Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
vance on both Visa and Mastercard at Prodem on the corner of Pando and Avaroa (Mon-Fri
8.30am-12.30pm & 2.30-6pm, Sat 9am-noon); the commission is a hefty 5.3 percent.
Hostal Beni
on Comercio and Aniceto Arce, changes travellers' cheques and most curren-
cies (the owner has a
cambio
in La Paz, apparently).
Internet
There are numerous hole-in-the-wall internet cafés along Comercio, though prices
are high (Bs8/hr) and speeds hardly the fastest.
Laundry
The friendly Alex Laundry on Comercio and Santa Cruz charges a very com-
petitive Bs8/kg for a same day wash-and-dry service and they'll even deliver the freshly
laundered linen to your hotel free of charge.
Telephones
There are Punto ENTEL offices all over Rurrenabaque, open all day every day.
Parque Nacional Madidi
SERNAP office Libertad, San Buenaventura • 03 8922540,
www.sernap.gob.bo
• Bs125
On Rurrenabaque' s doorstep, and covering nearly nineteen thousand square kilometres,
PARQUE NACIONAL MADIDI
is home to some of the most diverse plant and animal life
in South America. In altitude it ranges from less than 300m to over 5500m above sea level,
encompassing a variety of Andean and Amazonian ecosystems that range from dense trop-
ical rainforests and seasonally flooded savannahs to pristine cloudforest and glacial moun-
tain peaks. The park is home to an astonishing variety of wildlife: more than seven hundred
species of animal have been recorded, along with some 860 species of bird, although the
total may be more like one thousand - more than in the whole of North America. There are
also more than five thousand species of flowering plant. Madidi was recognized as a national
park in 1995 and, together with the neighbouring
Pilon Lajas
reserve and
Parque Nacional
Tambopata-Candamo
across the border in Peru, forms a corridor of biodiversity that is gen-
erally considered to be one of the 25 most critical conservation areas in the world.
The real wonder of the park is its spectacular scenery and the bewildering complexity of
the rainforest ecosystem, and you should treat viewing
wildlife
as a bonus rather than the
main purpose of a visit to the park. Having said that, on a standard three- or four-day trip you
should see a fair amount of wildlife, including several species of monkey, capybaras, cay-
mans and a veritable cornucopia of birds, including brightly coloured toucans, macaws and
parrots. If you're lucky you may also see larger animals like the mighty jaguar or the lumber-
ing tapir. Be warned, though, that many species are rare, nocturnal and shy, and the areas of
the park most easily accessible by river were logged and hunted until relatively recently.
If you want to get into the park's really pristine areas you'll need to go on a trip of about a
week, travelling on foot or horseback into the more remote regions of the forest around the
headwaters of the
Río Madidi
. The upper regions of the park can only be reached from the
highlands north of La Paz, and even from there they are pretty much inaccessible unless you
organize a serious expedition.
