Amazing Peru -- The Amazon
Just returned from Peru, helping Marlan and Colleen Walker with the second of two waves of travelers on a walking adventure that took us to the Peruvian Amazon, the teaming city of Lima on the costal plains and to the fabulous, colonial Cusco, former Inca capital, the Inca Sacred Valley of the andes and exotic Machu Picchu.
The Amazon
It is surprising to find that almost 60 percent of Peru lies in the famous Amazon basin and is composed of largely untraveled and seldom-visited jungle.
The El Dorado plaza of Iquitos rang with the primitive music of tropical Peru outside our hotel as a young girl in grass skirt and halter danced around a relatively small, six-foot boa snake for tips from onlookers just outside the hotel. The music was underscored by the stacato sounds of small motorbikes (moto-taxis or moto-carros) three wheeled contraptions with a wooden, rear bench seat, scurring past as townspeople wrapped up the tasks of the day.
A dinner of Paiche, an Amazon River fish that grows larger than a man, and "lagarto", litterally, "lizard" in Spanish, the local name for an Amazon-sized version of the Alligator, topped off an amazining day near Iquitios, a city of 500,000 people where seeing an automobile is uncommon. (The only way in or out is on the river or by plane.)
A ride up the Maroa River, an Amazon tributary, on large wooden "launchas" with thatched roofs for shade, took us for some true walking Amazon adventure.
First came a visit with the Bora Indian tribe where we were conducted to a thatched roof pavillion to witness, then participate in dances with these gentle ancestors of native Amazon people. The children were bright-eyed. The teen-aged girls shy and covered modestly unlike the older women who, like the men, wore only traditional grass skirts and shell jewelery around their necks in the oppressive tropical heat. There followed a frenzy of purchases of simple seed and shell jewelry and popular jungle "blow guns" by the travelers.
Next came a rustic (picture wooden shanties on stilts and a few chicken-wire enclosures), river-side serpentarium where the more couragous handled 20-foot-long Anaconda snakes. These giant water serpents that populate amazon waterways were as thick as my thigh and rippling with muscular power. And the ones we handled were relatively smaller specimins. Others held land Boas that were equally intimidating, though smaller at 13 to 15 feet long. There were brillant jungle parrots, Tucans, baby monkeys, gigantic prehistoric turtles and jaguar or puma "kittens" (It was hard to tell since at their young age, the rosette markings typical of jaguars are not yet obvious) twice the size of large house cats, and the lovable jungle sloths, or "osos perizosos", literally, "lazy bears" too.
The Amazon
It is surprising to find that almost 60 percent of Peru lies in the famous Amazon basin and is composed of largely untraveled and seldom-visited jungle.
The El Dorado plaza of Iquitos rang with the primitive music of tropical Peru outside our hotel as a young girl in grass skirt and halter danced around a relatively small, six-foot boa snake for tips from onlookers just outside the hotel. The music was underscored by the stacato sounds of small motorbikes (moto-taxis or moto-carros) three wheeled contraptions with a wooden, rear bench seat, scurring past as townspeople wrapped up the tasks of the day.
A dinner of Paiche, an Amazon River fish that grows larger than a man, and "lagarto", litterally, "lizard" in Spanish, the local name for an Amazon-sized version of the Alligator, topped off an amazining day near Iquitios, a city of 500,000 people where seeing an automobile is uncommon. (The only way in or out is on the river or by plane.)
A ride up the Maroa River, an Amazon tributary, on large wooden "launchas" with thatched roofs for shade, took us for some true walking Amazon adventure.
First came a visit with the Bora Indian tribe where we were conducted to a thatched roof pavillion to witness, then participate in dances with these gentle ancestors of native Amazon people. The children were bright-eyed. The teen-aged girls shy and covered modestly unlike the older women who, like the men, wore only traditional grass skirts and shell jewelery around their necks in the oppressive tropical heat. There followed a frenzy of purchases of simple seed and shell jewelry and popular jungle "blow guns" by the travelers.
Next came a rustic (picture wooden shanties on stilts and a few chicken-wire enclosures), river-side serpentarium where the more couragous handled 20-foot-long Anaconda snakes. These giant water serpents that populate amazon waterways were as thick as my thigh and rippling with muscular power. And the ones we handled were relatively smaller specimins. Others held land Boas that were equally intimidating, though smaller at 13 to 15 feet long. There were brillant jungle parrots, Tucans, baby monkeys, gigantic prehistoric turtles and jaguar or puma "kittens" (It was hard to tell since at their young age, the rosette markings typical of jaguars are not yet obvious) twice the size of large house cats, and the lovable jungle sloths, or "osos perizosos", literally, "lazy bears" too.
posted by The AdventureWalkers | 10:13 PM
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