get us. On the boat I wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t have been better to wait another day – it was definitely the scariest part of all. 

But we made it. We arrived in Rurre in the late afternoon, walking through the streets like from another world, dirty, wet, and hungry. We bought the first food we could find, and just then made our way to the hostel. It was a different one than the one I stayed in last time, but it was close and supposed to have better breakfast. What it didn’t have was water. The flooding hit the town pretty hard as well and most of the houses were without water and the streets were full of mud. 
Still, I was just happy to be back in civilization.