Football & Fishin’ in the Jungle

January 15^th, 2022 

Well by day 3, I think I’d pretty much done everything in the jungle around the Maniti Lodge, especially considering how crazy and amazing day 1 was.  Linder was wondering what to do with me and I actually told him that I was cool to chill for the first part of the morning as I had actually gotten sick at 3 am the night before…something in the jungle didn’t like me.

 

The day before, a new group of people had shown up.  There was a brother and sister from Nashville, Kirsten and Todd, and a dad, Joe, with his 13 and 11 year-old daughters, Camilla and Rosario, from Chile.  It was nice to have some new blood in camp.  All super nice people.  It was a lesson in not stereotyping too.   Kirsten and Todd were only in Peru for 8 days, just here to visit the jungle.  With their twangy southern accents, I thought they were “ignorant” American tourists as their attempt at Spanish was pretty bad, but it turned out that Kirsten has travelled extensively, from east Asia and eastern Europe to Greenland…although she slightly blew it by asking/assuming that I’d been to Greenland since I live so close to it being in Canada.  I politely (being Canadian) stated that no, I hadn’t been there.  In retrospect I thought that she might be closer to Greenland in Tennessee than I am in Canada!  The brief time I got to spend with them was fun.

 

That afternoon, the “newbies” headed off with Segundo to Monkey Island.  Linder and I walked over to a nearby village where a big football (soccer) tournament was happening.  He first gave me a tour around the place, including checking out some old school wooden equipment for squeezing sugar cane and de-husking rice.  But then it was time to check out the main event, the tournament.

A bridge to head out to the river:

Some nice giant lilypads:

The "port" for the village

The sugar cane press:

Linder explaining the rice de-husker.

A bunch of sweet, slightly alcoholic, but meant to be for health drinks.

It is a lush environment.

Teams from villages one or two hours up and down the river came for the event.  Matches were only about 20 minutes long as there was a lot to get through.  Linder and I holed up at a small shack where we could get a beer and enjoy the action through an open window.  At first, I was the only gringo in sight but later we did see a few other tourists, although they didn’t stick around for the duration.  It was exciting and fun.  The local team made it to the semi-finals where they almost scored to go ahead but were scored on shortly after and lost.  A few other matches were decided by penalty shootouts.  

The football pitch:

The action from our vantage point.

Note the two roosters and a dog sitting down, right on the football pitch.  Luckily their were no incidents...

A penalty shootout in one of the earlier games:

For some reason, I guess being the only gringo, I attracted a few of the local drunks.  At first there was a man in his 60s who reminded me of Chilean Juan who I knew over a few years in India.  But he was easily usurped by an older gentlemen in his 70s who had earlier been singing with a few other sauced fellows inside the building.  This guy barely made it to the bench I was sitting on and was definitely “furniture dependant” as we called it back in university (needing to hold on to something as to not fall over).  Sadly, the crowd thinned out towards the finals as each team from another village that had lost earlier decided to get on a boat and head home.  Nonetheless, it was a fun afternoon and a good cultural experience.

The guy in the blue shirt on the left was the really inebriated one.  Surprising the guy with the guitar was have decent at playing and singing.

Here's Linder trying to lead the singing:

Action both inside and out!

This boy was loving his juice in a plastic bag...sucked it back in no time.

Sunset on our way back to the lodge.

The next morning, around 11 am, Linder and I jumped in a canoe to try a bit of fishing.  We first paddled out to the Amazon but soon returned to the small creek.  It was definitely different to my first fishing experience on day 1, where we just dropped a line in with bait and we had bites within 10 seconds.  This time, I only got about 4-5 bites over half an hour and yet again, didn’t catch a fish.  Linder did pull in a catfish, which was the first one I had seen caught here, but it was all of 6-7 inches long.  He asked me whether we should keep it for lunch, but it hardly seemed worth it, so I suggested that he toss it back in to grow up and get bigger.

Fishin'.

Patience, patience, patience...

The monstrous catfish.

After lunch, it was time for me to head back to Iquitos.  Instead of a big taxi boat, the lodge sent one of its boats to take me, Segundo, the mother and daughter from Lima, their guide Cesar and a few others back to the “big” city.  We stopped about 2/3’s of the way back to check out this fish sanctuary.  Well it wasn’t just fish, there were some caiman alligators, various birds and some turtles. 

Heading back to civilization.

Cruising up the Amazon.

Passing a bigger village:

The sanctuary:

Feeding the fish.

Baby Caimans...so cute.  They are only about a foot and a half long.

The big boys.

I loved how the turtles didn't seem to care at all about the caimans.

Caiman selfie!

But the headliner were the Arapaima giant fish.   My gosh, these things were gigantic!  They can be up to 3 meters long and weigh up to 200 kg.  They looked like huge koi fish, but I mean huge.  Unfortunately, they have been fished close to extinction, or at least they are endangered.  I guess they taste too good.  Many Brazilians (and I’m sure Peruvians) have fished them extensively.  I hope they make a comeback as they were impressive.  Check out this recent article on them.

