Date of Entry: October 20th 2015
Date of Writing: November 14th Casa Blanca Hostal Potosi Bolivia
And so it comes to this, the last entry of my travels along side Sara. Sad days. Our fourth day at Yakari lodge we get the rare pleasure of sleeping past sunrise. It’s strange to wake up to full light and a delicious breakfast first thing, but not an unwelcome strangeness.
After a filling breakfast we climb on board the boat, just the five of us, Javier, Sara, Julia, and Ida, heading to a local farm just outside of the city of Puerto Maldonado, when we get there we find the tattooed teenage son of the farm owner, the farmer having gone to town, but no matter, our friendly tour guide Esther leads us through the blazing heat to see the vast variety of crops. From corn to Bananas, pineapples to Yuca they seem to grown just about everything.
The heat is gruelling though and even seeing a few young chickens, a kitten, and a dog passed out from the heat in what meagre shade he can find can’t stop me from focusing on the sweat. I’ve learned one thing, I’m not cut out to be a farmer.
Of course as i’m sitting by the water waiting to go back something appears that is both awesome and sad all at once, a scarlet macaw hoping along towards the others and watching us with curiosity. It’s a pet and it’s wings have been clipped, but it’s beautiful and seems pretty happy. We spend the next hour playing with it and photographing the thing, which quickly develops an obsession with eating Sara’s bag.
The longer we spend with the bird the more comfortable we grow around it and vice versa, eventually we retrieve some fruit from the ground and offer it up to the eager bird.
Eventually knowing it’s almost time to go, I offer up my arm to the bird and it hops right on, it’s somewhat sharp talons climbing up my arm and onto my shoulder where it promptly begins trying to eat my hat, somehow ripping off a metal clasp and enjoying a tasty metallic chew toy.
Eventually the boat arrives and we have to head back to the lodge for a tasty lunch followed by our first day time proper jungle walk, something I wish there was more of after my time at Tapiche Reserve.
The walk unfortunately is just in behind the lodge, an area which I’m sure many animals have learned to avoid due to the human population, stil it’s lots of fun to go traipsing through the jungle in a small group and I get a throwback to my time at Guacamayo Lodge in Cuyabeno National park back in Ecuador when Esther picks a jungle flower and lets us make some claws, which I later steal from Sara.
We don’t end up seeing much on the day walk, all the big animals knowing not to hang out so close to human habitaton, but we do see lots of fascinating jungle plants and some more insects, too quick and small to photograph.
Back at the lodge we’ve got some time to kill before dinner and we fill it in the best possible way, going to spend an extended visit with Martine, the adolescent capuchin monkey that the lodge has saved after his entire family was killed. Sadly he is kept in a cage most of the day, but he’s always happy to receive visitors, to gnaw on their hands and suspend himself from their arms, and drink from their water bottle caps. In short Martine is buckets of fun.
Eventually bidding goodbye to a hyper active Martin who they are hoping to re-release into the wild in the future we head to dinner after some hammock time and enjoy another high quality meal. (While the jungle aspect of this Amazon getaway has been mildly disappointing to my high standards the food and comfort levels have been stunningly high).
As the sun sinks slowly behind the canopy we wait for darkness before joining another boat excursion out into the darkness of the silent river, searching for caimans and whatever else might wait for us one last time.
It doesn’t take us too long, and soon enough the huge floodlight style flashlight is glowing with deep orange jewels, signalling caimans nearby. And this time I know how to use my new camera at night a little better.
We continue on from the caimans and spend a decent chunk of time without seeing anything but the orange glows in the distance. It starting to feel like we’ve seen all we’re going to see, when we stumble upon two more Capybara’s, one of whom is oddly sitting in the water, completely still, it’s back turned to us. Eventually it moves into shallower water and turns to give us a better angle for photos. It’s crazy to think these things are rodents, even the pictures can’t capture how huge they are.
All in awe of these calm and giant creatures we eventually leave them be, I mean the flashlights must be annoying, and head back to the lodge for our last night. We had been told we would be having activities on the morrow, but are now told that that is not the case and we will be leaving at 9 am unless we want to pay more. It’s upsetting to end our stay on a sour note as the lodge manager tries to tell us we paid for 5 days at the lodge but only two days of activities, which is definitely not true, but there’s little we can do so we head back the next morning and spend the next night in Puerto Maldonado until our flight back to Cusco the next day.
In Cusco we spend a day and a half relaxing and chilling before Sara has her flight up to Lima and our paths will separate. I’m pretty thrilled. Not that she’s leaving but that travelling with her has been a pleasure and without any major tensions, which, as anyone who has traveled knows, is not a safe assumption to make. Sara’s ben an excellent travel partner and as I write this is still enjoying herself up in Ecuador. Sara, if you ever want to come back and travel again, please do.
