Waiting the boat

Waiting for the boat to get from Yurimaguas to Iquitos was a bit of a nightmare. We had been told it was going to leave first thing in the morning so we packed up and went over to the port. It was raining heavily (sandals weren't the best choice of footwear for me, in the mud, no grip with my backpack on) at the port they were unloading wood from the boat. It looked like it could take a while.

We installed ourselves on deck with some jungle locals and started waiting, watching the rain and the river whilst we played cards sat on our backpacks.

The whole day past like this, after about three in the afternoon they told us we wouldn't be leaving today but tomorrow morning for sure. They hadn't stopped unloading and when they did they began loading up the boat with other produce. Great. This went on well into the night, we hung our hammocks and slept on the boat that night, hoping to be able to leave in the morning as promised.

When it finally was time to go we actually had to change boats, exactly the same kind of boat just that there were a lot more people. The bottom deck had row after row of hammocks and people's possessions neatly or not so neatly installed underneath. We even saw another pet monkey!

We positioned ourselves on the second deck. We were terrified of theft having heard horror stories from travellers and guide books alike about the likelihood of our stuff being taken. We had agreed that in any eventuality there would be someone stood with the bags and at night time we padlocked everything up.

I was getting frustrated with the waiting and didn't believe that we were ever actually going to leave. When we did the relief was enormous - but we now had to spend three days on a boat with not much to do but sit in our hammocks, or stand on deck and watch endless trees and river go by....

The never ending loading/unloading area that you can't see very well because it's dark

Amazing colours in the sky at dusk

Jungle Life

In Yurimaguags we had the chance to chill out a bit, catch up with a few things and try and work out how and where to catch the boat from. It seems that this far into the jungle everything operates on word of mouth. There was a vague timetable but it was subject to change and people just had to wait. Catching the boat was more of a challenge than you can ever imagine. I began to think that the boat was just a myth and we were going to be stuck in the jungle forever.

It was pleasant being in the jungle but it definitely attracts some strange people. We shared the hostel communal area with some slightly crazy geordies. They were a totally unique breed of South American traveller, I had not come across anyone else like them. They were really on their own trip, they weren't in Peru to just to the normal gringo route.

The balmy, starry nights we sat up and talked or did yoga on the balcony. If I was more of a hippy I probably would have just stayed there for several months feeling zen with the river running by the stars burning bright in the sky. They were exceptional with the lack of light pollution, what we saw was incredible. We were asking ourselves if we were back in the northern hemisphere or not. I found the plough, clearly we were.

Walking around the small but surprisingly sprawling town was an endurance adventure in surviving heat. It was like an oven, the humidity was so high it was difficult to avoid looking like red and sweaty tourist among all the locals who seemed to be coping with the heat just fine.

Stray dogs, stay cats, chickens scratching around in the dirt. The usual South American street scenes. The market and the aftermath of the market was the most remarkable bit about Yurimaguas. The streets were filled with fruit, vegetable stalls mixed in with fish for sale, meat, the works. It STANK. I had to hold my breath and resist the urge to vomit. It was endless and filthy - terrifying to think what British hygiene standards would think about it. In the road and in the mud, the market stool holders were sitting gutting fish or butchering meat. It was a real overload for the senses - nasal and visual, which left me happy to have been bought up in the desensitised supermarket society I live in. When all this packed up, bits of meat, fruit, bones and god knows what were left to decay in the dirt of the street. The smell was more than pungent. Wearing flip-flops was slightly off putting, paranoid I was going to contract some sort of disease through and unknown cut on one of my toes.

Otherwise the stalls were hung with hammocks, the only tale tale sign that we would actually be able to get out of this place on a boat. The hammocks were pretty ugly - they looked like carpets, strange, dated colours you see in old people's houses. Grainy textiles and images like dears - why on the Peruvian Amazon do they sell hammocks with dear images on? Bizarre. More than bizarre. I managed to buy a usable Brazilian hammock but my friend decided on the dear number claiming that it would be a good souvenir to take back home.

Much happier to take mine home and use it, still being a souvenir, not being quite as authentically 'amazon' if dear hammocks really, genuinely are authentically amazon. Would love to know how it came to be that they started making or buying uniquely 1970's granny decor inspired material to make amazonian hammocks. Briliiant. Or maybe some things are best left a mystery....

