Rurrenabaque is Bolivia's gate to the jungle. The town is only about 400 km away from La Paz. It says a lot about the state of Bolivian roads, then, that the bus takes around 20 hours to get there. That's an average of 20 kilometers per hour!
There are flights to Rurrenabaque, too. They are about seven times as expensive, but arrive within 45 minutes. So I booked the earliest possible flight, at 6 am, so that I could start the trip to the jungle the same day. I only got the bad news as I arrived at the airport at 5 am: due to cancellations the previous day, my flight had been moved to the afternoon. Luckily, there was free wifi at the airport - and it was fast! So the nine waiting hours passed very quickly, and at 3 pm I could finally board the plane.
The plane was tiny: it had only 19 passenger seats, the aisle was too low to stand up straight, there were no flight attendants, and I could see all the way into the cockpit from my seat.
The airport in Rurrenabaque was the next funny experience. The runway was a regular runway, paved and all, but everything else was just a grassy field.
The terminal building was tiny as well:
I spent the rest of the day enjoying the glorious warmth in Rurrenabaque. The perfect temperature after the evil cold in La Paz :-)
There are flights to Rurrenabaque, too. They are about seven times as expensive, but arrive within 45 minutes. So I booked the earliest possible flight, at 6 am, so that I could start the trip to the jungle the same day. I only got the bad news as I arrived at the airport at 5 am: due to cancellations the previous day, my flight had been moved to the afternoon. Luckily, there was free wifi at the airport - and it was fast! So the nine waiting hours passed very quickly, and at 3 pm I could finally board the plane.
The plane was tiny: it had only 19 passenger seats, the aisle was too low to stand up straight, there were no flight attendants, and I could see all the way into the cockpit from my seat.
The airport in Rurrenabaque was the next funny experience. The runway was a regular runway, paved and all, but everything else was just a grassy field.
The terminal building was tiny as well:
I spent the rest of the day enjoying the glorious warmth in Rurrenabaque. The perfect temperature after the evil cold in La Paz :-)
