We left for the Amazon jungle on a Friday evening, going first from Pisac to Cusco, then taking a Palomino night bus from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado, a city on the edge of the rain forest, next to the Madre de Dios (Mother of God) River. Luckily, we got full-bed seats on the first story of the bus, so I slept pretty well. The next morning the rest of the family were discussing a mummy movie that I had no memory of.
“What movie?!” I asked. I had fallen asleep before it even started.
We were even served dinner, something unusual for local transportation. We were the only tourists on the vehicle and shared the first floor with just one other woman.
We arrived in the riverside city Saturday morning. We exited the bus, stretching and yawning, and took a little moto-taxi into town. It was astounding that we all squeezed in there! When our bumpy ride ended at the Plaza de Armas, we went hunting for a local restaurant open for breakfast. We found the ideal place, a little hole in the wall with chicharones (deep fired pork), and got those and caldo de pata (paw broth) for breakfast, maybe an odd choice in some people’s opinions.
We walked around town some more, eventually catching another moto-taxi to our jungle lodge’s Puerto Maldonando office, where we got to just sit back, relax, and drink a nice cold cup of fruit juice.
We saw our first animals of the trip in that office, a group of bats hanging from the ceiling, high above us. As soon as the tourists who were sharing a boat with us got there, we took a bus to a serpentario, or snake place. There we saw turtles, monkeys, snakes, frogs, fish, a going-blind ocelot and an eel, all in separate enclosures or cages. After the guides informed us about each type of animal, we got back in the bus and drove to a second river called the Tambopata River, which flows into the Madre de Dios River. On the way, my mom thought that she saw three monkeys in the trees, but as we later learned, they might have just been big tree-termites’ nests. There were also massive vultures circling above the trees. The number and size of them were remarkable.
After our 45-minute bus ride, we took a boat up the Tambopata River. We saw various turtles with crowds of male butterflies fluttering around their heads. The male butterflies lick the salt from the turtles’ faces to attract females. Since side-neck turtles – the kind we were seeing – can’t pull their heads into their shells, there are always countless butterflies around them. We were also lucky enough to see four groups of capybaras, the biggest rodents in the world. This is not an exaggeration nor a guess, but an actual fact. To me, they looked like a mix between cute warthogs without tusks and giant guinea pigs. After 45 minutes or so on the boat, we dropped off people going to a closer lodge, Posada Amazonas, and continued on to a checkpoint, where we got our passports stamped and saw an ‘88’ butterfly. After these two stops, most of the rest of the boat ride was uneventful. Only one of the four groups of capybaras was spotted after dropping off the other tourists, but when we were almost to our lodge, Refugio Amazonas, our guide saw a yellow caiman, an animal similar to an alligator or crocodile. We got extremely close to it before it jumped into the water and went under. We could still see its eyes above the surface of the river as we sped away. At some point in the boat ride, we also saw two or three macaws high in the sky and there were always many other birds. Macaws have the same mate their entire lives.
When our boat ride came to an end, we walked to the lodge, enjoyed more juice, found our rooms (the beds all had mosquito-net canopies and were really fun to hang out in), and went upstairs to the relaxation area to hang out and read in the hammocks. We saw some monkeys from the balcony, playing in the trees. There could have been three or four, swinging, jumping and climbing about. I watched them until they disappeared.
Our guide finished with another group soon before dinner and talked with my mom and dad about what we wanted to do. We then went downstairs for the meal (meatballs – my favorite!). When we finished eating, Georgia and my mom went straight to bed, exhausted from the night bus on Friday. My dad and I decided to stay up a bit later, having gotten more sleep than them. I wrote in my journal and we went on a night hike with our guide, borrowing boots from the lodge. The guide wanted to take us through some water, but I was afraid that my boots wouldn’t be tall enough, so we took a drier route. We saw a small frog, a colossal wolf spider and some other giant bugs, but that was it. We might have had more luck going the first way.
On Sunday, we got up while it was still dark outside and hiked through the trees to Refugio Amazonas’ 105-foot tall observation platform just in time to see the sunrise. Although we didn’t spy many animals, the sight of the mist-covered treetops with light from the early sun spilling across them was glorious and captivating. At around 5:30 a.m., another group came up, their mere footfalls making an astonishing amount of noise and rocking the tower. As soon as they finished ascending, we had to head back for breakfast. Going down the skinny metal tower stairs terrified me even more than going up.
After we ate, our guide led us to an oxbow lake near the lodge, and on the way pointed out a tree-termites’ nest. When we reached the lake, we rowed to the other side to see some gigantic trees. They start out as vines, setting roots and winding around a larger tree again and again before starting to grow out. The new growth eventually kills the older plant. We got to go inside one of the trees to where the original tree used to be. We also got to climb one of the vines on the first tree. My dad got really high and said that he could have gone farther, but he thought he better not. While we were walking back to the lake, the guide showed us an herb with a purplish-reddish juice and painted my face with the natural dye. When we were back on the water, the guide threw breadcrumbs for the piranhas and sardines that live in the lake. Immediately the tiny fish attacked the bread, flitting about just under the surface and one or two maybe even semi-jumping. Luckily, none went after my fingers when I absentmindedly trailed them in the water later in the canoe ride, for which I am grateful. Next, our guide took us to an uprooted tree or bent log sticking out of the water, with a bunch of miniature bats hanging from it. He splashed water at them and they flew into the air, scattering, but most returned to the log. We also saw three macaws flying through the sky and on the path back to the lodge, there were two monkeys. However, I only saw one of them, swinging and jumping from tree to tree.
