I'm inserting this photo here, simply because the first photo in the blog is what shows up on the link when it's published and I just like these two guys (Pepe and Chapo)
Day 3
The super oppressive heat hits at around 11:00 a.m., and it showed up right on time. Day 3 felt particularly oppressive (even more so than the day before) because the air seemed to be absolutely dead still - no movement of air, not a hint of a breeze.
I still had a couple of hours to kill before the rest of the crew got back. I looked up the Cortes Maltes website and read what it said about the itinerary that I currently was not on. Sounded reasonable enough - take boat here, walk there, take a boat there, walk 3K in a wild life reserve to Largo Sandoval....hmmm, noticed it said a 3k walk and failed to mention that it was 3k out and 3k back (details, details). No mention as to the level of difficulty of the terrain. Or anything actually. Nothing that would indicate that it was beyond my physical capacity to do it.
I gave up on that, tired of that line of thought, since it was getting me nowhere but more annoyed.
Then it occurred to me to send an email to my travel agent to see if she could help figure out what our return flight information was for Tuesday. Which launched an email chain that I wasn't sure was going to get me anywhere.
So THEN it occurred to me that I could go to the airline's website and query the list of flights on Tuesday going back to Lima. And of course the site was in Spanish, but it was easy enough to figure it out. I identified two likely candidates, though I was 99% sure it would be flight 2074, since our flight here was #2075. So I sent ANOTHER email to the travel agent asking specifically: which of these flights is the right one? But Trafalgar department that deals with intra-country flights was closed till Monday.
Now it was a little after 11:00, the deadly, thick air had descended, and I was going crazy. I decided to wander around in search of a breeze. There just had to be one somewhere.
Unfortunately, there really wasn't any place to wander - I wasn't going to go off into the forest by myself, and wandering around the bungalows revealed no breeze. So I decided to sit on the bench over looking the river - and there it was! The Breeze!
Yes, this was my day. I sat on the bench and read my book. Already half-way through book #2 on this trip....
Around noon I was really really going out of my mind, so I decided to go back to the bungalow to charge up my devices while doing nothing. That's when I discovered the REAL breeze! Right on the porch of our bungalow!
And with this discovery, Andy arrived. With an hour till lunch, he filled me on some of the things I missed:
* the opportuntity to climb in and out of the boat via a narrow plank
* amazingly difficult terrain on the 6k walk - looked like the mud from the rainy season dried solid into nothing but deep ruts that was hard for everybody. If I had been able to do it at all, it would have taken me a very, very long time. This is what it looked like, and yes, I would have had a very difficult time walking on this surface for an extended period of time:
* the canoe ride on the Largo (Lake) Sandoval in the wildlife reserve (at the end of the 3k walk) to look at otters.
* the monkeys on Monkey Island
At lunch were more fun stories from the rest of the group, including much confirmation of the difficulty of the 6k walk. I relayed all the information I had discovered during my hours of boredom.
Julio did ask me how my day had been, and my response was: "Boring. Really really boring".
The afternoon was free time. Yey! More free time! We sat in The Breeze on the porch for a while. But I really needed to go for a walk. Julio had mentioned and pointed out the path to the "Observatory", another set of stairs to a perch to watch the sunset.
But first, we stopped to take photos of Pepe and Chapo, the two macaws whose photo appears at the top of this post. They were sitting on the ground - but the instant they saw us take our our phones, they immediately started climbing the fence to the top of the fence posts, where they sat side by side in an obvious photo ready pose. As if they had said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, don't take the photo yet! We need to get ready!" Which resulted in the title photo above.
The walk to the Observatory was all of 5 minutes - we decided to climb it later, closer to sunset.
We walked a little further, just because.
Turned back and went to the bench by the river to catch The Breeze there, chat with other group members and watch the beginning of the sunset:
We decided to try the sunset from the Observatory, which I thought I might be able to do - it was half the height of the stairs from yesterday. Of course I can do this!
Until I got about 1/3 of the way up. The steps were very rickety, very narrow and very steep. One particularly steep step had me rethinking the situation. I came back down.
Andy went up - he reported that further up there was a step with a hole in it, and one step that was missing completely. I would have had to stop at point anyway. And the perch itself was very shakey. Besides that, the sun was now below the canopy.
Day 4
Monday started off bright and early at 4:50 a.m., in order to meet the group at 5:30 for the 20 minute walk to watch parrots.
