Selva! Part One

The following blog is far too long and as such I have had to split it into two blogs. Two for the price of one, thats a good deal. It´ll save a bit of looking over the shoulder for those of you who read blogs at work when you shouldn´t be.

So it appears that both Tessa and I have romantic notions of travelling "off the beaten track" and having "unique experiences" during our adventures. As such we decided to throw in our lot with a tour agency offering a trip from Coca, Ecuador through the jungle and down the Rio Napo, to Iquitos, Peru. A trip that done solo, would take many weeks of agonising slow boat travel. Hence, after following the oil pipeline by bus from Quito, we arrived in the choking humid heat of Coca on Sunday 25th May, ready for our big adventure.

The trip began with a long boat ride, the type to which in the following weeks we would become well accustomed. As we slowly sauntered along the brown, muddy, wide river, a slowly changing vista unfolded of jungle forest occasionally interspersed with with banana plantations. Occasional but common sights of the river were; bamboo, thatched roofed houses; locals paddling dugout canoes; and lone children staring at us from the river bank. On the river I was struck by the immense scale of the jungle area we were passing through. Even the sky seemed somehow bigger and we were able to hear cacophanous thunder storms passing miles away. On occasion the storms would roll right over us and we would be pelted by intense rain usually for no more than 30 mintutes, after which it would continue past us. The highlight of this first twelve hour boat ride was, late in the trip, when the boat became stuck on a sand bar in the shallow river bed. After some deliberation it was decided that all the men ought to get out in the knee deep water and push. After more deliberation and general confusion as to which way we should push, which managed to shift the boat and we were on our way again. Small distractions on an otherwise uneventful trip.

I ought to stop at this stage for a short description of our crew. We were four tourists and in the beginning we were lucky enough to have three guides. We were joined by Buddy Levy from Idaho, a loud, brash and funny american whose running jokes kept us in good spirits. He is also an absolute gear head, the height of which was his Hennessey Hammock a perfect companion for the jungle explorer. http://hennessyhammock.com/ Buddy is a writer of "popular history" and was researching his next book on Francisco de Orellana who had taken the same route at the start of his famous descent of the Amazon. We were joined also by Elias, a well travelled Swiss man. As he was at the end of many months of travelling, he was keen to make the most of this final experience. As a tourism professional, he had some good advice about what to expect from travelling. Our guides were; Jose, a very knowledgable and humourous Quechua native who grew up in the area we visited; Sandro, the generally well organised master camp chef and boat driver and; Javier whose role was as translator for Buddy but as Jose spoke good english, this role was somewhat redundant. On the Peruvian side Jose and Sandro were unfortunately replaced by Fernando, the boat driving dentist...

Buddy: "Are you sure this Fernando guy knows what he´s doing?"

Jose: "Sure, he´s a dentist!"

Much of our four days in the jungle were spent in foraying missions in the canoe out on the lakes and rivers. We would set about trying to spot the numerous bird species endemic to the area, the highlight of which was an enormous blue heron breeding area where we were abused by hundreds of the birds for disturbing their mojo. During such trips we were lucky enough to see pink river dolphins, caimen (alligators) and a small group of fluffy Saki monkeys. As we visited in the rainy season, the waters were so high as to create a flooded forest so it was hard to tell where the river ended and the forest began. In one of these secluded forest/lake/bog inlets Sandro found an old dugout canoe. We were planning on swimming in the lake at the time but had been caught by a tropical downpour. We piled into the small dugout canoe, wearing only togs, as the pelting rain stung our skin and started to paddle around with our hands. The combination of heavy rain, our overzealous paddling and our fat asses caused the boat to sink right out from under us and left us to swim back to the other canoe.

We also went on several treks through the jungle which usually consisted of learning about the traditional uses of many plants, seeing an abundance of creepy crawlies and, at times, walking neck deep through flooded bogs that our guide assured us was perfect anaconda territory. Once we were on Terra Firma the jungle reminded me of the bush back in NZ except with thousands more plant species all battling to survive and dominate. As we pulled up in the canoe for the first of these treks, Jose spotting the danger of of the loose bark of a spiky palm as we passed, knocked off the bark. As it fell away, a small swarm of "banana spiders", with thick hairy legs and abdomen the size of squash balls were revealed inches from our faces. The look on Jose´s face was enough to tell us how poisonous they are. Another spot we visited on one of these treks was the former house of a shaman who, as legend has it, got too drunk one night and fell in the river.

To demonstrate the uses of some of the plants in the jungle our good guide got us to consume some wierd stuff. On the menu were lemon ants which live symbiotically in a particular small tree, the vine used for blowdart poison which at low concentrations is meant to be good for the stomach (which was not Tessa´s experience) and the hallucenogenic Ayahuasca vine. The latter is used by shamen to induce visions and cure basically everything and causes the patient to vomit and shake uncontrollably before seeing visions of wild animals, sometimes causing them to freak out and flee into the jungle. While for me, this didn´t sound like heaps of fun, and Tessa was still suffering from blowdart stomach problems, Elias and Javier indulged in Ayahuasca that night. Unfortunately the vine was young and the effects were limited to vomiting and feeling a bit drunk, leaving us all disappointed at the lack of entertainment. We made use of some small fruit, the juice of which is used for temporary tattoos. We spent the next few days looking real tough round the jungle with roughly drawn anaconda tattoos on our arms.

Our nights in the camp usually involved trying to avoid the mosquitos, talking a fair amount of smack and indulging in "Jungle Juice", a sort of mulled wine made with a red jungle vine, cane alcohol, herbs and honey. This indulgence culminated with some disaster on the last night as some of us had been hitting the juice since noon. That night while we trekked near the camp to spot some nocturnal creatures, Sandro was meant to meet us in the canoe further around the lake. Our path though, was blocked by a large bog and we turned back. Sandro, after a few too many and believing we were lost, crashed the canoe into the reeds, losing a paddle and then swam about trying to find us. Later Buddy, which attempting to show off his chef skills, sliced off half his fingernail. The night ended with Sandro, after sincerely asking Buddy if he loves Fidel Castro, fell asleep in a hammock with a cigarette in his hand.

With the short but torrential rains everyday, our camp quickly bacame a mud pit. Gumboots were compulsary fashion and on the third morning we had to quickly move our tents as the lake had risen sufficiently that we were about to get very wet!