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lonelybritHave successfully survived my first trip to the Amazon rainforest, spending a few days close to the banks of the Tambopata river. Definitely a trip I'd recommend to one and all.
The first day involved meeting the other members of the group, who turned out to be two perfectly pleasant if rather dispirited Republicans ("Let's just say we voted for the wrong guy.") and also getting introduced to our guide. The lodge was a 2-3 hour boat trip upstream, during which we saw clouds of butterflies on the patches of clay along the banks, and, the highlight, a family of capybara AKA the world's biggest guinea-pigs: two adults, one heavily pregnant, and two young ones who kept on running down to the shoreline to wriggle their ears and noses at the passing boat.
There was no electricity at the lodge, at least for guests, and so each day began at dawn (5am) and closed at sundown (with most folks abed by 8pm at the latest). There is something very romantic and calming about having to go about your business by candlelight and the lodge was gorgeous in the evening when lit up by hundreds of glass kerosene lamps along every available surface.
Anyway, the first evening we opted out of the night-time river trip searching for white caimen on account of the rest of the group already being knackered from a 4am start. During the next day, however, I caught up with the group who did go out. Theirs was a fun tale. It seemed they had successfully found a caiman minding its own business in the water chewing down on a watersnake. The boat pulled alongside it and the guide deftly scooped the creature up and then-
"EVERYONE GET YOUR LEGS UP!"
Yes, the guide had dropped said caiman into the bottom of the boat. Said boat is a kind of motorised dug-out, and very very sensitive to balance, even standing up can cause you to nearly capsize. Consequently there was much fun and excitment as everyone attempted to get their feet out of harm's way and let the rampaging caiman and persuing guide pass without ditching everyone into the silty waters. The caiman was successfully recaptured (apparently they are very, very strong) and I was shown the resulting photos. This is admittedly the other group's tale, not mine, but keep it in mind, it does have a final small part to play shortly.
The first proper day kicked off with a leisurely 5am start in order to make our way to a 'canopy tower', which takes you above tree level so you can spy on the bird population. Watching dawn break over the forest is definitely something to be remembered. The local wasps and bees greatly enjoyed our company and we greatly enjoyed seeing scarlet macaws and various toucans along with many parrots and parakeets. On the way back we stopped by some frankly awesome brazil nut trees and had the brazil nut harvesting process explained to us.
The trip before lunch was a short hike to a clay lick sometimes visited by wild pigs. We didn't of course see any pigs in the event, although we did hear them on the way back, but there were lots of butterflies of various shapes and sizes that inspected our insect repellent from time to time. The real star of the show turned out to be in the blind itself. We arrived to find a small fruitbat roosting on one of the beams. Adorable creature who watched us with a bemused air, its ears actually rippling every time one of our raincoats rustled. Quite extraordinary.
The other 'highlight' of the blind was the giant beige spider our guide found on one of the benches. He carefully put the bench against the far wall and let us all take pictures, pointing out the yellow underbelly and the red fangs. After which he picked up a metal fold-up stool and prepared to flatten it.
When asked why he was attempting to kill the local wildlife, he casually pointed out "Well it is a Wandering spider. It's more than fifteen times more deadly than a Black Widow. Can someone hold the bench still?"
Since both americans had promptly shrunk back against the wall the job of holding the bench firm fell to yours truly, and the guide duly went at the spider with the chair. Of course he missed and the spider flew past my foot to hide by the ladder before, sadly, it did indeed come to a squishy end. Poor spider.
I have to say, with the greatest possible respect, that my group was not the chattiest that day, talk about trying to keep conversation going. The two Republicans were obviously still trying to reconcile themselves to the recent election, and our guide was very withdrawn, keeping himself to himself and only speaking to provide information on our surroundings.
The afternoon rounded off with a trip to a local farm where we saw yet more birds and got to try various types of indiginous fruit, one of which I can't remember the name of but tasted like those super!sour sweets you can get and was actually quite refreshing in the heat. On the way back we found one of the boat drivers feeding his semi-adopted capybara AKA 'Ron'. Ron had wandered onto camp one day heavily injured, and the driver had left green leaves out for him. Eventually Ron healed but a bond had been formed between rodent and driver, and thus we were able to stand mere milimetres away from this gorgeous capybara who would look up at you, chewing away on his leaves and occasionally twitching an ear to get rid of a fly. At one point Ron actually stepped onto the ramp to the boat, narrowly avoiding treading on a disembarking tourist who nearly turfed themselves into the water to get out of his way, in an attempt to get a leaf that had fallen on the far side. All in all, a brilliant trip, although by that point it wasn't with our designated guide, for some reason we were temporarily tagged onto a different group.
