Jul 2009

I’ve just finished my first week in the jungle and I’m now back in the nearest city of Puerto Maldonaldo for a day back in civilisation, which mostly consists of eating lemon meringue pie and drinking beer.

The rainforest is humid and hot, only some daylight filters through the trees and gets to the floor so most areas are in a state of twilight all of the time. Animals are hard to spot; it’s so dense that you can walk a few metres from a jaguar without seeing it. Everything seems to want to bite, sting or lay its eggs in me. I have found out a couple of times how fire ants earnt their name, I have a family of tiny mites called chiggers eating their way up my legs, I am a mosquitoes´ best friend and I am trying to avoid getting a bot fly larvae laid under my skin (they lay their eggs in wet clothes and they then burrow into your skin, my clothes are constantly wet so I am a delight for bot fly mothers to be). Snakes lie around waiting to be trodden on, although I suppose thats not their main intention. The humidity rots everything unbelievably fast, my bags already have mould growing on them, my clothes smell like a wet dog and my ipod has some mold in the connection socket. When it rains it really rains, a few days ago we had 150mm of rain in one morning (in Norwich we get 300mm per month!), the trails turned into rivers and lower ground turned into lakes and we spent the afternoon wading around with water pouring into our wellies.

Despite all this I’m having a jolly good time, and all of these things seems like a mild distraction from how much fun jungle life is. The job here is great, we have to complete some tasks and after they´re done the rest of the time we can ramble around the jungle at our leisure hunting down animals. I am sleeping in a bungalow with another volunteer called Andy, he is from Uganda and is really easy to get along with and very nice, he seems to have had an interesting life, not many people can claim to have been shot twice in the back with an AK47 and to have had a broom sword fight with a spitting cobra all before the age of 20. The lodge is nice and our rooms are comfy.

They ring a bell three times a day and I have learnt, as did Pavlov’s dogs, that this means food time. We get a good breakfast and then a 3 course lunch and dinner. Andy and I have made friends with the waiter by giving him a reggae CD and in return we get multiple desserts and sometimes 2 main courses, I may come back fat.
Most days we walk between 10 – 15km along very muddy paths, we have built a bridge, put up signs, cut transects through thick jungle, canoed around a lake and done a few other jobs, but mostly we have just walked for the sake of walking and to try to find animals. In the evening we often go out and wander around the jungle in the dark (with a proper torch!) to search for the nocturnal animals that lurk around.

On the second day it rained heavily in the morning and we were stuck inside, in the afternoon we decided to go for a walk anyway to put up a sign near a lake. We lost track of time and by the time we got to the lake it was past 5 and the light was fading. Not to worry says Andy, I have a torch, and we set off home. When darkness came we were about half way home, he got out his torch, winds it up and turns it on, it looks and acts like a Fisher Price torch made for under 5’s and doesn’t really illuminate anything. Bugger. We continued on getting lost a few times, aware that if we wander even a few metres off the path we will be lost for good and that our bodies will be found inside an anaconda later in the month (ok, thats an exaggeration, we´d just have to sit in the dark for a night). We ended up in a basin, flooded deeply with water, in the dark with our dim torch, we didn’t know which way to go, we tried climbing the sides but slid back down. We tried leaving by what looked like a river but it was so deep it came past the tops of our wellies and we turned back. We panicked a little considering spending a night sleeping with snakes, army ants and a thousand mosquitoes as roommates. Eventually we decided to walk our way out via the river which turned out not to be a river at all but actually the path. Happily we made our way back and I vowed to take a proper torch next time.

We’ve seen a fair few animals; white lipped and collared peccaries, similar to wild boars but bigger and with tusks they roam around the forest in groups of up to 200 stinking like sweaty gyms and urine and freak out when they see you charging, snorting and knocking down anything in their way, we pick a tree when we first see (or smell them) to climb if they let loose in our direction. We see lots of monkeys, saddleback monkeys who are quite tame and like bananas, howler monkeys to try to pee on your head and capuchin monkeys who are very grumpy and throw sticks at you to make you go away.

We’ve also seen other mammals like agoutis, pacas, deer, ocelots (only a dead one though!!!), bats, tayras and Amazonian squirrels who are all keen to get as far away from you as quickly as possible.

We’ve seen a few snakes including a bad tempered rainbow boa who tried to bite us and then chased us down the path. We have a few pink footed tarantulas living at the lodge, one of which can sometimes be found in the toilet bowl. Butterflies are everywhere, there is 1400 species here, the highest number in the world, in all colours shapes and sizes, the same goes with birds and there are 2 wild macaws that hang around the lodge, I have managed to make friends with one of them and she will fly down, sit on my shoulder and eat oranges, the other one doesn’t like anyway and just tried to bite me (he sometimes also breaks into people’s rooms and hides under the bed until them come in, at which point he jumps out and attacks their feet).

Insects in all shapes and colours are all around and when they’re not trying to bite me are great to look at and photograph.

