This morning I got up early, grabbed a croissant from the French bakery and headed to the office for the canopy zipline.

At the office I met my guide, Emil, and then we headed to the river to go by boat to te jungle. Once we reached the jungle – it took around 20 mins by boat, we then had to trek to the first of the zipline platforms at around 3000m. The trek was up and down.

On the way we stopped at a viewpoint. The hills in the distance are the ones I ziplined through.

The zipline canopy was built by an American who promised to give any profit back to the local community at Villa Alcira. However, he didn’t keep his promise so in the end the local community hired a lawyer and won the case.

On the trek I got stung by a wasp in my ear, it was pretty painful. I’m not quite sure how it happened but I guess at some point I walked quite close to a bush and I heard this had buzzing in my ear – I swatted it and it stung me! Anyway, inwards and upwards.

Just before the first platform Emil showed me the technique to zipline successfully, sit down in the harness, cross your ankles, hold onto the short rope with your left hand and use your right hand for a brake when needed (You wear a special glove for this).

We arrived at the first platform and Emil explained everything again and then he ziplined down to the second storm. Once he was safely hooked on at the second platform it was my time to go. I was nervous but more excited. It was brilliant! This is the view from the first platform down to the second one.

And so it continued down across all 10 ziplined. Some of the lines were faster and longer than others. I loved it and you got such a good view of the forest from a completely different perspective.

These are some of the views from the different platforms:

At around platform seven, Emil told me how a guide had died last year as he forgot to unclip himself from the tourist so when the tourist started to go down the cable he got dragged along and he crashed into a tree and broke his spine. I made sure I was not clipped to Emil before he went down the cables!!

The whole experience was so exhilarating, I wanted to do it again as it was over so quickly. In total it’s over 1500m of cables and the fastest one is around 250m in 10 seconds!

On the way back we stopped at the lookout again and I ate the fruit of the cacao plant, the seeds are the beans that are them ground down to make chocolate so we didn’t eat these, just the fruit around them. Emil also cut down a couple of jungle oranges which were really juicy and sweet.

As there was only me doing the tour this morning we finished a little early and the boat wasn’t at the meeting point to pick us up. But Emil just flagged down another passing boat and we got a ride back to Rurrenabque.

This afternoon I just sorted out some accommodation trips and travel in Peru and spent some time reading by the pool. Obviously I swam a bit in the pool too.

This evening I had some fish at a nice restaurant and then went for a drink at one of the bars. The restaurant was really good for people watching. Practically everyone in Rurrenabaque has a motorbike or moped and quite often you see families of four or five on one bike. I’ve even seen pet dogs on them. And nobody wears any helmets or protective clothing.

I really like Rurrenabaque, it’s a really chilled, laid back place.