We had an early morning flight from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado - nice and short, only 35 minutes, but we go from 3,300m elevation down to 200m, which made a huge difference. No more shortness of breath, decent night time temperatures and some actual moisture in the air.
Last night was our final night with Jhon Smith, so we went out for a group dinner. We ended up at a place called Muse in Cusco, where I finally got to try Alpaca steak - a bit underwhelming to be honest, it doesn't really taste of much at all. We also had some Cuy (guinea pig) to share between the group. It came out in pieces, complete with the head. Although they are bigger than the ones we keep as pets, they are still not huge. According to Jhon, the trick is to eat the skin as well as the meat. The meat was a bit gamey, but tasted not too bad. The skin was quite tough - not a huge fan of that. Still, it was something different, and I'm glad that I tried it.
We also had a couple of celebratory drinks (first time I'd ever seen creme de menthe in a mojito, but whatever), and ended up wandering down the street to the hotel at 11pm singing "Poncho Man", in honour of Daryl's lime green and black poncho.
The airport at Puerto Maldonado was nothing special - basically a tin shed in the jungle. The rusting plane out the front, along with the shack that acted as the tower did not inspire confidence, but we made it down in one piece.
The rainforest lodge staff picked us up and took us to their office about 5 minutes away, where we needed to transfer anything we required for the next 2 days into our day packs. I discovered that I'd managed to lose my sunscreen somewhere along the line from Machu Picchu. Combined with the fact that I still hadn't found any replacement pluggers since I lost mine at Colca Valley, and I wasn't the most prepared camper. I did manage to pick up some sunscreen at the office - 25 soles for 20mL!
It seemed like the lodge staff were waiting for another flight to arrive, and didn't quite know what to do with us while they were waiting. So they bundled us up into a mini bus to show us the sights of Puerto Maldonado. I managed to hang in as we were shown the prison and cemetery, but once they moved on to a half-completed bridge and the slaughterhouse, I decided to skip the rest and have a snooze.
Eventually the other flight turned up and we headed out to the dock to meet the boat that would be taking us up the river to the lodge. I had assumed that the town was a port, the bus ride would be a few minutes down to the river. But no - 1 hour later, along a nice bumpy dirt road we arrived at a set of wooden stairs built into the riverbank, with our boat at the bottom.
The boat was an elongated canoe, with an outboard on the back and a canopy over the top - it was actually quite nice for zipping along the river. It took about 45 minutes upstream to reach the lodge. We had lunch on the way - fried rice served in banana leaves, which was delicious.
The lodge itself was great - they were quite serious about ecotourism. The lodge was powered by a methane gas generator, and the power was only on for a few hours each day. The rooms only had 3 walls, with the 4th being open to the jungle (this included the bathrooms as well). Also, no doors anywhere - just curtains. There were mosquito nets for the beds, but the overall effect was of really feeling like you were in the jungle, rather than staying next to it.
On the afternoon we arrived, we quickly dumped our stuff in our rooms, and headed off into the jungle to an observation platform. On the way, we passed a highway of leafcutter ants, and saw a few monkeys running around in the trees.
The observation platform was an interesting construction - basically a 37m tall scaffold, with a couple of cables to tie it down at the top. The views were well worth braving the stairs to the top though - we could see over the top of the canopy to the river. At the same time, we also got a good view of some of the birds flying around that afternoon - a couple of pairs of macaws, some parrots, and even a woodpecker. Definitely glad I brought my zoom lens along - I've got a few pics that look good on the camera screen, and I'm hoping they'll still be decent on a full sized screen too. After climbing back down, it was a quick walk back to the lodge for dinner (soup and beef stew) and bed. Since the rooms didn't have any electricity, showers were done by torch or candlelight.
