From the Amazon through the Andes to the Beach (in 24 hours)

Travelling on a cargo boat was an amazing experience, at times an idyllic one, sitting back in our hammocks gliding past the stunning Amazon rainforest and rustic villages that punctuate the riverbank. But after three days and nights, sleeping in hammocks with over 50 other people close by and listening to awful Peruvian folk music on other people's stereos, we were a little stir crazy and were glad to disembark at the muddy port of Yurimaguas, a town in precisely the middle of nowhere.

Bye bye, Amazon

Yurimaguas is only remarkable in that it has a road that connects the Amazon River to the rest of Peru. Three hours in a mini-bus took us to the larger, more relevant town of Tarapoto, which has connections to other parts of the country, albeit through treacherous windy mountain roads. Separating the Amazon Basin from the rest of Peru are the mighty Andes. Any bus trip from east to west in Peru inevitably involves a windy trip thorugh the mountains.

From the myriad of bus companies on offer, regrettably we chose badly. The lack of air-con didn't really matter, and ostensibly it was a good choice because the bus was very modern with comfortable seats.The problem was there was hardly any leg room between seats (known in the travel industry as "seat pitch") so when the people in front of you put theirs back, you are basically pinned to your seat and can't move your legs.

For Adam's lofty height of 6"5', this is particularly an issue. You can imagine the trouble he had sitting in his aisle seat, given that I was feeling squished in my window seat and I am only 5"8'. The 15 hour trip over the Andes, through winding mountain roads where virtually every bend was a hairpin, had us sliding from side to side every few minutes.

Where the Amazon meets the Andes

Worse still, at one point a guy got up and started preaching to the passengers - he was one of those evangelical christian fruitcakes, and he was standing right next to us, yelling all of this crap about god etc etc. At this point we wished we hadn't bothered to learn Spanish so we couldn't understand any of it. After a few minutes we both inserted ear plugs and tried to ignore him.

When we awoke the lush tropical rainforest had disappeared and we found ourselves in Chiclayo, a town in coastal Peru, in the middle of an arid, scrubby desert. We changed buses and headed 6 hours further north, to the small beachside settlement of Mancora right near the Ecuadorian border. The landscape change was stark compared to the verdant jungle to which we had become accustomed in the past two weeks.

Loki - pretty schmick for a youth hostel!

All we could see was a flat, yellow expanse of sand in every direction, interrupted only by dry-as-a-bone scrub and the odd sand dune, implanted with the curvy lines of inexorable wind gusts. The mountains were bare, and chopped their way all the way to the glistening turquoise ocean.

Mancora itself is little more than a collection of restaurants and souvenir shops clustered on the main highway to the Ecuadorian border. But away from the main road and on the beachfront lie a motley collection of palm thatch restaurants, guest houses and Loki, the mother of all youth hostels. Enormously curvaceous in shape, the white-washed walls of its accommodations are straight out of the Greek Islands. With two bars, a restaurant, a gigantic pool and a ping-pong table, its pretty flash for a youth hostel, especially when you can get a dorm bed for as little as $9 a night.

The only problem with Loki is that, while it might have been a great place to hang out a couple of years ago when it was a little-known backpacker getaway, the secret is clearly out. And that means knobs. Lots of them. Unfortunately it seems to be popular with Australian bogans. It's probably one of those situations where if we were five to 10 years younger (and single) we would have had a whale of a time, but listening to drunken Aussies who are practically paralytic by 5pm and singing the theme song to Home and Away made us feel violently ill.

Sunset view from our room at Mancora

The hostel had a plethora of organised activities, but they repelled rather than appealed to us, because they had this high school camp feel to them - for example, we studiously avoided the organised tug-of-war, beach volleyball and (especially) karaoke.

Peruvian food has been mighty carbohydrate-heavy. They heap mountains of rice on every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and as if this isn't enough there is also the ubiquitous mushy plantain (bananas so gross you have to cook them), beans and potatoes.

Fortunately on the coast, its all about seafood. It is fresh and super-cheap. We are gorging ourselves on ceviche, where fish, prawns, squid and octopus meat are marinated in lime juice so it gently cooks itself but is still immensely tender. Served with spanish onions, garlic and chili, this ensures a deliciously tart flavour.

Amazonian adventure part four - the cargo boat

The Amazon has barely any roads (probably a good thing from an environmental perspective). Here, the river is the way people and goods travel from place to place. Dozens of cargo boats ply the wide, muddy expanse of the Amazon, calling in at remote indigenous villages that would otherwise be beyond the reach of civilisation.

