The jungle

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So we left Loki backpackers in Lima- (Agostino -aka Mexico, and I) and it was total nightmare. The previous night had involved the police chase in the taxi, the drunken off duty cop and loosing my fleece which I realised the next day but thought nothing of it until we were justabout to leave (late) to catch the bus to Tarapoto on our long trip to the jungle near Iquitos. The trip was to involve a bus to Tarapoto, a combi to Yurimaguas and a three day boat trip to Iquitos followed by whatever trip we could get to take us in to the jungle. It was an ignominious start. My passport was no where to be found!! With less than twenty minutes and a taxi ride to the bus station panic struck in. The plan was to cross the border in to Colombia from the jungle in the north of peru which would be impossible without it. I´d already looked for the fleece so the chances of it turning up in minutes were slim. The only two other places it could be were the club and mad taxi from the night before so it would be impossible to get to them in time. A last minute decision to say to hell with it landed us in the taxi and bus queue with minutes to spare and then on the bus. So on the bus with everything decided and all the time in the world to think about it, I ran through the events of the last time I had my passport in my pocket of my fleece. It had been the previous evening when we had tried to leave Lima but our bus had been cancelled as indigenous peurvians were blockading roads along the route and the buses nor anything with wheeels could get past so we had to go back to loki where we were lucky enough to get beds again and rejoin the pub quiz, where Andy and Si had squandered our lead and we lost by half a point, numnuts. However what had happened when we got to the reception was that with 5 minutes of happy hour left, I left agostino to fill in the signing in forms while I got two double cuba libres in and he put my passport in his money belt and promptly forgot about it. So I turned to him on remebering the reception desk and asked if by any chance he had it and lo..I hit him round the head for not remebering he had it and putting me through all that stress 😊
So that was the poor start - then it got worse - we were stopped by numerous road blocks by protesting indingenous people of that region. First for about an hour or two and then as dusk approached for the whole night. What a mare...we found a house down the road in the middle of nowhere to eat a laying hen that was probably just killed for the occasion and some warm beer which had to be sent off for by motorbike 😊 The next day confusion reigned until the word was that we had to walk with all our gear through the blockades. These were rock and tree barriers that were manned by small peruvians with bigger spears. It was all very intimidating, we were told about a few deaths on both sides of the bloackades between the police and the indians not to mention poison tips on the spears but I put that down to some vivid imagagination but nonetheless no eye contact was made skirting the barricades. We caught another bus on the other side and made it to ?, crashed in a hostel and got up the next day to try to get to tarapoto knowing we would have the strikes to deal with again. we waited a while in a minibus waiting for it to fill so that it would start off but it didn´t so with another passenger took a mototaxi to a place where private cars pick up passengers. I was so glad it was a heap of ..... as it stopped the driver going too nuts on the windy mounatinous route. He took us as far as the first in a series of four barriers. They are miles apart and only allow people on foot to pass at certain times and if you get stranded between them you are sunk. We found a route around the first one through a swamp on the outskirts of the village and got a mototaxi to the next one but were held up there for a few hours and ditto for the next one. It was costing a fortune in mototaxis! Eventually after 47 hours on a bus and a day doing the 40 miles or so to tarapoto we arrived in Yurimaguas ....to be told that there would be no boat leaving for the next few days as the strikes were reducing the number of passengers. We were in another mototaxi who took us to the boat company in town to see if we could get passage and we were told we could down at the port. It was for a three day trip to Iquitos and we needed supplies so before tearing down there we got driven around the town at a scary rate to buy hammocks and tupperware and other bits and bobs but ran out of time for food and beer. Once on board I was convinced by people we thought were crew that there was plenty time to get off for beer supplies. Back on to a moto on a wild goose chase as all the beer had been drunk as the town was blockaded and only made it back onto the boat as Agostino had pleaded with the captain to hold off leaving---I´m really good as this travelling stuff, Alan Organised Intrepid traveller O'Neill 😊
We went posh and paid for a cabin on the top deck which was populated solely by other backpackers from Uruguay and one girl from Spain plus a few family members of the crew. The cabin was comfotable though the boat itself could get noisy as it would dock in little villages along the river at all times during the night. Three days were spent lazily watching the river go by. You could see villagers smoking out the inside of wooden dugout canoes and washing pig carcasses in the brown water or paddling along in canoes which seemed dangerously low in the water. I woke up prior to dawn both mornings and the light was amazing, reminding me of a friends art when she did a series on the lagoons of venice. The dawn chorus was something else too. Every so often a slim engine powered canoe would shoot off from the boat and pick up people or supplies from places where the boat didn´t dock or the locals would shoot out from the jungle to deliver goods for delivery to the major port in Iquitos. At one stage massive catfish? were hauled up the side - they must have weighed upto 100kilos a piece!
We got talking to our fellow travellers , Shenia from Spain was travelling around South Americe with all the direction of a person under the influence of Brownian motion. She talked at a rate of knots in Spanish and whenever I managed to keep up with what she was saying I was very pleased with myself...this wasn´t very often and she obliged by talking in English every now and again. As soon as we arrived in Iquitos we headed to a hostal recommended to us on the boat by the french guy who looked like he just got out of the french foreign legion and no sooner had we arrived than we were assailed by touts for a local tour company. He brought us to the office around the corner and his sales ploy of sending out for beer during negotiations was enough to swing the deal for the two beer deprived voyagers. We had one night out in Iquitos before starting off early in cars to the jump off point further a long the river to take the 8 hour trip to the lodge which they claimed was the deepest into the jungle from Iquitos. Along the way we saw more of the riverside close up - including a sloth up a tree form afar and loads of tiny villages. A stop at the nearest village about an hour from our lodge to pick up one of our local guides was an interesting but brief glimpse of how the people live along the river. One family had a baby cappachuin monkey as a pet which I got to hold but it screamed (and had a little pee on me) like a frightened child who has been handed to a stranger as it spends most of its time clinging to the woman of the house who it thinks is it mum. Arriving to the lodge a little further on we were very pleased with our accomdation of interconnected cabins on stilts in a lagoon in the middle of nowhere. The following days and nights consisted of early nights and early mornings bar a late night trip into the jungle one evening. It was amazing. The river was only starting to recede so most of the trips were made by small canoe with our guide (the appropriately names Wilde) at the front trying to spot as much wildlife as he could for us. I spotted a rustle in a tree which he recognised as a snake , hopped out his wellies and leapt from the canoe into the partially submerged tress and climbed about barefoot til he caught it and brought it back to the canoe. Not exactly the most unintrusive of animal watching but I was really excited to hold it. I loved paddling around through the waterways, old machete cuts in the trees marking the routes. The night sound and dusk chorus were amazing, the place alive with the sounds of frogs , caymen, monkeys and birds. One beautifully haunting bird call we heard is that of the Ayaymama - here´s a bit about it I translated from http://www.flickr.com/photos/vik407/517581662/ so ignore the bad english...The Ayaymama (Nyctibus grisens) is a mythical nocturnal bird of the Peruvian Amazonia that is fed on insects. During the day to duer to me merged with the color of the trunks incredibly droughts of the trees; thus, this small bird can calmly rest far from the siege of hunters and predators. Its song, very chilling, is resembled the moan of a boy, who says Ay, ay, Mama! ; of there its name, and in addition, this peculiar song has given rise to a very peculiar legend spread by almost all the towns of the Forest and that according to the region is changing in some aspects. It counts the legend, the history of two children who lose their mother; his father contracts marriage with a woman of bad feelings that saw in the children hindrances, is by that convinces his husband he leaves so that them, thus, a day, simulating a stroll to the mountain left, them by chance. The small ones during the night saw as they appeared to them wings, thus, could fly of return until their house, settled in their ceiling and sang sadly Ayaymama Huischuhuarca, that it means Our mother has died and they left to us. Another version of the same, relates that a native mother, wanting to save its children of a ferocious epidemic that whipped its town very far took, them within the forest, and it around left next to a gorge with many trees and fruits them his; they ate and played the day throughout, but when falling the night they began to miss to his mother, reason why they left in his search, losing itself in the middle of the forest; when seeing this the owner of the mount had pain it turned and them into birds, the ninños flew until their town but already all were dead, and from that day ayaymama flies by all the forest leaving to hear their sad song ayaymama…….

