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Published: December 29th 2007
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After my week of relaxing in Arequipa I managed to get myself booked onto a Jungle tour with my friends Shelly and James. This was to be a completely different jungle experience from the rescue centre as it was very much geared towards the tourists. Not something I would normally be interested in, but I had four days to use up and was curious to see the amazon from another perspective (plus I fancied a bit of luxury!)
We had to fly from Cusco the Puerto Maldonado as the lodge we were staying at was quite deep into the Jungle (15km from the Brazil Boarder) and it took days for buses to make the journey. The flight was only about 1hour and then we had a 2 hour boat journey, in what was essentially a canoe with an engine, along the Rio Madre, to get to the lodge. It was a bit of a package holiday deal as all meals and tours were included and when we arrive we were shown to our cabins and told when to meet for our first tour. I didn´t mind too much though, it was quite nice to just sit back and be told
what to do for once.
The cabins were lovely and I had one all to myself with a bedroom, bathroom , hammock area and reading area. Much more luxurious than my last jungle stay even though there was no hot water. There was, however, the same gauze walls on the cabin and so when everyone else was really excited about the open walls I was well aware of the really noisy night that was ahead.
The first evening was brilliant and after dinner we were taken out on the river to hunt for caimans in the dark. We managed to spot a few along the banks but the best moment for me was when we were heading back to the lodge. Our guide asked us to be silent for a few minutes and he turned of the spot light and engine. We floated back to the lodge in silence, under the stars, just listening to the sounds of the Jungle. It was a bit of a "wow" moment.
We got back to the lodge at about 9pm and had time for a quick drink. We´d been warned that the lights went out at 10 and I´m not
One of the Locals
Just outside the hotel aswell! quite sure what I was expecting but I didn´t realise that all the power in the whole resort was cut off at 10 pm. This meant every light, fan, plug socket didn´t work and it didn´t matter if you were half undressed or still on the way back to the huts, you were plunged into complete darkness and it really is dark out there, no joke! The night time wouldn´t be a pleasant experience for those who are a bit squeamish and you can hear all the bugs in your room (despite the gauze walls, holes appear everywhere) and the bugs fall onto your face in the night and you can´t turn the lights on to see what's crawling on you.
Luckily I´m tough!! (yea right!) I woke the next morning with numerous bruises from the "find the bed in the dark" adventure I´d had the night before, plus a slight headache resulting from my dramatic midnight wrestling match with my blanks just after "something" fell onto my face in the dark, causing me to try to turn on that light, untangle my legs from the blanks and swat whatever it was off me all at the same
time, which, combined with that "woken in the middle of the night with a jump" confusion caused me to whack my head on the table next to my bed and the wall behind my bed....it would have been funny if it hadn´t been completely terrifying!
On the second day we headed into the jungle for a hike. Even after a month of it in Ecuador, there wasn´t a moment that I was bored hiking in the jungle. I got to see my first Tranatula in the wild and it was a big one. Our guide tapped a stick at what he believed was the entrance to a nest and the biggest spider shot out on the attack. I´m still constantly impressed by everything in the amazon. After our hike we did some fishing in a calm section of the river , sadly we made no catches and so opted for a swim in the lovely cold, brown water (I´m still waiting for some parasite to pop out of my skin or something.) There no way you can say no to a swim in a jungle river if the oportunity arrises...it was brilliant.
The following day we had
a 10 km hike into the jungle once again..this time to hunt down an Anaconda. It was one of the hottest days yet and the Jungle is incredibly humid which leads to a reasonably unpleasent hike. We did manage to see and Anaconda and another Boa on the bank of the river. I´ve seen a few snakes this trip but these guys were absolutely huge. The Anaconda was wound up like a stack of tyers and about the same width as a car tyer at its widest point....Amazon , still brilliant!
I did enjoy my second trip into the jungle and the Jungle in Peru is a little more dense than in Ecuador, but nothing could match the experience at the rescue centre as it was a taste of the amazon without the securty of a luxury lodge and tour guide. I wasn´t looking forward to heading back to the city after my stay at the lodge, I definitely prefer the more isolated communities and towns to the cities, but the rain storm we managed to travel back through on our canoe made it bearable! Amazon..not so brilliant!
Its was time to head back to Cusco and get
ready for THE INCA TRAIL!!!!
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