That evening it was the communal dinner. The lodge has the custom that you sit in your groups with your guide, and as expected conversation was a hard thing to keep going. Our guide sat there, quietly keeping his attention on the arroz, but at least the americans were starting to loosen up and chat about themselves and the day so far. Our postponed caiman-hunting trip was scheduled for the same evening, and the tale of the previous group's experience came up. We made the joke to the guide of "Well, yes, we're looking forward to it, but please don't drop a caimon on us like the other guide did!"
At which point our guide went even quieter if possible, gave a wry smile, before admitting "Ah yes... That was actually me. It was my first time catching a caiman. And it bit me."
We were duly shown the injured hand which was looking quite red and swollen, and our guide finally became a bit more animated, helpfully pointing out which tooth from which part of the jaw had made which puncture wound. Ouch.
In any case, we did get our caiman-hunting trip, and we did indeed get to see a caiman. Beautiful beautiful creatures. A second guide hoiked one aboard for us to look at and up-close these creatures are stunning with very strong, thick tails and fantastic colouring.
The second and final day involved a painful 3.30am start to visit the clay lick visited by parrots and macaws. Again, stunning creatures to look at with all the colours you can imagine on their wings and tails, although the most memorable thing was the noise, you could hear them calling out way before you reached the blind. By the end, I could actually tell the difference between the call of the scarlet and the blue macaws, yes, fear my awesome birdwatching skilz.
The final trip of the final day was another hike, this time to a lake. We got to relax in a boat whilst the guide quietly paddled us about, pointing out yet more wildlife, and then taking us on another walk on the far side to see the most enormous trees I have ever seen before in my life. The bark of one was like elephant skin and I saw the base was as big as a small house. Another star of the walk was a strangling vine which had wrapped itself around a giant tree and killed it, so now all that remained was this eery hollow shell. You could actually walk inside this giant 'trunk' and look up all the way to the canopy roof. Amazing.
The return to the lodge doubled as a Night Walk and I got to see various tree frogs and frogs and even the odd toad. The tree frogs are my favourite simply because of their little padded toes and their bubble-like black eyes.
And that was that. The following morning saw us back in the boats and heading back to Puerto Maldonaldo for our various flights. Which were of course doomed. The plane couldn't land at Cuzco due to 'too much rain', though I can't complain as we were rattling around like anything before the pilot pulled up. In the end we wound up with an unscheduled stopover at Arequipa of over 4 hours and watching an unbelievable sunset over the volcanic mountains.
All in all, could have been a lot worse :)
Anyway, that's pretty much it now for my planned excursions into Peru. Next stop should be with the family and I'm not sure what they'll be wanting to do.
Of course, I took full advantage of my brief reunion with full internet access to catch up with Merlin. Ah Merlin. I've said in the past, and I to some extent stick to it, that one reason I like this show is that it's fun, light-hearted, and, very importantly, doesn't take itself too seriously, there is no supposedly 'deep' angst. What happened this week, as I suspected it might, was that you became accutely aware of what really great actors can do with even a nice, light script. ASH, McGrath and Morgan were fantastic this ep, which in their hands became, for me, one of the darkest and most interesting eps of the series so far. I never thought I'd be able to do meta for this show, and I'm not going to start just now as I'm knackered, but oh there is so much meta to be had out of this ep for all their characters. For now I will simply re-iterate something I said previously after the last ep.
So. Merlin. Very nice guy. Lovely guy. Can be utterly adork/adorable.
That is until you threaten Arthur.
Last week he was surprisingly ruthless about gunning down the two faries, and this week, although he did angst about it, let it not be overlooked that he was actually quite prepared to let an 'innocent child' die if it meant keeping Arthur safe. Had it not been for the last-ditch guilt trip via telepathy, Mordred would have been a goner. Ouch.
The first day involved meeting the other members of the group, who turned out to be two perfectly pleasant if rather dispirited Republicans ("Let's just say we voted for the wrong guy.") and also getting introduced to our guide. The lodge was a 2-3 hour boat trip upstream, during which we saw clouds of butterflies on the patches of clay along the banks, and, the highlight, a family of capybara AKA the world's biggest guinea-pigs: two adults, one heavily pregnant, and two young ones who kept on running down to the shoreline to wriggle their ears and noses at the passing boat.
