Then When: The Amazon

We safely arrived at Port Maldonado, after a 16 hour drive from Cuzco, through the lush jungle. Port Maldonado has a huge market where the Peru Amazonians come and sell the fruit they collect in the jungle and buy other necessities they need. The market is an interesting place as they have a very wide range of foods and fruits that look a little different than back home.

Backpackers in Port Maldonado

Head of Anaconda

"Variety of fresh Fruit on Market"

Gigantic fruits

George helped me look for a local that is willing to take me into the jungle with him and maybe speak a little "Engless", while he spent some time resting in Port Maldonado. I met up with a pleasant Peru Amazonian called Milan. I tried to make it sound like I would be a great help fetching fruit... he nearly died laughing while saying funny sounding words. I said to Milan that I wanted to eat whatever they eat. He then asked me what we have? I said banana and he showed me 15 different bananas. I said potato and he showed me 50 different potatoes and asked which one? I soon realised this was a lost case! We bought supplies and we were off on Milan"s boat with its egg-beater engine.

Milan's boat on the Amazon river

On the Amazon River with Milan

Milan moved to the bank of the river as if we were pulling into a driveway with a street address and recognizable house. He said "me casa", (my house), looking at the jungle and I felt right at home! His house was surrounded with fruit trees and very colourful flowers. We passed his house and 100m further we got to the kitchen and food storage and another 150m further was my house. He explained that if wild animals or large snakes, showing with his hands a diameter the size of my middle, come to eat the chickens or other food, then we are not in the way! I suddenly realised Im in over my head!

I was surprised to find a mosquito net over my bed. I asked Milan if they have lots of mosquitoes, and Milan just replied that its not for the mosquitoes. I just uttered an "oh", as if I knew what he meant and decided that it might be better for me to leave it unanswered and for my imagination.

My house in the Amazon

Colourful Heliconia flowers in the Amazon

Milan really went out of his way to show and teach me about the plants and animals in the jungle. He showed me that the different bananas each have a purpose it is best suited for. One banana is for feeding chickens (Then they lay eggs faster- or maybe easier!), others for feeding fish, others for salads, other one is to be prepared over the fire and my favorite was the APPLE-BANANA. It looks like a short fat banana, but tastes like apple and banana mixed together!

Apple banana is only one of 15 different bananas in Amazon

I believe we should experience and learn about things as wide as possible. This prevents tunnel-vision. "The Walking Tree" in the Amazon was a paradigm shift to me. This tree's roots are on top of the ground and it moves 20cm a year to find a better spot in the sun. You can see which direction it's moving if you look at the roots: the roots on one side are dying while it's growing new roots on the other side. I realised how easily we place things in boxes and because of our ignorance, we limit our capacity to experience.

Walking tree walks 20cm a year after sunlight

If these Army Ants come through your kitchen area, you should abandon cooking for the high-ground! They eat everything that moves! And I believe if you stand still for too long, you would be carried away for a later snack. When they bite you your ankles swell up and you will have pain and headache for 24hours.

Enormous Army ants

You never get use to the sounds of the jungle. When the parrots come over you in a swarm, you cant even hear each other if you screamed! There are amasing places where you find colourful flying birds come together. One of these places is a clay-lick, where the parrots and macaws come to lick up the minerals they need out of the exposed soil. The minerals help the birds process toxins found in the seeds they eat in the jungle.

Green Parrots at Clay-lick

Other times you crawl up your toes in your shoes when you hear something flying close by and you cant see it! And the worst is when it goes quiet! Then you anxiously start flapping your arms around and looking around to see if you were the landing strip! And some times you are! Then you cant scream like a girl, because you might wake up something worse!

Things that go BUMP in the night

There were many fruits and vegetables that I ate in the Amazon that I never even heard of or ever seen before. The one fruit looks like a rolled up palm-leave, with huge black pips covered in a white juicy flesh. They don't look half as interesting as it tasted! Something like watermelon, kiwi and pineapple!!? How do you explain something that compares to nothing you know? eh..

Best fruit I tasted in the Amazon jungle

My new friend took me to a lookout that was 75m above the jungle. There were swarms of colourful birds flying below us. Macaws and Toucans and smaller bright coloured birds diving through the rain-forest canopy. The view from the lookout is breathtaking.

Tree-house 75m above jungle

Tree-house towering 75m above the jungle

The Daceton Armigerum ant has a really strong jaw. I met this "orange"ant in the Amazon jungle, while 75m above rain-forest canopy. I heard a "tch" sound and I looked around and were brought to the attention of this small ant when I heard the sound and felt a pinch that felt like a bee-sting! This armored ant is not to be taken lightly! These ants are visual predators and if they see something they want, they go after it! These orange ants feed on just about anything it comes in contact with, including dead animals, algae and small slow insects! While the male ants walk most of the time, they also glide from the trees. The females have wings until they have mated!

