Ok, if my memory serves me well, we flew from Lima to Cuzco and onto the Amazon where we were ushered into a covered motorized canoe and shunted to our jungle lodge over 3 hours away. We passed by flat bottomed canoes loaded up with timber or fruit looking so top heavy you wonder how they even stay afloat. We finally viewed our timber eco lodge and it was lovely, no electricity or hot water but just fine and dandy. We had our dinner and went for a night walk in the jungle with torches and spotted lots of insects and lovely big tarantulas, some of which lived under our cabins... (see the photos) and then were left on our own every 200m or so, torches off, to just become one with the forest. You could hear all sorts of noises in the still of the night, owls hooting, creatures moving around you as twigs cracked underfoot, insects buzzing around your ears... it was so dark, it was just amazing that 10 mins of stillness, isolation and silence... then we all joined up and walked back to the lodge together.
The next day we went for a long walk and trudged through the rainforest in the humidity and heat to a lake where we got into a flat bottomed boat and cruised around spotting turtles, monkeys and macaws and whatever else we could see... they were at a distance so no great pix there and were so startled by our presence they took off when we approached. Different to Galapagos where animals have no fear of humans as there are no predators there. It was so bloody hot as the glare of the sun on the water seemed to intensify the heat. We sleepily looked out of the boat into the river and spotted fish darting around the lily pads, and our guide caught a walking fish with a bit of chicken gristle on a fishing line... it was cool. We then headed back to eat our packed lunch in a banana leaf and had another 3 hour walk back and we were exhausted in the heat of the midday sun and the humidity and our guide stopped talking as he knew we wanted to just go back and shower and rest up. All in all it was a 6 hour walk. The cold showers were great....
That night a few of us jumped into the silty brown river full of caymen and fish and other scary stuff for a quick swim. None were eaten thank goodness so we went back to eat dinner and after that embarked on a Caymen hunt. We saw some small ones slither into the river as we spotlighted them in the dark and then our guide rocked our boat as he jumped off and chased after a small baby on the shore and bought it back to us to inspect. Poor lil fella was probably scared to death and mum was not too happy either. But he was put back in the same spot and wandered off into the bush without too much trauma i hope.
That night we heard rain on the roof as we slept. When we awoke the heavens opéned and i have never seen so much rain in my life, a steady shower of water pouring out of the heavens, wish we got that in Melbourne. We got the covered canoe back down the river to catch our flight and it was a soggy, cold and windy 2.5hours as the boat leaked water and we huddled out of the wind and rain. It was amazing... then we headed to Cuzco and you know the rest if you read the blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment