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I went downstairs for my Nescafé and panini toast, and today the jam seemed fresh, so I had that instead of my usual honey. Jam with a tough skin on it sort of scares me, goodness only knows what's simmering under that skin. Maybe they put out fresh pots today so as not to poison any Mothers, even foreign tourist ones.
I had done my Amazon packing last night, we were limited as to what we could take with us since the small passenger boat that was taking us from Puerto Maldonado to our Eco lodge didn't have a hold or an actual storage area, so we were given duffle bags and we could only bring what we could fit in them. There wasn't a weight restriction, but we had to use common sense and be reasonable.
It was only for 4 days, so it wasn't a big deal for me. I wore my hikers and packed my sandals. I wore a pair of long cotton pants and packed a second pair, and I also packed one pair of shorts. For shirts, I wore a short sleeved T-shirt and packed a second one, plus one long sleeve cotton shirt. A couple of pairs of underwear and socks, a small bag of toiletries which included mosquito repellent and a headlamp and I had room left over for all kinds of stuff. My camera is always around my neck, and I have a small wallet/passport holder that hooks on to my pants, so my passport and a credit card and some cash are always with me. And of course I tuck in a small paperback book, and my journal. The rest of our belongings were stored at the Prisma hotel, to be picked up upon our return.
(I have had a few people ask me what I pack on my holidays, since I'm always talking about packing light and only bringing a carry-on, so that's why I'm going into more detail, and at the end of this blog, I'll do a proper "what I took" list)
Anyhow, what great sights there are on a sunny Mothers Day morning in a place where they love their sweets and their mothers. The streets were just packed with stalls selling gifts for mom. Flowers, trinkets, shiny balloons and....cakes....oh my, the cakes. I was amazed and delighted, and I was salivating.
It was fun to see all the people crowded around, purchasing their goodies, cake in one hand, flowers in the other and a dead chicken for dinner. All without stepping foot into a store. The streets are just a beautiful and vibrant slice of life.
Fresh chicken? I'll pass on that.
Our flight was to leave at 11AM, so we headed off to the Cusco airport. On arrival, we got our tickets and, awwww, look what all the women got from the ticket agents:
Our flight was delayed for about a half an hour or 45 minutes, they didn't really say why...at one point they said that the flight from Bolivia was late and they had to clean the plane before we were allowed on, but there was no plane on the Tarmac, but eventually a plane did land, and they let us get on it, the flight attendants were giving it a quick tidy up as we came down the aisle,
Bye-bye Cusco....see you in a few days!
As we climbed and headed towards Puerto Maldonado, the skies got kind of grey and grumpy looking and there was a "bit" of turbulence. Honestly, I'm a very nervous flyer, but I didn't think it was that bad, but some of the others said it was by far the worst flight they had ever, ever been on, I guess I just couldn't believe that my fate was to crash in a Peruvian jungle. Sometimes I'm terrified at the landings in Cranbrook, but this just didnt faze me. I mean, there's no doubt it was rough and a few drops in altitude had me gripping my seat tightly, but all in all, it wasn't terribly bad.
So we circled and circled and circled, and finally the pilot announced that the weather was too bad, the visibility was zero and we were heading back to Cusco. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy flight.
So now we are behind schedule 45 minutes from the original delay, plus a half an hour for the circling above Puerto Maldonado, and now we add on the half hour flight back to Cusco. (Hello again Cusco!), where we land and sit on the tarmac for another half an hour (beautiful weather here, by the way).
The pilot announced that there looked to be a break in the weather, so off we went again. Bye-bye Cusco....see you in a few days! A half an hour later...hello Puerto Maldonado! Whoop, whoop! We're only about 5 hours late.
Getting off the plane was both exhilarating (Hey...I'm in the Amazon!) and exhausting (Hey....I'm in the Amazon and the humidity is 110% and it must be 95 degrees as well...)
Hot. Africa hot. Death Valley hot. Sauna hot. Hit in the face with a hot, wet facecloth hot. Muggy from all that rain hot. But...the sun was out and the rain was gone. How excellent that so far the only rain we've seen was from a plane window. And, lets not forget, this is the rainforest, we need to expect the rain.
