Friday, October 10, 2008
Saturday, 9.20: Lima to the Amazon River Basin
Landing in Lima around 6 a.m., we were immediately struck by how…not all that different from America it felt. The signs were in both English and Spanish, which has pretty much become the norm in the U.S. now, and the food court was filled with restaurants such as McDonalds and Starbucks (where Bri and I stopped to get coffee in lieu of a Frappuccino and learned just how foreign our names were to Peruvians when we received cups labeled “Brilt” and “Clerk”). After a quick breakfast, we headed for our flight to Puerto Maldonado and had our first experience with the frustratingly inefficient departure-tax queue. For some reason, they don’t build this tax into your plane ticket in Peru, and therefore before you board the plane, you have to stand in yet another line to pay anywhere from $2 to $20 (depending on where you’re flying) before you can leave. Once we’d paid our tax and had made it through security, we stopped to buy a phone card so we could call our parents and let them know we’d landed safely before we headed into the jungle.
After a short flight (during which we were entertained by a blooper show that might not have been quite so hilarious had we not been so travel-weary), we landed at the open-air Puerto Maldonado airport and immediately met up with one of the more memorable characters from our trip, Jorge. Jorge was a guide from Posada Amazonas, the rainforest lodge on the Tambopata River (a tributary of the Amazon) where we’d arranged to stay for two nights. He met the three of us outside baggage claim and immediately claimed us as his group. (The reason why he picked us would become abundantly clear within an hour or two.) We took a short bus ride over to the local office of Posada Amazonas, where we filled our daypacks with just the bare essentials we’d need over the next couple of days, and left the rest behind. It was at this point that Bri discovered that a fancy hair product she’d stuffed into her hiking boots had exploded all over them. She cleaned them up the best she could, but ultimately decided to leave them behind in favor of her tennis shoes.
We boarded the bus again and this time rode an hour or so down a bumpy dirt road, across rickety wooden bridges that looked like they’d barely support a bicycle, much less a bus, until we arrived at the river. While supplies were being loaded onto the boat that would take us to the lodge, Bri and I took the opportunity to spray each other down with super-high-DEET bug spray while Jorge laughed at our ultra-preparedness. We boarded the boat and were given lunch in the form of fried rice wrapped in a banana leaf, which we threw into the river once we were done eating. As we neared the lodge, one of the guides spotted a couple of macaws sitting in a tree, and the boat slowed down so we could all get a good look at them. Bri had her foot propped up on the edge of the boat, and Jorge grabbed it and said, “Bri! Look! Can you see them?” He seemed totally unconcerned as to whether the other members of his group (Heather and I) could see the birds, which was when we first began to realize that our man Jorge had a little crush on Bri.
We soon pulled up to the bank, climbed off the boat, and began the short hike up to the lodge. On the way there, we saw several monkeys jumping around in the trees, plus an agouti (which is like a giant guinea pig) and a hummingbird. After checking in, we hiked a short distance to the canopy tower, which we climbed up for a view over the rainforest canopy. Bri, who has a bit of a fear of heights, wasn’t exactly jazzed about climbing up the slightly rickety tower, which was shifting a little with the weight of all the people on it. (Another group had gone up ahead of us.) We managed to coax her up, though, and once we got to the top, Jorge comforted her by saying that he would hold her if she got scared. (He wasn’t exactly subtle in his flirtation.) We found that the rainforest wasn’t nearly as lush as we had imagined it to be (there were many trees that looked practically bare), and although we saw a few birds (including a spyx’s guan, which is like the rainforest’s version of a wild turkey), we were all ready to climb back down before too long. On the twilight hike back, Jorge pointed out a few frogs that had ventured out into the growing darkness.
Once back at the lodge, we retreated to our room, where I took a long-awaited shower. It was pretty cold (the lodge only gets electricity for a few hours a day, and doesn’t have hot water), but it was still muggy enough outside that I didn’t mind too much. Before dinner, we bellied up to the bar for a beer before joining Jorge for dinner. It was our first experience with Peruvian cuisine, and Heather and I got a little confused—when we saw a pot of noodles sitting next to a pan of meatballs, we just assumed it was the Peruvian version of spaghetti and meatballs, rather than a noodle soup and some (separate) meatballs. (I swear one of the German women in line in front of us did this first! We did not make it up ourselves!) Jorge wasted no time in setting us right, so fortunately this was our first and last Peruvian dining faux pas. For some reason, dinnertime talk turned to a discussion of our various drunken antics, such as Heather’s and my nights at Café Society’s 2-for-1 happy hour when we lived in England. I think Jorge was most charmed, however, by Bri’s story about the time she passed out on a friend’s living-room floor and wiggled her pants off during the night, only to wake up the next morning with all of her friends congregated around her in the living room. (Fortunately, her pantslessness was hidden under a blanket!) There was no such wild partying that night, however—we’d already made a pact not to drink too much until after our Inca Trail trek, as we were already worried about the dehydrating effects of the altitude in Cusco. Plus, we hadn’t had a real night’s sleep in 36 hours (and were looking at a 4 a.m. wake-up call, provided that the rain that had started falling during dinner would let up by then), so we went straight to bed after dinner.