Cargo boats depart daily from the regional centre of Iquitos, heading downstream to the tri-border with Colombia and Brazil and upstream further into Peru, to places which eventually link with the country’s road network. Besides cargo including sacks of rice, crates of fruits and vegetables, electrical goods and even livestock, the boats take passengers on their two upper decks.

We travelled for three nights and two days to Yurimaguas, where there are buses that run to across the Andes to Peru’s coast. Let’s be clear – this is no luxury cruise with plush cabins, big buffets and on-board entertainment. The passenger decks are big empty expanses with hard metal floors. You bring your on hammock and string it up on the rails running along the length of the deck.

Crowded downstairs second class

Downstairs is much larger, and absolutely packed to the gills with people, with entire families squeezed into a single hammock space, their mountains of baggage, food and even pets. We spotted one lady cradling a baby howler monkey in her hammock, while another was breaking up bread to feed to her pet green parrots she had stashed under one of the benches. In the background, we could hear the chirping of baby chickens.

The top deck was smaller, less crowded and more airy. It cost just 10 soles ($3) more so the decision to string our hammocks (purchased the day before at the markets) upstairs was a no-brainer. We were basically the only foreigners on board, apart from a couple of weird French hippies and a friendly girl from Argentina.

The much more spacious top deck

This is not a journey for the impatient. The boat stopped all the time – it is the only supply line and transport option for the remote villages in the area. People on the banks waved plastic bags to gain the driver’s attention. Some of the villages looked extremely basic, with no electricity and only a few rickety thatched huts, while others were much more solidly constructed and had power lines and a central plaza.

Throngs of hawkers awaited the boat’s arrival at some of the larger stops, pushing their way on board and roving around the rows of hammocks trying to offload their goodies in plastic buckets balanced on their heads. There were drinks in plastic bags, gelatine desserts, popcorn and flavoured rice wrapped in banana leaves.

Calling in at a small village

Besides the occasional interruption of a stop along the way, the journey was blissfully relaxing. We spent the lion’s share of the time idly swinging in our hammocks, watching the beautiful rainforests and rustic villages pass slowly by. Unlike travelling on the ocean, the river was as smooth as silk, making it easy to read, play cards, watch movies on the computer and of course, catch up on the blog!

I was a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to sleep well with up to 50 people in quite a confined area, and especially in a hammock. Fortunately though we seem to be getting used to the hammock-as-a-bed concept, and have worked out a way to sleep diagonally in them so you can have your back as flat as possible and not wind up with your shoulders scrunched together. And being on a moving boat, there was no need for claustrophobic mosquito nets.

Waking up in the hammock looking out on the passing jungle as the early morning mist lifted out of the trees was quite surreal. The width and shape of the river varied wildly throughout the journey, sometimes being over 1km wide while at other times we passed islands, channels and junctions with other rivers.

It was a great opportunity to mingle with Peruvians and practice Spanish, who on the whole were really friendly, especially a man who ran a group of schools for indigenous kids in a remote area who was really keen to chat.

However, some seem to have very different ideas on personal space. We had nabbed hammock spots on the end of a row, which we thought would give us more room for our stuff (and for Adam to stretch out his legs). Instead, people grabbed hold of his hammock and bumped into him every time they walked past, even at night time when he was sleeping, so he was being constantly bombarded by people. People weren’t shy about pushing in front of us in the meal or bathroom queues either.

Peruvians also don’t seem to understand the concept of bringing music into public places. People around us had mini stereos, which they cranked with strains of their favourite music – accordion folk music, Christian rock and a weird, manic brand of Peruvian pop, sometimes from the minute they woke up, which was shortly after 6am when the breakfast bell sounded.

All up, the three-night trip cost 80 soles ($27) each, and included meals and water (which we purified just to be on the safe side). Meal times were hilarious - I felt as if I were on some kind of floating prison or boarding school. A bell would ring five times, after which a mad rush would ensue as people clamoured to the kitchen to avoid waiting in a long line.

The food was reasonable, but usually contained a massive proportion of rice, with just a small piece of casseroled meat, beans and potatoes and the obligatory mushy broiled plantain, a regular feature in Central American, Colombian and Peruvian food. One time there was spaghetti with a nice sauce and piece of chicken, but even that was served atop a mountain of rice. 

Amazonian adventure part three - jungle tour

Four-day jungle boat trip 
 

The instant we reached the confluence of two rivers that mark the official start of the Amazon River, we spotted a school of freshwater dolphins arcing in and out of the fast-flowing brown water.

Some of the dolphins were grey, and like their ocean cousins they had a pointed dorsal fin, only they were much smaller. Others though, were completely different. They were pale pink in colour, and dotted with spotty grey patches. The pink dolphins do not have dorsal fins, instead they have a weird looking, chunky hump running along their backs.

