EC-Rider Travels

I am thinking about you all so much today, such a sad day and it seems very strange not to be sharing it with you. I have managed to catch a little of the coverage on IPlayer – my goodness we do these things well, so proud of my Godson Tom and indeed to be British – but it all seems a long way a very way from here.

Meanwhile, I have spent most of the day on a boat., leaving Posado Amazonas at 8.30 and arriving at Tambopata Research Centre at 4.30! It was quite a journey…. The good news was I was allowed a lie-in until 7pm (breakfast finishes at 7.30! – it is a different sort of hotel) which meant that I heard the jungle waking up (having got up before they did yesterday). The noise is incredible with more and more different creatures adding their voice until it reaches almost a deafening crescendo at about 6.30am. I said a sad farewell to my new friends – all so different but we had rather bonded over the last 48 hours – and Dennis and I headed off to one of the other lodges belonging to the group called, Refugio Amazonas, which was rather more upmarket than Posado. We waited there for ‘15 minutes’ – it is always 15 mins whether it is five or in this case about 115!) We then went on a rather more superior boat for an hour to somewhere called Philadelphia (I think though a bit of a surprise) where we picked up a group of Americans and a lovely Canadian lady called Lesley who is my new friend and is also being looked after by Denys. She is in her late-sixties and has just run a 30k marathon along the Inca trail! It was quite an eventful journey up as the river has got so low in places that you can hardly get a boat through. Several boat-boys had to get out and push like fury to get us through. Goodness knows what happens if it gets any lower…..

Tambopata is bigger than Posado and even more rustic! Tiny rooms, pretty dodgy bathrooms and no fan – the humidity is on another level. I think two nights here will be plenty. Just off to a lecture before supper and Denys takes Lesley and me off to find the tarantula in the dark!

Lecture fascinating about Jaguars, supper pretty filthy but night walk with Denys – amazing… A mass of incredible spiders and a beetles/ants and the poor unfortunate tarantula – who lives down a hole not far from the hotel with her two babies. Poor thing I fear she gets poked by Dennis or one of his colleagues at least two or three times a night – but it was pretty incredible to see her. Short video below.

Returned at about 10pm to quite a number of rather noisy bed-mates who get very cross with the mosquito net and throw themselves against it at regular intervals, luckily in vain, but all the same not hugely sleep inducing.

Another 4am start tomorrow – so I better try….