20 hour bus ride later we arrived in hot, stuffy, humid Rurre...and boy were we delighted to be there. With cold beers in hand and swinging on hammocks, we threw off our trainers and hoody's and slipped on our flip flops! Oh the feeling of hot, sticky air on our skin...beautiful. Rurre is a cute little town - about 5 blocks by 5 blocks and no sight of cars...just motorbikes! Everyone in this town seems to have a motorbike and they'll fit as many people as possible on the back. I think the record we saw was 5 people and a 32 inch TV...priceless. It's funny the way Bolivia works...being the poorest country in South America, everyone still manages to buy a motorbike in a town you could walk around in aobut 20 minutes and where you have to get permission from the army to buy diesel.
But I guess that's it's charm as well. Anyway, we had a day to enjoy the little town before we needed to head into the jUngle. We chose a tour with an "eco-tourism" company where they don't touch any of the animals and completely protect the area in which they tour. From staying in Rurre for so long we soon realised these type of companies are few and far between. We spent 3 glorious days in a protected area of the jungle called Serere. Serere is privately owned land that was about to be destroyed about 20 years ago before it was rescued by a woman called Rosa-Maria Ruiz. She was the driving force behind Madidi National Parque (which you will see from most maps of Bolivia and Peru) - she hiked and canoed through the entire region of the Tacana Indigenous communities for about 2 years educating the people on what would happen if they didn't get together to turn this region into a national park (already it was being severely exploited by loggers and hunters). She got the leader of each community to sign a treaty which was then brought to the government and Madidi Park was formed. Years later, she started protecting the area of Serere...where we visited. After 3 days trekking and canoing through the jungle and seeing many different mammals, reptiles and birds we decided to volunteer for the company and ended up staying in Rurre for a month. We spent some time in the office in Rurre promoting the project and trying to get tourists to visit Serere - there is no such thing as government funding here so this is the only way to get money into protecting the area. We also spent some time in Serere enjoying the complete peace and beauty of the area - with no electricity and sleeping in cabins with just mosquito nets for walls it was complete heaven. 
While we were there we set projects for ourselves as well - Mitch painted a murel of the Serere bird on the wall outside the office, dedicating it to Rosa Maria and we both re-designed the website for Madidi Travel (after seeing the website we decided this was a necesity!). We worked everyday for a month...quite happily...with 4 other volunteers...from 8am-8pm (shouting "beer o' clock every evening at 7pm when one of the boys would have to trek to the shop for cold beers) loving every minute of it! We were quite lucky to get an inside look into the indigenous communities around the region and also into Bolivian family life - the family who ran the office in Rurre lived above the office and very openly welcomed us into their family! But we had to move on at some stage and with heavy hearts we said goodbye to our adoptive family and Rosa María and moved started our trek into Peru!(pic 1: Us with a spider monkey who lives in Serere - her mother was hunted so she was adopted by Rosa María...she literally jumped on top of me 30 seconds before this photo; pic 2: Mitch next to his finished murel; pic 3: Us with our adoptive family - Murilo, Pampi, Rosa María (with a baby spider monkey whose mother was also hunted), Guido, me and Mitch)