From here, we changed into a smaller canoe, known as a peque peque for the sound that its outboard motor makes, and headed up a smaller tributary. Immediately we noticed changes in the vegetation along the riverbank. The trees were taller with fatter trunks, the canopy was thicker and there were vines dangling everywhere. A handful of villages and jungle lodges, all made changes with wooden huts and thatched palm leaf roofs, were built along the banks.

The biggest difference though, was that the water was much darker in colour. Instead of the turbulent muddy brown of the main river, it was now coffee black, so still that you could see a mirror image of the beautiful rainforest and sky in front of the boat.

Mogli the Kid

Adam and Mogli outside the lodge

We spent the first night of our four-day jungle tour in the company’s secluded riverside lodge, and amazingly our group of three plus guide and the boat driver had the place to ourselves. The lodge was originally built for teams of scientists and documentary makers who visited the area.

We were hardly roughing it – the main area was a massive hut totally enclosed by mosquito netting and there was a separate hammock-equipped chill out area. We stayed in an enormous cabin a few metres down a thatched walkway, which again was totally enclosed in mosquito netting as well as a second, finer net over the bed. I was amazed to find we had an ensuite and running water.

The afternoon was spent monkey spotting. At this time of day they often pop down to the river for a drink and a dip. Our chances of spotting animals, entirely dependent on the water level of the river and the amount of flooding in the area, was not that high. But at least we were guaranteed an adventure, rather than staying at one of the lodges closer to town that contained zoos of animals like anacondas and alligators.

Three-toed sloth

Amazingly, our guide spotted a three-toed sloth clinging to the top of a tree along the river bank. After we gawped at the sloth from afar, Mogli the Kid decided to climb the tree and coax the sloth down. True to their name, sloth movements are so slow and dopey that they are pretty safe to handle. We thought he was joking, but minutes later he had squirmed his way up the tree and was shaking its limbs, trying to get the sloth to fall onto a lower branch.

Now I can’t say I approve of all of Kid’s methods, but it was pretty funny seeing him and the driver, Chaco, scale the tree and shake the sloth off its branch. As it neared the bottom, it fell into the water (luckily sloths can swim). Kid grabbed it under its arms, so there was no chance it could maim us with its three-inch claws. Although with the pace that it moved, I’d be surprised it could be quick enough to strike anything!

Kid’s taste for adventure and infectious enthusiasm made the trip an amazing experience. He was always ready for anything, and would capture any animal he spotted with his eagle eyes, including a bizarre looking jungle porcupine he found on the first night after everyone went to bed. Another night, he found two big hairy tarantulas and let one of them crawl up his arm, over his back and onto his face!

Tarantula!

Kid was never short of a yarn – he told stories of his village, a two-day boat ride upriver, about his hunting expeditions for tapirs and wild boar, close encounters with jaguars and jungle potions that his people obtained from vines, palm trees and frogs. You need to know what you’re doing if you want to extract these substances – a certain type of frog provides a hallucinogenic substance while from another they extract a poison which they put in blow pipes and use to hunt animals!

The campsite – and mozzies

After a night in the luxury of the lodge, it was time to head further upriver to find better fishing and animal spotting locations. The boat took us into a network of smaller, swampier creeks. At some point the creeks were impassable, jammed with masses of beastly thick floating reeds. Everyone in the boat had to hack away at the reeds with machetes and use wooden paddles to coax the boat through the swampy mess, which was crawling with spiders, grasshoppers and snakes.

Our campsite was a small clearing often used by native fisherman. Our guides brought a live chicken with them in the boat – apart from being lunch on the last day, chickens are used to warn against lurking predators. If a puma or jaguar roams into camp one night, the theory is that it will feast on the chicken first and won’t come after any humans!

As soon as the boat rammed into the steep muddy bank, we were greeted by a blizzard of mosquitoes. Being an Australian, I am well used to having a few mosquitoes buzz around outside at twilight. But this was like landing on a planet where mosquitoes ruled the world.

Even though it was the middle of the day and we were covered head to toe, we were constantly surrounded by a cloud of mozzies intent on sucking our juicy blood. They quickly seized on any exposed skin – I was bitten on my face and finger tips, and they somehow managed to bite me through my waterproof pants. Adam had big welts on both knees with scores of bites on each where the mozzies had permeated his clothing.

Deeper into the jungle

We were really keen on exploring deeper into the jungle, but the problem is that any uncleared area is inundated by mosquitoes. We put our plans for a night walk to spot animals on hold and jumped back in the boat, which is the only place to get away from the mosquitoes. Cruising through one of the lakes under the luminescent glow of the moon and the stars was a celestial experience in itself. Then Kid spotted a pair of illuminated red eyes lurking among the reeds - a baby alligator!