Seeing tarantulas for the first time in the wild was a cool experience - they were all over the place and they are big! Caymen hunting in the night was another great experience though we the mosquitoes had more succes in finding us on the first night of trying. We had a few close calls at catching them. Our guide was a bit thankful that he didn´t catch one as the size of the splash it made as he tried to catch it hangin off the front of the canoe gave him plenty pause for thought! There´s little way to tell how big they are bar the distance between their glowing red eyes caught in the lamplight. (and easily mixed up with anacondas too - yikes 😊

An afternoon of pirahna fishing had me way behind the stakes in the haul of the tiny vicious blighters - they are damn good at removing bait from hooks, you had to slap the water with the bait in order to simulate falling prey. The rest of the guys had a good time of it - i think I managed to catch two! Our first trip on to dry land had us learning about the medicinal plants in the jungle and drinking sap from roots for what purpose now I can´t remember, apart from that it tasted alright. Coming across jaguar tracks added some spice to the walk! Our guides showed us the techniques for building shelters and baskets from palms which you carried using a strap that went across your forehead which was pretty uncomfortable looking.

On another trip we cama across an eagle eating a monkey and shortly afterwards a sloth in a tree which our guide reckoned we would love to climb up to to take photos, so picture this , climbing up a straight trunk bare foot up to about thirty foot above the canoe. Of course for wilde it was a piece of cake but mexicos efforts were hilarious! He had disco leg about a third of the way up and was nearly slipping off from tha amount of sweat he was leaving on the tree he was so scared. I don´t reckon he´s done much tree climbing and to be fair it was a bit hairy when I went up.

On the last night Mexico thought it would be a god idea to camp in the forest over night eating only what we could forage... which would have been a good idea if we had a tent but we ended up lying on palm fronds with a couple of bed sheets under a one person mosquito net covered by a plastic sheet. We ate this strange armoured fish with platanos and grapefruit. We were visited by a large range of carnivorous insects and one ant who was so big I could hear it walking 😊

On the final day I was up early to watch the monkey families around the cabinas and take my last swim in the river and then on the boat trip back we were lucky enough to spot both types of river dolphins. The pink ones are really strange looking!

Our exit from the jungle is a story in itself which I´ll have to add later. It was a fantastic trip and another I won´t forget in a hurry, next stop columbia....

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