When deciding upon our tour, I wanted to do a jungle and pampas combined tour, but this was a lot more expensive than just doing the pampas one, and we couldn't justify the extra expense. Plus we are going to work in an animal sanctuary in the jungle after here, so we'll see it there anyway. We just decided to go for a 3 day pampas trip in the end. Once we'd sorted our the trip, we needed to work out how we were going to get there. As we're on a tight budget, we did consider taking a very cheap bus journey there. It was on one of the most dangerous roads in the world, but when we heard that around 12 tourist had died a week earlier on the same bus journey, we decided our own safety was more important than the price tag. Therefore we decided to fly to Rurrenabaque. There was a slightly cheaper way of doing it, and that was to book a flight with Tame, the military airline, so we chose that option.

The day of our pampas trip, we had to get a taxi to the airport, the military airport and not the main airport in La Paz . So we booked a taxi through the hostel and when we got in, I stressed that we needed to go to the military airport, the driver confirmed this was ok. However, when we got dropped at the airport, because we'd not been to the airport in La Paz, we didn't know that we were at a the wrong airport. It was only when we'd try to check in for our flight did they tell us that we were at the main one, not the military one, stupid taxi driver. Luckily for us, we had arrived early enough to get another taxi at double the price to take us to the military airport.
 
Once we'd got the second taxi there, we tried to check in, but at this airport they were so disorganised that we had to wait in the queue until a few minutes before our flight actually left. You would think it being a military airport, that things would run with precision, but no, it was chaos trying to check in. When we'd finally checked in the luggage, we had to rush straight away to board the flight, so that was good as there was no more hanging wound. When we boarded, it was a really small little plane . I was expecting there to be army people aboard, but it was just members of the public. So I am glad we opted for the cheaper plane now. We saved about £50 by doing it this way, and we are safer than on the bus, so I am happy. The plane takes an hour, the bus would have taken 25-40 hours, that was extra time that we don't have, so win win situation. The flight to get there was over the rain-forest, and we didn't fly that high, so we actually got good views of the forest, mountains and rivers, which to me, looked like the jungle.

After our short flight, we landed in a field! Well actually it's the airport in Rurrenabaque, which has been given a gravel track now, previously, it was just a grass landing strip. I saw a sign saying welcome to Rurrenabaque, this looked like it was in someone's house. It was in fact, the actual airport, it was tiny. As soon as we stepped outside the plane, you could feel the humidity levels were high, I was sweating. We have arrived in the jungle as far as i'm concerned . Our next step was to find some accommodation. There was a jeep that pulled up from a hostel asking people if they wanted a room. We looked at their business card and said thanks. Then when we saw that everyone else had taken them up on the offer, we were the only ones left at the airport. With no way of getting to the centre, we changed our minds, so said yes we'll come and stay there. We got in the jeep along with everyone else and they gave us all a lift to the hostel.
 
When we got there, we got shown around the place. It was right by the Beni river and they had lots of animals there. The rooms were basic, but for a night, it will be fine. There was a fan in the room, luckily, as we'll need they with it being so hot here. After we'd checked in, we went for a wander around to find the centre, as we had to go to our tour company, the local agent we booked our tour through was Fluvial Tours, so we needed to find their office. We walked into the main area and found it easily, so popped into their office. They seemed to know who we were and were really friendly. We are to check into their office at 9am tomorrow to start the tour.

After we'd confirmed that, we had a wander around Rurrenabaque, which was larger than I expected. We went and sat by the river to relax and saw lots of tour boats going part, those are the boats that depart to go to the jungle. We relaxed in the hammocks for a while. Then later, we went and found ourselves a restaurant to have dinner in and on the recommendation of the guy from the hostel, we found a nice place to eat. John had a lovely steak and I had some kind of pasta dish. There was a little cat in the restaurant who wanted to eat some of my dinner, so I gave it some food. We then left for an early night as we've to be up early for the tour tomorrow.