The Peru amazon trip was located at the Sandoval Lake Lodge, but we needed to get there first... Let me explain this journey and I will leave to you whether it sounds like the movie planes, trains and automobiles.
We arrived at Puerto Maldonado, eager and ready for our amazon adventure. Our 'transfer guide' looked somewhat confused when he first met us, but we couldn't figure out why! Finally he started to dissect the issue slowly, beginning with 'is that what you are going to be wearing?' and 'did you bring welly boots?' and 'do you know where we are going?'
When he saw that we are what we are, we are wearing slacks and shoes and clearly did not bring rain boots, he disapprovingly shook his head- 'oh that's not good' he progressed.
We were now getting a little worried, how ill prepared were we???!
He look out of the window on our way to the main office where we would drop off our luggage and take only the bare essentials... 'it looks like rain' he says.
Being londoners we felt confident, we knew rain- in fact we are experts with rain. Ahh how wrong we were.
After separating out our luggage to a 10kg wet bag in the 'open' office, we started to notice rain... not just rain, I mean flooding in my little welly boots and thinking I need a life vest rain. It was pouring was a gross understatement! Mario, the transfer guide(at this point we still didn't know why we needed one -yet) mentioned I hope you brought rain ponchos- and this we did indeed pack!!!!
We gathered our stuff in the 15 minute window allotted to us and we were relieved to find a fashionable array of jungle rain boots for our picking!! I chose a fetching pair of forest green ones and i was ready.
Our 10kg wet bags were now stored in a separate rubbish bag. We were still clueless!
Mario takes us to our motor boat, which was a long thin canoe with a motor at one end... We stagger on to the boat in the pouring rain, very wobbly and realized the boat is leaking water in--- we had better get going quickly I suppose.
We put in our oversize life vests an start wondering why we came! The boat started down the amazon tipping and swaying with the rain and high winds. The top of the boat was just a few inches from the water and I couldn't see much for the rain coming at us, the boat also was tipping to one side heavily and that was what the driver wanted....
It made me feel a little nervous that we were at an angle and going at speed, but not so much until Mario casually mentions that the river is infested with cayman, anacondas and piranas!!!
Arghhhhh!
After our 50 minutes of sheer terror, we think we must be there. Nope.
Mario then tells us we have to hike for a couple km's-- and now the rain really starts to fall!
We are ready, backpacks, wellies, skin oozing with ultrathon, rain ponchos...
We head out and realize very quickly this was going to be one heck of a hike! Mario mentioned it could be a bit muddy, as we approached we realized what an understatement that was. We trudged through mud, slipping and sliding- sometimes, shin deep- encountering trees we shouldn't touch and trees we death spikes from the bark and trunk and not to mention the spiders along the way!!
2kms felt like 10 and Mario said we
must complete in 40 mins- we took 50 mins and he seemed like he lost a race with himself! Through this crazy hike I kept calling out to Mario to slow down while we found our feet while sliding through the mud, surely the transfer guide by trade should try and assist in the actual transfer!??
He sped on ahead without a thought... he was obviously looking to beat his previous dry land record!
Finally we arrive to another dock with another canoe, but no motor this time. Ah we are in the national park- gotcha!
The next leg was to paddle the boat across the lake, 40 mins, no roof and sudden exhaustion was felt by us as we were slowly drowning in our canoe.
As we started to think about our last thoughts before we leave this earth, the boat docks up and after a final short hike we arrive at our lodge!
Ahh life in the jungle, there is nothing quite like it!
:o)
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