Into the depths of the Amazon jungle

  Iquitos, Peru
Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Boarding the boat at Iquitos

Saturday, 7th June
Alison: We dragged ourselves out of bed at 3.00 for our transfer to the airport. Although we had our boarding passes, the bag drop queue went forever with what looked like the whole Peruvian army waiting to check in their weapons and bags for the flight. Luckily we were eventually let in front of them. Mike ended up sitting next to one of them on the flight and they were actually an elite group of Police off to Iquitos to compete in some special Police Games.

Tom coming down the slide

We arrived about 7.00 in the morning in pouring rain - well it is a rainforest, isn't it?! Then we boarded this funny old bus to take us to the dock where we would catch our boat to the lodge. The city of Iquitos can only be reached by water or plane - there are no roads in or out, so all the cars and trucks etc have to be brought in up the Amazon from Brazil which takes 65 days so it's not surprising they just keep old vehicles going rather than getting new ones. Also its isolation makes the cost of living in Iquitos higher than anywhere else in Peru. We boarded a huge old river boat for our trip up the river, but there were only about 10 of us on it! It was very relaxing chuffing the 40 km up to Ceiba Tops Lodge and chatting to other guests. We quickly became friends with a lovely couple from England, David and Mary Alexander, and I helped them get their camera set up so it would take photos - Mary had been lent it by her mother but without the manual, so that made it tricky to work out why it wasn't working, but it just needed the time and date set on the menu and then it functioned perfectly. It's lucky mine was similar to set up so I could work it out.
The Amazon River is very wide in Iquitos, even though the mouth of the river is 3,700 km away in Brazil. Apparently though, there the river can be 60 km wide, we were told by our guide Raul! We were about two thirds of the way upstream, and only realised when Raul told us, that we had been looking at the very upper reaches of the river in Cusco with the Urubamba River. It's just that the Amazon has different names in different regions. So we went from near the source of the Amazon to this huuuge river 1200 km downstream or so in the space of a few days - amazing huh?

Rachel enjoying the slide also

It was still raining when we got to the lodge, a lovely series of buildings set in the midst of the rainforest. We had been allocated a big double cabin with a connecting door which was perfect, and right on the edge of the jungle. From there we walked along a concrete path back to the big building which had the entrance lobby, bar and dining hall, which overlooked the pool area. The rain soon cleared and the kids eagerly got into the pool, which had a fabulous slide from a spa pool at the top down to the main pool. Although it wasn't heated the kids didn't mind at all and enjoyed it thoroughly. I was quite happy to sit by the pool and relax!
There was a big group of school children staying at the lodge who were leaving early the next morning for Cusco. Their school runs this trip to Peru for them each year as they graduate from elementary school. Anyway, Rachel and Tom had fun playing in the pool with them, and later in the afternoon, Mike had a great time playing with them as well, big kid that he is!

Even Mike came down!

After lunch we went on a wonderful walk with Raul through the jungle. It had stopped raining, but because it was still damp, we got to see some of the frogs they use for making curare poison for their blowpipes - very exciting!

Poison frog used to make curare

They are tiny little black frogs with red stripes. Apparently they boil up these frogs with scorpions and tarantulas to make the poison. It was very sticky and slippery walking through the rainforest, but quite fascinating. We saw the huge holes of tarantula homes, but not the inhabitants themselves luckily, as well as monkeys, a raptor, a hawk, army ants, other spiders in their webs, centipedes, philodendron vines hanging down from the trees and various other epiphytes. We loved the buttressing on the trees and the walking palms with all their 'legs'.

A Walking Palm

Philodendron vines hanging down from a tree

The walk took us through the primary rainforest and then some secondary rainforest which was recovering from logging. At the end of the walk we went past an absolutely HUGE Ceiba tree, after which the lodge is named. These trees are used to make plywood, and have been mostly cleared, so it was great that this one was still there, and it was quite an extraordinary tree, covered in vines and epiphytes, as well as birds' nests and bee hives, and standing out huge and tall from the secondary rainforest.
That afternoon/evening we had a very pleasant time relaxing around the pool and looking at the macaws, and butterflies dancing around us. Walking back to the room, the kids and I were entranced by a group of tiny monkeys coming in from the jungle to steal some of the fruit from the banana trees and other fruit trees growing along the path. They were extraordinarily cute, and it was amazing to think that we were so surrounded by wildlife.

