Eco Amazonia
Trip Start
Aug 10, 2007
1
57
92
Trip End
Dec 27, 2007
Puerto Maldonado,
Peru
Thursday, October 18, 2007
We left Cusco on an 10am flight and landed in amongst the thatched huts of Puerto Maldonado an hour later. We jumped on board an Eco Amazonia bus, together with about 12 other travelers, some of whom had been traveling together for two weeks or so.
We were taken into the P.M. offices, where we were told to pack small backpacks for the jungle. We had a short tour of the local market, being shown many strange fruit and nuts before we purchased a flashlight (which apparently was a necessity for our trip).
A macau near the lodge
P.M. is the main centre for growing and selling of the Brazil nut in Peru, although the guide (tongue in cheek) said they preferred to call it the Peru nut!
We were shown a Brazil (Peru) nut pod, which is filled with 20 Brazil nuts. Each tree produces 100's of the big pods, which fall to the ground during the "nut" season.
Eventually we were back on the bus heading towards the riverside. The river was filled with local ferries. Some carried just cars, some goods and a bigger one was carrying two big trucks across the river!
The river is the Madre de Dios, which is a tributary of the Amazon river. We were 6 hours from the Peru, Brazilian, Bolivia border by road and 40km by river.
We carefully climbed on board the boat, careful not to tip the boat as it wobbled from side to side threatening to topple over. It was all a question of getting the correct balance on either side of the long boat, which we eventually did and then we were off down the brown, dirty looking river
A wild turkey gives me the look!
.Our guide passed along bunches of bananas (lady fingers) and we were suddenly feeling right at home.
The boat trip was about 90 minutes and we didn't see much more than some gold miners. Local miners have big "oil" rig type looking boats which they move along the river with and prospect for gold. They get 60 soles a gram for gold in the market and apparently they find about 150 grams per day ..... not bad going.
We passed 6 other lodges before arriving at our lodge, the last before the border. We jumped off the front of the boat and headed up the stairs to our welcome drink, "the Tarantula", a mixture of rum and passion fruit (granadilla).
Inside the dining hall were four long tables, seating about 40 people at each table. We joined the queue for a buffet lunch of delicious cold salads and then faced the problem of trying to find where to sit. Wherever we tried to sit we found a place card indicating that different tour groups sitting there. After a while, we were shown to the area marked "without group"
Eco - a local goes by
! We sat alone, feeling like lepers while all the other tour groups ate together. We felt better when we went off to unpack in our bungalow. All the bungalows are named after animals found in the surrounding jungle, and we were in Otorongo, which is a Jaguar type cat.
We had a veranda, double bedroom, bathroom and hammock room. The entire house was covered with mosquito netting and there were no windows, just open areas all along the one side of the bungalow. As we were walking towards the bungalow, Julie said "oh shame, those people have a big hole in their netting", and then we were no longer smiling when we realised it was our bungalow! However, it proved of no consequence as only a few moths and a butterfly came to visit us ..... much like home we thought.
Our first port of call was "Isla Monkey", Monkey Island. The long canoe boat took us across the river, and before we had even begun to climb onto the island we saw two "spider" monkeys swinging through the branches towards us.
We were less impressed when we realised the monkeys had come to collect bananas from our guide
Eco - early morning departure
! When we were all on the island, our guide explained that bananas were like sweets to the island monkeys, and that they came to fetch bananas from the guides every afternoon. Although it felt more like a zoo than a jungle island, I suppose it is necessary to do this if the guides want to ensure us tourists see lots of monkeys.We saw spider, cappuccino, tamarin and squirrel monkeys during our 45 minute walk. At one stage a spider monkey jumped onto the guides shoulders and ate a banana while perched there.
Just before we left the island, a pregnant white faced cappuccino monkey jumped onto the guide's shoulders. He allowed Jules to take the monkey onto her shoulders and feed it a banana.
After all the excitement we went for a swim in the Eco friendly swimming pool, trying to cool down after the 100% humidity on the island and then headed into the dining hall.
Again we battled to find where we were sitting. As we sat down we were asked to move to the "Intrepid Group", which was the group of people we had been to Monkey Island with
Eco - finally I get to use my raincoat
.Dinner was fish. We tried to find out what type of fish it was, but the best
we could understand was that it was fish caught in the river. It was ok, but not great.
After dinner we headed back onto the long boat and we were asked to be quiet as we made our way along the river, looking for Cayman (or alligators). Obviously, being quiet had nothing to do with the boat, as the engine made a very loud noise - alligators are obviously only bothered by human noise!
The guide shone a spotlight along the river bank and the eye of the alligator would sparkle. The boat would then slow down and we would watch as the alligator slipped quietly into the water and then watched us with his beady eyes just on the surface of the water, probably thinking he would like one of us to fall overboard so he could "thank us" for disturbing him!
We saw at least 8 alligators of all sizes, including one big boy. Then it was time for the engines to be switched off and for us to romantically look at the stars while enjoying the sounds of the jungle and the river
Eco - going home, our guide in the green shirt
. The engine was switched off and as we glanced skywards we heard the unmistakable sound of a large noisy engine! So our "sound" experience was not to be.We returned to the lodge and had a game of droughts in the pub. Luckily the game ended in a commendable draw!
We lay in our hammocks for a while, listening to the jungle night sounds until the generator was switched off at 10pm and we were plunged into darkness. We enjoyed the jungle night sounds and then had a peaceful sleep in our ecological matrimonial bed.
