January 8, En Route to the Peruvian Amazon

Danny Catt — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:05:04 -0800

I was up early (5 a.m. is early for me!) in order to make a quick visit to the Cusco Market with my delightful host and friend from Trek Peru (thanks Dafne!) before heading to the airport to start the next leg of my journey.

My brief time spent in the Peruvian Andes was fabulous and there is no doubt that I will return. The region is so rich in culture, with incredible landscape diversity and warm and wonderful people. In mid-morning I boarded an Aero Condor flight in Cusco heading for Puerto Maldonado in the Peruvian Amazon. Peru is so diverse … from beaches along the Pacific coast to lofty 6000 metre peaks, to the dark jungles of the Amazon rainforest.

First views of the Amazon rainforest

I admit it was a bit of a shock to my system as I left the air conditioned plane cabin and entered the hot, sticky and humid world of the Amazon basin. It was even stranger when I checked the weather in Vancouver on the internet to find that snow was in the forecast!
After checking into my hotel I went for a wander around town and down to the river, the Rio Madre de Dios, which runs through the town of about 40,000 inhabitants.

Rio Madre de Dios, Peru

The Rio Madre de Dios is one of the many headwater rivers of the Amazon. It originates in the south-eastern corner of Peru, not far from the Brazil and Bolivian borders, cuts through Bolivia and eventually joins the Amazon in Brazil. One of our Fish, Wildlife & Recreation program grads, Krista Adamek, has been working on a World Wildlife Fund project there for the past three years and it was my plan to get up river to spend a few days with her at the research station she has called home since graduating from BCIT three years ago.

I visited the Research Station office in Puerto Maldonado and filled out the necessary paperwork and also made arrangements for a transfer to the town of Laberinto where the next morning I would join a public boat (a collectivo) that would take me up river to the station.

My Spanish has not been improving as quickly as I would like but I was getting used to the menus in Spanish and I was getting fairly proficient (or so I thought) at ordering the foods I was keen to try (pollo = chicken; pescado = fish; carne = meat) so you can perhaps imagine my surprise when the words on the menu didn’t seem to make any sense at all. Had I suddenly lost all of the little bit of Spanish I had learned? I ended up asking the waitress to come over and I did my best to point out and ask why there was no chicken on the menu (her English was comparable to my Spanish… not very good). No matter where you are in the world though, with a little effort (perhaps some sign language) you can make yourself understood. When she finally understood and looked at my menu, she laughed, ran over and handed me a different one. This time the choices seemed much more understandable, and voila there was my pollo! Because Puerto Maldonado is so close to the Brazilian border, the menu I was reading was in Portugese (the official language of Brazil) not in Spanish!

After my fowlish feast I worked for awhile before calling it a night. Another early morning tomorrow.

Catt-Trax 2 - Puerto Maldonado

January 8, En Route to the Peruvian Amazon