The Amazon Jungle pt2
The Columbian side of the mighty yellow Amazon river is largely above water, it slopes away a little higher and thus in the wet season is a chance to tread around on terra firma. Leticia, the largest of the bordertowns and in Columbian territory, is unreachable by road, relying on ferryboat supplies, a small airport and satellite dishes for contact with the outside world. When we arrived the dockfront was underwater, having to make our way around by the improvised series of raised planks on stilts. There are companies here which venture into the jungle on tours, but these were aimed at more upscale tourists who didn't think anything of luxury speedboats instead of PekiPeki and didn't mind what worked out to be an arm and a leg in AU$.
We decided to take a water-bus to the tiny and remote village of Puerto Nariño. This was a curious town. There are armed soldiers all throughout, slouching on their AK74 assault rifles and drinking beer. There are kids at all hours patrolling the planking, staring downwards into the water with a ready spear and a torch The front of the town, of course, is under about a meter of water so the rough basketball court was now some kind of waterpolo court for the local teenagers. I got a kick out of seeing the top of fire hydrants poking out from the tannin river. We chose one hostel from the book at random and asked for directions. The walk there was a little out of the way- A few mins through town, across a bridge, then across some raised planking and through a graveyard, up a hill, came to a school where the endlessly helpful children let us over an overgrown and swampy soccorfield until they left us with the owner, Frey.
A word on Frey. Frey is a spanish word for friar, as he was indeed an ordained memeber of a monastery. For something unholy we never got him to divulge, he was punished by his order and forced to go and live in the Amazon for 5 years to oversee the religious needs of the PN community. That was 18 years ago. He now runs a hostel on the top of a hill, and to keeo him company while there are no guests he keeps a few dogs, cats, caimens, something mysterious and large in the bottom of his fish pond about which he would only say "Don't put your hand in" and pair of domesticated Macaws. Yellow squirrel monkeys, creatures best understood as pure mischief given form and a fluffy tail, also frequent his porch because although they are wild, they've learned that tourists caught unprepared will occasionally leave their cups of coffee unguarded and they can imbibe a complete stomache-full of espresso to get off their monkey tits on an unimaginable caffiene ascent. He, Frey, will never hesitate to offer people cups of espresso, possibly secretly waiting for this to occour. (The monkies have another favorite pasttime, which is to jump on the cats and hump them. This has produced a runny eyed and raped look in the smaller white kitten and serious emotional damage in the large black cat which started stalking me something fierce.) His strategy for people who don't speak spanish is simply to yell louder and laugh heartily at their (our) utter bafflement.
Our first day out we tried to reach the nearby lake, but as the river thinned the backwards current and after 3 hours of solid rowing and proceeding only at a snail's pace we though it better to strip off, jump overboard and let the current take us and the boat back for lunch. Our hopes of reaching the lake were not lost on Frey, who then organised a PekiPeki so he could take us out there. I was sure that the term 'drive like a maniac´could not be applied to the captain (or "El Capi-taan, hooray!" as he would refer to himself) of a PekiPeki but our host definetly managed. He would chicane and swerve wildly, bringing the boat into the bank as a ramming manouver at top speed, laughing wildly when we had all toppled forwards from the impact. At the lake, I saw the huge breach of an animal I have to tell myself was a pink dolphin, but it looked more like a whale in size.
At night we would venture into town for whatever meals we could find. Frey insisted on us taking a large stick with us, for protection from "the dog". We took the stick, and didn't ask.
At twilight, we encountered the Behe Moths. These ...things... appeared as large dark shapes on the warm concrete. As we approached, they lept into the air with creepy, ghostlike whooping impossible to either impersonate or forget, the extremities of the wings had a series of white spots which made an exact silhouette hard to see but we know they were at least as large as an owl. Maybee not your huge Harry Potter snowwy owls, but those kind of middle of the road barn owls. Yeah. That big.
The third day Frey was out "going about his buisness", but he had arranged for one of the local youths to take us overland through the jungle. We walked up and over a few outlying properties and then found the barest of paths, in places scarcely more than a human-shaped machetied-out hole in the vegetation. When we came to cross streams, logs had been felled and pushed across the gulf. We walked about 2 hours, then the skies opened up and a downpour of vicious intensity hit us for a few minutes. This was kind of refreshing, but meant the path back had gone from muddy to full-blown brillig wabe. It was laborious, and I need new shoes. The rain in the jungle has advantages though, it clears away mosquitoes and brings the frogs out. The return trip through the boggish rainforest gave us a loog at a lot of these little guys, ranging from thumb-nail sized and harmless green, to perfectly camoflaged toads the size of a fist, and even some scary medium sized ones who had the black and bright, bright toxic green stripes nature uses to mark a species as unmesswithable without a serious chemical retalliation.
Out of the jungle, said goodbye to Frey (who gave us each a set of rosary beads, which he makes, to remember him), the monkies, and after an anxious emotional scene with my infatuated black cat we took a boat to the dock and back to Leticia. It`s time to head north again, so we booked flights, crossed the equator and are now in lovely Bogota, the heart and capital of Columbia.