In the jungle, the mighty jungle....

We arrived in Iquitos not knowing exactly what to expect of an Amazon Rainforest river trip. We knew it would be rather warm as we were arriving in the summer – though really in this part of the world, summer and winter are almost the same with respect to temperature. The real difference is dry season versus rainy season. We arrived at the transition from dry to wet and the water levels in the Amazon had risen over 10 feet in the past few weeks. Iquitos is at 3 degrees south latitude and about 350 feet of elevation. There are no roads to/from Iquitos from any other significant city – in fact, Iquitos is the largest city in the world unconnected by roads to the outside world. It is located in the largest state in Peru - Loreto – which comprises over a quarter of the total land area of the country. It is over 2000 miles to the mouth of the Amazon from Iquitos and the Amazon is already enormous here. Everything in Iquitos is flown in or comes in container ships from the ocean. Iquitos boomed in the late 1800s because of the rubber boom – from our perspective, Iquitos has certainly has seen better days – but more on that later.

Our trip on the Amazon was on the M/V Aqua – a new luxury ship that has only operated for 7 months. We played our usual game in the airport – trying to figure out who else might be on our trip. Filter one – eliminate the majority of non-gringos. Filter two – check out the clothing, looking for American labels and passport wallets. Okay, we had our suspects.

Imagine our surprise when we landed in Iquitos and found out that our trip only had 3 passengers – us and a young, single guy from Chicago. All on a boat staffed by 20 Peruvians that normally holds up to 24 passengers. Call it good timing as we were on the last boat before the holiday crush and enjoyed what was virtually a private yacht trip. We drove upriver for an hour to the tiny rainforest town of Nauta and met our boat there. Nauta is the end of the road in this part of the world. We learned from our guides that something like 80% of the people in Iquitos had never left there. You can only reach Lima by an expensive plane flight or a very long boat ride (7 days or so) followed by a 20 hour drive.

We boarded our boat in the dark so didn’t get a feeling for the texture of the place – the only texture we felt was the bugs, the humidity and the heat. You don’t need to know Spanish for the words “muy opresivo” to give meaning to the conditions. The boat was very nice so we settled in for a nice dinner and an early sleep as the wake-up call would be at 6AM the next morning.

The first morning on the skiffs set the stage for what the trip would be like. In the morning and the evening, we’d board the skiffs to explore a “black water” tributary of the Amazon. At first we didn’t know what “black water” meant but it became obvious the moment we left the Amazon and motored up one of these tributaries. The Amazon is a brown, muddy, opaque river. The black water tributaries are literally black – full of tannins and a P/H level of 4 (that’s relatively acidic). The air, trees and water are full of animals. If you were a birder (neither of us are birders) you would literally be in paradise. Our guides knew the name of every bird that we saw – though they could have been blowing smoke up our butts since we wouldn’t know a lesser gooney-bird from a six-toed scarlet breasted parrot. Still it was impressive to see both the numbers and varieties of beautifully colored creatures. In addition to all of the ornately colored fliers, we saw a wide variety of raptors and scavengers. It seemed like every time we’d come around the bend of the river, there would be another hawk or vulture.

But for us, the allure of the jungle was all about the mammals – specifically the monkeys - and we weren’t disappointed. During the course of our skiff rides, we saw literally hundreds of monkeys – squirrel, tamarind, capuchin, and other types. The squirrel monkeys were the most prolific of all of the monkeys and, in places, the trees were full of them. Watching them fly from branch was truly magical and we never grew tired of stopping to look at the monkeys. Sadly, they were mostly too far away to pose for photographs but our eyes (with the help of binoculars) really feasted in the scenery.

The monkeys weren’t the other mammals we encountered in large numbers. At the mouths of these black water rivers, there are typically pods of fresh water dolphin. There are two types of these that we saw – the black type that look a great deal like the dolphins we are used to seeing in the ocean. The other type was a pink dolphin that has adapted to the river environment with a different type of fin that makes travel through flooded forest land easier. Many times we would stop at these river mouths and see 5-10 dolphins playing around the boat. And, as they played, they got pinker and pinker in color. The tops of the trees were home to many three-toed sloths. These 10 pound mammals appear much bigger than they are because their fur is so long and they move so incredibly slowly. Once you spot one, you can have lunch before pulling out your binoculars and they’ll still be in virtually the same place.

We are both surprised that Deborah actually enjoyed seeing another type of mammal – especially at night. Our afternoon trips extended into the twilight and quickly the dark night. While we saw them hanging in trees during the days, the end of twilight quickly brought an army of fishing bats over the water. These fragile creatures were fun to watch (with the help of a spotlight on the boat). But the real allure of these night time excursions was to see caimans – think crocodile hunter and you get the idea. Our guide would stand at the bow of the boat with a spot light (it is worth mentioning that the light is hooked up to a car battery for power) while the boatman drove the boat at full speed down the black water river. The guide would shine the light from side to side hoping to catch a reflection of the eyes of a caiman or other creature active at night. A quick hand signal from the guide and the hunt was on! We’d quickly motor closer to what the guide spotted and then – whammo – the guide would stick a hand in the water and he’d come up with a small caiman. Now we all know what happened to the Crocodile Hunter but we have to say that this was an impressive display – repeated many times over the course of a couple of nights of caiman hunting. We also encountered some beautiful frogs and interesting types of night hunting birds though after the caimans and the bats, the best find was a 4 or 5 foot tree boa. It wasn’t the anaconda we were hoping to spot but was a pretty great consolation prize. We did manage to see a bit of our childhoods in the jungle at night. Once it turned really dark, the lightening bugs created a display better than lit up Christmas trees. This combined with the stars made for a magic experience.