Typically, he was keen to catch the animal and show it to us before releasing it back to its hideout. Now as I said I don’t fully agree with his methods, but once he had grabbed hold of the alligator and allowed us to hold it, it was a pretty cool experience. To catch it, he speared it in the bottom of its jaw, which he said would hurt it “like a toothache,” and then pulled it from the water.

Our days were spent cruising through the creeks and lakes trying to find the best places to fish for piranha. I had not even realised it was possible to eat them, but I soon discovered they are a regular fish like any other, only with big sharp teeth. This makes it really difficult to remove the hook from the piranha’s mouth when you catch one.

Tiny piraña

We caught plenty of fish, including the aggressive piranhas. The problem was that most of them were tiddlers. Our fishing equipment was pretty basic – just fishing lines and hooks attached to long branches, with no reels to cast out further and no sinkers to get the bait to the bottom of the river where the bigger fish lurk. Adam was particularly disappointed that we did not catch a plate-sized piranha that we could eat. We did catch enough edible fish for two night’s worth of food, including some creepy looking pink catfish with long whiskers.

When it wasn’t raining, a huge variety of birdlife were easily spotted flying between trees along the riverbank. Adam woke early one day and spotted a pair of elusive toucans, but they had flown away once he returned with the camera. An endangered scarlet macaw – a giant, red parrot – hung around the lodge quite a bit, squawking noisily. We also spotted enormous brown and white hawks, kingfishers, herons and heard the hilarious sound of the jackass bird – I can now see how they got their name, they sound like a bunch of birds imitating a donkey!

One rainy morning we moored the boat in a swamp and trekked into the jungle, fortunately the mosquito cloud was a little smaller. Kid weaved this way and that, hacking off branches and vines with his machete to make a path. The rain meant that most of the animals were hiding, but he did show us some cool jungle plants, such as a vine that was filled with fresh water and another vine that emitted an iodine-like substance that could be used as an antiseptic.

The ever-hopeful piraña fisherman

Another vine produces ayahuasca - a hallucinogenic substance popular with nitwit hippies who rarely find the high they’re after and instead end up throwing up for hours and crapping their pants. My favourite was an enormous tree that is used as a “jungle telephone.” If you whack it with a stick it emits a deep thudding noise that can be heard from miles away. More spookily, we saw a fresh jaguar paw print in the mud- it would have been at least the size of my fist!

We lucked out a bit in terms of spotting animals – the river’s high level meant that animals did not need to converge on the river to find water. It wasn’t really our main goal to be photographed with wild animals - we just wanted to experience the rainforest.

That said we still had an itching desire to see some animals, so we visited a sanctuary for orphaned animals to check out some jungle beasts after we returned to Iquitos. Here are some of the pics!

Sloth

Toucan

Anaconda

Anaconda

Amazonian adventure part two - jungle city

Iquitos

I’d always assumed if you couldn’t access a city by road, it must be a backwater. How wrong I was. The Peruvian town of Iquitos, home to half a million people, is anything but sleepy. It throbs vibrantly on the banks of the Amazon, the world’s largest and most trafficked fluvial highway.

Iquitos is kept alive by a constant roar of multi-coloured motor taxis with passenger carts attached to the rear and the hum of commerce. People cruise into its bustling port from all corners of the Amazon region to buy, sell and trade in a staggering variety of goods, services and industries. There are even guys sitting at typewriters on little desks on the street to do your admin for you!

Cargo boats call in at Iquitos to drop off all manner of goods, including boat engines, electricity generators, televisions and enormous sacks of rice, everything that a modernizing Amazonian village could dream of. Further along the riverbank, in a wood-and-thatch collection of floating houses and shops on stilts, is home to a massive market where people come from all over to buy and sell fresh fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, medicines and other quirky products made in the jungle.

We were warned numerous times about safety and theft when we visited the colourful community of Belen, but we did not find it to be overly dodgy – having said that I wouldn’t go there alone or at night. The market was full of life when we visited in the morning, with rows upon rows of stalls piled high with glossy fresh fish that looked as if it had just been hauled out of the river. We spotted piranhas and several interesting varieties of catfish.

Meat sections at markets are always entertaining and this one did not disappoint. There were all manner of animals, including your standard cows, chicken and pigs, resplendently displayed with all of their entrails intact were visible. Some of the more exotic options included splayed jungle rats, guinea pigs and regrettably, river turtles and terrapins. Someone obviously forgot to tell these guys about endangered species.

butterflied jungle rat...anyone?

