Allie and Andy's Trip
Wed Jul 29, 08:37 AM
Since I have been negligent on my blog for a while, I have agreed to post details of my brother and sister traveling in South America. It appears she has written a short novel. I will add to the posts shortly. Enjoy!
Back in November my good friend Sarah and I were planning on doing a two or three week trip to South America. On a whim, we bought tickets to Manaus, Brazil with a return flight out of Quito, Ecuador 7 weeks after our arrival. We have spent since November looking up things to do between Maunaus and Quito and ways to get from point A to point B. Our initial plan was to spend sometime in Brazil, Peru and Ecuador.
Somewhere along the way my older brother Andy got invited but would not stay in South America as long as Sarah and I. Before Sarah and I knew it, it was 4 July, the day before we were supposed to leave for our long awaited journey. After nights and nights of planning we were finally going to leave. For those of you that know me, I thrive on schedules, so I was fairly confident I knew exactly when we would be where. Around 9:30 pm on 4 July Sarah calls me to inform me that the leg of our flight from Atlanta to Brazil was a day after we arrive in Atlanta from Montana. Long story short after a few more phone calls to Delta and a hotel reservaiton, Sarah and I were spending the night in Atlanta because Delta cancelled our flight back in March and failed to notify us. We left Kalispell in the am on 5 July and met Andy in the airport in Atlanta on 6 July. Finally late on the 6th we made it to Brazil.
We arrived in Manaus around midnight and I had booked a hostel for us to stay at. All we had to do was find a ride. I called the hostel only to find out they had given away our accomidaitons. Thankfully a local man had a hostel for us to stay at. The next day we changed all the plans we had made for Brazil and decided on a jungle tour along the Amazon. We spent the day in Manaus, a bustling city. It was a big rubber town a while back but now I´m not really sure what people do there…
The jungle trek was interesting. It took about 2 hours to get from Manaus to our ´jungle lodge´. I of course did not stray from my usual getting extremely sunburned the second day of vacation. The jungle lodges pleasantly surprised us. The unit we were in had a bunk bed and a double bed. We even got our own bathroom and air conditioning. When we got to the lodging, we ate a lunch of fried fish, rice and some other sort of vegetable. We could choose the tail of the fish or the head. After lunch we went out on the river in a motorized canoe and went fishing for peranas. Andy was the only one of us that caught one though. Two ladies from Colombia were with us as well and were able to translate a lot of what our guide Carlos was saying. Just as our spanish knowledge is limited, so was Carlos´english. Our night activity was to look for alligators. This was the point when Sarah and I were questioning our intelligence. Somehow going out at night on the river with no lights to actually be looking for alligators did not seem like the best idea, but you only live once right? One of Carlos´ assistants who seemed to be in his early 20s apparently spotted an alligator. He got out of the boat and caught the thing by hand. Andy, Sarah and I were in awe. There we were covered in bug spray in long sleeves and long pants, and this guide hops into the Amazon, barefoot and in shorts and catches an alligator with his bare hands. The one he caught was rather small and we all got to hold it. It was a pretty cool experience.
Day two of the jungle trek consisted of a morning on the river visiting different local people. It seemed as if Carlos was just dropping by to say hello to friends, not really giving a tour. We all felt a little weird about visiting people´s homes, and snapping photos of their lives. We were visiting these people for a few minutes as a part of a tour while they are living their lives along the Amazon. However, all the people we visited seemed happy to share with us some of the local foods that they grow and the animals they keep. We then went on a jungle trek and were going to attempt a night in the jungle. Our trek was, just as everywhere else, hot and humid. I cannot empahsize either word enough. We saw some monkeys, and Carlos had ´una sorpresa´ for us. We had been walking for 20 minutes or so and there was a vine swing. This was Carlos´ surprise. Andy enjoyed it, Sarah and I skipped out as it was not exactly made for short people. We got back to camp after about and hour or so of sweating in the thick jungle and then went out onto the river and swam. I told myself I wasn´t getting in the water, but I found myself swimming along hoping a perana would not soon be nibbling on my toes. We all survived swimming in the Amazon (which it turns out it was only a tributary of the Amazon). That night we were all getting in bed which were hammocks hanging in the jungle from wooden poles. Andy, Sarah, and I were the first in bed to escape the mosquitoes that were swarming. A bit after Carlos was getting in his hammock and we heard a snap. Then slowly, Andy, Sarah, and I all fell to the ground. Carlos and the helpers tried to fix the poles and make the structure stable once more, but Andy and Sarah tried to get in their hammocks again and they fell to the ground once more. So after a failed attempt at sleeping in hammocks we all agreed to go back to the lodges. We all had a good laugh.
The third and final day of the tour arrived. We had to leave by noon so we would not miss the boat from Manaus to the border of Peru and Brazil that we had bought before we went on the jungle trek. In the morning we went looking for a sloth with no such luck. We spent what seemed like an eternity floating through the jungle fighting off bugs. I have never seen so many bugs in my life or such big spiders. It was a relief to make it back to the lodges. Not long after we packed our things and hopped back in a boat to get to Manaus. During this time we found out that our boat did not leave at 5pm like the man that sold us the tickets had said…the boat in fact left at 1pm. All three of us were pretty mad and tried to think of alternate ways to get where we wanted.
After making it back to Manuas we were not on land ten seconds when we were put on a little speed boat. We were going to catch up with our other boat. Thankfully it only took about twenty minutes to catch up because the boat left late. It all went so quickly, but I saw my bag getting passed from the speed boat to the big boat and then I was getting directed to the front of the speed boat. We were to jump from the speed boat to the big boat while both were moving. We all made it and felt a bit like pirates.
There is not much but also quite a bit to tell about the big boat. It was a 6 day boat trip up the Amazon. The bottom level of the boat was full of cargo, the second level was cram packed with about 150 hammocks and people and the top deck had a small bar and open space. We were 3 of 10 white people on the boat. Luckily we found a frenchmen that knew portugese and could translate for us. We all decided that we did not choose an area of Brazil that many tourists visit because so many of the kids and even older people would stare at us. It´s probably a good thing that there was a language barrier most of the boat trip because while we were laughing and making jokes, our jokes were mosly complaints. The sleeping was nearly impossible, as one person could not move without hitting the person next to them who in turn would hit the person next to them. And as I mentioned about the jungle, it was still very hot and very very humid. The food was limited. I survived (somewhat) on noodles and everyonce in a while had meat. Breakfast was at about 545 or 6 and was just crackers and ´coffee´ which basically reminded me of when I was 12 and testing out coffee and poured about ten packets of sugar into each cup. The Brazilians do enjoy their sweet coffee. Lunch and dinner there was always rice, noodles, and then a meat of some sort. Sometimes it was chicken, sometimes it was a mystery. I will spare details on the bathrooms mostly because no one should ever have to experence anything like them. I think I showered twice in the 6 days becuase I never really felt much cleaner afterwards.
When it looked like we were going to survive the boat trip, I got really sick the last five hours on the boat. As with the bathrooms I will spare the details, but it took me about a week to get to feeling back to normal. When we got off the boat we were in a town called Tabatinga which is on the Brazilian border near Colombia and Peru. We kind of bounced back and forth between Colombia abd Brazil for the day and left the next morning via speed boat for Peru.
I will write about our Peru adventures another day. We are still in Cuzco and are leaving to go back to Lima Sunday. Feel free to leave comments or questions. Chao!
