Amazonia and the Land of the Peckish Peccaries

It is a bit of a wonder that there is even an airport in Puerto Maldonado. There really isn’t any “there” there. But there is an airport there and that is where we landed after our flight from Cusco. I suppose it is possible that the airport is simply far away from the main town, and we simply never drove to the main town. We did take a bus to our tour office and after a brief orientation and a bug juice bath, we reboarded the bus and headed out of “town”. The drive was long and bumpy and we were surrounded on either side by papaya tree orchards and then denser and denser bush. You got the feeling there wasn’t really any “there” at our destination either. And the feeling was right on. We finally got dropped off at a building that wasn’t much more than a few poles and a thatch roof. There were some not so healthy looking dogs and one or two locals sitting around playing cards but it would’ve felt like we had gone the wrong way if it weren’t for the couple of dozen other tourists all waiting around looking anxious. Then we were led down some rickety steps into the jungle only to find the river waiting for us, complete with caimans and sand flies that would bite your legs off if the caimans didn’t get there first. But there were multiple boats capable of handling about twenty peeps at a time, and we all piled in and starting scooting upstream into the great unknown.

The river was pretty wide. I know I wouldn’t have wanted to have to swim across, but I probably could have in a pinch. It reminded me of the River Kwai in Thailand because the same type of vegetation was growing on either bank and the heavy air was weighing us down with the same anticipation. In reality, we did see a few caiman right off the bat, but they were far away on the other side of the river and not really all that exciting as movement did not seem to be on their agenda. But the sand flies and the mosquitos were quite real. Even covered in DEET, all of us would finish our few days in the Amazon with more bug bites than freckles, and for some of us, no names or anything, JOSH, that is saying a lot.

I've forgotten the name, but it is a tributary of a tributary of the actual Amazon River.

About 45 minutes of boat ride later and we pulled up to another rickety staircase on the opposite bank as equally unassuming as the one we had gone down. A few hundred steps up the bank later and another quarter mile hike in, and we had arrived at our destination. And there was a “there” there. It was a raised platform lodge of sorts with maybe twenty rooms and a bar and a dining area and a behammocked meeting area. Lots of raised wooden floors and lots of bamboo walls. It was all quite charming. Of course there was no air conditioning, and it would remain around 100 degrees for the entire duration of our stay, but it wouldn’t have been an authentic Amazon experience if there were AC, right? We needed to embrace the humidity and the bugs and the incessant noise coming from the multiple bickering howler monkeys. So that’s what we did. Really, they ought to call them “growler” monkeys, as the sound they produced was much more akin to that generated by my peckish stomach than it was to a wolf communicating with the full moon. Only with the monkeys the volume was cranked “to eleven” at all times, whereas occasionally my tummy takes a hiatus.

Just hanging out at the lodge.

The lodge had as few walls as possible.

Each time I have been asked if I enjoyed my time in the Amazon, the answer has been an unwavering “yes”. But I can’t really put a finger on what it was that made the visit so enjoyable. We didn’t really see anything in the rainforest that we hadn’t already seen in Costa Rica or Southeast Asia. We didn’t really do anything more special than hike and play in the river and hang around in hammocks trying in vain to cool off. So why was it worth the trip? How can I make the Amazon sound appealing enough to recommend it to friends? Good questions, both. I will attempt to answer, but I can’t promise anything.

That's one tree's trunk, but not really one tree trunk.

Even the plants sweat here.

First off, we were assigned a guide, named Gilbert, who led us on hikes and adventures and even ate meals with just the thirteen of us for the duration of our stay. He was a really cool guy who understood our needs and molded the agenda to fit our desires. Without that, I think I might have called the last four days of our vacation a waste of time and money. But with that, with our new friend Gilbert, we really did get the most out of our time. The thirteen of us each got to pick and choose the hikes we would go on, some staying back to nap, others to partake in a massage. And Gilbert even gauged our level of energy well enough to know that some hikes just weren’t gonna fly at all. Had Gilbert been our guide in Machu Picchu, I probably would have loved the tour there as well. And if we had been given options to do different activities while in the Amazon, but each with its own guide and together with lots of other patrons, I probably would have enjoyed that less too. So I suppose we were lucky. We hadn't expected the VIP treatment, but we were very much glad to have it.

