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. This was a side trip we'd tacked onto our original itinerary.

The contrast between the Andes and the Amazon was obvious from the moment we touched down. The jungle is humid. I mean, really, really steamy. Within minutes of exiting our plane, we had sweat flowing from every pore, a situation that didn’t change the entire time we were in the Amazon. I’ve never felt so perpetually damp in my entire life.

The Amazon's unrelenting humidity was manifested the moment the aircraft door opened. Almost instantly, cool air from the cabin’s overhead vents began condensing into misty streams along the aisle. It was an odd sensation walking through the plane as a dramatic dry-ice-like vapour curtain led the way.

Our group was transferred from Puerto Maldonado to the banks of the Rio Tambopata, an Amazon tributary on the edge of town. Here we boarded a slender open-sided boat - no fancy wharf, just a muddy track down to the water’s edge. For the next two hours, we travelled upstream to our jungle lodge, Refugio Amazonas. 

The lodge was located about 35 km upstream as the crow flies. However, thanks to the river’s winding switchback channel, we eventually travelled closer to 50 km.  Unlike rivers in Australia, New Zealand and Europe, the Amazon's tributaries twist and turn dramatically, often doubling back, for hundreds of kilometres. The closing photo in this post gives you a sense of what I mean. I took this picture north of Puerto Maldonado, on our flight back to Lima.

The leisurely pace of our journey gave us plenty of time to watch the locals going about their daily lives. The river is a communal place. We saw women washing clothes, children swimming, and village people gathering along the shore, watching as the world passed by. Simple huts were everywhere, some thatched, some protected by corrugated iron.

There was an endless stream of traffic on the river. With few roads in the area, the river acts as a regional 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, manoeuvrable shaft. All were loaded with cargo, people, or both. 

Everything you can imagine is transported in these slim, elongated canoes. We saw timber beams, sacks of food and entire families crammed into their narrow hulls. Many were so heavily weighted that they barely sat above the waterline. It’s hard to imagine living entirely without land transport. Yet here these people were deftly manoeuvring their boats up and down the river, sitting in the open, exposed to the elements year-round.

The lodge was far more luxurious than expected. It had 32 rooms, each simply but comfortably appointed despite its remote location. This is a real jungle, located within 200 privately-owned hectares in the buffer zone of the Tambopata National Reserve. The final image above was ripped from the lodge's website. Sadly, the photos I took of our room, while showing the same scene, were rather dark and blurry thanks to low light. The jungle is a heavily shaded world, and our room was without electricity during daylight hours.

As you can see, we slept safely behind a curtain of mosquito netting that fully enclosed our bed. We’d slide between the sheets each night, carefully ensuring we left no gaps for anything to crawl inside the netting. During the day, the housekeeping team would gather up 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). He seemed fully recovered, but the recounting of his illness certainly put the fear of god into our entire group.

Our room included a wall of unglazed windows permanently open to the surrounding jungle. However, the complex itself was separated from the dense vegetation by a grassy buffer zone about three metres wide. From the comfort of a hammock, we soaked in the endless sights and 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. We also witnessed a cavalcade of reptiles of all shapes and sizes constantly rustling and foraging through scattered leaf litter along the jungle’s edge (and there's lots of leaf litter).

Incredibly, on our second day, an agouti wandered out of the dense foliage and brazenly searched the grass in front of us. The agouti is a short-tailed rodent, about the size of a large cat, but with a distinctive, flat snout. Garry and I couldn’t believe our eyes. In unison, we turned to one another, confirming we’d just witnessed the same thing.

On our first full day in the Amazon, we rose early and went fishing for Piranha in Lake Condenado, an oxbow lake that was once part of the nearby river bed. The trek through the jungle was magic. As we walked, our guide pointed out giant soaring balsa trees, massive strangler vines the size of trees and an array of deadly plants and fungi. He also explained how the trails we used were rarely man-made. Instead, they've been created and maintained by animals traversing the jungle, day after day, night after night, and year after year.

The lake itself was a murky body of water surrounded by impenetrable, lush, verdant jungle. In the early morning light, its surface was serenely calm and glassy. You’d have never guessed that schools of deadly Piranha lurked below. As we fished, I was secretly grateful that our pontoon boat had waist-high side rails to stop us from toppling in.

Sadly, we tourists never caught a thing. However, we could feel the fish nibbling and tearing at the bait. Eventually, our guide took pity on us. He dropped a line, wiggled it skilfully, and within minutes successfully hooked a Piranha for us to examine. Rows of deadly razor-sharp teeth were clearly visible. 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 offered a spectacular bird 's-eye view of the surrounding jungle and the river beyond. In every direction, wilderness stretched out into the distance as far as the eye could see. It was a magical experience looking over centuries-old Brazil Nut trees, Acacias, Ceibas, and Ironwoods soaring above the canopy. 

Before we'd set out, our guide revealed that the tower is the only place in the jungle where you could pick up a weak cell phone signal emanating from base stations near Puerto Maldonado (about 30km away). We took a phone with us to test his claim. Sure enough, a solitary coverage bar appeared on the screen atop the tower. On a whim, we called Garry's mother and exchanged best wishes for his birthday the following day. 

The following morning (Garry's birthday), we rose 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. The black-framed image above was taken with the binoculars our guide brought along. As you can see, we literally enjoyed a bird's-eye view of these magnificent creatures from a nearby sheltered hide. 

When we first arrived, the muddy clay ridge was barren. Our guide urged us to be patient and remain silent. For a while, we stood in his ramshackle wooden hide staring at nothing. However, our patience was eventually rewarded as the cautious birds, initially just one brave soul, slowly increased in number. 

[Note: A few years later, in 1994, the lick was 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. This surprise treat was all the more impressive considering the camp was powered by a generator for just a few hours a day. Otherwise, we went about the day without electricity, and hot water was the last thing you wanted to shower in.

Our final morning saw us rise at dawn to catch a boat back into town and then on to the airport for a flight 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.