The Jungle

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I started this journal entry while I was still in Peru, but unfortunately have not been able to publish until now. Please Excuse the delay and enjoythe stories from one of my favorite side trips I took while in Peru.


I must first apologize because I am a little behind on journal entries. We went to the jungle Friday June 26- Saturday June 27. We traveled from Huancayo three hours to La Merced, a jungle town. To get there we had to travel up and over the mountains and then descend down into the jungle. The road to the jungle is a series of switchbacks and is barely wide enough for two cars to travel on it. The trip is absolutely breathtaking- it starts with the drier brown mountains characteristic of the higher altitudes. They are beautiful, especially when set against the light blue sky of morning or at dusk. After Huancayo there is only a splattering of houses for over an hour. Some of these houses and their occupants live in complete isolation with their animals and small fields. After an hour or so there is a small agriculture town with a nice river next to it. Staring around this point the Keiko 2011 Fujimori innocent signs start. Fujimori is the ex-president of Peru who is associated with the shinning path. After his corrupt and violent leadership I am surprised at the number of signs there are supporting his daughter. According to many of our local friends much of the support comes from people who have been bribed to support her. The biggest town before La Merced is Tarma. Tarma is located in the valley in the middle of the mountain range. It is surrounded by steep hillsides that are carved into some of the most beautiful terraced gardens or fields I have ever seen. The work just to get up to the field would be enough to deter most of us from even gardening. Tarma is the crossroads to the jungle. People coming from Lima and from Huancayo both travel to Tarma and then on the same road to the jungle. From Tarma the jungle is still and hour and a half away, but you can start to see the differences in color starting around this point. Although the mountains are not solid green they are also no longer brown. The road continues down about another hour and then you come to the jungle line. It is not marked by a sign, but instead by a sudden change from a darker duller green to a brilliant, vibrant green. Waterfalls appear suddenly cascading down the entire length of the mountains. At this point we also start going through several tunnels that are carved into the side of the mountain. The temperature inside the car is now clearly 10 degrees warmer, although I am not sure if it is because we are all just breathing harder with excitement or if it is because it is about 25-30 degrees warmer in the jungle than in Huancayo. I opened the car window when it became to hot for comfort and I was met by the most amazing and invigorating air. It is hard to explain just how the air in the jungle felt, but it was amazing. It smelled like life- so fresh and unpolluted, almost raw (so different from the exhaust filled air from Huancayo. It felt so good that I couldn't help but hang my head out the window so that I could breathe in as much air as possible. It gave me a new lease on life.
About twenty minutes after entering the jungle we entered La Merced. La Merced is located at 8,000 ft, so it is still quite high in elevation, but the 4,000 feet difference between Huancayo and La Merced made the difference- La Merced was warm, humid, green, and vibrant. Do not get me wrong, Huancayo is not some dried up dead land because it is not, it is breathtaking, but the change of scenery was wonderful. I felt like every part of my body opened up a little more- my eyes, ears, nose, lungs, and the pores in my skin (kind of like a desert plant at night).
The first thing that we did was to go to a waterfall. I believe it was called the cataratas de selva. It was a 3 km hike up to the waterfall. This was my first time experiencing a jungle so everything was new and exciting and surprising. First of all you are surrounded by these green mountains- covered in all sorts of fruit trees- banana, mandarin, papaya, and way up on the mountain tops coffee plants. You can only see the occasional top of a mountain because most are covered by fluffy, cotton-ball like clouds. At the base of the mountain a river ran trough the town. The river is fed by the waterfalls while also feeding others. The first thing I noticed about the jungle was the green, then it was the smell, and thirdly it was the insects, more specifically the butterflies. The butterflies in the jungle come in the most amazing colors- colors that I thought only existed in a Crayola big box of crayons. The butterflies were hot pink, electric blue, chartreuse, and construction worker orange, indigo and brilliant yellow. As we walked to the waterfall we were surrounded by them. Everything that grows in the jungle is also bigger. The leaves of most plants are the size of elephants’ ears and the flowers into tall bushes, not the tiny things we see in greenhouses although they are the same species of flower, like impatiens. After a half hour we got to the waterfall, and it was gorgeous. It fell straight down onto some boulders. It looked like a scene out of a fairytale where everything is green and the water is a perfect clear blue. Although we were tempted to swim we opted not to. Instead we decided to go to lunch.
