Amazonas Parte II

As promised, I will begin the second part of my Amazon jungle adventure with an introduction to my new friends. The first smiling, friendly face I saw when I first walked onto El Eduardo was a Chilean chap named Guillermo. It was he who helped me gather information about when the boat would leave (mostly because he had no idea himself). He introduced me to his girlfriend, Karolina, and we all went out to grab some ice cream. We would soon bond more, for four days actually, as we were the only foreigners on the boat amongst at least 250 Peruvians.

After four days on the boat, we arrived to our destination: dusty, noisy, Iquitos. With about 500,000 people, Iquitos is the biggest city in the world without road connections. You can arrive by boat or by plane. Once you are there, you ride a motorcycle. At any moment, it seems that all 500,000 people are buzzing around on their motorcycles. With my visa running out, I had initial plans to head to the Ecuadorian border straight away. Being on the river, three stories high, seeing the jungle from above, gave us a feel for the jungle without truly letting us in. It stoked a burning desire to get on the ground and go explore. It was Guillermo and Karolina´s excitement for the jungle that really sold me in joining them for three days on a ´jungle tour.´ It was us three, a German gal, and our guide Larry who set out the net day on a boat taxi to a local´s house which would be our ´base camp.´ The local, El Capitan, was our boat driver an eagle eyes. He once spotted a pygmy monkey (a monkey the size of a rat) in a 100 foot tree from 200 feet away – it was magic.

Boat is the only form of transportation in the Amazon as almost all land is covered in water for most of the year. We saw only a couple small patches in the three days on our tour. The water mark from last year was still six feet above the current water level. For anyone who can grasp the idea of six feet of water for hundreds of square miles, that’s a lot of gallons.

Our tour included various walks on the small patches of land, boat trips, and a night sleeping in hammocks in a very remote spot. El Capitan drove, Larry would guide with paddle and machete. We saw all types of strange animals. Pink fresh water dolphins fed at the river mouths. El Capitan spotted young caimans while on a night cruise, which he proceeded to catch with his bare hands. Larry spotted a sloth in a tree, climbed the tree, and wrestled him down to eye level a foot away. Peru has a massive diversity of birds and Larry an El Capitan could spot them all.

The one thing we saw most of was mosquitoes. They flocked in herds of the thousands. At one point, after Karolina regrettably volunteered to cut the tomatoes for dinner, there were four of us, El Capitan included, swatting the dark swarm of mozzies away from her face. She was nearly in tears. On our camping trip, we had mosquito nets over our hammocks. In the five seconds it took me to unzip the net, hop in, and re-zip, at least 200 mozzies had made their way into my hammock space. After I was in, a massacre even Hitler, Stalin, and Truman would have been impressed. But, it’s odd how accustomed the natives are to mosquitoes. They just swat unconsciously and often in mid conversation. Here come us city-folk on red alert, search and destroy missions constantly; very akin to a puppy who hears a fly buzzing around its head.

After my three days in the jungle, El Eduardo couldn’t have been a more welcoming sight. I had finally exited the heat and the constant barrage of mozzies. Two days of full relaxation and hammock swinging were ahead of me. All I had to do was to enjoy the scenery and eat rice, far away from the annoyances of the jungle. 

Rio Amazonas: Parte I

I decided to fly to my next destination: Pucallpa (avoiding the 19 hour bus ride, which by word of mouth, I learned has a record for massive mud slides in the rainy season). When I arrived, it was sunny and hot. Quite hot. Pucallpa is one of Peru’s main gateways to the Amazon River basin via paved road. The airport is so small planes turn around on the runway to return to the terminal. And the terminal consists of a couple big rooms with a conveyor belt and a bunch of desks toting ‘the best’ Amazon tours. The mototaxi I grabbed at the airport talked my ear off the entire, slow, 8 km trip to town. It had not rained in a few days, leaving the street’s dried up mud subject to the tires of the mototaxis, making for a dusty experience through the small town.

My mototaxi was convinced he knew the cheapest hotel for me. We went to three that were 7-8 times what I have been paying throughout Peru. Finally, I paid him and told him I would walk myself to a cheap one. Which may or may not have been a good choice because after walking around lost for half an hour, getting lost on the streets with no signs, I was pretty sweaty and hot. I stumbled into a menú restaurant (my favorite places to eat in Peru as they are usually only slightly more than a dollar for a bowl of soup and a plate) to collect my bearings and grab a quick meal.  Finally, I was able to figure out where the hell I was and find a hostel.  

