We made it to the Amazon! After taking our flight from Cusco
to Lima and another from Lima to Iquitos we were picked up by a new guide at
the tiny little airport in the jungle and taken by car 20 minutes to a travel
office on the river. When we arrived, a woman gave us a sack lunch and ushered
us to the back, where we got our first glimpse of the Amazon. It is gigantic!
Our luggage was transported onto the boat and we all clamored in afterwards.
There were 2 other travelers who arrived with us, so the four of us plus the
four members of the staff disembarked together from Iquitos on a journey that
would take 4 hours going upstream on the Amazon.
The river was beautiful, and at all points it was as wide as
a typical lake in Texas. There were a couple of bends of the river that
reminded me of spots on Lake Travis near our old lake house where I would train
all summer long for wakeboarding. The only thing that is not particularly
beautiful is the color of the water. The water of the Amazon is a murky brown
from all of the mud, clay and silt that the water picks up as it flows down the
Andes Mountains and into the tributary.
The boat ride was long, and since I had woken up at 4:45
that morning I drifted off to sleep many times along the way. Finally, around 4
in the afternoon we arrived at our lodge after having left the main body of the
Amazon for the Tahuanyo River an hour back. The lodge is a pretty cool place.
It is built on stilts because of the potential of the river to flood, so it has
the feel of a giant tree house. Most of the rooms in the complex share a
bathroom, and there are common rooms like a hammock room and reading room for
any of the guest to enjoy throughout the day. It is extremely hot and humid in
the jungle, but because of the remote nature of the lodge there isn’t enough
electricity from the solar panels for fans, and certainly not enough for A/C.
Instead all of the rooms are screened to prevent bugs and mosquitos from
entering, but they’re open enough to catch the natural breeze.
Last night before nodding off to sleep we had a fun
nighttime boat ride up the river to a lake in search of Caymans and toads, and
before that a really great home cooked dinner with all of the other travelers
staying here. Although a big group of people took off for the research center
this morning, I greatly enjoyed their company last night and their enthusiasm
for the jungle. The lot of them were from California and were all retired, and
their stories of travel, family, and excursions passed time pleasantly.
This morning we were able to sleep in until 7:40 and woke up
just in time for the 8 a.m. breakfast with everyone else. At 9 we were given a
pair of rubber boats and were fitted for harnesses to prepare for our
zip-lining adventure. We hiked through a km of the rainforest to get to the
platform, but because we walked a very windy path our distance traveled seemed
to be much longer. The walk was extremely entertaining for me. Because we were
trouncing through the rain forest most of the path was wet and muddy, which
meant that our boots squelched and sunk through all of the mud as we fought our
way through to the platform. I had a blast.
When we arrived at the platform there was another surprise
in store for us. Almost every zipline I have ever done has a set of stairs or
pegs on a tree that you climb up in order to get to the starting platform. This
one, however, had no such thing. Instead, there were two options. The first was
what most people chose – you could clip your harness into a set of ropes and
sit back while the staff hoisted you up by pulling on the ropes through a lever
system. The second is the way the staff reached the top – climbing. Climbing
didn’t entail climbing up the actual tree, but instead using a rope, a foot
harness, and two hand grips to slowly advance up the rope to the top. The hand
grips were locked in such a way that they would only move up the rope, but not
down, so that every time you pushed it upwards it would stay there and you were
a little closer to the destination.
The guide went up first, then let Witt have a try. The issue
with choosing this path was the fact that once you start you can’t get back
down, so you have to be able to find the strength to make it to the top. Witt
started off slower than the guide (which is to be completely expected), but
after a while he caught the rhythm of it and progressed upwards pretty steadily
with some very heavy breathing and grunting. The climb was roughly equivalent
to climbing 15 ropes in gym class at the same time, with the added difficulty
that the hand grips sometimes were stuck on the rope and didn’t move as freely
as our hands do while climbing.
After Witt made it to the top in pretty good time it was my
turn. I had a pretty rough start, as I could hardly even get the grips to move
along the rope at all. After a couple of failed attempts, however, I was able
to adjust my technique to start the journey upwards. The climb was a total of
48 meters, and it was gruelingly difficult. My right arm, the one that had to
thrust the first hand grip up the rope, was extremely sore and my breathing was
ragged by the time I made it close to the top. The final few pushes were
excruciating, and I pretty much just tumbled over the ropes onto the platform
when I had finally made it. Witt was lying down still catching his breath from
his climb when I arrived.
I regained my strength and breath pretty quickly, and had a blast ziplining down the three stretches of cable before repelling back down to the jungle floor. Our hike back to the lodge was equally fun as the one to the zipline, and the mud was just as squishy. Once back at the lodge we washed our rubber boots in the river and enjoyed some free time before lunch.