In any case, I do need to document exactly what it was we did, or I’ll quickly lose my readers, if I haven’t already. So here goes. We didn’t arrive at the “inn” until late in the afternoon, so all we had time for was a short hike. But we made it count. They had erected a vertical, rectangular open-air metal tower that was nothing more than a 168 step spiraling staircase to a fifty square foot platform 140 feet above the ground. All fourteen of us, including Gilbert, barely fit on the precarious platform at the top and we watched the sun set over the trees from just high enough above the canopy that we felt as if we were flying with the birds. You couldn’t see the ground at all, other than far off near the river, as the trees were too densely packed. It was a different vantage point than I’d ever been privy to in the past, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We watched vultures and parrots and only Gilbert knows what else soaring along, but the highlight was when the scarlet macaws did a fly-by that definitely buzzed the tower. I could have hung out up there for hours, but it was getting dark quickly and the hike back to the dining hall begged for our immediate attention.

We are climbing what?

Seems taller from up here.

When Gilbert did the rundown for us about the next day's activities, he got a bit of a rise out of us by suggesting that a four a.m. hike was the best way to see the wildlife. We went out at 8:00. The wee hours of the morning thing was getting a bit old for all us on this trip, and if we didn’t see any more caimans, well, we could live with that. But as I said, Gilbert was flexible. He took us down to the boat, which scooted us across the river. We then climbed the opposite bank and hiked beneath the monkeys until we came to a lake where he had another boat waiting. This was more of a floating platform for which the only means of locomotion was a single crazy shaped oar at the back, reminiscent of gondoliers in Venice. The “gondola” in this case was more of a barge. We never did see any caimans, but we spent almost an hour tracking a couple of river otters who gave us a good show. We also went piranha fishing with beef for bait. The kids caught quite a few and had fun holding them by the spine and watching them bite at the air or a leaf that we’d put between their jaws. Pretty sweet. We couldn’t eat them, even though they could probably eat us, so eventually each got thrown back into the lake before it suffocated. There would definitely be no swimming here!

The otters were doing a little fishing themselves.

First human to catch a piranha that morning!

Nasty little buggers.

The hike back was without incident; unless you call being targets for the little spider monkeys an incident. We did get a little swimming in on the river before heading back to camp. It was a much more pleasant wet than the ever-present layer of sweat that I bathed in as I hiked, especially when mixed with one part sunscreen and two parts bug-juice. But the dip in the river had its issues too, because even though the mosquitos were mostly uninterested in us due to the DEET, the sand flies were having a smorgasbord. Most of us came back with a few dozen bites each after just 15 minutes or so in the river.

Cooling down.

The afternoon activity was a trip to a local farm, but I opted out choosing a massage instead. That was fun. The woman spoke no English. She instructed me to strip naked and stood there with her hands on her hips staring at me, with this look on her face like I was keeping her from some other important appointment. I did as she asked for fear of physical repercussion and mounted the table face down. The table had no headrest, so I spent the whole massage turning my head back and forth from one side to the other managing an ever-growing crick in my neck as she worked my back and legs. No towel, just my bare bug-bitten butt, naked as the day I was born. Not the most relaxing massage I’ve ever had, but at least I found out that I hadn’t missed much on the farm visit.

Dinner was excellent. In fact, the food was pretty darned good at this place. It was buffet style, with few choices, but I tried everything and liked it all. It was nice not to have to deal with decisions about where and what to eat. We got what we got, and for the most part, we loved it. Really, how can you go wrong when your food is wrapped in banana leaves, anyhow?

