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Ahhhhh,
la selva Amazona. One realization from this trip is how much we love the jungle - for a visit. We could see it being hard as a full-time gig. But it is hard to find a place more different than where we come from - one that has more to discover, to appreciate, and to teach us - more than the variety of plants, animals, and civilizations than the jungle. Every cut out of the jungle feels like a gash out of the heart of the earth, something that doesn't belong and won't survive. By contrast, the eco-lodge that we stayed at called Posada Amazonas, and the surrounding places we visited, felt like they could live on forever. In those places, you could even sense what is meant by the now cliche words - sustainable tourism. Of course, anything sustainable seems to come at a premium.
We flew from Cuzco to Puerto Maldonado and took a motorized canoe two hours up the Tambopata River to the lodge. The flight itself was worth the price of admission. Our plane barely cleared the tops of the 6000 meter peaks of the high Andes, and then we marveled as the carpet
amazon canopy
From a 30 meter high tower of the Amazon spread down from the high peaks and grew to its green-ness. You could see how, like the toilet bowl analogy, weather spins the other way in South America. The moisture develops over the Atlantic and spreads throughout the Amazon Basin, where it is caught and held by the Andes to preserve the rain forest. Whereas on the Western side of the Andes, in Cuzco and the Altiplano all the way to the coast the climate becomes more and more desert.
But onto the forest! The plants, the smells, the sounds! We slept in a room with private bath and nice beds, surrounded by a mosquito net. Other than that, the room was open air looking right out into the jungle. Open to the bats in the ceiling (our bug control, laughed our guide Ivo) and the guano on my toothpaste; Open to the frog crawling up our bathroom wall; open to the screeching call of the howler monkey, which is a cross between an airplane landing and a burp through a megaphone.
On the river, along the way, we saw small, family-run gold mining operations that were pumping large quantities of water through their machines.
red howler monkey
lounging in the tree. It is really hard to get a good monkey picture (or any animal) Naked kids splashed in the muddy water. These people didn't wave at us. Our guide informed us this type of gold-mining was illegal because of the havoc it imposed on the environment. Each small mining operation dumped large quantities of mercury into the river, but there wasn't enough money to patrol and control these miners. So, our guide sadly warned us never to eat any fish in Puerto Maldanado, which seemed a horrible shame.
The lodge, however, was as eco-friendly as it could be. We spent our days taking guided hikes in the jungle. The lodge provided really good meals, a giant pet tarantula in the open-air hallway, and fresh squeezed juices. For our two nights spent there, our wake-up times were 4 and 5 am to better view wildlife. Here is a partial list of the animals we were able to see:
red howler monkeys
smaller dusky titi monkeys
night monkeys
a two-toed sloth
a kincayu, kind of a tailless tree-crawling relative to the coati
scarlet macaws
smaller macaws
parrots
tarantulas
falcons
turkeys and squirrels (not so exotic)
frogs
large spiders
river otters
pyranhas (which we fished for)
toucans
The plant-life was also incredible. We saw
sunrise and boat
along the Rio Tambopata walking palms, which move up to 15 cm in a year to take advantage of shifting sunlight. I never thought I could see so many different shades of green. We were surprised that there weren't a great number of flowers, but the jungle made up for this in the abundance of unusual fruits.
We finished the trip with a trip to a local shaman, who showed us his medicinal garden. Deep in the jungles, as in many parts of Peru, western medicine is way too expensive and nearly inaccessible. It is plants from the garden that provide cures to arthritis, headaches, cancer, but also heartache, love-loss and the prediction for this season's crop.
We were sad to leave the jungle. The visit was way too quick. But we learned that, when we next travel, there are some places that capture our imagination, and some that transport you to a different life altogether.
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