The Jungle... here we come!
Did our early morning routine, and arrived at the airport, with an hour's wait for our flight to Puerto Maldonado. LAN flight was only 40 minutes long; we encountered cloudy skies - have not seen this since we landed in Peru in mid-May.
We had booked our jungle tour with the tour company, Eco Amazonia, and the tour operator & bus met us at the airport, then droveus into the 'town' of Puerto Maldonado. It lived up to its description from the Lonely Planet - a dusty, one-horse, frontier town. Motorcycles appear to be the mode of travel for almost everyone, with 3 - 4 people on one bike at a time, no helmets to speak of, & moto-taxies, (bikes that taxi people). We visited the very colourful, local market place, purchasing snacks (cookies & water) for our days at our lodge.
Then, our group, all 15 of us, embarked upon a 1.5 hour boat ride, in an oversized, motorized, dug-out canoe, with a broad 'roof' canopy, called pekis-pekis. Rather tippy - so we all sat very still, but we did wear life-jackets. The sky was still overcast, so we were cool while on the long river trip. The Madre de Dios river was muddy, murky & silty - Bruce says it's trying to transport the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean! River was extremely low, about 20 meters lower than it would be during the rainy season, yet the current was very rapid.
Arrived at Eco Amazonian Lodge, climbing a steep set of tippy, cemented stairs that were uneven and very challenging, to say the least. My knees were 'talking' to me, no doubt about it!
Our group was served lunch - steamed rice and chicken cooked within a banana leaf, which was quite good. We then made our way to our "Hut" room, and settled in. The place is not quite what we expected, and we have 5 days here! Yikes! (I'm just over-tired right now - I'm sure things will look rosier tomorrow.)
After a short rest, we went on our first excursion -Money Island. We boarded a smaller pekis-pekis to get there. We landed on what we considered a rather treacherous sandbar, and the guide "macheteed" steps for us to climb on. We began our walk through the jungle, and "jungle" this is, with a wide, green canopy of leaves and ropes overhead. Even though it's only 4 p.m., we're having some difficulties seeing our path as it's dark, due to the overcast skies.
At last - we see the monkeys! They come visit this space because our guide feeds them bananas, then teaches us about the monkey population on this small island. We saw two types of cappuci monkeys and the black spider monkey. They were all quite playful, jumping and swinging from tree to tree - squawking away, greedily grabbing the pieces of bananas our guide lay out on the ledge for them. We all stood quite still, observing their behaviour, as our guide did not want any of us to be 'attacked'.
Ronal, our guide, explained that Monkey Island was officially 10 years old. This is when Eco Amazonia first imported different types of monkeys to live here. Bruce photographed all of this activity.
I found the jumgle atmostphere to be rather cloying & claustrophobic. I could hardly wait to walk to the clearing. This was probably die to the lack of sunlight...
Returned to our main island, via a short boat trip. Conquered those stairs again! Bruce & I rested a bit, then tried the shower - cold water only! Yikes.. washed ourselves down, then went to the bar, and dinner. We chose not to go on the alligator excursion that evening, for my legs simply could not tackle those stairs one more time. (Hearing from the others, they said we did not miss much as far as the alligators were concerned, but we did miss seeing the stars overhead - apparently the clouds had cleared off, and the night sky was quite the sight to see.)
Weather is warmish - thank goodness! We so longed for this! Now, we're looking forward to our 5 days, enjoying our time here, in the wilds of Peru!
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