There was no electricity at the lodge, at least for guests, and so each day began at dawn (5am) and closed at sundown (with most folks abed by 8pm at the latest). There is something very romantic and calming about having to go about your business by candlelight and the lodge was gorgeous in the evening when lit up by hundreds of glass kerosene lamps along every available surface.
Anyway, the first evening we opted out of the night-time river trip searching for white caimen on account of the rest of the group already being knackered from a 4am start. During the next day, however, I caught up with the group who did go out. Theirs was a fun tale. It seemed they had successfully found a caiman minding its own business in the water chewing down on a watersnake. The boat pulled alongside it and the guide deftly scooped the creature up and then-
"EVERYONE GET YOUR LEGS UP!"
Yes, the guide had dropped said caiman into the bottom of the boat. Said boat is a kind of motorised dug-out, and very very sensitive to balance, even standing up can cause you to nearly capsize. Consequently there was much fun and excitment as everyone attempted to get their feet out of harm's way and let the rampaging caiman and persuing guide pass without ditching everyone into the silty waters. The caiman was successfully recaptured (apparently they are very, very strong) and I was shown the resulting photos. This is admittedly the other group's tale, not mine, but keep it in mind, it does have a final small part to play shortly.
The first proper day kicked off with a leisurely 5am start in order to make our way to a 'canopy tower', which takes you above tree level so you can spy on the bird population. Watching dawn break over the forest is definitely something to be remembered. The local wasps and bees greatly enjoyed our company and we greatly enjoyed seeing scarlet macaws and various toucans along with many parrots and parakeets. On the way back we stopped by some frankly awesome brazil nut trees and had the brazil nut harvesting process explained to us.
The trip before lunch was a short hike to a clay lick sometimes visited by wild pigs. We didn't of course see any pigs in the event, although we did hear them on the way back, but there were lots of butterflies of various shapes and sizes that inspected our insect repellent from time to time. The real star of the show turned out to be in the blind itself. We arrived to find a small fruitbat roosting on one of the beams. Adorable creature who watched us with a bemused air, its ears actually rippling every time one of our raincoats rustled. Quite extraordinary.
The other 'highlight' of the blind was the giant beige spider our guide found on one of the benches. He carefully put the bench against the far wall and let us all take pictures, pointing out the yellow underbelly and the red fangs. After which he picked up a metal fold-up stool and prepared to flatten it.
When asked why he was attempting to kill the local wildlife, he casually pointed out "Well it is a Wandering spider. It's more than fifteen times more deadly than a Black Widow. Can someone hold the bench still?"
Since both americans had promptly shrunk back against the wall the job of holding the bench firm fell to yours truly, and the guide duly went at the spider with the chair. Of course he missed and the spider flew past my foot to hide by the ladder before, sadly, it did indeed come to a squishy end. Poor spider.
I have to say, with the greatest possible respect, that my group was not the chattiest that day, talk about trying to keep conversation going. The two Republicans were obviously still trying to reconcile themselves to the recent election, and our guide was very withdrawn, keeping himself to himself and only speaking to provide information on our surroundings.
The afternoon rounded off with a trip to a local farm where we saw yet more birds and got to try various types of indiginous fruit, one of which I can't remember the name of but tasted like those super!sour sweets you can get and was actually quite refreshing in the heat. On the way back we found one of the boat drivers feeding his semi-adopted capybara AKA 'Ron'. Ron had wandered onto camp one day heavily injured, and the driver had left green leaves out for him. Eventually Ron healed but a bond had been formed between rodent and driver, and thus we were able to stand mere milimetres away from this gorgeous capybara who would look up at you, chewing away on his leaves and occasionally twitching an ear to get rid of a fly. At one point Ron actually stepped onto the ramp to the boat, narrowly avoiding treading on a disembarking tourist who nearly turfed themselves into the water to get out of his way, in an attempt to get a leaf that had fallen on the far side. All in all, a brilliant trip, although by that point it wasn't with our designated guide, for some reason we were temporarily tagged onto a different group.