The hustle and bustle continued down the hill to the river bank, the height of which changes constantly. Amazonians live by two things – the ubiquitous rain, which comes night or day at any time of the year, and water level of their river, which varies dramatically from month to month.

Close to the water’s edge, the streets were lined with mud, muck and huge piles of rubbish. Just one month ago, the entire area had been under water, and the level had only recently receded. For over half of the year, a good part of Belen is submerged. Streets become canals. People abandon the bottom story of their homes and shops which are instead used to store the canoes required to get from place to place.

Some years the water gets so high it starts to flood the top stories of peoples’ rickety wooden homes, and creeps further uphill to where it is not expected. When the water recedes (usually in April or May each year), the cleanup begins, including construction and repair work for parts of properties damaged when they are under water.

Floating houses..with floating outhouses

Many families don’t bother with precarious stilt houses and instead have built floating dwellings that rise and fall with the water level. There are around 15,000 people living in Belen, and nearly half live in the lower area that is flooded annually, either in stilt or floating houses. A whole industry has sprung out of the floating houses, including floating petrol stations with bowser pumps, floating grocery shops, restaurants and even a couple of bars.

We jumped in a small motorized canoe and zoomed in and out of these floating houses, many joined together to form streets. Nearly all of them have electricity, but obviously plumbing is out of the question! Many people even had chickens pecking around on the wooden rafts that the simple two-roomed shacks are built on. Our guide, a Belen local, said up to three families live in each house.

Running with the quirky vibe of the town is a weird and wonderful collection of expats. Our hostel is called “Hobo hideout” which made absolutely no sense to us until we found out that the owner is an Alaskan, and a hunting enthusiast. The lobby area has a slightly macabre collection of taxidermy, including a stuffed grizzly bear, several jungle animals and even a human skull stolen by the owner from an ancient Incan burial site.

Another American expat is on the run from the authorities in several countries for conning other tourists, pretending to be a guide and then robbing them, and also on some serious sexual assault charges. We discovered this when we ran into a fellow Australian in one of the bars, who had been ripped off by the guy and has now spent several months trying to pursue him.

You need to keep your wits about you here, and not just on account of the kooky expats. Just about everyone here is trying to sell you some kind of tour or experience in the jungle. From the moment we were mobbed by motor taxi drivers when we arrived on the boat, to the people in our hostel, to random guys following you up and down the street with colourful brochures, you’re a sales target.

pirañas!

Fortunately though, our instincts did not let us down. It is far cheaper to take tours further into the Amazon jungle than in the Colombian town of Leticia, and there are a huge amount of operators so you can bargain the price even further. Even better, we were presented with a range of options when we went to talk to tour companies, from down and dirty camping and month-long expeditions to luxury cruises up and down the river.

In the end we booked a four-day tour with a guide that was working at our hostel. Our guide - Mogli the Kid - was born and bred in the jungle, he is from a village a two-day boat ride away from Iquitos, and has led many groups of scientists, documentary makers and other jungle-obsessed nitwits up some of the smaller tributaries of the Amazon only accessible by dugout canoe.

Stay tuned for the next instalment in our Amazonian adventure!

Amazonian adventure - part one

The triple frontier

It takes just two hours to fly from mountainous Bogota, with its crispy cool climate, to the Colombian outpost of Leticia on the banks of the Amazon River. Bustling Leticia is practically unreachable by road; the town’s orientation is towards the mighty river, reliant on supplies from cargo boats and transportation via speedboats that ply its muddy waters between Colombia’s neighbours, Peru and Brazil.

Leticia’s location is no accident – a tiny speck in the middle of South America, it is perched right on the Brazilian border, adjacent to a Brazilian town called Tabatinga. In fact it is so close to Brazil that you simply walk 200 metres down one of the town’s main streets and you cross into Brazil. No gates, no signs, no border control. On one side you are in Colombia, where all the shop signs are in Spanish, on the other they are all written in Portuguese and you are in Brazil. On the other side of the river lies Peru, a five-minute speedboat ride away, so it is possible to be in all three countries in a matter of hours.

Not quite the same as the "Aguila Ninas"

Motorbikes, scooters and Asian-style tuk-tuks rule in these frontier towns, where those on each side of the border speak a bizarre mix of Spanish and Portuguese and accept up to four different currencies in the shops. Jungle tours are big business here, among travellers arriving by air from Bogota, as we did, or from the upstream Peruvian port of Iquitos or from the Brazilian Amazonian hub, Manaus.

There are a multitude of operators spruiking, but the tours all seem basically similar – involving a boat ride down one of the smaller tributaries of the Amazon, a few nights either camping (under tropical strength mosquito nets) or in lodges, piranha fishing, night tours spent looking for anacondas and caimans (which look like alligators) and day trips to spot birds and other jungle wildlife. In the end, we decided to wait until we were further into the jungle in Peru, as the prices seemed a little steep.

