give me a day or two to go through all my pictures and rewrite texts. 5 days to go

Last days in Lima

1 days to go

Chachapoyas

it is grate city and the road from tarapoto to chachapoyas fantastic. old bus, steep slopes and narrow road, astonishing landscapes. yep I m lovin it

i think we will spend here more days a lot things to see, fuck chiclayo

Chachapoyas

I´m in Tarapoto now. yesterday was crazy, you will not believe it.

I will write something about my trip to jungle in few days. tomorrow me and my 55 years old friend from sweden - Jon - are going to Kualap and then to chiclayo.

take a look on few pictures from my journey from Pucallpa to Iquitos. good luck and good night

Tarapoto

This was totally crazy day. First we went to the police station in Yurimaguas to get paper confirming that Jan’s camera was really stolen. For one hour we were explaining how it had happened and who are we (even after we showed our passports). Finally he printed out some paper and told us to wait. It took them another hour to explain us we needed to pay for that print out. But as they couldn’t receive that money from us directly Jan had spent hour in a bank. Then we were waiting another hour while other officer was retyping the printout on his typewriter. Crazy?

It is better not to loose anything here, cos then you will loose at least half a day to deal with police!

Now we needed get to Tarapoto. We found out that the road between is under construction and we had to wait until 7 o’clock, as the road is closed everyday from 6 AM. Buses are going only on Sundays, but what you have other mean of transport for? We could choose from taxis, pick-ups or small buses. As pick-ups and micro buses are taking far to many people (not to mention chickens, cows and everything else that they were designed for. We bargained a bit and negotiated 20S/. per person in hardly going, old taxi

tbc….

Maranon river

We were in hurry. A cargo-boat to Yurimagaus would leave in few hours, on the same day we came back from the jungle. ‘Eduardos’ are the only on-water connection with Yurimaguas that makes them extremely expensive. For 3 days, for a cabin they wanted 200S/. ,  for hammock - 70S/. on the lower deck and 140S/. on upper one. The good thing is that they are renting a hammocks for 10S/. and drinking water is included.

We had chosen hammocks upstairs as there was no so many people and food is better. Eventually we paid 120S/.  that was fine for me

Well for Jan it wasn’t pleasant night. A boy who was selling something around had stolen his camera. This is Peru. You need to take care of your stuff every time the boat is in a harbour, as so many people are coming and leaving. Later is safe and sleeping on a hammock is so grate experience. Jan will have his money back from insurance company but I think both of us will miss the photos

Our lodge was as simple as three huts from wood and straw. A power generator had just broken down so we didn’t have water to wash ourself. I could see that camp is quite old, as nets in windows were full of holes but it was OK. They were rebuilding it but I think it will be ready for a summer season.

The good news was that the kitchen was operating and I had delicious fishes with bananas and lemonade we had collected on the way form the river. Next I put on my rubber boots and followed Jose - my guide. We entered the jungle :).  He showed me flowers, trees and animals I have never seen before. Really nice experience was to touch a rubber form a Rubber tree, watch ants highways, tarantulas or for example a little poisonous frog I didn’t spot any sloth or a jaguar that had been seen recently nearby.

It seemed Jose knows pretty a lot about plants around showing me those to cure or to kill. He used to say that for him the jungle is a big drug store, but even he doesn’t know secrets of local shamans.

I have found that using a repellent is useless. Mosquitoes and other flying creatures weren’t afraid at all, I had dots everywhere. Pity me One the one hand they had assured me there is no malaria in that area, and they are checking it from time to time. On the other hand the problem is that the malaria is the best you can get there Jose briefly described me other diseases you can have leaving  in deep jungle.

Later that day I met Jan from Sweden. Jag heter Pawel Jan is 55 years old now and crossed Amazon river from Manaos to Iquitos. Jan refused to use rubber shoes as his guide wasn’t using them and he is not afraid. He was wearing his flip-flops instead.