We went to an open porch restaurant along the river bed in La Merced. We ordered juice because we had not had any fresh juice since coming to Peru. The juice was amazing: cocona juice from the cocona plant is a cream color and a little thicker than most juice. It tastes tropical with a twist of banana and coconut flavor. We also ordered another juice made from a different fruit from the jungle. It too was wonderful, much tangier than the cocona and a little more like citrus fruits and tart but still very fresh and ice cold. We also had fried plantano in the form of plantain chips and also fried yucca, which is very tasty and has a texture similar to a potato but is much more substantial. Feeling invigorated by the jungle I decided to be daring when I ordered my lunch and I chose the grilled zamaÑo, which at the time I thought was a jungle pig, much like a warthog. Turns out it is not a jungle pig, and it is, in my opinion, not good. It was very fatty and had a gamey taste to it. Luckily it came with more fried yucca and some sweet fried plantain slices, which were delicious.
After filling up on tons of food and way too many glasses of ice cold fresh fruit juice we went to a village where the occupants dressed in and dressed us up in native attire and taught us some jungle dances and the history of their people. This activity was actually my least favorite part of the trip. It was completely touristy and the children, even the ones who were not part of the presentation constantly begged for tips and for us to buy their bracelets. I know that it is how they were earning their living, but at what point is begging and child labor a little excessive.
After the village we went to a zoo that had a butterfly garden and many other animals from the jungle. It was at the zoo that I came face to face with my lunch, or rather maybe its daughter. The butterfly garden was beautiful- we got to see two butterflies mating. Did you know that butterflies can and may stay attached and mating for three days straight? Other organisms that we saw were an anaconda (eww), a blanco alligator, some baby turtles, an ocelot, two parrots, a shrinking fern and Lulu the baby zamaÑo. A zamaÑo is not a jungle pig. Instead it is this cute small cuddly animal. It had white spots and chestnut coloring- it actually had very similar coloring to a fawn. It appears to be a cross between a large rodent, a guinea pig, an anteater, and maybe slightly like a piglet. I was horrified. We told our guide that that was what I had eaten for lunch, she just laughed. I apologized to Lulu for maybe eating her father or mother and I have sworn off zamoÑo for life.
After that horrible shock we left the zoo and went to and organic coffee roaster. It was a nice treat after a day of surprises. The roasters had the most amazing smelling coffee and some delicious chocolate covered coffee beans. After sampling almost everything in the shop I bought several pounds of coffee and some chocolates. The coffee is highland coffee which means it must be grown above 1,000 meters above sea level. The coffee bushes grow on the tops of the surrounding mountains, many of which are very steep. I would be frightened to pick the coffee and I am still not sure how they do it. After a full day of travel and activities we were all tired and went back to our hotel to watch the first TV we had had during all of our stay in Peru.
After a restless night of sleep due to a lot of road noise we woke up early for our second and last day in the jungle. The hotel provided a complementary breakfast and so we packed up the car and then went to breakfast. The food was nothing exceptional, but the drinks were amazing. We each got coffee and juice with our breakfast. Coffee in most parts of Peru is made from Nescafe instant coffee powder, but in the jungle it was real coffee- grown and roasted locally. It is served as very thick and strong syrup and then you add hot water to it to make it as strong or weak as you desire. Of course I am a lover of strong coffee so I added a lot of coffee to my hot water. It was delicious and the first coffee that I had consumed since my first morning in Peru. Although the coffee was amazing, it was not the most delicious drink at the table that morning. The most delicious thing that I had in the jungle and possibly my whole time in Peru was the fresh Pina juice, or pineapple juice. It is hard to describe just why it was so good. It had a different texture from juice that you can buy in the store. It was thicker, frothier, and had a more intense flavor. it was ice cold, but tasted like it had just been made right at the table from a perfectly warm sun ripened pineapple that had just been picked off of the tree within the same minute that the juice had arrive at the table. It was so sweet and refreshing and intense. It will be a taste memory that stays with me forever and that I will always try to replicate and will eternally crave.
