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....