It didn't want to finish my year trip without an adventure in the jungle. I chose to go to the rainforest in the Amazon basin (if you want to do it, do it right!). The easiest (and cheapest) place to organize such a tour is in Rurrenabaque, a small town north of La Paz. And a few hours boat ride from Rurrenabaque is the Madidi National Park, one of the richest park in flora and fauna in the world.
In order to avoid a very long and bumpy bus ride, we took a plane from La Paz to Rurrenabaque. The cheapest tickets were sold by the TAM, the Bolivian military airline. Two armed soldiers checked our taxi driver's documents at the entry to the military airport. However, once we got to the terminal, it all looked surprisingly informal. The terminal reminded me more of a small local bus station, and the check-in was only about looking at our tickets and weighting the luggage. No security control whatsoever, no rules about taking liquids on board. When the plane was ready, we all just casually walked out of the terminal to board our ride.
It was a no-frill tiny plane and I can only hope that TAM does a better job maintaining the engine than the interior. But the flight itself was spectacular. The flight started among white-capped mountains at 4000 meters above sea-level and then descended through highlands all the way to the jungle. Seeing the rainforest from above really gave me an idea of the size of the Amazon basin. It was forest as far as I could see.
The airport in Rurrenabaque was even more casual than the one in La Paz. The plane landed on an asphalt strip (finished a year ago) but then it just turned left directly on the grass and after a few minutes it arrived at a small house surrounded by trees. Welcome to the Rurrenabaque airport!
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