Brazil - enjoying a coldie as the sun sets over the Amazon

Though Leticia and Tabatinga are side by side, there are some big differences when you cross the border, even though at first the only thing that changes is the shop signs. Confusingly, Tabatinga is on Brazil time, which is one hour ahead of Leticia. And while Leticia is packed with bakeries, Amazonian restaurants and motorcycle sales and repair shops, Tabatinga is lined with fashion outlet stores, with rows and rows of the ubiquitous Havaiana brand flip flops (sorry my Australian friends, I must use international lingo in this blog) and their cheaper imitation, Ipanema brand.

Oops.... eating endangered species :(

The Amazon is bursting with countless varieties of river fish, including giant river monsters which are endangered and therefore you don’t want to see them ending up on your plate. Adam found out later on that the innocuous fillet of Pirarucu he enjoyed cooked in coconut milk is actually an endangered species, the largest freshwater fish also known as the arapaima.

It is still being fished commercially in the upper reaches of the Amazon despite a ban being in place. There are however, several kinds of fish in plentiful supply. I had a delicious fillet of El Dorado, a white fish with the consistency of a kingfish, cooked in a spicy tomato and onion sauce.

This triple frontier outpost is the jumping-off point for our adventure into the Peruvian Amazon. Our first leg in the journey was a 10-hour speedboat trip upstream to a town called Iquitos in Peru, the largest town in the world not accessible by road. To get to the boat, which departed at 4am, we first had to cross the river to the Peruvian port of Santa Marta.

On the docks for a 2am departure

Confusingly, the boats left from the Brazilian side of the border, so we had to spend the night (well half the night because we got up at 2am) at a seedy “bagpackers” hostel close to Tabatinga’s seedy but bustling market and port precinct.

After a few days in Iquitos, we will take a tour by canoe deeper into the jungle (Adam, predictably, is particularly excited about fishing for piranhas and other river fish) while I am hoping to be able to wrap an anaconda around his neck if he spends too much time fishing!

The next leg is to ride on one of the big Amazon cargo boats further upstream, right to the source of the river, to another speck on the map, the Peruvian town of Yurimaguas. The journey will take three days and two nights, in which we will sleep in hammocks on the top deck of the boat.

Stay tuned for the next instalment in our Amazonian adventure!

The mighty Amazon - clouds so low you can nearly touch them

Big ups to Bogota

Colombia's capital city Bogota has its nice and not-so-nice areas, ranging from flash apartment blocks and malls to rundown alleyways crawling with homeless people and hookers. If nothing else, there's something for everyone here and its all relatively easy to find. The city, which has more than eight million inhabitants, is at an altitude of 2600 metres and set against a stunning backdrop of pine forested mountains.

One thing that didn't leave us alone was the rain. It's been a pretty recurrent theme since we arrived in Colombia a little over three weeks ago. We've had barely a day where it did not rain at some point. During our four-day sojourn in Bogota we have probably seen the sun twice for a one-hour period each time.

Apparently though we have avoided the worst of the inundations, as Colombia experienced terrible flooding in April and May, with thousands being made homeless, road and bridge collapses and serious transport delays. Getting around Colombia has not been too bad for us, but some bus trips took noticeably longer than they were supposed to. The trip from Rio Claro to Bogota took an agonizing 11 hours, a lot more than the advertised five hour journey.

The massive rainfall of late is to do with the La Nina weather pattern and has been drenching Colombia for most of the year. Its a good thing Colombians do not let a little thing like constant rain dampen their spirits. Even in the most solid downpours there were people out and about in Bogota, walking, cycling, riding motorbikes and enjoying the many green spaces the city boasts.

Some home cooking in the Cranky Croc kitchen!

From the minute we arrived - at 1am on Saturday morning after the horrendous bus trip - there was activity everywhere in the downtown streets and in the colonial district of La Candelaria, which is packed with bars and clubs and is where we stayed in a hostel run by a Bogota-based Australian. We really liked the atmosphere at the "Cranky Croc", and it was kind of nice to be in the majority in terms of nationalities, as not surprisingly, the place was crawling with Aussies! It was equipped with a BBQ, fireplace and the proprietors were very proud of their "Aussie-style doonas."

We were in Bogota on a long weekend - on the Monday it was a public holiday. Instead of the streets being absolutely dead (as happens on most Australian public holidays as everyone goes to their mates' place for a BBQ), they were throbbing with activity, as couples, families and teenagers came out to play.

