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Published: November 24th 2007
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After completing the Inca Trail and having walked 40km at altitudes of over 3500m you would have thought it would be fair to assume that we would have a couple of days to recover. But no such luck. This tour was pretty relentless and after a night back in Cuzco, we flew straight off to Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon the next morning. And I was actually really looking forward to being back at sea level again and therefore being able to breathe normally. But what I´d forgotten was the fact that this was the Amazon, which meant extremely hot and humid weather. I´m not sure which is worse, altitude or humidity. But after the 2 days in the Amazon, going back to altitude didn´t seem like a bad idea.
The flight was just the start of our journey to our jungle lodge. We then had a bus ride followed by a 3 hour canoe ride along the Tambopata river so didn´t arrive until late afternoon. Just time for a quick cold shower (no hot water but I didn´t really mind) before going out on our night walk. I´m not completely sure what our guide was hoping we would see
but I was praying that we wouldn´t actually see too much in terms of wildlife, there was definitely plenty of it around though from the amount of noise coming from the trees. Our night walk was in the pitch black, apart from a couple of us who had torches to light the way. And we didn´t see a huge amount - a tarantula´s leg disappearing into its nest, a few dragonflies, some fireflies. Plus I provided dinner for plenty of mosquitoes. The jungle lodge we stayed in was simple but very comfortable. We had running water which was great, and mosquito nets over the beds which came in very handy, but no electricity so I got used to brushing my teeth by candlelight. And it was run by a French lady so the food was definitely an improvement on what I had eaten in the rest of Peru (basically rice).
And the next day we set off on a 7 hour hike through the jungle, maybe slightly ambitious in hindsight seeing as I was still aching from the Inca Trail! We did get to see some wildlife though, quite a few monkeys, lots of birds, and we even came
across a tortoise sitting next to the trail which our guide was amazed about. He´d never seen one in the jungle and I have to admit I didn´t know they lived in the Amazon. The scenery was amazing too, huge trees and a lot of the time you couldn´t even tell the sun was shining as it was so dense. The hike took us to a beautiful lake and we took a canoe ride across it, spotting brightly coloured parrots in the trees along the edges. By the time we got back to the lodge it was 3pm and we were all exhausted and so hot. So thankfully we found a group of hammocks waiting for us right by the river and I was happy to sleep there until the mosquito attacks became too frequent. The lodge is called Cayman lodge because of all the caymans in the area and that evening we went out on the river cayman-spotting. This involved turning all the lights out on the boat so we were in the pitch black (I have no idea how the driver knew where we were going as I couldn´t see a thing), and our guide then shone a
A dragonfly
Spotted on our nightwalk through the jungle torch along the banks of the river searching for their red shining eyes. And we literally saw dozens of pairs of eyes. I thought this would be the extent of the trip, until the boat stopped near the bank, our guide jumped off, briefly wrestled with something in the grass and returned to the boat with a 3 foot cayman. Yes, returned to the boat and then sat next to us with it in his hands. I felt slightly sorry for the poor thing, apparently it was grabbed whilst it was enjoying dinner, it then had the torch shone on various parts of its body while we all stared at it. It was pretty amazing to see one so close up though.
So after our brief trip to the Amazon, we returned to the altitude and the pleasantly cool climate of Cuzco. Just for one night though, then we had an 8 hour bus ride through the high Altiplano region to a town called Puno on Lake Titicaca. The bus ride was actually really nice, the scenery surrounding us was pretty spectacular, lots of snow-capped volcanoes, and we stopped off in a couple of towns on the way and
the ruins of a temple. Lake Titicaca is 3850m above sea level and the largest lake in the world above 2000m. And standing on the edge its hard to believe that it’s a lake - we could just about see the snow-capped peaks of Bolivia on the other side, but it looked like we were standing on the edge of an ocean. We boarded a boat the next morning and headed to Taquile island, which had absolutely beautiful views of the lake from the main square on a hill in the middle of the island. We also visited a local craft market which was very interesting as it is the men on the island who do all the knitting and weaving. We then headed to Amantani island where we would spend the night in the house of a local family. We were each designated a ´mama´ whose house we would be staying in and who would look after us for our stay. My mama was called Ulga, and I don´t think I ever saw her put down her knitting apart from when she was cooking (the women have to do the knitting on Amantani). We were given a little sheet
of Quechua phrases, the native language of the area, but I have to say that communication between us was pretty limited! I did manage to ask if she needed help with the dinner though and was given a bowl of potatoes to peel. They held a little party for our whole group that evening and even dressed us up in the traditional dress which was great fun, it didn´t look quite right though with jeans and trainers underneath!
Then the following day we headed to the floating Uros Islands. These islands were absolutely amazing, the Uros people first created them centuries ago to separate themselves from the Incas and many people still live there. The islands are made using layers and layers of Totora reeds that grow in the lake. The islands have to be anchored to stop them from drifting too much and bumping into each other, and every 2 weeks a fresh layer of reeds has to be put on top of the old layer as the reeds have started to shrivel and dry up. Everything on the islands are made of reeds, the houses, the furniture, they even make their canoes out of reeds and some
of them are really elaborate. After about 100 years an island has to be abandoned as it will become too thick and eventually touch the bottom of the lake and so they just move and create a new one. It was quite strange walking on the islands seeing as they were just made of reeds, and the locals there all seemed so happy with their way of life.
Then it was back to Puno for a final night in Peru, before boarding a bus the next morning headed for Bolivia.
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