A most Amazon adventure

It's time to tell you more about our grand tour of South America. Perhaps one of the more exotic places we visited was the Amazon Basin. We flew into steamy Puerto Maldonado from Cusco on November 10 ready to enjoy three nights in the jungle.

The contrast between the Andes and the Amazon was obvious from the moment we touched down. Within minutes of walking off our plane, we had sweat pouring from every pore, a situation that never changed while we were in the Amazon. I’ve never felt so perpetually damp in my entire life.

The intense humidity manifested itself as soon as our aircraft door opened. Within minutes cool air from the cabin’s overhead vents began condensing into dramatic streams of misty air. It was an odd sensation walking down the aisle with a dry-ice-like vapour curtain guiding the way.

From Puerto Maldonado we caught a boat up the Rio Tambopata, traveling for almost two hours to reach our jungle lodge, Refugio Amazonas. The leisurely pace of our journey gave us plenty of time to watch the locals going about their daily lives. We saw women washing clothes, children swimming and village people gathering along the shore as the world passed by.

There was also plenty of regular traffic on the river. With few roads in the area, it acts as the region's main highway. Many of the boats we passed were traditional wooden dugout canoes - with one modern twist. They were always propelled by an outboard motor with the propeller attached to the end of a long maneuverable shaft and were loaded with cargo, people, or both. Everything you can imagine is transported by canoe. We saw timber beams, sacks of food and entire families crammed into these skinny vessels that barely sat above the waterline.

The lodge was far more luxurious than expected. It had 32 rooms, each simply, but comfortably, appointed despite the lodge's location. This is a real jungle, located within 200 private-owned hectares in the buffer zone of the Tambopata National Reserve. The room image above was ripped from the lodge's website. Sadly the photos I took of our room ended up dark and blurry. 

As you can see we slept safely behind a curtain of mosquito netting that enclosed our bed in full. We’d slide between the sheets each night, checking carefully that we’d left no gap for anything to crawl inside the netting. During the day the housekeeping team would lift the netting and stow it on an overhead canopy. The threat of yellow fever and malaria is ever-present. One afternoon, much to our surprise, one of our guides matter-of-factly recounted his own experience with a debilitating bout of malaria a few years earlier (that's him in the image below).

Our room included a wall of unglazed windows that were permanently open to the neighbouring jungle. However, the complex itself was separated from the surrounding vegetation by a grassy buffer zone about two metres wide. From the comfort of a hammock, we soaked in the endless sounds of animals going about their daily lives. I never realised how noisy the jungle is. It's never silent. Crickets and cicadas chirp, monkeys screech and birds call out.

On our second day, while sitting in our room, we watched an agouti wander out of the bush searching for dinner among the scattered leaf litter. The agouti is a short-tailed rodent, about the size of a large cat, but with a distinctive, flat snout.  We also saw an endless cavalcade of reptiles of all shapes and sizes foraging away.

On our first full day in the Amazon, we rose early and went fishing for Piranha in Tres-Chimbadas Oxbow Lake. The trek through the jungle was magic. As we walked our guide pointed out giant balsa trees, strangler vines and deadly plants. 

The lake itself was a murky body of water encircled completely by lush, verdant jungle. You’d have never guessed that schools of deadly Piranha lurked below. I was secretly grateful that our pontoon boat had side rails keeping us safe from toppling in as we fished.

Sadly, us tourists never caught a thing. However, our guide dropped a line, wiggled it skilfully, and within a few minutes successfully pulled up a Piranha for us to examine. It's hard to believe such a tiny fish can be so deadly.

After lunch, we ventured out again to climb a 35-metre canopy tower. It provided a spectacular bird's eye view of the surrounding jungle and river while confirming the extent of the wilderness around us. It was a magic experience looking out over centuries-old Brazil Nut trees, Acacias, Ceibas, and Ironwoods soaring above the canopy. As luck would have it, the tower was also the only place where you could get a cell phone signal so we called Garry's mother for his impending birthday. 

The following day (Garry's birthday) we were up at the crack of dawn to watch parrots and colourful macaws gather by the dozen at a local clay lick. This was an incredible sight that I’ll never forget. We subsequently learned that the lick once featured on the cover of National Geographic magazine. Later that evening our friendly lodge staff sang Happy Birthday to Garry, then presented him with a delicious cake they'd baked earlier in the day.

Our final morning saw us rise at dawn to catch a river boat back into town and then on to the airport for flights to Lima. We'd done Peru! The trip was shaping up to truly be an experience of a lifetime. After five weeks on the road, Garry and I were still in good humour and enjoying each other's company. Next stop: Brazil.