Encounters & eating things you normally wouldn't..

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Jane is heading to the jungle! That means first a long bus ride, towards Tarapoto with my new travel partner Dan, who will soon turn out to be not the best pick. Maybe even closer to worst pick. But this is a bit of my own fault, I was being a bit egoistic; I really didn't want to go alone. After a bit of bussing we arrived in this important town in the 'high jungle'. The hostal had a gorgeous garden with colibries (yes!) and after a good half night of sleep in a bed instead of a bus seat, we left towards Yurimaguas. Luckily our taxi driver wasn't drunk: you couldn't say that about the other driver, with whom we were more or less driving 'together'. It was an interesting ride. There was on big parts of the road work happening because of mostly slides. The view after sunrise was impressive; going from 'high jungle' into 'low jungle'. Last one is as flat as my own country.

Here in Pucallpa we bought ourselves a hammock and some rope, a breakfast and some snacks for on the boat. We were going to be on the boat for 2 nights for sure. In the little harbour people were running towards us, pulling our arms while shouting in our faces. By this time Dan was already on my nerves, by not speaking a word Spanish, being huge and just overall dorky. I was noticing that my role was already shifting from translator towards his mum holding his hand. Sigh. On the boat there were some more tourist, we chatted and did some card games. The food wasn't bad at all to my surprise. The views were cool and the river is very wide. Luckily we had some stops at tiny tribe like villages, where women enter he boat with the most delicious, never seen in my life, fruit. I've seen some different boats and even full rafts for transportation. We were given the option the night before arriving in Iquitos to get of at Nauta and take a bus there, all this because of a robbery last week. We decided not to and as precaution I put my memory card from my camera in my bra, next to my money, bank cards oh and yes boobs.

Iquitos is only reachable by boat or air. Happy that we arrived safe and sound, there was so much going on around us. Embarking & disembarking boats, people shouting for cabs, chaos. But nowhere to be seen was our guide, who I had called to make an appointment. I saw a horrifying things when we got off the boat and were walking towards the entrance of the harbour. I already heard it: squealing pigs and cows mooing in pain. I almost tripped over it: a dead pig, another one pushing his nose against it and a third who couldn't stand on its back legs because of ropes tied too tight around it for days, so cut off the blood stream. Men around them were pushing the pigs to get them to walk but they couldn't, then they just lifted it up at ears and tail and threw it further in the direction the wanted them to walk. This atrocious sight combined with the sounds; I cried and almost panicked. I wanted to get away from here, but there are so many people in this chaos. Finally at the entrance we didn't hear of see the poor animals anymore, but I felt nauseous. And of course, mister Initiative, Dan started whining about where the guide was, which I couldn't deal with at that moment.

Our guide did show up and we went together to our hostel and he explained after a welcome shower the plan for the next 3 days. It sounds great and even after we paid, a couple joined us and we got a big refund back. We left the next morning, bussing and then with a peke-peke (little boat) towards the village were our guide is originally from. Here we met his sweet family, encountered the most 'moving' 'eco' toilet ever: you had to walk behind the neighbours house passing dead parakeets hanging in nets to a hole in the ground, with on either side wooden boards. Inside however flies were swarming and maggots were abound. Really quickly I got skills to deal with it in the best possible way and to be honest I was grinning every single time. I've seen dead spiders, we ate delicious fish the caught in the rivers and prepared for us. Except Dan because the head was still on, ashamed as I was because the effort the family made, I ate it.
We've seen a sloth high up in the trees and in the night trip we were attacked by mosquitos, jumped on by grasshoppers in all sorts of colours, we caught little alligators & hold them, then a bird called a tuki-tuki because of its sound. This birds has actually a yellow ´thorn´ on its wing as protection. This night trip we first had so many millions of stars above us, which was absolutely gorgeous and when clouds came in for a storm it looked like the sky fell down; all sorts of glowing insects on the river plants, indescribable! When we just arrived back in our tents underneath the roof of the house the rain poured down combined with thunder.

The day after Dan said he wanted to go home, because this was not his place. Duhh he's literally afraid of everything what flies and moves, good choice 'buddy' to head to the jungle. Sorry to say but I was actually really happy with this message, but, unfortunately there is no transportation so mission impossible. We went in to the jungle with all our gear to camp out. On our way in the tiny wooden boats, we saw already 2 different kinds of monkeys; tiny ones and then in an other spot a whole family of other tiny monkeys. They were really cute and really curious. At our 'camp side' I played with a tarantula, tasted juice from a tree (for stopping internal and/or external bleeding), encountered a tree with a lot of ants which apparently have painful bites. They used to tie up women to these trees when they had been unfaithful. And then they men showed us larvae which were full of protein and taste like coconut. I didn't believe it anymore than you do, but I tried it; and they taste like coconut! I ended up eating 2 alive ones because the photo of the first one failed, and one fried. They also showed us where palm hearts are coming from, even though the name says it all, I've never thought abut it.