Both before and after lunch, we had some time to rest before going to a mammal clay lick. As many butterflies gathered on the wooden walkway to our room as had alighted on the side-neck turtles’ faces. A few landed on me. We also saw dozens of half-green, half-brown lizards in the grass and leaves; a tiny mud-colored lizard on the walkway; a capybara (or maybe an aguti, a giant squirrel-like rodent but without a squirrel’s fluffy tail); and a laughing frog or toad in our bathroom.
I was taking every chance I could to write in my journal on this trip so that I wouldn’t forget anything, but eventually my dad and I got bored. To pass the time, we went for a short walk down a seldom-used path with good views of the Tambopata River, which also led to an equipment building and a pulley for bringing carts of goods up a steep hill from the river. We also passed a woman sitting on a bench and practicing the violin, an odd thing to see and hear in the Peruvian jungle. Near the pulley, my dad saw an animal run across the path, possibly a monkey, but more likely a Peruvian jungle raccoon or some other large ground animal. Unfortunately, I was keeping an eye to the jungle floor so that I wouldn’t trip and didn’t see it as clearly. Then we took another side trail to an immense tree that people can climb if they’re willing to pay extra.
At 3:30 p.m., shortly after our quick hike, our guide Jose’ Luis took us to a mammal clay lick, where large animals sometimes gather. My dad spotted a falcon as we walked, and an unseen monkey growled at us from the bushes for at least five minutes of the trek, maybe even ten. After arriving at the viewing building and seeing nothing for a while, Jose’ Luis left to try to locate some animals for us. He found a huge elegant white harpy eagle perched high in a towering tree. It took me a while to spot the bird, but was definitely worth the time once I could see it. It was a marvelous creature. Eventually, we also noticed the mating bats in the dark building, hanging upside-down from the ceiling right above our heads. Soon after, we returned to the lodge for dinner, my mom not wanting to walk back in the dark.
Right after dinner, we headed to the river for a caiman search. We were supposed to have gone the night before, but the river had been too high and dangerous. We saw five caiman plus another huge group of five to ten. Unfortunately, the big group was in water that was too shallow for the boat, so we couldn’t get very close and I didn’t see any of them. However, I saw the other five very clearly. The first was tiny and looked dead, lying on its side halfway in the water with its mouth wide open. Even when it slipped into the river, it kept its jaws gaping. Another was so massive that it looked like a log until it started crawling towards the bank. The rest were all more normal-sized with closed mouths, but pale and ghost-like, just like the others. On our walk back to the lodge from the river, we saw some giant scorpions without tails that looked like spiders, as well as some glowworms.
Monday morning, we got up around 7 a.m. to pack and eat breakfast. A woman who came to Refugio with us spotted an aguti next to one of the lodge’s walkways before we left. We went back to Puerto Maldonado with the same people with whom we had come to Refugio. During the boat ride back with them, we saw two macaws and some turtles and butterflies, but nothing else. However, back at the Puerto Maldonado office, we saw three spider monkeys right above our heads, cavorting in the trees. The two bravest black monkeys came right down to us and one touched my hand, tugging lightly on my bracelet. One of them almost went into the bathroom (it tried to climb over the wall). I got to touch the monkeys twice. The white monkey was shyer and stayed up in the trees, watching us from above. That was one of my favorite parts of our visit to the Amazon jungle.
After we pulled ourselves away from the monkeys, the Amazonas bus drove us to another bus terminal and we bought some tickets for a night bus back to Cusco. We found some lunch and ice cream as we strolled to the plaza, where Georgia and my mom stopped to rest. My dad and I went on towards the Madre de Dios River, only a block or two further. There we saw a huge bridge being built, the last step in a road from Cusco to Brazil. We also encountered a nice shady area to hang out in, with hammocks, dogs, chickens, a swing set, a parrot and a nice view of the river and bridge. We brought Georgia and my mom there and played with the puppies and swung in the hammocks. The parrot was chewing on a plastic cup but dropped it. Whenever I tried to give it back to him, he threw it up in the air! He was a funny bird. He screeched at his reflection, tried to bite his owner’s fingers and ate messily. He knew how to say “hola” (hello) and supposedly could say other words too, but we didn’t get to hear them.
After spending an hour or hour and a half in the shady yard, we walked back to the plaza, got some snacks for the bus and some drinks, and went to the bus station to catch our night bus. In a less comfortable normal seat, I definitely got less sleep on the ride back to Cusco than on the way to Puerto Maldonado. We arrived in the city early Tuesday morning (about 5 a.m.) and took a local bus back to Pisac, catching another hour or so of sleep before school started. Our trip to the jungle had come to an end.
-Katie Hastie
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