We made our way to our bus, and drove to a G Adventures office where the Inca Trail Trekkers had to do their duffle bag changeover. Because we were so delayed from all the, uh, delays, they only had 10 minutes to cram their duffle with their 4 day supply of clothes etc, for the lodge. I'm not sure what that was all about, I think their suitcases had been previously shipped here while they were on the inca trail.
Rush, rush rush!
As they packed up, I wandered down the street. Puerto Maldonado is a grungy looking port city. It looked poor and tired and worn out.
There didnt seem to a whole lot of vehicular traffic, but holy Hannah, motorcycles by the hundreds were zooming by at speeds that seemed far too fast, the price of gas is very high, thus the prolific amount of bikes and motorcycles.
The main industries used to be logging, gold mining, and rubber, but those days are long gone, now it's eco-tourism and the boatbuilding, guides and lodge employees that go along with the tourism, as well as Brazil nut collecting. I always liked Brazil nuts, hard as they were to get out of their shell, it was worth the work. I had no idea how good a fresh Brazil nut was....I bought a container of shelled ones, some were coated in a sugar mixture and some were covered with a type of powdered chocolate....I could not believe how good they were, I will shamefacedly admit to scarfing down the whole container, less a few that I grudgingly gave my seatmate.
But back to the trip to the lodge. The original plan was to take another bus down the road a few miles to the place where we'd catch our boat, but apparently the rain had made that road impassable, so we were catching a different boat at a closer spot, which would make the boat ride longer. Fine with me....I was excited about taking a boat into the Amazon rainforest...the longer the trip, the more time to savor it.
So, we settled in our little wooden seats and off we went. I was sitting at the end of the boat, at the back. behind me were all the duffle bags, balanced one on top of the other in a huge pile, it seemed very precarious, the captain was somehow wedged in there as well, manning the engine and the rudder I guess, or some sort of steering mechanism. Someone passed us what would have been a hot meal if we had been on time, but since we were a few hours late by now, it wasn't hot anymore, although it was still slightly warm. We were each given a metal bowl with a lid, and inside was chicken (I think...) and rice and some vegetables as well as two tiny bananas. It was hard to eat as we were bouncing down the river, and I wasn't that hungry anyhow.
It was quite an extraordinary trip. The river itself looked as I had imagined it....wide and lethargic and dark as chocolate milk. There was an awful lot of debris that the captain had to maneuver around, and a lot of shallow spots that had to be carefully monitered, but it all seemed to be under control, with one "co-pilot" at the front, calling directions to the fellow at the back.
We settled in and watched the scenery flash by, other longboats loaded with goods for the market and other boats with tourists heading to their lodge....everyone passing us with a cheery wave...we were soon left behind, bouncing over their wake. Weaving from side to side and slowing down to get around large logs and shallow areas. I couldn't figure out why every other boat seemed to zip by us...did we have an abnormally deep boat? Were we an overweight bunch? Was our captain brand new at this?
In any case, I scrunched down in my seat, my life jacket keeping me cozy, it was starting to get dark and the breeze and gentle spray was a little bit cool.
As the sun dropped behind the horizon and darkness quickly overtook us, the stars came out and I was mesmerized. What on earth was I doing here....in a rickety wooden boat, in the dark, heading into the Amazon rainforest? What a marvelous moment! Until the boat slowed down even more, and the fellow on the front used a large flashlight to sweep back and forth across the river to look for logs and other debris, hollering directions to the fellow in charge of the steering, who informed us that he had never piloted a boat down the river at night. Oh well....it's an adventure and I do have a life jacket and the caimans are asleep somewhere...oh, what's that? Caimens are nocturnal? And the current is deceptively swift? Not lazy and lethargic at all? I'll just close my eyes a bit and squint up at the brilliant stars above me.
I was 100% sure that my fate was not to die in a plane crash over the jungle, but I wasn't 100% sure that my fate might (might not?) be drowning in a river in the jungle. Or losing a limb to a caimen. Or even just falling overboard and ingesting dirty river water that was now looking nothing like chocolate milk at all.
But after a few shouts of alarm, and a few abrupt swerves, the boat pulled over, and cut the engine and out we clambered....late, tired, hungry, damp, sweaty, but more than anything, excited to finally have arrived!
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