This is it!
Nos vamos a la selva mañana. The team will be leaving by boat around 6:30am tomorrow morning to go San Antonio de Pintuyacu in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon. Am I ready for the jungle? We´ll see.
The only things I have left to do are pack and buy gasolina for my return trip since I won´t be staying the entire time with braemblerose and crew. I will be spending twenty days there, then cajoling someone into giving me a ride back to Iquitos using gasolina y soles. I´m told five gallons is enough to get someone´s boat to Santa Maria, which is halfway to Iquitos y donde se venden gasolina. So I´ll buy another five gallons or so, then continue to Iquitos and get a room, then catch my flight to Lima. Kinda scary, but I´m trying not to worry about that right now. The best I can do is buy gas and try to make friends with someone that owns a boat once we get to San Antonio. As I understand it, people often would like to go to the city, but they don´t have enough gas, so I should be able to find one of those people and give them my gasolina(and maybe a few soles) in exchange for a ride. I´m expecting it to be a two-day trip. The boat we´re taking tomorrow does it in five hours, but they have a much bigger motor.
Our time here has mostly been occupied with procuring the food and supplies that we´ll need. The first day or two I was here, Leo and I worked on getting the generator working and hiring a boat to take us to San Antonio. His narration of the negotiation process was pretty funny. When we arrived at the port, he was telling me, "All of these boat drivers are basically criminals. The challenge is to find one that won´t try to cheat you, won´t run out of gas and has a boat that will make it all the way there." It made me think of the line from Star Wars: A New Hope, "Mos Eisley spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." When we got off the mototaxi, some people immediately approached us to tell us about what great boats they had. "You don´t want to talk to the people that approach you immediately. They are the ones that think they can rip you off for the most money." This may only be funny if you know him and the way he delivers lines like that with a straight face. Anyway, the rest of the trip was a lot like that and I really enjoyed it, but it made it clear to me just how challenging it would be for an inexperienced person with poor Spanish like myself to do that sort of thing. I gained a lot of respect for Don Leo that day.
This will be my last post until I get back from the jungle. Wish me luck!
The only things I have left to do are pack and buy gasolina for my return trip since I won´t be staying the entire time with braemblerose and crew. I will be spending twenty days there, then cajoling someone into giving me a ride back to Iquitos using gasolina y soles. I´m told five gallons is enough to get someone´s boat to Santa Maria, which is halfway to Iquitos y donde se venden gasolina. So I´ll buy another five gallons or so, then continue to Iquitos and get a room, then catch my flight to Lima. Kinda scary, but I´m trying not to worry about that right now. The best I can do is buy gas and try to make friends with someone that owns a boat once we get to San Antonio. As I understand it, people often would like to go to the city, but they don´t have enough gas, so I should be able to find one of those people and give them my gasolina(and maybe a few soles) in exchange for a ride. I´m expecting it to be a two-day trip. The boat we´re taking tomorrow does it in five hours, but they have a much bigger motor.
Our time here has mostly been occupied with procuring the food and supplies that we´ll need. The first day or two I was here, Leo and I worked on getting the generator working and hiring a boat to take us to San Antonio. His narration of the negotiation process was pretty funny. When we arrived at the port, he was telling me, "All of these boat drivers are basically criminals. The challenge is to find one that won´t try to cheat you, won´t run out of gas and has a boat that will make it all the way there." It made me think of the line from Star Wars: A New Hope, "Mos Eisley spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." When we got off the mototaxi, some people immediately approached us to tell us about what great boats they had. "You don´t want to talk to the people that approach you immediately. They are the ones that think they can rip you off for the most money." This may only be funny if you know him and the way he delivers lines like that with a straight face. Anyway, the rest of the trip was a lot like that and I really enjoyed it, but it made it clear to me just how challenging it would be for an inexperienced person with poor Spanish like myself to do that sort of thing. I gained a lot of respect for Don Leo that day.
This will be my last post until I get back from the jungle. Wish me luck!