Continue to Day 3: Amazon River Basin
Landing in Lima around 6 a.m., we were immediately struck by how…not all that different from America it felt. The signs were in both English and Spanish, which has pretty much become the norm in the U.S. now, and the food court was filled with restaurants such as McDonalds and Starbucks (where Bri and I stopped to get coffee in lieu of a Frappuccino and learned just how foreign our names were to Peruvians when we received cups labeled “Brilt” and “Clerk”). After a quick breakfast, we headed for our flight to Puerto Maldonado and had our first experience with the frustratingly inefficient departure-tax queue. For some reason, they don’t build this tax into your plane ticket in Peru, and therefore before you board the plane, you have to stand in yet another line to pay anywhere from $2 to $20 (depending on where you’re flying) before you can leave. Once we’d paid our tax and had made it through security, we stopped to buy a phone card so we could call our parents and let them know we’d landed safely before we headed into the jungle.
After a short flight (during which we were entertained by a blooper show that might not have been quite so hilarious had we not been so travel-weary), we landed at the open-air Puerto Maldonado airport and immediately met up with one of the more memorable characters from our trip, Jorge. Jorge was a guide from Posada Amazonas, the rainforest lodge on the Tambopata River (a tributary of the Amazon) where we’d arranged to stay for two nights. He met the three of us outside baggage claim and immediately claimed us as his group. (The reason why he picked us would become abundantly clear within an hour or two.) We took a short bus ride over to the local office of Posada Amazonas, where we filled our daypacks with just the bare essentials we’d need over the next couple of days, and left the rest behind. It was at this point that Bri discovered that a fancy hair product she’d stuffed into her hiking boots had exploded all over them. She cleaned them up the best she could, but ultimately decided to leave them behind in favor of her tennis shoes.
We boarded the bus again and this time rode an hour or so down a bumpy dirt road, across rickety wooden bridges that looked like they’d barely support a bicycle, much less a bus, until we arrived at the river. While supplies were being loaded onto the boat that would take us to the lodge, Bri and I took the opportunity to spray each other down with super-high-DEET bug spray while Jorge laughed at our ultra-preparedness. We boarded the boat and were given lunch in the form of fried rice wrapped in a banana leaf, which we threw into the river once we were done eating. As we neared the lodge, one of the guides spotted a couple of macaws sitting in a tree, and the boat slowed down so we could all get a good look at them. Bri had her foot propped up on the edge of the boat, and Jorge grabbed it and said, “Bri! Look! Can you see them?” He seemed totally unconcerned as to whether the other members of his group (Heather and I) could see the birds, which was when we first began to realize that our man Jorge had a little crush on Bri.
We soon pulled up to the bank, climbed off the boat, and began the short hike up to the lodge. On the way there, we saw several monkeys jumping around in the trees, plus an agouti (which is like a giant guinea pig) and a hummingbird. After checking in, we hiked a short distance to the canopy tower, which we climbed up for a view over the rainforest canopy. Bri, who has a bit of a fear of heights, wasn’t exactly jazzed about climbing up the slightly rickety tower, which was shifting a little with the weight of all the people on it. (Another group had gone up ahead of us.) We managed to coax her up, though, and once we got to the top, Jorge comforted her by saying that he would hold her if she got scared. (He wasn’t exactly subtle in his flirtation.) We found that the rainforest wasn’t nearly as lush as we had imagined it to be (there were many trees that looked practically bare), and although we saw a few birds (including a spyx’s guan, which is like the rainforest’s version of a wild turkey), we were all ready to climb back down before too long. On the twilight hike back, Jorge pointed out a few frogs that had ventured out into the growing darkness.
Once back at the lodge, we retreated to our room, where I took a long-awaited shower. It was pretty cold (the lodge only gets electricity for a few hours a day, and doesn’t have hot water), but it was still muggy enough outside that I didn’t mind too much. Before dinner, we bellied up to the bar for a beer before joining Jorge for dinner. It was our first experience with Peruvian cuisine, and Heather and I got a little confused—when we saw a pot of noodles sitting next to a pan of meatballs, we just assumed it was the Peruvian version of spaghetti and meatballs, rather than a noodle soup and some (separate) meatballs. (I swear one of the German women in line in front of us did this first! We did not make it up ourselves!) Jorge wasted no time in setting us right, so fortunately this was our first and last Peruvian dining faux pas. For some reason, dinnertime talk turned to a discussion of our various drunken antics, such as Heather’s and my nights at Café Society’s 2-for-1 happy hour when we lived in England. I think Jorge was most charmed, however, by Bri’s story about the time she passed out on a friend’s living-room floor and wiggled her pants off during the night, only to wake up the next morning with all of her friends congregated around her in the living room. (Fortunately, her pantslessness was hidden under a blanket!) There was no such wild partying that night, however—we’d already made a pact not to drink too much until after our Inca Trail trek, as we were already worried about the dehydrating effects of the altitude in Cusco. Plus, we hadn’t had a real night’s sleep in 36 hours (and were looking at a 4 a.m. wake-up call, provided that the rain that had started falling during dinner would let up by then), so we went straight to bed after dinner.
Continue to Day 3: Amazon River Basin
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