After breakfast we checked out and went to another jungle zoo that specialized in birds. The birds were very cool- the males were colored so brightly for their displays. Most of the males were black with a color combination that included at least one of the following: bright red, brilliant blue, marigold yellow, and turquoise. The zoo also had several different varieties of large jungle rodents, and ocelot, tortoises, and several primates including a baby new world variety of monkey.
After the zoo we went to two other waterfalls. They were an hour away from La Merced and up a mountain. The drive was much like the drive to the jungle (lots of switchbacks and lots of bumps), but it was even narrower. Only one car could safely fit on the road, which made passing the smaller cars coming down the road completely frightening because the side of the road fell straight down at least 100 ft before it hit the first big line of trees. Although we were all a little road sick and scared when we arrived at the parking area we were excited for the hike. It was only about a 1 km hike up to the first waterfall. It is named Catarata de Boyoz, and the hike was beautiful, lush, and peaceful. It seemed like we were the only ones on the trail on the way up. There were several swimming holes along the way-some were deep and wide and others looked like perfect rock sliding places. We didn’t swim on the way up to the waterfall, we were too eager to get there. When we did it was well worth the wait. It was beautiful, shorter but still very tall, and much wider than the first waterfall. It fell onto ledges of rocks and then into a pebble filled pool. It was very inviting so once we had taken out dry group photo I ran to the rock bank, stripped to my bathing suit and ran into the water. It was cool, but not numbing and very refreshing. It felt amazing sitting under the waterfall. The water fell hard and cold onto my shoulders like a massage from Mother Nature, and it blocked out all other noise so it was very peaceful and surreal. We all posed together under the waterfall and then by ourselves.
The waterfall reminded me of a waterfall that you would see in a romance movie, inviting to lovers and all kind animals. It was itself very beautiful, but it was also beautiful because of the animals that it attracted and the life that it provided to the lush green plants covering the banks of the stream. Striking butterflies stopped at the edge of the water for drinks and played with each other along the banks, birds called, and insect buzzing provided a constant harmony to the crashing water. After about an hour of playing we decided to head back down to the other waterfall. We stopped in one of the larger swimming holes for one last swim and then hiked down. When we got to the parking area it was swarming with tourists from Lima. We decided to quickly go and see the other waterfall, called the bride's veil, for pictures and then head out. We had to climb down for the second waterfall which was a little nerve-wrecking because the path was narrow, steep, and slippery. It was very beautiful in the river gorge and look like a scene out of Tarzan with steep river walls, a waterfall, and a flowing river. We hiked back up and then got into the car. On the way down the mountain we encountered three buses- thank god we were on the inside of the road next to the mountain wall so it was not a scary and the buses somehow maneuvered around us without falling over the edge. We stopped for lunch at the same restaurant as our first day. It was much better because I avoided the zamano. Instead I ate Duran chicherrone which was like fish sticks. After lunch we headed back to Huancayo so we could get through most of the mountains before dark.
On the way home all of us seemed more cheerful than when we had arrived. We were more relaxed and a little bit more full of life- the jungle had definitely done the trick. The jungle was amazing- hot, humid, green, and full of creatures and places that I had only dreamed existed before seeing them. The jungle is a life-force. It and all of its treats will be something that I will never forget, and will absolutely be a place that I will visit again.

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