Part two
If you missed part one – here it is: Peru and the Amazon Jungle – An Adventure in Puerto Maldonado
We will be sleeping in an eco-lodge – bungalows arranged in a row in a park, with a lovely garden and a common building at the entrance of the settlement that serves as a dining area.
We are greeted by a sign with a grand name: eco-lodge „Amazon Paradise“.
The place has its own pier. It is not five-star luxury, but it is clean, tidy, welcoming, and maintained by extremely kind, smiling, and polite people.
We are arriving right for lunch. The dining room is huge. Outside, there is a wooden veranda with hammocks and a transparent water barrel. We will fill our bottles from there. There is nowhere to buy bottled water. There is no shop in the settlement.
The Amazon Paradise Ecolodge„
The „mageritsa“ itself is a large wooden room with a roof and no ceiling – the beams are visible. With screens. There is no glass anywhere on the windows. The world is direct. There are no partitions, rather they are transparent.
Different languages can be heard. There are Belgians with us. I didn't catch the others, but I will definitely remember them. (A young woman was constantly squealing and her boyfriend had to follow her around to chase away the insects...)
Regarding the endless screaming – our tour guide told us straight out: „You will not scream. I am on vacation here. Experienced guides will take care of you. You are safe if you follow the rules. Calmly say if there are any problems. There is no need to scream and disturb the peace. There are no barriers. Everything can be heard from one end of the settlement to the other.“.
The food is abundant and includes a first course, a main course, and a dessert.
„We are stuffing ourselves inhumanly. It is the general opinion that this is the most delicious food we have tasted so far. I am letting go and eating from everything, which will have consequences later...
I see two refrigerators. We are told that we must leave all the products we are carrying in them. We are not allowed to have any food in our rooms, because uninvited and unfamiliar guests of another kind will arrive, and if they smell it, they will rummage through, scatter, and tear apart all our belongings.
We follow the rules. None of us takes risks. We are a decent group.
We have about an hour before we head out on our first „hike.“ We will visit „Monkey Islands“, a few minutes by boat upstream.
In the Jungle – „Monkey Island“
We get out and step onto cracked earth – and we emerge from the water... A very strange landscape. They warn us: not a single step to the side. You have to walk only on the path. When you look at it, there is no way you could even step to the side, the vegetation is so dense...
We won't see monkeys, but we will wander along narrow paths through the jungle. The sun barely breaks through the foliage, and the plants reach out friendly toward the path.
We step over fallen branches and trees, pass by various grasses, bushes, and trees with trunks and leaves of all sizes. It is teeming with life: bird songs can be heard, insects are buzzing…
The place feels both emotionally energizing and physically draining to me. Part of me wants to stay here – in the green, in the life, in the warmth, yielding to the rhythm of the jungle, the sun, and the timelessness.
And immediately I think of another rhythm, somewhat forgotten: a particularly difficult moment for me back then, though when has it ever been easy for me—and not to return to the darkness of Sofia, subjected to the rule that you must constantly hurry, compete, and earn your daily bread.
Back to the boats and to the lodge, under the blazing sun.
Life by the Amazon
On the river we see a boat carrying a family. At the bow, a man dozes, leaning against piles of luggage. In the middle, a mother is changing and cleaning a baby, and at the stern, the captain is operating the engine. This fleeting encounter once again makes me think of how different life here is from everything back home.
Yes, it may seem strange to me, yes, it may seem to me that extreme poverty reigns. But what if people are actually happy with what they have? What if their mindset and values are different?
What if their goals are different? Perhaps their philosophy of non-being is entirely different from ours and my lens for viewing them is inapplicable? Perhaps for them happiness is something completely different from my value system?
With this thought, I am going to lunch. It is appetizing, even though I think that in this heat I won't be able to eat anything—and beautifully presented, but I already eat only rice—everything else I share with the men in the group. I see that others are doing the same. Apparently, not everyone finds the food to their taste. I resort to my deep reserves that I left in the fridge—rusks and plain biscuits. I immediately take measures with medication…
Well, something always has to happen in the end.
I think the digestive discomfort is from the water. The food, after all, was heat-treated and freshly prepared. But the water—I’ve been taught that in places like this, it gets BOILED, or goes through filtration systems, or it has to be bottled mineral water. And the one in the transparent jug... Now I'm just thinking about getting back to civilization.
One of the young men had signed up for a meeting with a local guru. He was supposed to drink herbal concoctions and cleanse himself… We didn't see him for two days. But at night, cleansed, he was at a meeting with the shaman and they were performing rituals there. They drank something again. He's keeping quiet. In my opinion, it was various hallucinogenic herbs, but who knows?! I shared almost all my food with him, because he was „starving“ from hunger. He let slip that he now looks at the world with different eyes.
Back to the lodge to refill on water and we head out for a night walk to spot caimans.
Night observation of caimans
One side of the boat never sees caimans. It is very important to manage to sit on the side that will see the amphibians. I am on the „right“ side. To make the reptiles show themselves, the guides turn on bright searchlights that illuminate the area. The eyes of the alligators glint... Some are lying along the banks and we disturb them with this light. They slowly and sluggishly head for the water. They are not big: about a meter. A meter and a bit. There are also white ones... Or they just seem that way from the searchlight.