Believes of our guide(s) "Female alligators when the are adults can become 8 meters, they live then only on the bottom of the river eating mud, because it doesn't really move anymore, trees can grow over them." "Veins from trees(lianas) grow out of the legs of a spider or butterfly which died on a branch."

After all these goodies we went to do some piraña fishing, for me not so exciting, because it will be my third time already. It was such serene place though with water like mirrors, reflecting these amazing clouds & trees. I was the only one catching fish and they died a terrible choking death, even after trying to prevent this again. And we didn't even eat them in the end. After trying to create as much smoke as possible in my fight against the mosquitos we were told to rest: always perfect. But that perfect changed pretty soon; Dan's covered hammock has holes in its cover and him already not wanting to be there & already having a lot of bites, he didn't want to sleep in there. He asked me of I wanted to share my tiny tent with him..NOOO, but said 'yes'. So here I am in a tiny tent where it's hard not to touch each other because there is a lot of me and certainly a whole lot of him. Like 2 giants in a doll house, one doesn't like the other and that other smells as well. Anyways, after a nap which was longer than I expected it to be, we were woken up by our guide, they found a bullfrog! They come out in the dark and they are huge I can tell you. The couple didn't wake up, so the mosquitos were all attacking us. Seriously so many that if you would just grab a fistful of air, you would have your fist full of mosquitos. Really odd thing there was the no dinner that night and they were not going to make or give us anything. I asked for some hot water and bread as I need to eat every some hours. What happened next was hilarious & embarrassing; three guys were waving wind and slapping me with their t shirts while I was eating to try to get the mosquitos off me. I felt bad, I was like a woman who have slaves to wave wind with big leaves when it's hot and feed you grapes, well in slightly different circumstances but still.
The next day we did some jungle related swinging with the veins and headed back. we were followed for a bit by grey river dolphins.

It was nice to be back in Iquitos. Here I had had some serious rain, I met some interesting people, I ate alligator (another first, we waited around for a boat to leave to get back to Yurimaguas, I surprised a friend with a phone call, I visited the famous market Belén which is both awful and impressing and the amazing refuge & butterfly garden Pilpintuwasi:

Belen is a gigantic market with different areas for certain goods: section fake cigarets, section meat with even heads and feet of the protected turtle, section baby animals like sloth and monkeys tied up, section medicinal drinks drugs and plants curing everything even cancer etc. It was impressive in its size and certainly also its diversity, but I can not deal with the turtle heads and caged baby animals. I even said to an old guy selling the baby animals that he's is an evil person, but that wont change a thing.



Pilpintuwasi; I loveee animals. This is first of all a place for butterflies, breeding, studying them and explaining to people they evolve. Amazing we've seen from tiny egg, to tiny caterpillar, up to beautiful colourful & hairy caterpillars up to butterflies. Even the huge bright blue Morpho, my favourite. Besides this the owner started an animal refuge, so they have orphans and animals which were sick or used for selling. Now they had two little monkeys which are the cutest but also the best pickpockets. One of them, Junior, became my stalker slash backpack. I've been feeding a tapir tomatoes, which are dorky, being again amazed by the sound howler monkeys can produce, I've seen a jaguar, an anteater etc. All walking around(except jaguar of course) and in my case jumped at so many times by especially Junior!

Before we left Iquitos after waiting for a few days for a boat to leave I told Dan I can not and will not travel with him anymore. In need of me-time. We were still 'together' for 3 (long)days on a boat then the ride back to Tarapoto were I left him after a day, heading towards Ecuador.

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Comments

[Judith]

wow zeg, wat een reis in de natuur!
Hey noukie...dat was echt een geweldig verhaal zeg, en wat een gave foto´s van al die beesten die je gezien hebt,fantastisch! Zou het ook wel willen nog,maar weet niet of ik dat wel durf haha...nie wat de dieren betreft hoor,zoals je goofy reispartner, maar meer het hele plaatje, dat je aankwam met die dierenmartelaasr etc etc, weet niet of ik dat wel alleen durf! Maar mssn tegen die tijd wel..;-) Nu lekker in Ecuador...geniet ervan meis, de tijd vliegt! Al heb je na deze reis alweer iets leuks achter de hand, en alleen maar feestjes in je tijd in Nederland...super toch! Spreek je snel! Dikke kus xxx