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Published: November 20th 2009
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Oooh - I'm back home and though this part of the trip was around June or July - it seems like ages ago. Agostin and I exited the jungle by boat but through some cock up or other not for once on our part we got dropped off early along the river and had to walk a fair distance through a different type of forest to a road where we were to be picked up by taxi. There was a bundle of wild life a long the dirt road, mostly different types of monkeys- One of our guides caught up to us after a while, on a motorbike that he had to find fuel for and the idea was that he would ferry us to the end of the road individually - the track was hilly and at points slippy and quagmirish in the dips so it was an interesting ride - Agostin decided to walk it after a few too many hair raising incidents but I was happy to hold on tight. When we got back to Iquitos we started planning our exit strategy - it would be either a 10 day boat exit to get us somewhere in to
Ecuador and then bus it to Colombia or a fast boat ride to Leticia (about 1o hours and then a flight to Bogota) so one was for the time rich , cash poor and the other vice versa - we decided to go with the cash poor idea for the experience - we managed to hook up with Sheenia again who was going to join us for the ride. It involved a day (or two?) wait for the sailing but the day to leave arrived and we headed for the port which was a filthy board walkway strewn affair and found our boat - and what a boat she was - we struggled to get on with our rucksacks as it was so crowded and despite having arrived two or three hours early it was mobbed - there was as far as A and I could see not a spare foot to hang a hammock. It wasn't anything like the boat we'd caught from Yurimaguas - the rats had left due to the overcrowding and you'd have spent most of the time bumping off your fellow hammock occupiers. So we got off again thinking that we were definitely missing out on an experience but that it might not be such a bad thing. Sheenia hadn't arrived so we waited for her. By the time she arrived the boat had left but not having the option to take the flight she followed the boat to the next port in the town and squeezed her way on. She later told me it was a trip to tell the grandkids about but not particularly one she would ever consider repeating. So Agostin and I caught a moto taxi into town and started on plan B - a few trips into fast boat shops got us tickets for the next day to Leticia the following morning and a mare of trying to book flights online which was an endurance race between my patience, the net , and the mossies was lost when the last stage of the process required a Colombian bank card- several shekels later in a phone shop had us pay for the same but slightly dearer tickets on flights to Bogotá from Colombia a few days hence. So after all that palaver we reckoned we definitely deserved beer - which turned into more beer and a trip to a local night club - bear in mind I said local- Agostin being a macho Mexican decided he wasn't comfortable being out on the dance floor without a girl so announced he was off home - I on the other hand could give a flying flip and danced my tail off and eventually had people to dance with until it was time to retire - by this I mean it was time to have an hours nap before it was time to catch the fast boat. Thinking that Agostin had been asleep for several hours and that he shouldn't have a problem waking up (okay so I didn't think about it much on mature recollection..I probably just fell over once I got back to our room). Anyway in the heel of the hunt the next thing I know is A is trying to wake me with the information that we'd missed the boat - why I needed to be woken for this I don't know but it turns out that A had been led astray by the mototaxi driver outside the club (he took a taxi for a 5 minute walk - great sense of direction that boy 😊 Not happy to finish off the night he got talking to the taxi driver and ended up in the middle of nowhere at a bar full of old guys. It took him a while to find his way home and when he got home he set his alarm and .... stuck in his ear plugs...See that's the problem of going from solo travel to going with companions - its sometimes a mistake to divest yourself of duties like making sure you have in place means to wake yourself up ...so off we went again the next day to shell out another 50 bucks for the following days fast boat, had a relatively quiet evening and left late the next morning around about the time when we might have made the previous days boat had we hauled our asses out of the bed...you live and learn - this doesn't mean you apply your lessons - its just that you recognize the lessons when you come across the same cock ups when you meet them again! The trip to Leticia was pretty uneventful - the border crossing went well enough and while Leticia was a quiet spot it was relaxing waiting for the 9th for our flight though the heat and the humidity was something else (damn I miss it now!) In Leticia - motorbikes are the prefferd type of taxi - Interesting when you are carrying a rucksack and a backpack 😊
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