To Yurimaguas

After only one night in Tarapoto we went to Yurimaguas where the boat leaves for Iquitos. A very cool jungle road journey accompanied by some amazing music by a band I wish I'd noted the name off. Idiot. Winding jungle roads, heat, happiness.

Extracting the correct information from people in the jungle is challenging and rather frustrating. When we arrived a particularly annoying taxi driver noticed that we were foreign - not exactly a difficult observation to make. He tried to grab my backpack which instantly annoyed me. I can MANAGE! And it's my stuff! We wanted to time sort ourselves out and collect our thoughts, come up with an action plan. He was intrusive, forcing his business on us, it was uncomfortable and none of us liked it. We decide to not use him, in my opinion he looked a bit high, there was something not right about him. However, when we tried to use the other taxi driver parked outside, it became clear that there was a queuing system and we were obliged to use the weirdo. We had no choice.

Our suspicions were correct, he was a liar, he took us to the port and gave us false information about the boat, then tried to take us to somewhere outside the market where we could get 'cheap' hammocks - a friend of his clearly. I felt thoroughly frustrated with him, he was totally taking advantage of the fact we were foreign, foreign but not stupid and I speak Spanish and apart from that most people know when they are being taken for a fool. I got him to take us to the market to drop us off and stop trying to fleece us. Shamelessly he tried to get us to a hostel - for pretty much three times the price of what we ended up paying - saying that we wouldn't find anywhere cheaper that was decent and secure.

Seamlessly moving from the misfortune of that arsehole to the fortune of meeting a really nice and helpful guy in the market eating watermelon who took us to a riverside backpacker haven for just 15 soles a night. It was pure bliss, so relaxing watching the river run by, sitting in a hammock on the balcony watching birds and butterflies pass by and listening to the children play in the water. Perfect.

The river as seen from our balcony at the hostel

Cool clouds!

The church in town

Chicha advertising and typography - sooo peruvian!

Type geek moment - hand painted signs

Construction

Sunset clouds

Amazing colour sky, the photo doesn't do it justice

A very colonial looking building with a corrugated iron roof, love the contrast

Amazon boats

JUNGLE FEVER

I didn't really think it through properly. Some friends I'd been travelling with were heading to the Peruvian Amazon, they wanted to see Iquitos as it is the largest city in the world with no road access. A city in the middle of the jungle? A city? I couldn't imagine what it would be like, all pictures and guide books painted rather exotic pictures, I wondered what the reality was like. I tagged along for the experience. One of my Peruvian friend's in Lima told me I was crazy - even she would find a trip like that hard to deal with. Peru is an amazingly big and amazingly diverse country. It's difficult to make comparisons, it's not like not knowing what Scotland is like if you live in the South of England, or even finding Greece exotic, it's more like travelling back in time and space even (given that the geography is so different). It's mind blowing that Cusco, Iquitos and Lima are all cities in the same country when they are mark more change in identity and way of life from one another than most European capitals, but this is the reality of South America.

I booked my flight with in 48 hours of take-off. Yes, we flew. Yes, I did feel like a cop out but it was because of time issues. Also, flying within Peru is only marginally more expensive than buses and if we had taken the bus we would have stopped a night or two so it actually worked out cheaper. We took to the skies and arrived in Tarapoto where we would make our way though the jungle to Iquitos.

I was sad to leave Lima, I would happily up sticks and live there for any amount of time, it's a cool city. My final night there consisted of more drinks and kisses with the card game expert, followed by more drunken walking around Miraflores. I had to once again sneak back into my hostel late and drunk, falling over to climb into my bunk, failing in the process to get undressed. Classy.

We woke up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport only to find out that we were badly delayed thanks to terrible weather over the zone we were flying to. I should say at this point that other backpackers had actively discouraged us from embarking on this section of the trip since the Amazon was so badly flooded, seeing the worst flooding in forty years, with rivers at the highest levels they've seen in generations. Undeterred, but armed with anti-malaria pills we went anyway. Not a trip I would have done alone though.

I passed out in a miserable exhausted, abused heap at the airport on a very uncomfortable lounge bench. Time for a bit of a detox in the jungle I think. Heathy eating and no more alcohol! It was fun to be at an airport with friends such are my lonesome, solo travel tendencies. I was surprisingly excited and happy to share the mundane check in, go through security and wait in a lounge process with friends.