A project called Forever Fauna Tambopata has just come to the lodge, they are carrying out 3 surveying projects on mammals, birds and reptiles (and amphibians). We have been helping them out and when I get back to the lodge I am joining the bird team to go mist netting (to catch and measure the birds) and the following night I will be out in the jungle from 9pm-4am searching for snakes, lizards and frogs. Hopefully I´ll see lots of stuff (although I´m not all that keen to get close to a pitt viper to be honest) and I´ll learn alot too, it will be good stuff for my CV.

We have just got back from a trek to Machu Picchu and we’re now recovered after all the walking, we had an amazing time and it was one of the best things I have done since we’ve started travelling. So I can remember it all when I’m an old man and have trouble remembering even my name I’m going to write a mini novel about it all, you can just look at the photos to get the gist….

Day 1: Mollepata – Soraypampa. 18km. 700 metres ascent, 0 metres descent.

We started off bright and early and caught a bus from Cuzco to Mollepata at 4am. We met the other people we would be trekking with, 6 Americans, 2 Brazilians, 2 guides and us and got acquainted over some coca leaf tea and breakfast before we set off.

The trail at the start was fairly easy and lulled us into a false sense of security; this was going to be a breeze. We wandered through rolling hills and dusty paths up to a big hill where we had our lunch and relaxed before setting off again.

In the afternoon we set of again, now a bit sleepy from lunch and the mornings walking and we walked, walked, walked and walked some more. Slowly but surely we approached the snow capped peak of Salkantay. We arrived at our camp after 7 hours of walking, with aching feet, feeling very tired and had dinner before we fell exhausted into freezing tents at 8pm. It was one of the longest and coldest nights ever and I didn’t get hardly any sleep, at about 3am I even managed to break the zip on my rental sleeping bag and spent the rest of the night swearing at the bag and the cold and the tent and pretty much everything.

Day 2: Soraypampa – Challway. 20km. 1050 metres ascent, 1700 metres descent.

We all got up in the pitch black at 4am and stumbled around in the freezing cold to get breakfast.

We were all cheered up no end when one of the American girls asked in all seriousness whether llamas laid eggs. Brilliant. We informed her that they did and also had feathers and exchanged stories about how we had either not slept or slept very little and we sang happy birthday to Christy. We all seemed to be in a very good mood despite our lack of sleep and we set off for what we knew would be the most gruelling day of the trek. We started off walking along a valley next to an icy river and as our campsite disappeared behind us we saw the massive Salkantay Mountain looming ahead. We worked our way up a steep series of switch backs up the mountain which was hard work but well worth the view from the top when we finally got there.

We had a bit of a group celebration before realising we were actually only about half way up to the pass and that most of the climb was still ahead. On we plodded, walk walk walk walk walk.

We continued heading upwards stopping off at a nice frozen lake, played with a calf and then headed towards the top of the pass. At last we reached the top of the pass and had amazing views of the mountains surrounding it and the valleys leading from it. We stopped for a bit to take in the view, rest, drink some birthday rum and undertake a spot of mountain rock golf.

We set off down the other side of the pass into a mist filled valley. It was good to see a change of scenery from the icy top to more green with birds singing and packhorses charging by in the mist.

By the time we got to have lunch we had been walking for 6 hours and we were exhausted and settled down to a nice siesta before setting off again.

After lunch the scenery changed rapidly again as we descended into a mist topped jungle valley with a river flowing down the middle.

As we walked on slowly with tired feet horsemen and porters with massive backpacks came running past making us feel very unfit.

After 3 more hours walking we reached our next campsite which was perfectly placed in the jungle near a river. We played cards, had dinner and our chef brought Christy out a birthday cake which we had somehow magically cooked oon a gas stove. We then sat around a camp site telling stories, one of our guides who didn’t speak much English decided to tell a story with the help of a translator. Unfortunately it didn’t make any sense as it was about a woman who changed into a puppy, a man who went for a wee with a girl tied to his leg and Dracula, either way it was quite entertaining in a weird sort of way. After we settled tired down and slept perfectly for the night.

Day 3: Challway – P. Sahuayaco. 14km. 0 metres ascent (yay), 1020 metres descent.

We woke up early refreshed and ready for another days trekking. We set off first through open hills and then went into the jungle again on dusty paths high up winding around high above the river below.

We continued through the jungle stopping at a beautiful waterfall, met some locals and after for a game of football, gringos against Peruvians. We lost after we scored in our own net and kicked the ball into a fast moving river.

We finished walking early at 1pm and celebrated by going to some hot springs to soak our legs. In the evening we all got together for dinner and celebrated with some wine and rum. We were in a tiny village but our guide told us about a nightclub there, I didn’t know whether to believe him because he liked winding people up but he persisted saying it did exist. A few of us went to investigate and were surprised to see it did exist. Based in the main room of the bottom of a small two storied house and decorated with a stripper’s pole and a wolf skin on the wall, it was quite possibly the weirdest nightclub ever. It was owned by an old lady who promptly fell asleep on a chair at the bar when we arrived and left her 10 year old relatives to run the bar. An interesting mix of Dr Dre and traditional Peruvian was being played and we stayed for a few hours taking advantage of the constant happy hour rums. After we went back and slept perfectly again. Tent sleeping was getting easier by the day.

