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Other entries in Manú

Jungelling Manu National Park

On Sunday night we arrived back from the Inca trail somewhat sodden and very tired. Apart from being exhausted, Ant thought it would be a grand idea to contract the stomach bug that had been making the rounds with many of our group members. This entailed much pain , fever and groaning. It more or less fell to Vics to pack the bag for the jungle trip to Manu leaving very early the next morning. This entailed trying to ascertain which of our soggy, muddy clothes where the least offensive in smell and/or sight. Unfortunately the least offensive smelling clothes had the capacity of blinding a guide dog at 40 paces. Luckily the next morning Ant`s fever had broken and whilst he would not have won the 100m sprint in the special Olympics against someone with no legs, he was up to facing the grueling 8 hour drive over the mountains and down into the Amazon basin. So off we went. Our tour group consisted of Ant and Vics and 24 year old Alaskan called Seth. Our guide, Fernando, was quite amusing and as he was raised in the area we were going to, we had high hopes for him.

When we booked the trip it was friggin expensive and more or less broke our budget - something we were a little bitter about. However, as we were not going to Bolivia the alternatives were flying to north Peru, going ass about face back to Bollivia, or alternatively flying to Brazil and catching a boat for the better part of a week. We therefore decided to grin and bear it being as we were unlikely to be back in the area anytime in the near future. That said we quite quickly cottoned on to why it was so expensive. Being as it was the wet season we only had 3 people in the group. Serving these 3 full time for the 8 days was a guide, a cook (who lugged all the food for everyone, for the 8 days, with us) , a bus driver and 2 boat drivers. Jungle bashing in style. Kind of.

Day 1: Driving over the Andes and down into the Amazon basin i.e. descending from 4000 metres to 200 metres  along terrifying mountain roads which can only fit 1 car (barely), where the road more closely approximates a mud slide. A couple of hours of looking out and down of one`s window, not really being able to see the road, but definitely being able to see the 2000 metre drop to the valley floor, whilst at exhilarating at first becomes somewhat exhausting. We found that your  body eventually gets quite tired of producing  adrenalin and is therefore inclined after the first hour or so to merely leave you gibbering in terror.

About 1 hour from our first nights lodging we came across our second real South American road adventure (the first being the bus driver from Arequipa to Puno who I would have quite happily killed with my bare hands). We arrived at what appeared to be a traffic jam. We quickly ascertained that the road block was caused by a huge land slide, caused by the massive amount of recent rain, that had swallowed the road. The many locals on busses and trucks had industriously leveled the slide somewhat creating a more than precarious ramp over the landside. A waterfall was disappearing into the one side of the ramp on the upper slope of the road and reappearing on the lower slope. Trucks were roaring up to the ramp  at record breaking speeds of about 10km `s an hour (as they only had a drive up of about 15 metres), and getting stuck. They were then being dug out again. We figured this would take us about 2 hours. Finally our turn came and our driver revved his engine and caned it. We were standing on the side and noticed that the ramp resembled nothing more than a great big muddy jelly. How some of the trucks and busses getting over hadn't swept the whole wobbly pile down the mountain we have no idea. Anyway on we went. Five hundred metres down the road we once again met the roadblock. This time we were told that nothing was getting through. There was a massive landslide ahead as well as a few small ones. The road had been impassable for the last 3 days. The information was a little sketchy but we ewre told there may or may not be a bulldozer clearing the mess from the other side. Our guide made arrangements for us to sleep at a nearby camp and told us we would see what the morning brought. If the magical bulldozer materialized we would continue on our way otherwise it would be back to Cusco tails between our legs having been soundly trounced by the jungle `s wet season.

So we arose bright and early went off for a peak at the colourful Cock  of the Rock (Peru`s national bird). Returning from our early morning walk we were greeted by the sight of a great big, yellow dozer trundling past. Yay. There was much cheering and waving on our behalf. As we continued on our way Vics managed to count approximately 40 landslides that had been cleared!! We were extremely lucky to have been continuing on our way.

Day 2: Getting past the landslides and down to the Madre del Dios (mother of God) river where we met our boat driver. The rain was pounding down and Ant`s stomach bug had flared up. All he could do was double over in raw agony. We decided to continue on but were pondering the possibilities of airlifts from the middle of the rainy jungle (luckily, with anti biotics it seemed to pass in a day or so). We continued down a very flooded and high river to our first jungle lodge - a very, very rudimentary collection of ramshackle wooden buildings in the middle of what can only be described as a mud pit. Luckily we had some trusty Wellingtons to help us. We were there not 15 minutes when a very friendly spider monkey (called Monica we learnt later) said hello. This was quickly followed by a Coati (kind of big raccoon animal), that scaled the wall of our lodge (it is more or less open) and climbed onto vic`s bed. Despite many attempts to persuade it otherwise it refused to move. Various  prods elicited nothing more than growls and gnashing of very sharp teeth. One particularly hard push resulted in a cross Coati flying onto the floor and ant and vics flying on to ants bed and away from the enraged rodent. The rain was unfortunately coming down to too hard and prevented a night walk.

Day 3 - 6: The rain cleared up thank goodness. The next 4 days were spent going further and further down various rivers into the jungle and finally into the restricted park of the manu national park. Our days were spent either on the boat, walking in the jungle our trying to catch piranha and caiman from a paddle catamaran in oxbow lakes. We didn't see any jaguars or capybara as the river was too high (Boo!) but we did see many monkeys, parrots, macaws, giant river otters, spiders and other nasty creepy crawlies and tons of funky insects (Yay!).

Day 7 - 8: The great trek back to civilization. Up the river for a day and then back into the combi. Luckily the roads were in better condition but no less terrifying. We got back to Cusco with clothes that could probably have been studied for the amazing new smells they were now exuding. We were tired, more muddy and stinky than it is safe for two people to be, but still exhilarated. Getting to the jungle in the rainy season was not an easy thing to do, but we are happy that we did.

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