The next morning, we were up at 4am - time for a quick breakfast, and then into the boat for a trip up the river to a separate lake. The sky was clear that morning, and seeing the sunrise over the jungle and river was quite something. At the lake, we transferred into a catamaran with no engine (only a single oar at the back) to go and check out some of the wildlife in and around the lake. We managed to see quite a few species of birds, a couple of Black Cayman crocodiles and even a family of otters! Probably my pick for the morning was a family of bats hanging from a tree stump just above the lake. Each bat was probably only the length of my thumb, and was camouflaged seamlessly with the wood - looking at them close up was fantastic.
The guides let us do a spot of fishing for piranhas, which was trickier than it sounds. We baited the hooks with chunks of meat, but the piranhas just nibbled around the edges and then pulled the last piece straight off the hook. Eventually, one of the guides caught one, and we were able to get a close look - definitely a vicious looking fish! They kept it out of the water for about 5 minutes before putting it back - no one seemed keen to give it a kiss before it went, though.
After that, it was back down the river to the lodge, a quick break, and then on to a hut for some macaw spotting. There is a salt pan on the side of the river that they come down to at about midday. It's believed that they eat the salt off the plane to supplement their diet. However, they only come down when they feel absolutely safe, so we needed to be perfectly quiet to have any chance of seeing them up close - no easy task with 20 people in an enclosed space. We eventually spotted some red macaws at a distance (glad I brought my zoom lens), but they never got closer than about 150m away, and up in the trees. At about midday, we headed back for lunch, although a few decided to stay for a while longer. Apparently, that's all the macaws were waiting for - about 10 minutes later they came right down onto the salt pan, not 10m away from the hut. Ah well, at least some people got to see them - serves me right for choosing lunch over patience :-P
We had a bit of a siesta after lunch (2 hours snoozing in a hammock), and afterwards we headed downstream to visit a local shaman and his botanical garden. Calling it a garden is probably a bit of an overstatement - it was really just patches of jungle where useful plants happened to grow, with a path connecting them together. Still, it was quite an interesting afternoon, with the shaman explaining the various plants and their properties, and what kind of medicines could be created from them. Some of the more interesting ones included a vine that could be used as an anaesthetic for the mouth (we actually tried this one - it took about 10 seconds before I couldn't talk, and about 2 minutes to wear off. Apparently, the active ingredient in the vine is what they use in Novocain), and a jungle version of Viagra (made from a leaf that couldn't be crushed, it just kept springing back - go figure :-P). The shaman usually had an interesting story to tell, especially about the people who would buy a love potion, then the jungle Viagra, and some jungle red bull to finish it all off!
Just after dinner, a Canadian that we had made friends with while macaw spotting came into the dining hall and told us that they had just seen a tarantula on the walk home. Not to be outdone, we tracked down Fino and Rudolpho (our guides) and asked them if they could show us one as well.
They were quite happy to oblige, and a group of about 8 of us trooped out into the night time jungle in search of creepie crawlies. About 10 minutes in, they got us all in a group and asked us to turn off all of our torches. We found ourselves in pitch blackness, with only occasional patches of starlight shining through gaps in the canopy, and the full sound of the nocturnal jungle around us - it really was quite an experience.
About 2 minutes later, Fino had found our first tarantula. A seemingly innocuous hole at the base of a tree, but once he stuck a long blade of grass down it, the tarantula emerged. Although I knew what they looked like and their rough size, seeing one in person was something else. They are just so big that you don't think of it as you would with regular spiders - it is definitely in it's own category.
We found a second one about 5 minutes later, bigger than the first, and a bit more aggressive - it crawled about half way along the blade of grass as soon as it got out of its lair. It was big enough that you could clearly see its fangs, and you could definitely hear it walking on the jungle floor.
Deciding two was enough, we headed back to the lodge. Seeing as it was the last night of the tour, a few of us headed to the bar for a couple of quiet drinks. Adam and Mike were trying to get through the list of jungle cocktails, while I stuck to my G&Ts. We asked the bartender what time the bar closed, and were told that it closed whenever we went to bed. About 10 minutes later, the generator turned off for the night. Undaunted, the bartender lit a couple of candles and just kept on pouring :-D