Thursday
We are in the Amazon Rainforest! The Tambopata Reserve to be exact. After having tea and a scrambled egg at our hostel, Jill and I left Cusco for the last time to catch our flight to Puerto Maldonado and head into the jungle. We got there with plenty of time to spare, not wanting a repeat of Mexico City.
Boarding the flight, we realized the flight would be only 30 minutes, approximately $6.50 a minute. We arrived, expecting very hot temperatures. To our surprise, it was only 65 degrees – but the air was thick and damp. We found our tour guide – from Explorer’s Inn and boarded the bus. Our guide said Puerto Maldonado was in a “cold front” for the next 3-4 days, so we could expect cooler temperatures than normal. There were 12 others on the tour with us, all English speaking, but no others from the United States. We drove 15 minutes to the Explorer’s Inn office where we left our bags and took the bus another 1.5 hours to the Tambopata River launch in the Infierno Community. Just so we’re clear, “infierno” means “hell” in Spanish. That’s just the kind of place you want to hang around. We climbed into a covered canoe, put on our orange life vests, and started down the river toward Explorer’s Inn, the only lodge in the Tambopata National Reserve. The jungle canopy wasn't quite as tall as I imagined, the river more brown and mucky than I imagined too.
We meandered down the river, eating our box lunch of balls of chicken (those balls of chicken again!), rice, sticks of potato with ketchup (that might as well have been pure sugar), a whole egg, and some kind of bean/fruit salad. Every so often we could hear the boat motorist using a plastic bucket to bail water out of his end of the canoe. We were told there were caimans and piranhas lurking in the river. Right before we pulled up to the Tambopata check point (where we would get our passports stamped) we spotted a big caiman. A big black caiman. The mack daddy of caimans. It was about 1.5 meters long (the biggest we would see all trip). Completely uninterested in us gawkers, it slithered into the water and swam away.
After the check point, we motored into the Explorer’s Lodge, climbed off the boat, over some boulders, and up a set of very steep stairs leading up to the jungle lodge . We arrived at a beautiful site, with a main dining hall and 4-room lodges surrounding it.
We had a welcome glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, and went to find our rooms. Our room had big, flowy bug nets draped over the beds and had a rustic country feel of all wood. There was no electricity, so candles were placed throughout the room. The walls were paper thin, and we could hear every sound anyone made from any of the three rooms around us.
The Inn had saved three macaws from being sold on the black market and had set them free in the wild near the lodge. They had the freedom to go as far from the lodge as they liked, but they preferred to stick close.
That evening, we went on a caiman watch in the boat, the tour guide sweeping the banks with a flashlight (or torch, as others called it). She had light signals for the boat operator for when to start, slow down, or stop the boat. She was quick quick and good at spotting caimans, even some as little as foot long on the shore.
Later that night, we ate dinner and went to bed, eagerly anticipating our 4:30am wake-up call.
No comments:
Post a Comment