Culture Shock! Bolivia - A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette

Enjoying Bolivia 229

stew. It would have been suffi cient to partake of the Chimane
gardens of papaya, yuca, guava and lime. If you don’t agonise,
though, then you haven’t really taken this tour.
More medicinal herbs, and then it’s back to the motorised
canoes, where the travellers may get cleansed by a drenching
rain all the way back to Rurre. After removing ticks from
various parts of their bodies, they will sleep until noon the
next day.

Useful Tip

Hotels are friendly, basic and cheap. With Rurre tour

companies expanding faster than they can be clocked, it

is necessary to consult Bolivia’s Secretariat of Tourism for

recommended companies.

I originally wrote that Rurrenabaque exemplifi es how so
many potentially prime tourist spots in Bolivia will remain
undisturbed for years to come; it is diffi cult to reach, and
once you’re there, the infrastructure is not tourist-friendly.
But between 2000 and 2005, the number of annual visitors
to Rurre jumped from 5,000 to 37,000, and local tour
companies sprouted up accordingly. Not bad for a town of
11,000 inhabitants, or maybe not good for preserving the
reason why one would want to visit Rurrenabaque in the
fi rst place. Tours have expanded in dimension to reach the
Madidi and Pilon Lajas national parks.
Bussing from La Paz during the dry season (when roads
are most passable) takes 18 hours; it’s only 45 minutes
by plane.
No one says that we must travel with a tour, but when
culture shock or inaccessible geography are constraints,
macho travel may not be the answer. Many Bolivian tour
companies are well aware that the type of customers who
arrive in such remote territories are adventurers who do not
want to degrade the environment and would like to interact
with local inhabitants without disrupting their way of life.
In such cases, a tour is not contradictory with adventure
and enrichment.