Welcome to the jungle

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Hi everyone,

We´ve just returned from 4 days, 3 nights in the Amazon rainforest! We had a great time and have a ton of pictures, but not our photo uploader! We´ll get them up ASAP though once we have it.

We arrived in Puerto Maldonado on Saturday the 24th and were met at the airport by heat, humidity (which felt wonderful) and a friendly taxi driver named Juber. After finding a hotel for us, Huber set us up with a guide who would take us into the jungle. He did a good job of recommending us to Victor, who was actually recommended by the guidebook for Peru too. After hanging out with Juber and some of his friends and sampling plenty of the local beer, Cusqueña, we rested up one last night before heading out in the morning to meet Victor. 3 other travelers accompanied us, nice 30-years-ish Spanish guys and girl. Victor´s son, Nick, and a boat driver came too, but we were still a pretty small group in all.

Sunday morning we set out for Lago Valencia in our long kepe (que-pay) boat with a very noisy motor. 90 km (7 hours) later, we made it to the lake. It was quite remote, as proved by the night sky. It was incredibly clear, and you could see the Milky Way (along with lots of new southern hemisphere constellations) very easily. We stayed there for 2 nights in tents under a thatched roof and on top of a wooden platform, with jungle floor as our bathroom. There wasn´t much time to walk around the first day, but we did a little on the famous Monkey Island, where we saw no monkeys. The second day, we rose very early and set out in our boat to a farther away part of forest, where we walked around until breakfast, and then walked more. We went out both nights in the boat to look at the sky and around the lake for caymans, which are like alligators. The 3rd day we boated to Lago Sandoval, a national park. This was less remote and had more tourists, but it was still great. That night on the lake, we went out in a canoe to look for wildlife and see night-blooming plants, and Victor actually caught a small cayman that we all held. It was at this park where we saw the most monkeys; there were dozens!

He also showed us all sorts of amazing plants, like the quinine tree (where the anti-malarial drug comes from), cat´s claw (also medicinal), curare (the very poison tree), a vine that you could cut and drink loads of water from, hollow trees filled with giant red ants (they were 2 inches long!!), Brazil nut trees, fruits that stain skin dark blue for days but go on clear, and lots more. We also saw lots of animals, such as caymans, the rare giant river otters, tons of tropical birds like parrots, macaws, and toucans, monkeys (of course), a very poisonous snake (which we found at night on our way to the lime tree and almost walked right by... Victor machete´d that poor guy), a tarantula, lots of butterflies, and ants in every size imaginable carrying leaves and flowers. The pictures are amazing... we´ll get them up here sometime, promise!!

So, our rainforest adventure was wonderful, but it´s nice to relax here in Puerto Maldonado. Today we´re going to go to the market and eat food with Huber (the taxi driver), and we´ve got to meet him in just a bit so we will say adios for now!

Love, Mariel and Ben

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Comments

[mariel]

guided tours
Jason, I checked out the website link you gave. About the overall trip it describes: if you have a little more time, it may be worth it to go on your own. The trip seems expensive, BUT i noticed it includes a lot of airfare, which is expensive here (though buses are dirt cheap). It hits the main Peru tourist spots, but you won´t ever escape loads of other tourists... if that bothers you, I´d rethink the tour. About Iquitos: we wanted to go there over Puerto Maldonado because you´ll be on the actual Amazon river, and the jungle is supposed to be better (somehow) there. But Puerto Maldonado and Rio Madre de Dios are wonderful too and if it´s cheaper to go there, do it. Good luck!