Iquitos, Peru: I booked a seven day adventure with an agency who promised me that I wouldn´t be doing the standard tourist´s tour of visiting local communities who are wearing traditional clothing who will show off their traditional dances and visits to animal sactuaries and blah-blah-blah safe tourist activities.
Initially I wanted to go downstream along the Rio Amazonas, but was talked out of it because of the number of lodges and other tour agencies that have set up shop along the Amazon River. They have developed the coastlines so much that animals have moved far inland to escape human interaction. It could all be bull, as the Amazon is quite huge. But of all the agencies that I stopped at, this place had the most convincing adventure.
Instead, we would be leave Iquitos and drive to the town of Nauta and take a boat down the Rio Ucayali and spend a night at their lodge on the Rio Cumaceba . From there, we will embark on night walks and day walks at points along both the Rio Cumaceba and Rio Yarapa, camping along the rivers each night. Piranha fishing for food was on the agenda. Primates would be seen.
Here is the map of where I was. My tour prior to this was in the Pacaya Samiria Reserve. Along the Rio Yanayacu. North is actually towards the right of the map.
This is an example of the speed boats that go from Nauta to villages along the rivers, typically carrying no more than 20 people.
the lodge for the first and last night of the tour
a non-poisonous tarantula that was hanging out on the screen to the dining area.
this is one of the more common birds that hang out along the rivers
For some reason, butterflies like to hang out along a petrol-stained engine. This happened more than once.
a dragonfly making a feast out of a bee.
a twig bug
I love these vines that are twisty and wavy
hanging vines
This is our guide, Israel. He is pointing out this hole (seen below) that is an opening to a wind chamber in the trunk of this tree that extends all the way to the top, about four stories tall.
A thing about our guide. He was trained in the Peruvian military and was given the nickname Commando, after Arnold´s movie. Very appropriate. He was very adept at handling the machete, using it to carve a path for our boat through fifty meters of fresh growth of water plants that stood almost five-feet high and more than half a meter deep. During hikes in the nighttime, he would be able to accurately guide us through three kilometers of rainforest back to the campsite. I would test him periodically during the trail and ask him which direction the campsite was, without using my GPS. He would be spot on. I even said that he was wrong once (knowing that he was right) and he fired back saying that you can´t trust computers sometimes. This guy even drank river water, claiming that he never gets sick and has been drinking the water all his life.
too bad there isn´t the time to see the caterpillar transform into a butterfly...
Commando shredded some of bark of this tree and gave me some of the dust to place inside the elbow. Within seconds, searing heat was burning my arm, more intense than icy-hot. His grandfather was a shaman, thus he has extensive knowledge of the many medicinal properties of the plants in the forest.
Commando busted open this termite nest to show two things: that the termites will patch up what he destroyed in a few hours, and that a handful of termites can be smeared onto skin and used as an insect repellent. I tried it with just twenty termites and have inconclusive results. Let me just say this, I got insect bites all over my body throughout the whole tour, though didn´t notice anything on the area of termite carcasses for the next 20 minutes.
The only time I was not constantly under attack was after submerging my body into the river and air-drying. For the rest of the afternoon, I did not get any bites. Commando also recommended to squeeze lime juice all over the body as a relief to bites and as a repellent... I will have to dismiss this one. I was very sticky and still attracted to mosquitos during the night.
a rare opening in the forest
a tip from Commando: shave the bark to create rope that can be used to tie things together
if your screen is large enough, you can play Where´s Waldo and find a beige and white monkey walking along a branch. The monkeys move really fast and were hard to capture on camera. I ended up taking multiple photos of an area and play Where´s Waldo with each photo.
Woody Woodpecker doing his thing
fellow trekker demonstrating the size of some of these tree trunks
this is one of the easier paths to trek through
crossing a mud river. It is the dry season right now- during the rainy season, this area would be all water, three meters high.
hanging out
during the rainy season, the white trunk marks the highest point of the river
Commando hacking away a path to see the giant water lilies (below)
those are some bug-eyes on that dragonfly
Commando drinking water from the tree. The vines begin from the top of a tree (at least four stories high) and dangle from one of the branches. When they get long enough (and old enough) to reach the ground, they take root and start pulling water up to the top of the tree. Then you can hack off a stick about a meter long. The water drips downward because the water stops going upward after the top is hacked. When the water stops, more of the top is hacked off and more water will drain downward. It tasted as good as any bottled water.
the thing about it being the dry season is that all the fallen trees are exposed and pose as obstacles while boating along the rivers. At some points, I was able to stand in the middle of the river and it would barely be waist-deep.
some obstacles we could go around, some obstacles we would go under, sometimes we would have to lift the boat over the fallen tree.
the black vulture on the prawl
the only primates not to run away at the sounds of humans. These are called owl monkeys
This is a pakka, a victim of our night hike, a jungle rat. Without warning, our other guide (not Commando) fired his shotgun and took him down. Using leaves like this, Commando wrapped him up and took him back to the campsight for consumption. He tasted a little like chicken, but less fatty.
(more photos to come)
I am now back near the coastline of northern Peru, marking my final days in Peru. The next week will be a journey to some stone ruins that are supposed to be more interesting than Machu Picchu. Then I will make my way towards the Ecuadorian border to visit some mangroves. After that it will be a sprint across Ecuador and into Columbia to meet up with some friends in Bogota.
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