Today the crew had to deal with me clumping along at my one and only speed. Though it took me just a little over 20 minutes. Hah!
The parrots were in the trees - randomly they would circle as one organism and settle back into the trees. After about 30 minutes, they began to come down to the clay cliffs - apparently parrots need to eat clay for assorted reasons.
Soon there were hundreds of birds on the cliffs, though still randomly taking off and circling, and coming back. After about 40 minutes or so, they took off, circled, and didn't come back.
Time for breakfast!
We said good-bye to three members of our group as they had signed up for only 2 days. That left the four of us on the Trafalgar tour.
The sky was overcast as we climbed into the boat on the way to a local farm. We welcomed the overcast, because without the bright sun the air was at least 10 degrees cooler.
Ten minutes later, and the boat pulled over to a seemingly random spot. Out came the infamous plank! Yes, indeed it's about 6 feet long and maybe 8 inches wide. It took a person on either side of me to walk me across. Easy peasy!
Until we tackled the steep climb up to the top of the hill. Did I mention steep? Going up was a bit of a challenge - the real challenge would be coming down.
The owners of the farm are gone over the weekend and don't come back till late on Monday or even Tuesday. Leaving this guy to keep an eye on things:
He really liked Julio. I get the impression Julio comes with treats - Brazil nuts, in their shell that he cracks open with his beak like it's nothing.
We spent the next hour walking a big circle around the farm, sampling the fruits of assorted trees - unripe mango (apparently this is a thing), sweet lemons, other things I already can't remember their names.
And from this plant, possibly called the macaw plant:
Because this is what you do with it:
But the best of all, here is the Three Of Life and its miraculous, most wonderful fruit:
Don't recognize it? This is kacao - the seeds of which are roasted and ground into: CHOCOLATE!
So unfortunately, not as easy as peeling and eating to get to the desired result.
Coming back down the hill was, in fact, as entertaining as expected. And back across the plank to the boat.
On our way to our next stop, a local native family, we all noticed that the overcast sky had coalesced into storm clouds:
By the time the boat pulled over, the wind was blowing and gusting - we stayed in the boat a few minutes till it died down a bit. Then back across the plank, and another fun challenge climbing up to the top.
Though of course I don't remember the name of the tribe this family belongs to, apparently they come from the area around Machu Picchu. They are here in this particular spot because one son left the tribe to go to school and eventually landed a job as a boat driver for Corto Maltes. At some point the young man wanted to leave to be with his family, but instead Corto Maltes brought his family to him. So now they live on land owned by Corto Maltes. Over time, the family agreed to visits by Corto Maltes visitors.
We said hello to the family - and then the skies opened. We huddled under one of the thatched structures in an attempt to not get soaked.
Mind you, it hasn't rained here in 4 months - it was just waiting for us to arrive. OTOH, the temperature had dropped another 10 degrees, to something approaching chilly, a sensation we had not experienced since arriving in Peru.
In the meantime, Julio chatted with the family elder, bringing out ritual items used in the ayahuasca ceremony (including a plastic container of ayahuasca, nasty looking and smelling stuff - why anybody would drink it is beyond me).
Here is the head of the household with his grandson, showing off traditional head dresses - the boy (Caley?) was particularly eager to show us his feathers.
A kitchen person from Corto Maltes magically appeared with our lunch. After lunch, there was an opportunity to try our hands at archery using the grandfather's hand made bow and arrow. Amazingly enough, none of us hit the target.
After buying a couple of souvenirs (hand made bracelets) and presenting the two children with some cookies, it was back down the hill, to the plank, to the boat and back to the lodge.
Though we did make a stop to watch 3 monkeys in a tree just off shore - my consolation prize for not seeing the monkeys yesterday.
The temperature stayed cool in the afternoon allowing for the rare opportunity for an afternoon nap.
I'm hanging out here on the porch of the lodge, waiting for dinner, watching the new batch of people arrive. This afternoon Julio was finally able to confirm that our flight tomorrow is indeed #2074, and that the Corto Maltes office people are working on getting us our boarding passes (but the LATAM website is flaky, as well I know). So worst case scenario we will need to get our boarding passes the manual way at the airport when we arrive.
No clue what's supposed to happen tomorrow morning other than we need to get back on the boat one more time at 10:00 to go back to town.
An interesting experience all in all. A bit marred, but there you go. Onwards to Lima and Cuzco!
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