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Published: October 5th 2008
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White caiman
soaking up the sun We had an 8-day trip into the Peruvian Amazon, to an area of primary rainforest (untouched by man) called the Manu Reserve zone. On the first day, we met the other three people in our group, and I think it's fair to say it was clear from the outset that we were never going to bond. The first signs came with the rubber boots incident. Simple really. We needed to borrow some rubber boots (aka wellies) for the trip - find a pair in your size, try them on, and bob's your uncle. Except bob wasn't their uncle. You see, they had to have the perfect pair of wellies, and they were so rude to our poor guide (Satu).
One of the key things on a trip like this, whilst walking through the rainforest or sailing down the river, is to be as quiet as possible, to not disturb the wildlife and increase your chances of seeing things. This was a concept that 'the others' (as Rob was to christen them) had difficulty grasping. I never before realised that it is humanly possible to talk non-stop for 24 hours, even through the night I swear (the walls were rather thin).
Towards the end of the trip, Satu actually said to them ¨Do you talk this much at home? It's affecting the amount of animals we're seeing.¨ You can imagine the indignant response. All that aside, it was a fantastic trip and we saw loads of stuff.
On our first day we stopped off at a little town called Paucartambo and saw a wedding party emerging from the church there. After a day driving through the cloud forest we had a day sailing down the Rio Alto Madre de Dios. The third day was a little detour to see the macaw clay lick. So what's one of those? It's basically like a giant rennie. The macaws (magnificent brightly-coloured parrot-like birds) eat a lot of unripe fruit then come to nibble on the wall of clay for its minerals. We arrived just as the sun was rising to see blue-headed parrots sitting in the trees. If they feel nervous or scared they won't go down to the wall of clay where they are quite exposed, so it is important to be as quiet as possible. The parrots left without nibbling but we got quiet for the macaws who arrived later and
they eventually popped down for a nibble - quite cool to 30 or so macaws all nibbling away.
We spent one night in Boca Manu - the last town before the reserve zone where they have three hours of electricity per day, and where there resided a parrot who had perfected the cry of a small baby, punctuated by one word - ¨Hola!¨. Very amusing. I tried to teach it to say 'vino blanco' but he was having none of it. The next day we finally started travelling through the reserve zone by boat, to our lodge. Very rustic; private little cabins, shared showers and toilets supplied with river water, no electricity - just candlelight and a gas stove. We had walks through the rainforest and a little catamaran trip on one of the lakes, in the hope of seeing giant otters. Unfortunately, they were off on holiday. No really. They do that sometimes, for a week or so - just bad timing.
Satu was brilliant and would spot things you'd never see in a million years. We must've seen a hundred different types of birds, from big majestic jungle condors to tiny cute pied lapwings running along
Andean Cock of the Rock!
The Peru national bird - lives in the cloud forest the pebbly shores. The most interesting one was the Hoatsin - a prehistoric bird, in that the young are born with claws on their wings. We saw tall palms, short palms, spikey palms, walking palms, palms with stomachs, palms used to build houses, palms with coconuts the size of peas, palms that looked liked trees, palms which contained female hormones (!) and loads of other trees. We saw eight different types of monkey, caiman and capybaras, but most exciting of all was definitely the jaguar casually strolling along the banks of the river.
We also not so much saw, as felt, the insects. First there were the mozzies. I stopped counting after 50 bites. I was permanently covered in DEET; so what was going wrong? Then I deduced that maybe it was the open air showers. By day 5 I had formulated a plan. After a super-quick dry post-shower (a somewhat futile exercise in the humidity) it was then a race against the mozzies - could I get the DEET on faster than they could bite me? I learned my lesson - not a single inch of skin was to be left untouched. Then there were the giant killer
ants. First Rob stepped on one in his cabin and his leg went a bit numb. Can't be that bad surely......then it got me.........twice........second one knocked me for six. And I can confirm that it was very very very very very very very painful. So we asked Satu, I suppose this happens quite regularly? No, once or twice a year. Typical.
The return journey was upstream and although there was some rain, being the dry season, the river levels were a little low. Consequently, there were times when the propeller had to be lifted from the water or else it would have scraped the riverbed. This meant that all the boys had to help the two drivers, the cook and Satu push the boat along where the current was particularly strong. It was one of those moments in life when I was very glad to be a girl - standing near naked in a cold fast-flowing river, trying to push a boat with bare feet pushing against pebbles and rocks - not my idea of fun. Rob fancied themselves from Baywatch....hmmmmm......browner bodies, less flab, more sand, fewer pebbles, more sun, less rain.......and you're almost there. Finally, back to Cusco,
Blue-headed parrots
they didn't hang around to nibble on the clay a moment of hysterical relief between us and Satu when the others had been dropped off, then we treated Rob to his first overnight bus experience.
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