That evening it was the communal dinner. The lodge has the custom that you sit in your groups with your guide, and as expected conversation was a hard thing to keep going. Our guide sat there, quietly keeping his attention on the arroz, but at least the americans were starting to loosen up and chat about themselves and the day so far. Our postponed caiman-hunting trip was scheduled for the same evening, and the tale of the previous group's experience came up. We made the joke to the guide of "Well, yes, we're looking forward to it, but please don't drop a caimon on us like the other guide did!"
At which point our guide went even quieter if possible, gave a wry smile, before admitting "Ah yes... That was actually me. It was my first time catching a caiman. And it bit me."
We were duly shown the injured hand which was looking quite red and swollen, and our guide finally became a bit more animated, helpfully pointing out which tooth from which part of the jaw had made which puncture wound. Ouch.
In any case, we did get our caiman-hunting trip, and we did indeed get to see a caiman. Beautiful beautiful creatures. A second guide hoiked one aboard for us to look at and up-close these creatures are stunning with very strong, thick tails and fantastic colouring.
The second and final day involved a painful 3.30am start to visit the clay lick visited by parrots and macaws. Again, stunning creatures to look at with all the colours you can imagine on their wings and tails, although the most memorable thing was the noise, you could hear them calling out way before you reached the blind. By the end, I could actually tell the difference between the call of the scarlet and the blue macaws, yes, fear my awesome birdwatching skilz.
The final trip of the final day was another hike, this time to a lake. We got to relax in a boat whilst the guide quietly paddled us about, pointing out yet more wildlife, and then taking us on another walk on the far side to see the most enormous trees I have ever seen before in my life. The bark of one was like elephant skin and I saw the base was as big as a small house. Another star of the walk was a strangling vine which had wrapped itself around a giant tree and killed it, so now all that remained was this eery hollow shell. You could actually walk inside this giant 'trunk' and look up all the way to the canopy roof. Amazing.
The return to the lodge doubled as a Night Walk and I got to see various tree frogs and frogs and even the odd toad. The tree frogs are my favourite simply because of their little padded toes and their bubble-like black eyes.
And that was that. The following morning saw us back in the boats and heading back to Puerto Maldonaldo for our various flights. Which were of course doomed. The plane couldn't land at Cuzco due to 'too much rain', though I can't complain as we were rattling around like anything before the pilot pulled up. In the end we wound up with an unscheduled stopover at Arequipa of over 4 hours and watching an unbelievable sunset over the volcanic mountains.
All in all, could have been a lot worse :)
Anyway, that's pretty much it now for my planned excursions into Peru. Next stop should be with the family and I'm not sure what they'll be wanting to do.
Of course, I took full advantage of my brief reunion with full internet access to catch up with Merlin. Ah Merlin. I've said in the past, and I to some extent stick to it, that one reason I like this show is that it's fun, light-hearted, and, very importantly, doesn't take itself too seriously, there is no supposedly 'deep' angst. What happened this week, as I suspected it might, was that you became accutely aware of what really great actors can do with even a nice, light script. ASH, McGrath and Morgan were fantastic this ep, which in their hands became, for me, one of the darkest and most interesting eps of the series so far. I never thought I'd be able to do meta for this show, and I'm not going to start just now as I'm knackered, but oh there is so much meta to be had out of this ep for all their characters. For now I will simply re-iterate something I said previously after the last ep.
So. Merlin. Very nice guy. Lovely guy. Can be utterly adork/adorable.
That is until you threaten Arthur.
Last week he was surprisingly ruthless about gunning down the two faries, and this week, although he did angst about it, let it not be overlooked that he was actually quite prepared to let an 'innocent child' die if it meant keeping Arthur safe. Had it not been for the last-ditch guilt trip via telepathy, Mordred would have been a goner. Ouch.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 11:12 pm (UTC)That's exactly what I was thinking. Though, then with my slash goggles fully on I was thinking, the fall-out from Merlin not being there Arthur at the grate might have been very great indeed... Perhaps Merlin didn't believe in the dragon quite enough to risk his bond with Arthur just yet (in addition to the telepathy guilt).
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 11:37 pm (UTC)Have fun with the family wherever you end up ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 09:55 pm (UTC)I only have an old-fashioned film camera, but possibly the people I was with will email some pics they took when they get back, in which case, yes!, there shall be pictures! :)
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 09:58 am (UTC)Glad you're having such a good time and hope the meeting with the family goes well. See you when you get back!!!
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 09:57 pm (UTC)Thank you! Am already looking forward to Hub 2 and catching up again with you all!