The contrast of going from Lima, a dry and hazy city, full of buildings, parks, restaurants and shops to the hot and humid jungle town was remarkable. It was such a short flight but we were in such a different environment. In stead of cars there were tuk-tuk like motor-taxis everywhere. It was so green all around. All the buildings were a bit more make-shift, corrugated iron roofs, dusty, pot-holed, tarmacked streets. And it was hot. All the llama printed stuff bought a couple of weeks ago in Bolivia and Cusco is just taking up an annoying amount of space in my backpack now!

The Spanish! They made it to the jungle too!

Palm trees and motorbikes dominate the visual environment here

We got our bearings in Tarapoto and had a really cheap and tasty meal, thought about going out but decided television was better. We saw a man with a pet monkey wearing a dress and holding his hand in the main square as we walked home! Welcome to the jungle! Life here, I can tell is going to be pretty different from the norm....

Rock n' Roll

So I confess, I spent more than a week in Lima and I wasn't my most productive, vague, nebulous ideas of trying to get a volunteering post involving the textile trade or Art were dreamt up along my many to-ings and fro-ings around Miraflores to my hostel, to parks, cafes, friends hostels, cinemas and tourist sights.

It was pleasant, but when night fell we would end up drinking too many Pisco Sours, Cusquenas, Vodkas. One particularly ambient night in a very classy hostel bar we started a game of cards. Unwittingly I was playing the dumb blonde and losing, seeking advice from the stranger next to me who had joined in. He bought me some drinks, we got talking and suddenly we were kissing in the toilets. I know I wasn't the one who engineered this situation, but apparently I offered no resistance either. Exceptional class, I don't know if this little trip isn't a homage to youth and freedom, as if it's my last chance to do silly things like this before I go back home and become a real adult with real responsibilities. The thing is - I've managed to avoid this teenage right of passage thus far and had the fortune of always making it home with the guy at the end of the night to have some proper privacy. Hostel dorm rooms don't exactly lend themselves to romantic hook-ups. Needless to say, the party hostels with bars are just asking for trouble and teenage kicks. I think everyone has a hostel sex story, they got lucky and had sex in a hostel or they feel foul of this wheel of fortune and happened to be sharing a dorm room where a couple where getting it on. Such is life.

I got carried away with the vodka and this seemingly nice gentleman who had been helping not lose at cards and buying me drinks. We got it on in the toilets. Fortunately they were spotlessly clean, I assure you. And we saved other tired and weary backpackers in need of a calm night's sleep from having to share our drunk moment of stolen intimacy. Unfortunately, the militant night-shift receptionist had clocked us and I got embarrassingly clapped around the ear, told off, and thrown out of the hostel (I wasn't a paying over-night guest, just a paying bar guest). Given an angry dressing down in front of sniggering bar staff and backpackers alike. We left together and found so very strong cocktails, had to soak them up with some chips and stumble back to our respective hostels.

I recounted the incident to my flatmate back in London - rock n' roll! Was her response.

The Olive Grove Park

Reunited with some travel friends from Cusco who had the dollar enough to do the NASCA LINES we walked along the Avenida Conquistadores to get the this park and to see some Peruvian designers clothing shops along the way - I was keen to see what was on offer, I like clothes and I was interested to see the non-llama printed, knitted take on Peruvian fashion.

The form of olive trees is so beautiful, twisted, knotted, slanting and so old, I find them enchanting, like they hold a lot of secrets. They are so intrinsically mediterranean in my mind, it seems like the strangest colonial hangover that you can find a park like this in the middle of Lima.

Musings

I feel like all the best things I see on my travels, all of my finest musings happen when I don't have either when I don't have my camera or my laptop or some paper. Back in the city groove, I went for a dusk, night run one evening. I love running at dusk, the light is so beautiful, you get to be out in the fresh, cool air as the blue deepens and deepens until it loses all its glow and all of a sudden it's dark. I felt like I flew through the streets giving on to the steep coast. High rise, premium sea front apartments, a grassy park with dog walkers, sauntering lovers, skateboarders, other joggers. As I ran I was picking my way through, flowing my nose - always the best way, until you get hopelessly lost which can often happen when your inner compass is quite as out of whack as mine. I went past all sorts of cool stuff little bars, a bodega with very cool, old typography and some quite strange artefacts inside other than just bottles of booze. A very nice looking restaurant that would be a great place for a romantic meal, I can but dream...

Lima has loads of cool stuff for people who are happy to saunter and take it in, for the more adventurous, I'm sure that the other barrios have a lot to offer for those keen to explore.

Lima