Most travelers I talked to have never heard of Pucallpa let alone know why anyone would want to go there. And there really is only one main reason people from abroad would waste their time going to Pucallpa: the boat ride to Iquitos. After feeling refreshed from a long nap under one of those wind-turbine style ceiling fans, I headed to the docks to find a boat. The boats are notorious for leaving hours to days late and finding out a true departure time is almost impossible. Basically the name of this game is to show up to the docks and find a cargo boat that accepts passengers and attempt to assess a departure time. It was easy for me to find a boat as it seemed there was only one boat accepting passengers with signs claiming a departure that night.

So, I headed for the boat: El Eduardo IV. One guy peddling a shoulder full of hammocks helped me out in pointing me to ‘the guy in charge’. He told me that the boat “sale a las seis y media.” This was in 30 minutes. And judging by the line of trucks still waiting to unload cargo onto the half-filled cargo bay, I estimated the boat would not be leaving in 30 minutes. ‘The guy in charge’ was helpful in showing me around the boat. It was 3 stories. The first story was the cargo bay being filled with anything from chickens to motorcycles to plátanos to cans of evaporated milk. The second level was the main level with probably 100 hammocks and 150 people, a kitchen, and bathrooms. The hammocks were strung one after another, often two-wide for the length of the boat. Kids were running around everywhere and piles of luggage and goods were packed where possible. The third floor was similar, except a bit smaller.

I then started asking everyone who looked willing as to when they thought the boat would be leaving. Some people were determined they knew and everyone that did provided a different time: “Sale a la mediodía mañana” or “Sale a las siete hoy día” or “Sale el viernes.” I was given advice to find the capítan but he unfortunately had disappeared. Some people had no idea when the boat would leave. Some people get curious and ask around with you. Most people, i.e. the hundred and fifty people or so already on the boat, just tied up their hammocks and waited for the boat to leave.

Of the answers I got, two seemed most probable: that day at seven or the next day at noon. So, being six o’clock already, I ran back to the hostel to grab my things, take a quick last shower, and buy some supplies (cookies, cheese, tortillas, jam, and juice). I hurried back to the boat to find out that the boat was leaving the next day at ‘noon.’ One guy gave me a friendly nod and so I walked over to say hello. It turns out he and his girlfriend, from Chile, were as lost as I was. They were facing the same decision as me: spend the night on the boat, or find a place in town. In the end, it was an easy decision. We ended up getting some refreshments in town before calling it a night. More on these two later.

I returned to the boat early the next day to make sure I didn’t miss the boat and set up my hammock. At first I was still trying to figure out when it would leave. But soon, I just surrendered, set up my hammock, and relaxed. It was this renunciation that set the tone for the remainder of my existence on that boat: relaxing in a hammock. The boat was snuggled in between two other boats, so the air circulation was that of a cellar. It made for a really, fucking hot cellar at that. I swung, sweating in my hammock until 3 pm when the boat finally pulled away from shore. The relief brought from the breeze from the moving vessel was nothing short of extraordinary. For 4 days straight, I would thoroughly enjoy the breeze.

Life on the boat was simple, to say the least. Three meals a day created the main form of excitement. They would ring the bell from the kitchen and everyone would jump up from their hammocks, grab their Tupperware bowls, and head for the food. Why everyone got so excited for the food, I may never know, for the meals consisted of a monstrous amount of rice and a little bit of chicken stew. It wasn't bad food, but about all it did was fill your belly - A good reason for always carrying vitamins on your journeys.

The river scenery was beautiful. The chocolate milk colored water of the Ucayali, originating from the mountains around Cuzco is very high at this time of the year, making for a river that is generally 400 meters wide, and it’s still rising. It reminds one more of a long, skinny lake than a river. We passed countless small villages of wood houses on stilts. And almost every village was flooded up to the bottom of the houses. In most places flooding is devastating, but for these people, flooding is a yearly event. It is funny to think about how easily these people deal with widespread flooding in comparison to the ineffective heavy engineering in places like New Orleans.

We made frequent stops to these small river towns to either drop off or pick up goods or passengers. At the bigger towns, people from the town would jump on board to sell fruits, fish, or drinks as the crew unloaded the goods.

On the average, though, for as far as the eye can see it was river and trees. If it weren't for the utter beauty of the region, you might get bored of the scene.