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Published: September 1st 2005
the night before
not at all worried about being forty!Fab at Forty
Before jumping in our dug out canoe and padling up the Amazon river to face our demons at the Shamonic healing camp, Simon had one particular demon of his own to face, the dreaded 40th Birthday.
Our trip to the jungle was once again thwarted by flight cancellations and we found ourselves unexpectedly in Lima airport for the day. This presented us with the welcome prospect of western style fast food, so it was McDonalds all round courtesy of Lan Peru. We may have been delayed but at least we got there alive, one of the planes we travelled on in Peru came down in a storm in the week we were at the camp, scarey stuff.
We arrived in Iquitos around ten pm. It was hot, damn hot and a little humid but not too many of the dreaded mosquitos showed up. Iquitos is in the Peruvian Amazon, a rubber boom town of half a million people who entirely depend upon boats and planes to move around. Other than in the town itself, there are no roads linking it with the rest of Peru. The highways are the bubbling brown rivers of the Amazon
and its tributaries.
We got to our hotel and set about settling in, glad for the air conditioning. We poured a bath, took one look at the muddy gloop that came out and settled for a shower instead.
Now somehow it got to midnight and as you can see from the photos, Simon was not taking being 40 years old very well at this point. However when the dawn came and we opened our curtains to a view of the Amazon he seemed in a much more resigned state and the champagne seemed to help him along a little.
Thanks to all of you who managed to battle the hotel telephone system and receptionist, he was delighted to speak to you all and you made the distance between us seem less far and made up for him having only one card (printed for a 4 year old but skillfully turned into a 40th birthday card by the addition of a happy face) and present to open!
Around midday, one bottle of ‘poo to the wind we decided to venture out of the airconditioning and see what Iquitos was all about. I am not joking when I
say that the heat hit us like a wall. It must have been 40 degrees out there on that day and even the locals were complaining, unsuprisingly since they have tin roofs!
We staggered in the heat along a beautiful boulevard, built to look like a promendade but instead of the sea we had the Amazon. The houses along it are turn of the century rubber boom mansions with beautiful tiled facades, an unexpected architecutural treat. We made it about 500m before having to dive into a bar the “Yellow Rose of Texas” for a drink. Curious old place full of snakeskins, skulls and saddle seats at the bar.
Later in the day all the electricity at the hotel failed, that means no air con, no fountains, no cocktails and no hot food, oh and no lights either. This thwarted our preparations for the big 40th birthday night out on the town to celebrate. Have you ever tried to shave or put make up on by candlelight!
But heh we are travellers now and so I did the best I could on the face and Si wisely decided that having a little stubble was better than cutting
his throat in the dark. Our friend Karen from Baסos arrived and the three of us went back to the Yellow Rose for pina coladas, on the saddles and wearing cowboy hats of course! (this could be becoming a fettish of ours...)
Then something quite unexpected happened, a friend of Karen’s arrived and recommended we go to eat at a lounge bar called La Scala where the food tonight was - curry! It was gorgeous, easily the best food we have had in 5 months and all washed down with Aussie wine in my case and a big fat Cuban Cohiba cigar in the Birthday boy’s. Perfecto!
We had a great time and I even got offered the chance to cook a curry on my return to Iquitos. We left the curry restaurant at around 2pm and set about looking for a Karaoke to while (or perhaps whine) the night away. Having scoured the town we found them all to be shut - pah what whimps. So we wandered around taking in the sights in the “cool” of the night air instead. As you can see, Simon´s mood had improved considerably by now and he was very “celebratory”
indeed.
Eventually we got back to the hotel and to bed. So does life really begin at 40 - as our experiences in the jungle (blog to follow) showed!
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Pat Pemberton
non-member comment
I've been waiting for these!
So pleased you had a good '40th' and a curry to boot. I thought the photo (er...much - forty so what) may have been Simon lying on the pavement, still standing at 2am Simon, why? Maybe your B'Day cards will show-up in time for your 41st, now that does sound ooooold!