On my second day I had to catch some piranhas if I wished to eat anything.  After 2h I had nothing I don’t know what was wrong with my stick and hock, because hehe lucky bastard in 30 minutes cough 4! Fortunately piranhas are as clever as tasty By the night we went to look for some caymans. In this areas are no chances to find any big, mature ones and maybe even better. I was a bit sceptic about finding at least small one so I had left my camera in the camp. What was my surprise when Jan’s guide cough one. We had no other option so I carried a piece for my new shoes back to take a few picture.

I had strange feeling that our guides have all those animals, that they showed us before, hidden somewhere around the camp. To be sure we freed our cayman back to the river.

On the last day we were promised to visit the shaman’s house. But somehow plans changed and we went to see how is sugar, sugar juice or ram from cane produced. It took as about hour to squeeze juice from cane in quite ancient machine. Fortunately ram was waiting for us Juice is very sweet, like a half kilo of sugar mixed with water, blee…

Well and that’s it. It was nice few days, I cant remember if I have been ever that dirty.

As Jan had no exact plans what to do next, he decided to follow me. We were heading west!

Jungle boy

Another reason for taking this agency was a schedule of the trip. On the contrary to all others agencies around the city we had started very early in the morning with breakfast:). Of course you need to be a tough guy like me to wake up at 6 o’clock. And you know I don’t like to waste my time, which I am paying for!

After 2 months in Peru I have noticed that anyone who transports people can predict such a simple thing like refuelling before his passengers appear. As if they all were afraid, that no one will come.

Firstly we were about to see grey and pink dolphins. I was travelling with a couple from Belgium that had paid only to see those animals before they took off to Lima. On my way from Pucallpa I had spotted so many dolphins so I though I would be able to see them now from close distance. Unfortunately our small boat was fast enough to make it impossible to see any. Later we stopped in some small village to have a break and eat something. But we wanted to see anything, so we were standing there on some kind of pier near our speedboat and scanning the horizon. As you can imagine dolphins were to far away to see them well, just shapes of their tails.

While we were trying to spot anything that looked like a dolphin another boat came. It was full of people and all they had with them. My guide told me, that most of those people were already travelling for 10h and as the boat was going from one village to other they would arrive to Iquitos in 6-8 hours (it was only 100km to Iquitos). Nice!

After an hour of watching the river I left the pair from Belgium, I don’t think they saw anything more. 30 minutes more in that speedboat and I was in the middle of nowhere. We had about 1h of walking. My adventure in jungle had just begun.

Finally we came to Iquitos in early afternoon. Iquitos is a big city in the hart of Amazonian jungle. It had grown with a increasing need for rubber during colonial times. Now it is a important port on the Amazon river and tourist centre for those who wants explore beauty of Selwa. Iquitos is almost cut off from the rest of the worl. There are no road connection. The only possibilities are a plane (about 80$) or a small boat or big cargo boat I had taken.

In the port a taxi driver caught me and offered a very cheap hostel and a tour to jungle. The price was 50$ for 5 days. So I decided to go with him to his agency. I don´t know why I could get tricked so easily. As we got there, a nice, old woman explained that 50$ is an average price for each day. A plan of the trip seemed to be reasonable, but I wanted to have an comparison.

I found out that agencies offer two kinds of lodges (a central point in jungle where you sleep and from which you can start your tours). One of them are just a fun centre, comfortable with hot water, swimming pools and cold beer. Others are closer to nature, quiet but it is possible that there is no electricity or water to wash at all. Choosing a lodge it is very important to check where it is located. If it is far away from national park you can forget to see real jungle and people living there.

As I have heard a good and cheap idea is to take a cargo boat from Iquitos to Laguna (on the way to Yurimaguas). In Laguna you can hire a guide for 80 S/. per day that is like half of the price. And Laguna is a small village close to the biggest national park in this area.

I wanted pure nature without theatre prepared just to make stupid tourist happy. I decided to go for 3 days with Carrusel Tapira for 40$ per day. Their lodge was 120km to the south from Iquitos, more or less close to the National park.

Sounds good - but I was a bit afraid and suspicious at the beginning. Now I know it was a right decision!