When you are woken up so early in the morning, your first thoughts of the day go to the freaking birds and their progenitors but after putting some food in the stomach, the sun comes up and actually going to watch the birds doesn't sound as such a bad idea. The sunrise in the jungle is amazing.
We took the canoe again and went in search of the
We actually got to see some birds, although we didn't take many pictures. The views were so magnificent that I barely remembered I had a camera with me.
After that as it was still early we went for a short walk in the jungle with the guide. Just nearby the base camp.
It only took about 5 minutes into the walk to get totally immerse into the jungle. If it wasn't because there was an animal trail we were following, it would have been impossible for any of us to work out the way back. It is so dense and full of plants and trees that you cannot see anything beyond the next 20 metres and that was just around the base camp, in what they call a secondary jungle.
A primary jungle is an older part of the jungle which contains a lot of old and therefore higher trees, the secondary jungle is made up of plants and trees too but they are not as high so you get more sunlight. You can actually see where the sun is.
We also stumbled upon an ant nest up on a tree that any of us would probably ignore but our guide apart from pointing it out to us it also showed us how dangerous it is to camp nearby one of those nests. These ants use sound waves to guide themselves so when someone makes camp and start talking and making noises, the ants start all heading in their direction and in a few minutes the whole camp gets swamped with the ants and they get through everything, clothes, food, tools... everything and they go in the thousands.
Have you seen the movie?: The Naked Jungle (1954)
Apparently that's what it's like without the part were humans get eaten by the ants.
We walked around it without making too much noise and just to demonstrate, when we were all on the other side, the guide started to shout and make noises... it only took about 30 seconds to see a column of ants starting to come down the tree.
After that, we walked back to the base camp, had lunch and packed everything for the next step on our trip... spending the night in the primary jungle.
We packed a hammock, lots of water (I took 4 litres with me for one day and I would have drank more had I had more water), a blanket and some food. We weren't carrying much but the blanket and the hammock took a lot of space in the rucksack so we all looked like we were on an expedition for a month. Our guide, on the other hand, looked like the guy that goes from the hotel to the beach. He was carrying a tiny-mini-mini rucksack and a small basket with some eggs.
The main difference was that he could drink the water from the streams whereas we would probably have to be evacuated had we tried the water. No blanket and a tiny hammock. He spent 15 years in the army serving in the jungle mostly guarding the border with Colombia and he was used to spend weeks living in the jungle. Almost like us the city-folk.
Below the three survivalists in jungle gear...
What the heat and the humidity you may wonder why the long sleeves...
Most plants along the trail will make cuts on your skin, not to mention the ticks and leaches that lay on the plants until you brush through them and find a new home.
Also, you'll notice that the socks go over the trousers... that's to avoid unwelcoming poisonous insects getting on your feet.
That thing you see below is a snake... that Susana almost stepped on. She was posing for a photo below a tall tree when the guide saw the snake and told her to move away slowly. Not that that would scare Susana from taking a picture of the snake afterwards. :-)
That guy emulating Tarzan in the middle of the trees is our guide. :-)
We all had our turn and I was lucky that nobody was recording when I did it... it turns out that when you jump you go in the air and it feels kinda good but at some point you end up coming back and there is a big thick tree waiting for you. I was the only one who forgot about that small detail and ended up crashing spectacularly against the hard tree. I think my scream at the point of realisation was almost as loud as at the moment of the impact.
Some trees were really tall...
And in some points the jungle was really thick and was difficult to work out the trail to follow.
Eventually we stopped in the middle of nowhere and decided to camp there. By the middle of nowhere what I really mean is that that part of the jungle wasn't any different than any other, we could have stopped somewhere else and we wouldn't have been in a better place. We just stopped at a random place in the jungle and the guide decided to camp there so off he went and built a camp out of nothing.
First the fire... No self-respecting camp would lack a good fire, so after gathering some wood from the immediate surroundings we started one.
As you can see the guide cut off a branch and tied it up to two nearby trees creating a line from where we hung our hammocks. On top of that, he added some palm looking leaves from a nearby tree to create some rudimentary roof. It tends to rain at night... maybe just for 10 minutes, but when it rains... it rains.
You can also see Maria, converted into Maria Jones, Indiana Jones' secret twin sister gathering some woody vines to hang our boots and rucksacks, as you wouldn't want to leave them on the ground... spiders and snakes love boots and rucksacks for some reason...
The end of a long day
The morning after. Nothing like a good nutritious breakfast to start the day with energy.
We had another long day ahead of us. First, to get back to the base camp, then have a quick swim in the river followed by the boat trip to the bus station from where we would be taking the 4 hour journey back to Manaus.
The guide would stop every so often to show us the most diverse things, from which plants are good to drink water from, which can be eaten, which are poisonous etc... we even stopped at some point where there was a small hole on the ground. The guide started to insert a stick into the hole while I was leaning forward to get a better view, then María and Susana joined us and after a few unsuccessful attempts on his part I decided to ask what is it that he was trying to do, his reply was:
"There is a tarantula here, I'm trying to get it out so you can see it"
The three of us jumped back as if we had a spring in our legs and put a safety distance between us and the hole. He kept trying to get it out but it turned out to be a very stubborn tarantula and never got to see it. I wished someone could have taking a picture of our faces when he told us what he was trying to do...
Later on, we passed by another hole, this time considerably smaller and the guide made us walk around it and keep our distance. As always, I asked why and it turned out there was a black widow in it... so it seems tarantulas may not be as aggressive as black widows judging by the fact he never tried to insert a stick inside the black widow nest and he even made us walk around it.
Thick jungle
It was a long day and we got to Manaus quite late just to find that a friend of Susana's boss was waiting for us in reception to take us out for dinner.
I have to say, she was the nicest person you can get but we were really knackered and just wanted to go to bed and rest... nonetheless we couldn't leave her like that so we joined her for dinner and had a great night out.
I mention this because the following day in the morning when we were about to catch our boat to navigate the Amazon river from Manaus to Santarem she brought us a small white container filled with fruit and drinks which at the time we thought it was excessive and would never be able to finish it all... but fate had something in store for us and that container came in really handy in the end... but that's another story for another entry. ;-)
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