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Published: February 17th 2007
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Landslide
Unable to pass to Pucalpa on account of two landslides We left Lima at 1 pm expecting to arrive in Pucalpa at 9 am to learn what we need to do from there in order to ¨do¨ the Amazon. None of that happened. After two landslides, the road connecting the cities was washed away so we got our luggage off the bus and walked around the missing piece of highway to a taxi on the other side where we got into a taxi that ran out of gas. So we tried pushing it and that didn´t work so we climbed into a golf-cart like thing and then into a bus and continued to Puculpa, arriving at 5 pm the following day. We were then rushed onto a huge ferry by our taxi driver who told us it departed in 30 minutes to Iquitos. Iquitos is the first city on the Amazon, and at 500,000 inhabitants it is the largest city in the world inaccessible by land. So we buy hammocks and rope and board and walk through a jungle of 300 Amazonians, shoulder-to-shoulder, jam-packed, who had already strung up their hammocks on this commercial boat anxious to get downstream for whatever jungle reason they have. But we did find space: Gordo
Hammocks Aboard
Our sleeping quarters for 3 nights. Everyone smelled really good too. and Graham slept above a 20 ft. stairwell that led to the engine room and pens full of cows and chickens, and the girls found space above the dinner table, leaving their rears inches above peoples´meals. In the afternoon we rained sweat profusely, while in the evenings we simply glistened, and all above the roar of the engine. The bathrooms weren´t bathrooms. They were schoompflumpens. For meals we stood in line for 30 mins. like Oliver with whatever container you brought with you or could find, and the chef would dip it into a huge bathtub of whatever they so desired you to eat for the day. But it wasn´t terrible so we ate it. Plus we wanted to survive, so we ate it. So for four days we swayed down the Amazon in our hammocks (actually half the way was the Ucuyali, a major tributary of the Amazon) and absolutely fell in love with it. The people on the boat were amazing: we played cards and talked with them, taught them English, photography lessons, played music for them at night and simply became a part of them for quite a while. Whatever it was we were doing, they simply
Storm a Brewin´
On the deck of our SS Minnow stared at us… we were in their world and they didn´t know why - why would we want to be here? And when we docked we were sad to get off.
Arriving in Iquitos threw us amidst a citywide water balloon war, sparing nobody and nothing. They hit old women and innocent little girls, they tossed on Elise a big bucket of water black with grime and grit, they got what they deserved when we commandeered their supply of balloons and threw every single one back at them. They do it because it´s hot here, TOO hot, and because it´s Carnaval. After much searching we found a guide to take us into a world where mosquitos rule, the heat is an evil accomplice and everything is twice as large. It is true, we stayed in a hut on stilts with a thatched roof and mosquito netting surrounding flimsy mattresses, we swayed in hammocks during the heat of the day, we ate our dinners by candlelight. Sounds all nice and cozy until the ¨jungle walks¨ kicked in...we tightroped across sticks laid down over mud that would suck you up to your armpits if you are slipped, blindly following our machete-wielding guide
Rigamortis
the chicken population dwindled each day as they served up the fresh ones for every meal...with unripe bananas and rice cooked in river water/Amazonian toilet water. as he literally cut out the path for us, all the while searching for either anacondas or giant tarantulas and swatting at the colony of mosquitos that seemed to multiply the longer we stayed in there. To complete the notion that we ¨did¨ the jungle, we spent one night in the depths of it, sleeping on palm frond beds and listening to the constant racket made by nocturnal monkeys overhead. Among our odd animal sightings was a rainbow boa constrictor not 100 yards away from our campsite, massive tree iguanas, monkeys of all sorts, ants the size of a thumb that will give you a fever for a day if they bite you, pink dolphins by the peace of an Amazonian sunset, an anthill large enough to fit inside a tractor trailer with a thoroughfare leading out like the Pan American highway, little sardines that kept stealing the meat on our fishing hooks that were intended for piranhas, a 2 month old sloth that we fell in love with and didnt´want to put down, Gordo saw a baby coral snake behind our hut, an earthworm 2 feet long, toucans, more birds, tarantula the size of an outstretched hand and last
Waiting to Dock
The locals/fellow passengers/best friends forever and us approach Iquitos after our 4 day boat taxi but not least the most gigantic frog you can imagine. The Amazon River is huge, it´s wild and none of us can actually believe we are here...nor can we believe that Peru is finally behind us and Colombia awaits!!
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CB
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sloth
so cute! bring me one.