What should I do first?! Film, watch, or make sure I don't plop into the water. I choose to watch.
I accidentally lift my head to the sky and gasp. As if a black abyss, bottomless, has covered me and brightly traced the Milky Way, stretching out over the jungle within arm's reach.
Unique! Now I understand why the Incas and pre-Inca peoples revered it so much and turned it into a cult. It is present everywhere. Well, yes – it is part of the nature surrounding them. Bright, luminous – pointing the right way. Quite different sights are above the traveler's head in this part of the world – the star map is unfamiliar.
Since not a single „star photo“ turned out – I'm compensating with a sunset on the boat.
Night in the eco lodge
Dinner at the lodge and off to bed. God, that Belgian woman hasn't stopped shrieking hysterically... Something's always bothering her, scaring her, and terrifying her.
We have hot water (surprise!), a giant cockroach – that's what we named it, some huge insect in the bathroom (roommate!) and electricity (super luxury!). Electricity here is like at a campsite – on a generator and available at certain hours: they turn it on for us in the evening to get ready for bed, and for an hour in the morning (which is more than all of us expected). We’ve been warned and are armed with headlamps and flashlights. But we’ve also been warned not to walk around the camp at night in the unlit area. Dim lamps flicker along the main paths...
The paths in the camp during the day:
From the camp, a path leads to the jungle.
The beds are draped with mosquito nets. I have lived for years in Asia and Africa and we have used mosquito nets, but I had never seen such a wonder.
Awful! Impregnated with all kinds of repellent smells.
Good lord, how am I going to get into bed and possibly sleep... I felt like I was going to suffocate from the smell. I decided to do my part – and generously sprayed the inside of the canopy, very carefully and securely tucked it under the mattress, because I know that even a miniature gap between the bed and it will cause me an attack by local insects.
The windows have been replaced with mosquito nets. There is still no ceiling – just beams, and they seem very sparse… Will they withstand the tropical rain? The bungalows themselves are elevated off the ground on stilts. A large, distinct room with two queen-size beds, nightstands, and a bathroom. Decent.
Aside from the mouse they saw scurrying across the dining room, there are various insects that are shyly trying to take over the bathroom...
We're doing well again because two people from the group are raising a tarantula in the hammock. It's full of ants of all sizes everywhere, and at night cicadas sing to us at the top of their lungs.
I am not afraid of insects, large animals, snakes, and lizards, but I am terrified of rats and mice... We are on their territory – we are intruding on them and trying to carve out comfort and territory for ourselves... But we follow their rules. We do not bother them, hoping for tolerance.
The only exception are the mosquitoes, against which I constantly spray myself with repellent. And strangely, as always, they are eating me. These ones are invisible, tiny, silent. But they attack in swarms. The bites itch very uncomfortably, but I have ointments for that too... Well, I didn't get vaccinated against yellow fever. But there was no doctor who would do it. Even with preparation against a potential reaction. Simply in my case, it shouldn't be done.
So God help me...
The tropical storm and the uninvited guests
We go to bed, exhausted by the heat, humidity, and emotions, and try to fall asleep. And suddenly everything goes quiet and a great tropical storm begins: rain, lightning, thunder... A downpour... Not what you'd expect with our roof. Nothing leaked, not even from the window openings... The rain raged for a few hours and somehow the air freshened up.
After the downpour, a fragile, brief silence followed. Then I felt someone's presence, and it didn't seem to be just one. A scampering began, climbing on window sills, beams – up and down... Jumping on the suitcases, the clothes, the chairs, the table...
I froze. I didn't dare make a sound. I closed my eyes, I didn't want to see them, whatever it was, and for the first time in my life, I didn't feel the curiosity to turn on the flashlight and see who was walking so familiarly around the room.
My heart was beating wildly… My roommate wasn't sleeping either, but neither of us made a sound. We kept a tense and terrified silence. The last thing I…
Suddenly, the wave of visitors left as unexpectedly as it had rushed in, and an ephemeral silence ensued.
None of us spoke…
Peace has fallen
Nature, as if more calmed by the rain and the slight chill, fell asleep, but at dawn a grand concert began.
The jungle was waking up to the new day, and discordant voices were heard first. Then a whirlwind of songs, screams, shouts hit me... It was as if everything that had a voice was shouting over the others.
There was no need for our mobile phones, set for 7 o'clock, to wake us up... We had 30 minutes to freshen up and quickly grab breakfast. Excited and encouraged by the daylight, we plunged into guesses about what had come to the midnight party in the bungalow?!
If they were rats, I didn't want to know... I would have swum across the river. I hope they were monkeys... But how did they get in? Our clothes and belongings were untouched. It's a good thing we hadn't brought any food in...
So, after a hearty breakfast—with an American pancake, corn cakes, and all kinds of fresh organic foods, washed down generously with juice and a feast of fruits—we head to the shelter where our guide is waiting for us. Today we are going into the jungle and Lake Sandoval.
End of part two.
There is a continuation…
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