As well as the skiff explorations during the early mornings and evenings, we’d go on a hike late morning to a small village and nearby scenery. Normally, hiking is much more enjoyable for us that being passive participants on a boat tour. But once you left the water and entered the jungle, the mosquitoes were very thick. A 5 second stop was “rewarded” with a swarm of these vermin and even though we were wearing long pants, long shirts, head and neck protection, the little bastards still managed to bite us on our hands and through clothing. They even bit the palms of your hands!

The small villages were both enchanting and depressing because we got a close up view of the living conditions for the people as well as an opportunity to interact with them. The enchanting part will mostly be discussed here – the depressing part later in this post. The people in the Amazon are poor beyond anything we can conceive of in the US though we suspect that view themselves rich in everything that matters to them – the scenery, family, connection to the land, etc. Everywhere that we travelled, we’d pass people paddling dugout canoes and see thatched huts with no sides and raised floors. Their bathroom, shower, washing machine and sink was the black water river. Some of these homes were on terra firma all year. Others were temporary structures in the dry season – knowing they’d be flooded out every December through June. But, the people were both happy and friendly and the children are absolutely enchanting. At our first village of about a dozen or so families, the children followed us all around the village and into the woods. They were shy and immensely enjoyed posing for photos and movies (and watching them on our small screen). Arn talked to a group of the kids and none of them had ever heard of snow. They didn’t know the word and had a hard time imagining a place so cold that water falls from the sky as icy white stuff. If you live in a place without electricity, running water, and your home is made only from the immediately available materials (no nails, no screws) and you have never enjoyed a beverage with ice, then snow is a pretty remote concept. It appears as if the Peruvian government is trying to provide teachers and schools in all of these remote villages to the extent possible. It is a very primitive existence by our standards.

A final highlight of the skiff tours in the jungle was fishing for piranha. Raw chicken was used as bait and the chicken would literally “cook” in the acid of the black water river (think ceviche and you are on the right track). The technique was to disturb the surface of the water with the end of your rod, let the bait sink and very quickly pull up when you got a nibble to set the hook. One of the people from Aqua quickly caught one of the five species of piranha in the river (the most ferocious type, in fact) and we have to say we were impressed by the sharpness of their teeth. Getting bit by one of these guys would have been painful and there are apocryphal tales of cows being devoured in seconds. Before seeing them in person, we would have though the tales were exaggerations but now we aren’t so sure. Arn quickly caught a sardine (really, a good size one actually) but was unsuccessful catching a piranha. Deborah had two out of the water but they got away before getting to the boat. But the guides managed to catch a handful and placed them in a holding pen. Apparently, they could live out of the water for 30 minutes and the guides said they would be eaten later. We thought this meant by us but it turned out, they had a different fate. A small stick attached to a piranha makes the piranha float on the water. Wait to spot a hungry raptor and, well, you can imagine the rest of the show. Like shooting fish in a barrel – so to speak.

We finally arrived in Iquitos and took a tour of the “Venice of Peru” – a neighborhood in Iquitos known as Belen. And, this is the depressing part of the rainforest story. Belen is only like Venice in the sense that when the Amazon floods for six months, all of the houses there float and the streets are now under water and only accessible by boat. It was a shanty town of houses that looked like they would fall over in a heart beat – many like the houses we saw in the back country but picture 100s of them stacked next to each other and multiple families living in them. Many of the people in the bush though that the city held riches only to find themselves destined to a life of extreme poverty and little work at the edge of the city. Instead of a private black water river as your source of life, you shared an incredibly polluted river with 15000 other people. We saw people swimming, cleaning, drinking, motoring and crapping all within yards of each other. This is a kind of poverty unlike the poor but simple life in the rainforest. It is beyond anything we’ve witnessed first-hand anywhere else we’ve traveled and orders of magnitude different than anything we have in the United States. It is difficult to understand what the exit strategy is for the people in Belen and very sad to bear witness to.

It was during this experience in Belen that our guides shared their own personal stories. Victor’s family moved to Iquitos from a village in the Rainforest when he was 11 years old. He is one of four sons and his parents believed their children should continue their education in the city. At the time, children’s education ended at age 11. Victor’s mother found work as a “healer” and his father became a carpenter. Usiel is one of eight children and he is the youngest. When he was five years old, his family built a raft from balsa wood and spent 32 days floating down the Amazon as they left the Rainforest in search of Iquitos. As a child, Usiel followed the gringos in town and learned to speak English. He is self-taught and can speak, read and write fluently. Usiel’s oldest child is a daughter (age 16). She will start university this year to study computers. His goal is provide his children with the opportunities that he didn’t have. Usiel’s enthusiasm for the Amazon, its people, and its creatures was an essential element to our experience. He will be remembered for a line that he said over and over again, “You will like it so much!” He was right. We were moved by all that we saw and experienced.

A photo/movie/slideshow will be posted when we are not sucking the internet through a straw (just imagine us trying to share that straw!)