The streets were crowded with vendors, selling chorizo sausages wrapped in thick tortillas known as arepas, waffles served with various types of spreads, jams and even chocolate freckles and the obligatory BBQ corn on the cob guys. Street performers kept the masses entertained - mime artists, storytellers and even an old lady singing Colombian folk songs!

This I did not expect...people walking llamas

One funny thing I have noticed all over Colombia is that pretty much every street stand, and even lone people stand around wearing big signs advertising phone calls. They rent out their mobile phones for an average of 10c a minute. Come to think of it I don't think I have seen many public phone booths but in most countries mobile phones are so cheap that even five year olds have them. So I'm not sure why using strangers phones is so popular here!

As is the same all over Colombia, everything is owned by a small, high-powered elite who obviously are very-well connected in political circles, and the rest of the population is pretty much left to fend for themselves. The rich seem to keep themselves quite separate from the rest, employing security guards with giant automatic weapons to guard their apartment blocks and driving around in big four wheel drives with the doors locked.

Lots of sandstone buildings...reminds me of Sydney

Far away from the neat and tidy apartment buildings, Bogota is ringed by shabby brick shoeboxes rising up the surrounding mountainsides in nearly every direction. The city is packed with homeless people, many of whom look like they are teenagers. I'm not sure if they live in some of these outer areas and come into the city to make money, or whether they actually live on the streets. Either way we were absolutely mobbed by them everytime we went walking around in the city. It is sad the way the government seems to look after certain parts of society, completely ignoring others.

Many of the people asking us for money were junkies, but unlike typical heroin addicts or drunks that you might see in other countries, these junkies were high on cocaine. Here, it is cheaper to buy than a bottle of rum, hence its popularity among street people. Unfortunately this meant that people asking us for money had a lot of energy, and were prepared to pursue us eagerly for it, which made it difficult to shake them off.

Enjoying delicious Ajiaco soup!

We saw one guy with a blanket around himself standing in the middle of a charred mess. At first we thought he was burning rubbish, but we quickly realised he was burning plastic cabling to access the copper wiring inside which presumably he could sell for quite an attractive price, given the spiralling value of copper recently.

Aside from walking around town (in the rain), visiting some nightclubs and a shopping mall, we did not do too much sightseeing in Bogota. But we did come across some great cheap eateries, including a place around the corner that sold delicious meat and chicken empanadas for just 50c each and a cafe where we tried Colombia's specialty, ajiaco, a delicious thick vegetable soup crowded with potatoes, corn and other goodies.

We are abandoning Bogota's crispy cool climate and embracing the sticky, sweaty jungle for the next installment in our adventure: THE AMAZON!

DO NOT go to Rio Claro - unless you like RATS

I think the title of this blog pretty much sums up what we thought of the so-called "nature refuge" at Rio Claro - a few hours east of Medellin on the main highway to Bogota. Seems like the perfect place to stop and break up a journey, right? Wrong!

It's kind of a shame really - this mega rich Colombian family owns this nicely built eco resort on the banks of a pristine mountain river and offers an all inclusive tariff with activities such as kayaking, rafting and zip lines for only a few dollars a pop.

The problem is they didn't give any thought to the truckloads of bugs, rodents and other "animales" in the vicinity and stop them from breaking into the rooms. The aptly named "eco-lodge" contains beautiful timber-constructed rooms, but they are open on one side - ie have no window and no flyscreen.

With no mosquito netting over the beds, its an insect free for all, with ants, wasps, moths, grasshoppers and the occasional mosquito sharing the room. Note: this is not a good environment to read with a head torch late at night - we got swarms of bugs landing on our books and buzzing around our noses. Not good to breathe through mouth in these situations.

Fortunately our cabin had four walls and windows, but there were big spaces on either side of them where insects could crawl through. And worse...a rat. Adam awoke in the night to hear sounds of our plastic food bag rustling. First he thought I was kindly preparing him a midnight snack, until he opened his eyes and came face to face with a hungry rat! After we shooed it out and blocked up the big space under the door where it made its escape, I found it a little difficult to get back to sleep, even though we hung the food bag up on a hook.

The rat experience and the weather had us on our way the next morning, a day earlier than expected. It had rained constantly throughout the night, and the so-called "Clear river" was a swollen muddy brown, and the hotel owners would not let us hire inner tubes and ride down it until the river abated. So we left without doing any of the activities. The one good side to this stop-over was the food - although the all-inclusive price worked out to about $85US a day for the both of us, so it wasn't really worth it.

Next time we'll be catching the night bus instead of thinking we'll have a relaxing time at the "eco-retreat"!

Memories of Pablo in Medellin

Cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar has left an indelible in his home town of Medellin, a lively and modern city of two million nestled in a big green valley in Colombia's northwest.