Day 4: P. Sahuayaco – Aguas Calientes. 14km. 80 metres ascent, 0 metres descent.

We woke up covered in ant and mosquito bites, in our drunken state we had forgotten to put any repellent on and had made a great meal for the local wildlife. We got up and went for breakfast only to be provided with entertainment like none before. Across the road from where we were eating there was an open sided metal shed. A live cow was lead in, it was stabbed in the head, had its throat cut and the drama unfolded something like this...

It was quite shocking and put me off my breakfast a bit (not enough to stop me eating it, thankfully it wasn’t beef) but it was a brutal education and thankfully the cow playing along splendidly and died fairly quickly, after twitching a lot and banging its head on the floor a few times. I think it’s good to see what happens to the animals which we eat so it was a good experience in some ways. We tried to decide whether it was better to be a intensively farmed cow killed with a bolt gun, but who would have to live in a shed all its life, or to be a free range Peruvian cow who lived outside happily all its life but got killed by being stabbed in the head. We decided the Peruvian cow’s way would probably win, although being a cow in India would be better.

We set off walking later in the day and regretted lying in because sun was beating down. We were now out of the jungle and we trekked along dusty roads alongside a river.

We walked until we reached out lunch spot and enjoyed eating in the shade. After lunch we continued on briefly entering the jungle to see an Inca sacrificial stone where llamas were sacrificed for the gods. Christy and Ben reconstructed what this would have been like, to great effect.

After we walked along a railway line for at least 1000 hours before finally and very happily reaching the gringo filled town of Aguas Calientes, tired and very smelly, where we had a hotel with hot water and a comfy bed waiting. We had a final meal together and then went to bed early, ready for Machu Picchu the next day.

Day 5: P. Aguas Calientes – Machu Picchu. 14km. 800 metres ascent, 0 metres descent.

We woke up at 3:45am to start the 2km trek to Machu Picchu, it sounded very easy but was in fact 2km of almost vertical steps up to the site, which was even harder in the pitch black. We stumbled and panted up the steps until we finally reached the site in time to see a beautiful sunrise over Machu Picchu, it made all the trekking even more worth it as the tour groups didn’t get into the site until about 11 so missed half of the fun. The view as you walk into the site is amazing and it was much bigger and more impressive than I thought it would be.

I decided to climb the mountain next to Machu Picchu to get a better view, from the top Machu Picchu looked tiny but I got a good view of the sadistically winding route up we had slogged up in the morning.

After that climb Christy and I fell asleep in a meadow for a bit then wandered around some more.

After spending the day hanging out with llamas we caught a train and then bus back to Cuzco where we fell asleep for the next few days.

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All in all it was an awesome trek and I hope we can get some more trekking done in the rest of the countries we go to. I am going into the rainforest tomorrow for the next month, apparently there is a satellite internet connection when there is no rain (not sure how often that is in the rainforest mind) so with any luck I might be able to add photos of me wrestling jaguars and racing on anacondas.

It seems like I haven’t written a blog in some time because we’ve been busy doing lots of fun things and have been away from t’internet. After visiting a cemetery in the Nazcan desert and seeing some anorexic looking people we travelled to Cuzco on a gruelling 15 hour endurance bus ride that I wouldn’t like to repeat again.

Cuzco was the centre of the Incan empire and the continents oldest continuously inhabited city, after the Spanish invasion it became a bit of a backwater but now it’s back and is known as the cultural capital of the Americas. One of the reasons we travelled to Cuzco was to see Peru’s biggest festival, Inti Raymi (festival of the sun). For Christy’s birthday we checked into a 400 year old hotel which was built by the conquistadors and enjoyed the festival in style. For 10 days before the festival the city is totally filled with parades and celebrations. It seems like everyone’s involved and the whole city parades about dressed in awesome costumes, dancing, playing music and having a great time – it was really nice to see everyone getting involved and the feeling of community spirit. It all comes to a head with the main celebration, the festival of the sun, which is attended by everyone and their dog. We got to see all the parades close up but the main festival was so busy we had to sit high up on a hill and watch from afar. Unfortunately some people in front of us on the hill stood up enraging everyone behind who, on encouragement from a stupid American, started throwing rocks to make the people sit down. Some of these started landing near us and some on our heads so we decided to run away before they got so hyped up the mob started to crucify people. I don’t think we missed that much as we couldn’t see very well from there and the parades in the city definitely had a better atmosphere to it anyway. The festival was a photographers dream and I got a bit carried away, here are some (lots) of the photos ....

Ok, no more I promise!!!