I put my foot there, not hoping that they'd bite it as they are carnivores, but to give some sense of scale.

Polly want a finger?!?

The "watchbird" for all the booze.

Back on the river...a big abandoned ship.

Hard to see, but it's a military hovercraft...cool.

Getting close to Iquitos...there's the big bridge again.

The dock.

Mmmm...shish kebab grubs anyone?

Back to the chaos of the city.

A family of four on a bike.

Nice sunset clouds that night.

This is the Casa de Fierro (Iron House) which guides will state that it was designed by Gustave Eiffel...but it likely it wasn't.  But it might be the first pre-fabricated building in the Americas.

What a great, quick trip to the Amazon jungle.  I have to admit, I was ready to move on, but I’m glad I came.  It’s just too damn humid, and I couldn’t imagine when it gets super hot.  I can only put up with sticky balls for so long…

Camping in the Jungle

January 14^th, 2022

Late in the afternoon, I hopped onto the resort’s long boat with the guide Linder to cross the Amazon for our night out camping.  A mother and adult daughter from Lima with their guide Cesar came along as well and they were going fishing.  We docked at the same spot as we did yesterday when Theresa, Segundo and I visited Monkey Island but this time we took a sidetrack early on and walked by a small village.  It was cool to see how a small settlement exists in the jungle.  There was a small football (soccer) pitch, a few buildings that functioned as the local school and probably about 15-20 house that we walked past that were on stilts about 8-10’ high for the wet season.

From left to right, guide Cesar, captain Robert and my guide for the camping Linder:

Some old workhorse plying the river.

We hiked only an hour out of the town to our home for the night.  It was a pretty basic shelter with mosquito netting around it for walls, but it was raised up and had a covered walkway over to an outhouse.  For just the two of us, it would do just fine.  There were some thin mattresses inside and we had brought some sheets and mosquitos nets from the town when we signed in with the local office there.

The small village on the opposite side of the river from the lodge.  The light blue buildings on the right are the school.

Linder giving me a guided tour.

Lawn mowing...Amazon style.

Another huge tree.

This is our home for the night.

Pretty basic...

Once we were set up for the night, Linder told me that we’d head off for sunset at a lookout tower.  It was only about a 5 minute walk and we reached a swampy area where a couple of boats were moored.  We hopped in one and started to paddle along a narrow waterway covered with algae.  Monkeys were jumping around in the trees nearby.  I enjoyed the ambience.

Nearby were a couple of boats that we could take for a paddle through this narrow, swampy channel.

Monkeys!

About 10 minutes later we reached the other side and hopped out of the boat.  It was only another 10 minutes and we got to a lookout tower that was about 4 storeys high.  As we climbed up, the structure creaked and groaned but seemed fairly solid.  From the top, I scanned the horizon with some binoculars that Linder brought while he chilled out and had a nap.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of wildlife activity but the highlight for me was seeing a Hoatzin bird, which seemed so prehistoric.

The lookout tower.

The view from the top.

Spotting the hoatzin bird through the binoculars.

Scanning for wildlife.

As darkness set in, we started to return to our camp.  We didn’t see much in the blackness of the forest but the paddle back in the boat was interesting.  Again, didn’t see much, but the possibility of seeing a boa constrictor kept me on my toes.

A tarantula on the way back to camp...it got dark quickly.

Sure made the paddle back in the boat a bit spooky...especially when there's a chance you might spot an anaconda or caiman!  Unfortunately/fortunately we didn't.

We ate our dinner back in the shelter and got to know each other a bit better.  It was an early night for both of us as there isn’t much else to do, especially when your only light is a headlight.  Unfortunately, I woke up a few times in the night with an upset stomach.  It was raining (the first rain since I’ve been in the jungle in the supposed “rainy season”) so the covered walkway to the compost toilet was nice.  Not to be overly graphic but on my second or third nighttime visit to the outhouse, I couldn’t help but see these large beetles, bigger than your thumb, feasting on what I had left behind. Eewww… Well, that’s what a composting toilet is all about I guess!

We were up around 6 am and hiked back to the small village.  Luckily by this time, the rain had abated.  Pedro was at the shore to ferry us back across the river with some ominous clouds to the south.  We timed it well as when we were just walking back to the lodge, the skies started to open up.

The hike back in the morning.

An owl butterfly.

Camouflaged chickens on a side path.

A fancy house back in the village.

And on the other side of the road, the not so fancy house.

This poor rooster had no wings...but perhaps he still gets to get busy with the hens.

You can't really see it, but there is a big flat screen TV inside this house.  Just seemed odd to me, these very basic homes with high tech.

Some of the plantations just outside the village.

Linder demonstrating how this plant's leaves are used for wrapping food up to cook them in a fire, or use as a plate or even transport the food (Mother Nature's tupperware).

Pedro came to pick us up at 7 am.  Some pretty dark clouds to the south.

Very dark...

Goats and horses on the riverside.

We barely had any room to squeeze our boat through on the creek.

Back to the lodge.

It was a good night out in the jungle.