The next day was all about a project that Gilbert dreamed up to keep the kids happy. We cruised across the river to where he had found some balsa wood logs that had been left over from a construction project. We stripped the bark off of them, and then used the strips to tie the logs together until we had a pretty serviceable makeshift raft. I think the plan was to have the kids help do the building, but they were having too much fun getting muddy in the river, so in the end Dan and I did most of the building. But the kids all boarded the raft and rowed themselves down river. It was pretty cute seeing them floating along, but poor Gilbert earned his pay that day. The “oar” they were using was really just a pole. And they weren’t getting much of anywhere along the river. Gilbert swam along with them, encouraging and instructing, but in the end, mostly pushing. The kids were getting hot in the sun, and most of them abandoned ship and starting swimming too. We adults were all scooting alongside in the engine-powered boat, letting Gilbert herd the cats. It was pretty amusing for us all except for Gilbert who was feeling responsible for the safety of all of our children and yet getting very little cooperation from any of them. I am sure that if there were really any danger we would have helped him out, but the absurdity of it all just had us laughing and cheering rather than being helpful. We did eventually make it to our destination and Gilbert sold the raft to another local for a tidy profit, or not.

Gathering the logs to build the raft.

Chloe was into the project for awhile.

How to tie balsa logs together with the bark from the same logs.

What to do when you are avoiding building a raft.

The raft worked great, the pole as an oar, not so much.

Gilbert is the only one left of the raft, but he is cheating, as that is an actual oar from the boat.

The afternoon hike was to the largest tree on the preserve. I think it was a Kapok, but I could totally be making that up. I did pace around the base of the trunk and found that it was about 55 meters just to get around. That’s a big tree. From there, Gilbert pointed out the sounds of some white-lipped peccaries crunching on tree nuts in the distance, and we spent almost an hour stealthily approaching the sounds, only to eventually scare the animals away and never see anything but trampled vegetation. I think Gilbert was more excited about trying to see them than the rest of us were. But what are you going to do when your guide insists upon silence and then does the follow me hand signal deeper and deeper into the bush? You follow, that’s what you do.

There was a night hike designed mostly to scare the crap out of the kids. But the spiders were apparently out in force and were larger than an adult male’s hands, so really, I think the adult males were just as scared as the kids. But the nighttime was really about a different experience all together. The walls of the “inn” were made of two rows of parallel stalks of bamboo with a mesh screen in between. In places you could see through the walls, but everywhere you could hear through them. The wall rose up eight or ten feet, but the shared ceiling was at least fifteen above us. Which means, for much of the space, there was nothing at all in between rooms. We got to be neighbors with some twenty-something women on the first couple of nights, which wasn’t bad at all. They were pretty quiet. But on the last night, there was a gaggle of un-chaperoned American teenagers in the room next to ours. They were loud, they were obnoxious, they were vulgar and they were driving me crazy as I tried to sleep.

Finally, I lost patience and put on my teacher voice and under my breath I read them the riot act. I think the fact that they could all hear me, though I was speaking at barely above a whisper, really freaked them out. This faceless stranger reprimanding them probably scared them more than any jungle spider could. It was quiet for the rest of the night. Good to know all my years as a teacher were good for something. At breakfast you could see them all searching the faces in the dining room trying to surmise whom it was that told them off. Not sure if they settled on me or not. I couldn’t have been that hard to spot, considering the smirk on my face was wider than the river.

Before breakfast we went to a bird watch spot that they had set up, where you could watch scores of parrots licking the clay on the riverbank presumably to supplement their diet with minerals. Any time there was an unaccounted for sound, the flock would all dart off in different directions in a chaotic fever-pitched “run for your lives” kind of way. But then they would all come back to the wall and starting licking again when they realized the panic button had been touched by one of their own who thought that the best way to get to a tastier spot on the wall. We were only close enough to see detail using binoculars, but still it was pretty cool to see exotic birds somewhere other than in a zoo or a sanctuary.

I guess it was tasty clay.

They were way cooler in mid-flight, but hard to capture on film.

