Arriving in Rurre

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Oh, Bolivia.

A week ago we left La Paz in a little propeller plane, which was by far the most beautiful flight of my life (and I’ve done quite a few…). Since the plane was so small, we flew between the snow-covered mountains and then down towards the lowlands, the green hills, the rivers.

When we arrived at the airport of Rurrenabaque, which was basically just a house next to a field, we were greeted with the phrase “wellcom to paradais!” (imagine a Spanish intonation here), and he was so right. This is so incredibly beautiful, it’s like living and breathing a documentary from national geographic. The landscapes I barely dared to dream of are now surrounding me.

So we got into town and called our couchsurfer. In this remote (yet touristic) village, there is only one couchsurfer, who of course gets heaps of requests. However, after 3 years in the CS community and this being my 40th time surfing, I have some practice in writing requests by now and know how to make people understand that I'm genuinely interested in meeting them and not just want to stay for free at someone's house. Miguel, or Lechu as he is nicknamed, picked us up and then drove us to his grandparents place, where he picked a coconut from the garden and served me. In the afternoon Tess was feeling a bit ill, so Lechu and I did a little excursion to a remote beach to go swimming in the river. Lechu and I get along so well, he is fun to hang out with and we have a special kind of humor largely based on teasing each other. He is not at all the typical Bolivian, since he lived in Venezuela for five years and has travelled a lot. At some point, I think travellers merge into a people who have more in common with each other that their countrymen – we are in a certain way a different species, with our own variety of course. And yet, after a while, you can pick out distinct types of travellers so easily... will return to this topic later!

Couchsurfers and a shared piece of beach art!