You stroll along the natural winding path, trees and plants blossoming with flowers of every color on either side of you, sun lighting up the fresh morning dew. The audio is the wind rustling leaves and birds calling near and far. Stepping off the path you arrive to your cabana, hammocks out front, fan whirring causing the fabric around your bed to flutter. The rainforest? Not that romantic notion at all.
You are speedwalking in the dim, overcast light swatting at bugs both real and imaginary. Humidity out of control, everything you own, worn or not, is damp. Feet slipping and sliding in bogs of mud, or splashing in pools of water from the 80" of rain. Good thing the hotel provided galoshes, but they should have offered waders! Electricity, as it turns out, is only offered for limited hours. OFF becomes our new best friend, going everywhere.
Today starts at 5am. At this time you cannot see the mosquitos, you can only hear them. We have two excursions planned for today...
Hike to canoe Lake Sandoval:
We take a twenty minute boat ride to a 1.8mile hike through the muddy jungle to a half-submerged canoe which our guide, Jesus, bails out to take us on a one hour canoe trip around Lake Sandoval.
Anything has to be better than that hike
Since it is the rainy season we did not see as many animals as we thought we would. However, we did get to glimpse some creatures - several beautiful bird species, including macaws, a red howler monkey, some prehistoric 10ft fish, and some long-nose bats. Canoe ride over, we start the 1.8mile trek back again. Every time we asked Jesus a question he would stop walking and the mosquitos would descend in swarms... our inquisitive natures were shortly put on hold. I often walked with my head down, black coat closed up around my throat and hood over my head. Every time I looked up I would seem swarms of mosquitos around Mom's head, and would see her blotting her face with a napkin as the rain caused the OFF to run into her eyes. But we hoped for the rain to pour and pour, as at least that helped to keep the bugs at bay.
After lunch, back out again! We were excited starting this second excursion since the rain had picked up even harder.
Canopy Walkway:
Pouring rain as we go traipsing off into the jungle's understory. It was supposed to be an easy twenty minute walk to the canopy bridges, but Jesus had other ideas for us... Not quite sure why, but Jesus decided that we had not had enough adventure so he improvised.
Trail? What trail?
All of a sudden he stopped walking, claiming that the trail was blocked by fallen trees. Would we like to attempt to continue on anyway? he asks. Mom and I look at each other, and with shrugs of "why the frick not" we follow Jesus as he machete-cuts his way through the underbrush. Shortly we are balancing on slippery fallen tree limbs and clawing our way through branches, wading through water dangerously close to cascading into our knee-high galoshes. No trail in sight. (keep in mind, this is all done with me carrying my camera and full gear bag! Mom has her own backpack, and my tripod, as well as an umbrella) This goes on for some time until Jesus seems to reach an impasse - a pool of water that would clearly be waist deep should we attempt to go any further. Jesus asks if we want to continue anyway (are you freakin' kidding?!?) and then says he might be able to find another way through. We trek back over and under the trees, sloshing through the black water and muck, to the original trail which picks right back up again and we continue on our merry way to the canopy towers. What just happened?!?
Only two canopy bridge systems in Peru - this is one of them!
Seven cable-suspended walkways, the wooden slats slippery in the rain. Didn't see much, but were fun to walk across (in a dangerous-going-to-slip-and-fall-to-my-death kind of way)
We survived the day to return to the lodge around 5pm, exhausted, satisfied with our accomplishments, and ready to get the heck out of the rainforest.
Despite the forty applications of insect repellent an hour, I still manage to get several bug bites. Wish me luck that I don't contract any of the three major insect-related diseases common around Peru right now... (insert nervous laughter here)
woot woot
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