Into the Jungle!!!!
Trip Start
May 27, 2008
1
19
26
Trip End
Sep 06, 2008
Natural Ecological Reserve,
Peru
Saturday, July 26, 2008
We booked a trip in Cusco to visit a lodge in the Peruvian Jungle the lodeg was called EcoAmazonia Lodge and looked pretty cool. Flew out from Cusco on a 30 minute flight to a town called Puerto Maldonaldo, where we were picked up by the lodge people in a proper tourist wagon. A quick pit stop at the lodge office and we were of to the port (well river bank) to pick up a boat. It was a typical looking jungle boat a kind of big Kayack with an outboard engine.
One of my big dreads about booking a tour was the possibility of ending up with 30 odd Americans,video in hand and gob in gear!! so it was a nice suprise to get a mixed crowd of Spanish Dutch Peruvian, the only down side was all the French people!!
The boat ride was around 1-2 hours and took us into the heart of the Nature reserve. The lodge was excellent all the rooms were ensuite and had mosquito netting over windows etc. That said we still hitched up our own Mossie nets to keep away all sorts of horrible insects (And Spiders!!).
We had a quick bite to eat and it was of to the first excursion. Monkey Island, this was a short boat trip across the river to an Island Monkey sanctuary. This was the first time we experienced the Jungle and it was a bit unerving to see the size of some of the spiders webs and just how dense the trees could be. The walk through Monkey island took around an hour and the guides were very informative about the animals and tree's etc in teh jungle. We saw Black Capaccino, White Cappaccino, Spider Monkeys, squirrel Monkeys and one other that i cant remember. The Monkeys were almost tame and came down fom the tree's to collect the bananas that the guides dished out, it was great to get be close to the monkeys,at one stage to close when a big spider monkey climbed on my head, it was fine with it until the guides looked extremley worried and told me to keep calm and walk to a tree. I find out after that if you panic the monkeys are inclined to bite and scratch, a bit like Shelly on a Saturday night!! The down side was that it felt a bit staged and much like being in a big Zoo, but still a great experience.
That was it for the first day, we went back to the lodge for some food and a chat about the next day, we met a nice Dutch couple who were to be in our group for the rest of the time at the lodge. We were quite lucky really being the only english people meant we were in a small group of 8 for everything rather than the spanish and french groups which must have been at least twice as big. Our group included the dutch couple Daisy and Mark, Lincoln and his parents (Peruvian) and his girlfriend who was from Germany all nice people. We had to be up at 4.30am ready to leave the lodge at 5.30 after some breakfast. We were off to do an 8K hike through the jungle to Lake Apuvictor. Starting with another hour boat ride we ended up being dropped of on teh bank of the river and it was into the jungle following pre made tracks, along the way the guide Ronnie (who was besotted by Rachel LOL) showed us various trees and animals including a tree called the justice tree full of fire ants, its the one tree not to hang your hammock on!! We saw more monkeys, soldier ants and spiders. Along the way Ronnie showed us, various trees the best being the Giant Lapuna tree, it was huge the trunk must have been 8 to 10 metres in diameter, we then stopped at another tree expecting more info but Ronnie started to poke at a hole in the ground witha stick, when we asked why, he explained that he was trying to coax a tarantula out of its nest (at this point i ran of to the lodge Lol) the spider just about poked out a legbut wasn't interested in meeting us. After a 5k hike we reached the first river via a rickety old platform through a huge swamp. We all boarded a kayak and paddled out into the lake / swamp.
We moved about 3ft and were about a foot from a small cayman, we carried on around the lake seeing lots of birds and turtles sunning themselves, then the mother of the peruvian guy that we were with nearly had a heart attack, we were about 3ft from an 8m anaconda ronnie manouvered us in nearer, at this point we could have practically touched it. I am guessing it was about 50cm in diameter and it looked like it had already eaten (that what i told myself anyway). Ronnie seemed as excited as the tourists to see the snake, he was taking photographs and telling us all to be silent, we later found out that this was a very rare occurance and he had only seen 2 in 2 years. After that the rest of the lake trip was a bit of an anti climax, we saw more, bigger cayman and plenty of turtles but nothing really compared.
After the lake trip we tracked back through the swamp looking out for more anaconda, and came to a 45m tree that had steps nailed to it made out of old bits of wood,in the brochure it was advertised as the canopy look out, but to me it looked more like the tree house i built as a kid, but much much higher!! As most of you know i am not great with heights but after the Mum of the group went up i felt obliged to. The only way to do this was not stop and not think about the fact that these peices of wood we were walking/climbing up were just nailed to a tree. We got to about 40 m up and found that the last leg is literally a climb on pieces of wood nailed to a tree (just like my tree house!!) When we got to the top there was a rickety platform of rotten wood, I looked round and Rachel seemed as petrified as me haha ha.Somehow this gave me some macho confidence, and i climbed the last few steps to the top platform, where the view was pretty amazing,even looking through my fingers Lol, that said i didnt stand up on it as new underwear would have been needed!! Both of us by this point were starting to realise that now we were up there, we had to climb back down. The hardest bit to negotiate was the climb at the top and after this the decent was not as bad as we first thought. Apart from the fact that a German girl and a Peruvian had decided to come up.I thought Rachel was going to kill them as we had asked before starting down if anyone was coming up. So there we are about 30m up a tree, not only were the peices of wood only nailed to a tree but now there were 4 people standing on them!! AFter manouvering round each other we were down in about 5 minutes shaking like a leaf.
Another 1k hike and we came to another canoe/kayak that we all had to paddle for 5k upstream back to the main River, i am guessing it was about 90 degrees and ridiculous humidity, we all started wondering why we had paid to do this Lol. but when we reached the end it all seemed well worth it. When we got back to the lodge we had a dip in the pool and lovley cold beer before dinner.
Day 3 was free in the morning so more pool time and chilling in hammocks, then it was off down river with fishing rods trying to catch Piranha,we were getting eaten alive by Mosquitos and no fish were caught but we stopped at an indiginous family to see how they lived. Basically it was in shacks on the river bank, they made there living by panning for gold along with plenty of others we saw on the river. After seeing the Anaconda these excursions were a bit of an anti climax but still worth while.
Comments
Hair again
Have just looked at the photos on this one and it appears that bushy still has hair (hippy)