There's no escaping it: Pablo was a serious gangster. His activities in the cocaine trade and gang war against the rival cartel based in the southern city of Cali resulted in a terror campaign that saw hundreds of bombings and a giant death toll inflicted on his home town. Only in 1993 when he was gunned down by the CIA (although conspiracy theories abound), did the city lose its mantle as the world's most murderous city and become safe for foreigners to visit.

El Poblado -  financial and entertainment district

But at the same time, Pablo has left an incredible legacy. Needing to launder the billions of dollars he made annually from the cocaine trade, he invested heavily in Medellin's infrastructure - building schools, hospitals, roads and even a flash metro system that puts Sydney's CityRail to shame. Sleek, modern and air-conditioned, the metro zips passengers along Medellin's central north-south axis in style.

Like Pablo Escobar, many things about Medellin simply don't add up. It is an incredibly diverse city - at one end is the chic financial centre and Zona Rosa, or entertainment district, full of modern high rise apartment towers, banks, and shaded streets lined with sidewalk cafes, bars and nightclubs. Further along the valley is a stark contrast, where rows and rows of shabbily built brick shoeboxes line the steep hillsides.

One of the many things I liked about Medellin is that it is so well-planned. A relatively large population is well-contained within quite a reasonable area, with lots of medium-density housing built along key transport corridors (Sydney planners take note!). In many ways it is as modern as any European or US city - without the urban sprawl.

On another note, even though clearly not everyone lives in a nice house or apartment, the cityscape as a whole is an impressive site because the buildings are all built with attractive terracotta bricks, rather than the ugly grey cinderblocks used in other Latin American cities, so even the most basic of neighbourhoods are relatively easy on the eye.

Another strange thing about Medellin is that while it is in a developing country, it has an ultra-modern cable car that connects with the metro system, rising up its steep hills and over some of the poorer barrios. It sort of reminded me of a chair lift in the ski slopes - the capsules are suspended on cables and stop at a platform at the bottom of the hill, and move around in a circle, giving you a few seconds to jump in one before it turns around and heads back up again.

The view from these babies was amazing - its so rare that you get to travel above residential areas and it provided the perfect opportunity to stickybeak into people's houses, shops and schools. You could watch groups of kids playing football on concrete pitches and see right into rooftop coutyards that are haphazardly attached to most houses, where people hang their laundry, hang out and store all manner of junk.

Once you reach the top it isn't over - you can change for another cable car that takes you even further up the hill. It is sad to see the quality of life deteriorating as you ascend, as the suburbs become more and more like slums, but from here you can see the whole of Medellin in all of its contrasts. The view is absolutely priceless.

Rich and poor - Medellin's slums with financial district behind

To our surprise, the ride kept on going past the top of the hill and into a dense pine forest behind the city. When we alighted we realised we were in the middle of a big new national park boasting a network of walking trails, restaurants and even horse rides. We really weren't dressed to go on a hike, so we selected a short walk through the forest and prayed that the city's incessent rain hadn't created too much mud.

Natural beauty and smart planning aside, perhaps Medelllin's best asset is its amazingly friendly people, or Paisas as they are known. Normally you would expect city people to be a bit more uptight and aloof than country folk, but we did not find this with Paisas at all. Many stopped to chat to us in the street, and one kind group even offered us a lift home in the driving rain from a hotdog stand we had visited for a midnight snack.

Earlier that day we grabbed a cheap set menu lunch at a diner in a small laneway in the centre of town. The place was all set up with benches and individual seating, and the majority of the (male) clientele were in there alone. The Colombian set menu is the best and cheapest way to fill yourself up, and is even better value than fast food joints.

You are served a soup, made of varying ingredients - on this occasion it was tripe, the entrails of which I studiously avoided, but the soup itself was really tasty. Then you pick between a slab of beef, pork or chicken (or fish if you pay extra) which comes with a mountain of carbohydrates - rice, beans, fried bananas and even chips sometimes. For good measure, it is garnished with a limp-looking side salad. The price? $US2.

The street hustlers - porno salesman covering face!

The day we visited central Medellin, we were walking around with two Dutch guys, who were around the same height as Adam. The three of them attracted a lot of attention everywhere we went - stares, giggles, comments - I don't think anybody had ever seen a group of people that tall! After lunch we were hanging out in the laneway, watching men gamble on dice and other games in these mini-casinos that are set up all over town. Instantly we were surrounded by Colombians, keen to have a chat and laugh.

Very quickly though it became apparent that they had other motives - one old man, who was raucously drunk (at 3pm) started trying to sell us drugs, while another started trying to flog Adam copies of porno movies and prostitutes - when he thought I wasn't listening!