Daceton Armigerum Ant

There are more than 1500 bird species in the Amazon Basin and South America is home to more than a third of the worlds birds. The Toucan is one of the most well-known and also the noisiest! They can be heard almost a mile a way! Many birds are migrating birds and can only be seen certain times of the year. Milan took me to a rehab center for animals and birds found in the jungle that got injured. There were large snakes, loud birds, many monkeys and a very shy Jaguar! So I got the opportunity to see some of the animals up close and still in the wild!

Down-river to see animal rehab

Toucan, Amazon rehab centre

Red and green Macaw at rehab centre

Collecting the fruit was done in the "greenest" way imaginable. Some trees only bare fruit once and even then are they not just chopped down. Over ripe fruit are thrown on the jungle floor and a lot of care is taken not to trample new fruit trees. A long bamboo is cut down and sharpened. It is then used to pierce the branch that carries the fruit until the fruit falls to the ground.

Gathering fruit for the market

Gathering fruit in the Amazon jungle

After carrying different fruits back to the boat, I was covered in blood-red spiders. Nervously getting the attention of my Amazonian friend, not wanting to over-react and get another one of his laughs! He just looked briefly, poked off a couple that did not look friendly to him, turned around and walked off! I asked him if we can swim and take a bath in the river?! He chuckled again! Milan put his long panga-knive on the side of the boat where it is easy reachable and said come, while hitting his two index fingers against each other to signal that we have to stay together! He explained: Piranhas, Cayman, Anaconda, Sting Ray, eels..etc and all I was worrying about is the little catfish that swims up your manhood! The river was flowing fast and Milan showed me how to surf trees coming down the river and then swim back against next to the river bank in the slower moving water. When we got back into the boat, we were refreshed and clean. As the boat "scrambled" off with its egg-beater attached to the back, we were shocked to see a few Cayman lying in the reeds 50m from where we were swimming!

Getting speech on river dangers, not motivational

Swimming 50m from Cayman

When it gets dark, everything changes.. for once I understood what is meant with... "the hunter becomes the hunted"! Milan told me on the first night to go fetch my "lunar"(light) and mumbling "aranya... aranya", but his broken English with my "scattered" Spanish missed some crucial info. Every time Milan has no idea what I am saying he just answers with an English word he picked up somewhere: "EXACTLY"... "Milan, can I eat this?.. Exactly! Fortunately I figured out that "exactly" is not exactly what Milan means! As I want to walk off to fetch my headlamp, Milan tells me to stay away from the trees and if I walk in-between two trees, closer than 3 meters, I should put my hand in front of my face. After a day of seeing poisonous trees and some dodgy jumping insects, I thought he was quite reasonable with his advice. On returning to Milan, he points his fingers at his eyes and to the trees, as to ask if I looked at the trees. I shook my head and Milan took my headlamp and I followed him.. Oh my word. ARANYA MEANS SPIDERS!! And freaking huge ones! My stomach was shaking as I approached the hand-sized Tarantula spiders which was on every second tree! Suddenly I knew what the mosquito net over my bed is for!

Sunset on the Amazon River

Tarantula Spiders on my house and in my house

Amazonian Spiders

Amazon Insects

I soon realised that my weak stomach was not enjoying the adventure as much as I did. I think Milan's friend we visited just added fresh meat to the old ones to damp the taste. All the Amazonians were fine afterwards, while the sweat started to form drops on my forehead. The next day Milan realised that something was seriously wrong and told me to find a doctor in Cuzco. Getting back to Cuzco was the next problem as I was throwing up all over the place. First Milan gave me herbs in boiling water and then took me with his slow boat back to Port Maldonado, where I met up with George. We had to wait a couple of hours for the bus that takes 16 hours to get back to Cuzco. When I finally got back to Cuzco, the doctors looked a bit stressed and ran around puncturing my arms and neck to find a vein, as my veins had fell flat. I lost more than 11kg in 6 days! The funny thing is that I was injected against salmonella, but got so much in that my salmonella count was sky high. The doctor wanted me to stay in hospital for five days and he made quite a case when he tells you how many people dies from Salmonella. But with 7 days left in South America, I was not willing to lie in a hospital bed for 5! The doctor gave me medicine I should use for the next couple of days, until I am home. We were off to Bolivia..