Removing snakes from the dinner table

This was further reinforced during our nice dinner in the dining hall. While we were sitting there, I noticed a commotion a few tables away where the owner of the place was sitting, a lovely old chap who had started the lodges 30 years ago. Two boas who had been up on the rafters mating fell down onto his dinner plate! They were still tightly curled around each other and obviously annoyed at having been disturbed. This caused great hilarity and you can imagine how excited all the school kids were for their final night in the Amazon! We watched with interest as one of the staff somehow caught the snakes and put them outside. Then it was off to bed for an early night after all the excitement.

Sunday 8th June
Alison: After breakfast the Alexanders joined us to visit the Yagua Indian village. There are not many groups in the Amazon still living their traditional life, but the Yagua still wear traditional clothes and use their blowpipes to hunt in the jungle. They also make various items to sell to tourists and are happy to welcome tourists to help them get some money which they can use to buy items they cannot produce themselves. We headed off on a small boat with an outboard motor, looking out for the dolphins which live in the river. There are two types, the pink ones and the smaller and shyer brown ones. These we actually managed to spot, although from afar and my picture of them is just a tiny dot in the middle of the river, but it was exciting to see them.

Mike using the blowpipe

We arrived at the Yagua's village and took a seat in the large round communal building where the Yagua elder showed us the blow pipe and our guide Raul, who grew up in one of these traditional communities about 150 km away, blew the dart straight into the bag the elder was holding on his lap! Then more of the community came in and whilst some played on their instruments, the women and children danced in a circle around the hut, later getting us to all join in the dance.

A nice dance with the children

Rachel and her baby sloth

We then went outside and got a chance to use the blow pipes ourselves, which was lots of fun. It was a very long pipe and it was amazing how much air you needed to blow out in order for the dart to go a long way. The young children there had a baby monkey and a baby sloth and Rachel quickly fell in love with the sloth, enjoying it hanging off her and quite unwilling to take it off when we had to go. We bought some nice items from them, but it will be interesting to see if they get through Customs in Australia!

Look at those piranha teeth!

After lunch back in the lodge we headed out with Raul to go piranha fishing. This was very exciting. We were once again in the small boat and headed upstream into a tributary called the Black River, accurately named as it is quite black from the tannins in the water, but which of course led to beautiful reflections, a bit like the Gordon River in Tasmania.

Local river people

At the entrance we noticed a local couple bringing in their fishing net and went over to have a look. They had caught quite a few piranha which they had to club on the head to stop them ripping apart the net, and Raul bought a couple from them just in case we didn't catch any ourselves. They are extraordinary when you look down their open mouths, as apart from the quite vicious rows of teeth at the front, they have a couple of successive rows of sharp teeth spaced further down their gullet - scary to contemplate!

Tom and his catch

Mike explained that in Australia beer and fishing go together so then the search was on for a local place where we could buy beer - not that easy in the middle of the Amazonian jungle! We stopped at various little quiet spots along the bank to try the fishing. Our skipper pulled out the rods - just rough sticks of wood with a thick fishing line fixed to them and a rough metal hook - and a tub of chunks of raw, bloody meat to attach to the hooks. It was amazing how as soon as the line went over, you could feel the fish tearing and pulling at the meat - they stole the bait very quickly and you had to lift the rod almost as soon as you threw it over, but by the end we had all managed to catch some fish, although they were all tiddlers and we threw them back. After stopping at a few different places, Raul even managed to get some beer, so Michael was very happy. He also played tricks on the kids, attaching the large piranha he had bought to their lines so that momentarily they thought they had caught great big ones!

Rachel and Mike with respective catches

Coming back along the river we had stunning blue kingfishers racing along in front of the boat and we even saw a mother sloth in a tall tree by the river. Back at the lodge we spent the rest of the afternoon writing blogs by the pool and admiring a tapir who had wandered in and decided to spend the day at the pool also!

