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…