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Published: July 31st 2006
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Achilles
my rainforest guide, can you see the machete? I got a room at El Rey hotel in La Merced, a small jungle city in the eastern foothills of the Andes mountains. At 3:30am, after a quick nap under a slow moving ceiling fan followed by a refreshingly cold shower, I grabbed my backpack and hopped on a motor-taxi to the truck stop by the river. Maybe I should have been nervous about traveling alone, especially as a young American female now surrounded by rugged looking, 40-something Peruvian men wielding machetes, but I was too excited to feel any other emotion. Next I was being ushered into the tarp covered trunk of a pick up truck by a small,, dark-eyed man chattering things that could have been complete nonsense. I sat down on the wooden plank over two buckets that would be my seat for the 12 hour trip and grasped the metal bar in front of me just in time as the driver floored it and we blasted off into the darkness.
I could see nothing, but my other senses alerted me that we were getting further and further from civilization. As we tumbled down the rough dirt road, over potholes and boulders that repeatedly bounced me a
rainforest
en route to Tingo Maria foot in the air, the air grew thicker, hotter and wetter. It tasted like earth and decaying wood, smoke and mist, life and death and something in between. I could hear rushing water below us, beside us, over us, all around us. Billions of bugs and birds sang and screamed in every direction for hours. Then suddenly the bumping stopped, and the truck slowed, and we arrived at our first stop. One of the strangers sitting next to me peeled the tarp open a couple inches and as soon as we could see that the sun was rising, the tarp came off. As we pulled away, the red clouds of dust from the road settled. We were on the side of mountain, deep in the rainforest. I could see lakes of mist swirling around the canopy of trees, glistening in the morning sun far below us. It was amazingly beautiful, and for the next ten hours of the trip I was in a constant state of awe. Whirlwinds of pink flowers and butterflies, colorful birds and thick vines and ferns and everything suspended in an eerie, dreamlike mist... literally breathtaking.
By the time we arrived in Puerto Bermudez, the
sun was beginnging to set. It was by far the longest, most uncomfortable trip I've ever been on in my life but it was all beautiful and 100% worth it. I rested for a day (my butt in particular needed it!) before heading out by small boat for a trek into the jungle. My guide, Achilles, stopped in a small port on the way to trade a bag of bread for a machete. "Seriously? A machete?" I asked. He laughed, "Through the jungle without a machete? Not possible." I thought that they did that in movies just to look cool. Guess I was wrong. We stayed for a while with a family that lived in a raised straw hut over the river and fished for a living. I was about 6 inches taller than everyone. They kept calling me a giant. I tried to explain that girls do not like to be called "huge" in my culture but they didn't understand. I decided to take it as a compliment. We returned to the hostel and I ate starfruit from the garden and fell asleep on a hammock over the river.
After Puerto Bermudez, I started my long trek to
just north of Tingo Maria
from the window of a shared taxi (four Peruvian men and myself), en route from Pucallpa... the best road I'd seen in several weeks... Pucallpa. I took a 6am taxi to Pulcazu, where I traded for a car to Zungaro, where I traded for another car to Von Humboldt. I spent the night with locals in Von Humboldt, then in the morning lapsed the final stretch of jungle road to Pucallpa, apparently a huge ass city. I don't like cities, so I bought my ticket to leave the next day. While eating lunch, however, I did get to talk to some natives from a nearby Shipibo village. Very interesting culture. I wish I got to spend more time with them. So now I'm in Tingo Maria, which my book said was a crappy but which is actually freaking beautiful, possibly the most beautiful setting for a city that I've seen in my life. Wondering if the book said those things on purpose to drive tourists away, keep the place unspoiled. I spent last night in an eco lodge. Tonight I'm taking an overnight bus back to Huancayo to get my bags and visit the kids one last time like I promised.
The past few weeks have been really nice. The worst part was knowing how much better they could have been with more
time traveling this way. I could have helped people SO MUCH more on my own than I did with the programs in Lima and Huancayo. The world is full of people who could use a little help and aren't afraid to tell you about it.
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jeff w
non-member comment
i am glad that things are going your way. i miss you and am thinking about you.