EC-Rider Travels

Early flight from Lima to Puerto Maldonado between which the temperature rose by 20 degrees and the humidity by about 100%. Came out of the tiny, dusty airport with lots of other travellers who were all being met by their ‘representative’ but not mine! Kept quite calm as I knew my Spanish lessons would not let me down …. when along came Denys full of apologies for being held up. He introduced me to others coming to the Posada Amazonas – Veronica and Ray from Bournemouth, Scot and Cindy from Tampa Florida and Geraldine and Justin from Dublin – now my very best friends. We headed off in a rickety mini-bus to the ‘office’ – an open shed about ten minutes away – where we were to reduce our luggage to the minimum and leave our worldly goods in the open ‘office’ for four days.

We then drove for about an hour along incredibly dusty dirt tracks through villages of extraordinary poverty and unsophistication. Chaotic electricity cables going nowhere, communal leaking water butts a few shops selling very little except rather smart garden tools – which don’t seem to be used much! Denys proudly told me of all the fruits they grow – papaya, pineapple, avocado, pawpaw, bananas etc and sell at the market further up river, but it is all very haphazard with no structure to the holdings. They are about to have local elections, so posters everywhere – quite a lot printed with ‘villain’ across them! – but they appear to be of little interest to the electorate as they beleive the election is rigged anyway.

We then met Edwin and his beautiful long-boat and headed up stream for about an hour, eating a delicious lunch of rice and I am not quite sure what, tied up in a giant leaf acting as both cling-film and plate. En route we saw a family of capybara (like giant Guinea pig – largest living rodent) basking on the river bank and some beautiful red and green macaws on a clay lick. The birds are huge (up to 2m in length) and quite magnificent. We were deposited on the river bank at the bottom of a ladder of steps and walked for about fifteen minutes until we reached the lodge.

Posado Amazonas is an eco-lodge, comfortable but simple with electricity for just a few hours a day, hot water sometimes, no paper down the loos etc. 80% of the staff come from the local community and look after us beautifully. The food is simple but good and the pisco-sours sensational. The rooms are large with two beds, which the others say is a god-send as you certainly would not want anyone else in your bed in this heat and humidity! There are just the three walls, with the third being directly into the jungle, but despite the constant sound of animals and birds moving around outside, which is very, very dark, it is surprisingly un-scary. There is a pretty robust mosquito-net over the beds which prevented someone (I am told most likely a frog – felt more like an elephant) jumping on my bed last night.

Denys’s English is limited and he admitted to me that he had not in fact ever been to Posado before so we set out to discover it together. We climbed their 42m tower to watch the sunset which was completely stunning with some howler monkeys obligingly tucking up for the night in a tree straight in front of us. You cannot imagine the noise these not very large red monkeys make – it is not a howl but a growl and almost sounds like motorway traffic but indescribably loud. We saw squirrel monkeys, capuchin monkeys, dusky titi monkeys and were lucky to spot a juvenile tayra. A few frogs, quite large spiders and scorpions on the way home in the dark. We managed to take a wrong turn and got just a little bit lost which was marginally nerve wracking but luckily I am safely back to tell the tale.

Dinner was at seven, after one of Victor (the apprentice barman’s) pisco sours – rather to the amazement of my new friends! – it was delicious and supper not so bad either. Early bed as it is a 4am start tomorrow!