The forest meets the 21st century!

That night we joined our table with the Alexanders' and shared a bottle of wine with them, as well as trying the piranha. They were bony but rather yummy and a good evening was had by all.

Rachel befriending the tapir

Palmita and bound hogs waiting for market

Monday 9th June
Alison: It was our final day in the Amazon and after breakfast we headed off with Raul to visit some neighbouring river towns. First we headed downstream to the village of Timicurillo where there were many boats being loaded up with goods to take to Iquitos for trade. These included trussed up pigs, piles of Palmita and huge hands of green bananas. From there we took two tuk-tuks across country to another village called Mazan on the Napo River.

Catching our tuk tuk

This short cut allows the locals to cut many days' journey between their villages upstream and Iquitos. We wandered through their market and looked at the piles of illegally logged rainforest timber on the Mazan River - a depressing thought - before taking the tuk-tuks diagonally across land once more, this time to the bigger village of Indiana.

Illegal logging on the Napo River

Here we saw a boat builder building a large ferry type boat almost completely by hand at the age of 70, and then visited a local primary school.

Grade 3 children in Indiana school

The Grade 3 class we visited sang us some songs and we replied with our best rendition of "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree" although the kids were pretty shy about singing it! From there it was a quick boat ride back to the lodge, where we had lunch and packed our bags in advance of our LOOONG journey ahead.

Mike: It was so exciting to find ourselves in a boat heading down the Amazon, as this was one place that the four of us had so actively looked forward to, being somewhere that holds such fascination yet we knew so little about. Arriving at our lodge the kids were immediately delighted to see the pool and water slide, which I'd known well in advance was going to be a real highlight of this leg of the trip; the woman who booked the whole Perupackage for us having taken her own daughter there as her choice of a local holiday destination.
We certainly weren't let down as poolside time dominated free time between our Amazon expeditions, and proved to be the ideal unwind for all of us in such a beautiful location. Alison has provided many of the details of the amazing flora and fauna we were to enjoy, but there are no words to describe the joy of seeing a tapir casually drinking from the edge of the pool you are swimming in, while the resident macaw happily hops about in its trail. Snakes falling from ceilings served only to heighted the sense of Indiana Jones exotic locations...!
Visiting the local Yagua tribe was a lot of fun, all dancing together, the kids loving playing with their resident monkey and sloth, and to my delight, my managing to hit the target with their blow pipe on my third attempt, their clearly finding amusing my celebratory jig! Our own guide Raul had himself grown up in a jungle tribe so this was very much familiar territory for him and he shared his experiences of how they eked out a life on the banks of the Amazon, each tribe fending for themself and left in peace by the government/tax department as clearly they were worthy of very little attention. Right at the bottom of the class heap, we were sad to gather that it was only a matter of time that these traditional lifestyles would fade away as the children sought greener pastures in nearby towns and cities.
Fishing for Piranha was also a real buzz and certainly beat them fishing for us! They are quick little buggers so every time the bait went down there were countless bites.. but pulling them up proved difficult. Alison however proved herself a dab hand with a haul of 6 or 7 (mainly goldfish size admittedly!), but more importantly we each managed to pull up something. My real catch of the day was our guide Raul's ability to snare some cerveza (beer) deep in the jungle, when I set him a challenge by telling him that in Australia not fishing expedition is complete without cold beer.
A very decent tip indeed rewarded him well for his resourcefulness and was well worth every penny out in the hot sun! This boat trip was perhaps the highlight of the Amazon for me. Wandering down the narrower tributaries the peacefulness and serenity of this place was just beautiful, seeing sloths in trees and amazing birdlife heightening the sense of how lucky we were to be there.
Also, for one not renowned as a nature lover, I saw theeee most beautiful tree I have ever seen in my life. Raul took us for a junglewalk, and as well as an amazing variety of local wildlife, we saw the rare Ceiba tree, after which our lodge was named. It had an Enchanted Forest quality about it, and was truly a most magnificent sight, huge majestic trunk, beautiful foliage, inhabited by epiphytes of various sorts.. wooooow!