We really were quite sad to say goodbye to Gilbert. But I think most of us were ready to be done with the Amazon. The wet, heavy heat of day gave way only to the wet, heavy heat of the night. It was quite a contrast to the dry air in the super high altitudes in the Andes just a few days removed, but in neither place did you feel like you could get a good breath of air. In any case, that last morning was about eating breakfast, paying the tab, and starting the long trek home. A half-hour boat ride followed by an hour-long bus ride and we were back at the office to pick up the luggage we left behind. Then a quick trip to the airport and a flight to Lima, and the jungle was but a memory. We stayed the night in Lima, and got to see only a very small portion of the city. But it seemed like a pretty standard big city, so we don’t feel as though we missed much. Josh wasn’t feeling well in any case, so we tried to lay low, only traveling enough to check out the sea cliffs down to the Pacific and a seafood restaurant that was recommended to us by someone Carol met on a hike.

Then it was back to travel-issues-central. There was no avoiding it any longer. The return half of our defective round-trip tickets to South America was about to be tested. I am sure you recall the story of our miserable start to this vacation. Well, we handed them our passports at the gate and awaited the inevitable. Yup, troubles with our tickets. We arrived at the airport just before 5:00 a.m. for a 7:10 flight. The line was long. We got to the counter at 5:45 or so. We were the very last ones to be helped. The half-dozen or so groups behind us in line all went through other agents quickly, and our guy was still typing away on his terminal trying to get our boarding passes. Panic started to build, but before full-blown hysteria set in, he did eventually issue us boarding passes for the flight to Mexico City, but informed us that the flight from Mexico City to SFO was over-booked and we could only go “stand-by”. We had a five-hour layover in Mexico City and so we hoped we could take care of things then, so we boarded the original flight and made it out of Peru.

Once in Mexico City, Carol went immediately to find help with our tickets and was told that she could only get help an hour ahead of flight time when the gate opened for business. So we waited it out. We had a leisurely lunch of really bad Mexican food (we were in Mexico City!) and prepared ourselves for the worst. Good thing too, because the worst happened. We got to the gate; they told us the flight was full. We waited to see if there were any no-shows or volunteers to take another flight. There were not. We got bumped. There is nothing like spending a whole day in an airport only to find you aren’t going to fly anyway.

But this story ends well. Josh was really feeling quite sick at this point, and so a flight would have been rough for him in any case. AeroMexico was kind enough to book us on the early morning flight the next day in Business Class! They booked our hotel for the evening and gave us compensation tickets for dinner and breakfast. They even threw in a set of four round-trip tickets pretty much anywhere AeroMexico flies. Now that is how you treat a customer when you screw things up for them. Expedia needs to take some notes!

Other than a fiasco with getting our bags back in Mexico City so we could change clothes for the overnight stay, the whole getting bumped thing went well. I had to bust some heads to get those bags back, but eventually we did get them. Poor Carol had to work on Monday and now we weren’t getting home until Sunday late afternoon. But you really couldn’t ask the airline to do anything more than they did. I do find it odd though, that we were the last people to check-in for that flight, and therefore the first ones bumped. We checked in before 6:00 a.m. in Lima, and the flight was after 6:00 p.m. in Mexico City. Something was amiss. I think the guy in Lima never did get us checked in correctly and so we didn’t officially check-in until the hour before the flight in Mexico. But oh well, all is water under the metaphoric bridge. We made it home, luggage in tow, and our sick-boy a bit more rested than he would have been had we flown coach the night before.

Final thoughts? Well, we spent an awful lot of time in airports and on airplanes on this trip. We got up before 6:00 a.m. on more mornings than anyone should ever have to on a vacation. Mark lost an ATM card. I had multiple eye infections (never even mentioned that a recurrence happened on the trip home). Josh got sick. Expedia screwed us out of a day of vacation and a few hundred bucks at least. But even with all of that, it was a blast. I am still bouncing-off-the-walls-ecstatic when I think about finally getting to experience Machu Picchu. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city and Rio de Janeiro is in a gorgeous part of the world. Iguazu Falls was simply mind-blowing. We got to spend tons of quality time with our friends. And every time you can gain a little more perspective from the world, it makes everything seem that much more a reason to celebrate the life you have. Would I do that trip again? No. There are so many other places to see. Though I’d love to see the Salt Flats of Bolivia or the peaks of Patagonia, or the blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos, I may never make it back to South America. But I’m awfully glad I made it once.

The sun has set on our South American adventure. Where to next?

Thanks for reading! Adios!

Esteban.