Date of Entry: October 18th 2015

Place of writing:  El Solario Hostal La Paz

We wake up before sunrise a Caoba lodge and as I reach for my bag something scuttles away, my headlamp showing a beautiful tarantula now huddled in the corner.  We watch it nervously then continue packing until Sara suddenly gives a quiet shriek, another tarantula is just a few feet from her bed.  We’re well and truly in the amazon now.

We climb out in the early morning pre dawn light and head down towards the river bank to watch the sunrise and wait for our ride to the main lodge.  Today is the excursion I’m most excited for, our hike to, and boat ride across Lago Sandoval, also the only day we actually enter Tambopata National Park.  But while we wait the sky takes on incredible hues of pink and blue as the sun creeps towards the upper edge of the canopy, bathing the tranquil yet chaotic amazon in light.  This is partially my camera’s dawn mode, but the colours were insane.

As our ride arrives and we say goodbye to the friendly older local man who runs our little side lodge, dragging our stuff into the boat, all very excited for breakfast the pinks and purples shift to the fires of burnt oranges the ball rises above the canopy, blazing bright in the mostly clear sky.

We get to the place and enjoy a quick and hearty breakfast, though sadly there’s no pancakes today which we’ve already heard about then a huge group of us, including the big group of Bulgarians pile into the boat and head up river a bit landing after maybe 15 minutes and splitting into two groups, the Bulgarians getting their own tour while we stay with three lovely french people, Javier, Julia and Ida from Sweden and a friendly if quiet Peruvian couple.

The walk is just over 3 km to the boat launch, but in the stifling jungle heat it’s not quite a stroll through the park.  Again though the trails here are wide and well manicured, long sections of boardwalk cutting through the jungle and for me somewhat hampering the experience of it all.  It’s comfortable, it’s easy, and it’s beautiful, but somehow it doesn’t feel as much like the amazon.  Still as we enter the reserve and spot an amazing butterfly sleeping on a branch near the path all complaints flee from my mind.

We walk onwards through the jungle which is full of sounds of animal and bird life, capuchin and howler monkey calls clear to my ears in the distanced, paired with the incessant prattle of parakeets it seems miraculous we don’t see any more animals before reaching the boat landing.

This place is a hectic mess, lots of people come to Lago Sandoval and they all congregate at this marshy inlet waiting for their turn to get on one of the leaky longboats here.  You have groups from all the lodges as well as eager day trippers  from Puerto Maldonado. It’s hot and it’s crowded and loud, and there plenty of bugs around making the wait unpleasant, and seemingly unfortunately our guide is very aid back and despite not arriving close to last, we’re the last group to get a boat.

Again impatience is the wrong way to go,  (not that I did anything about  it)  because as the last boat pulls away and our guide starts to go about getting us a vessel the monkeys arrive and everyone else misses them, while we abandon the idea of leaving as slowly the capuchin’s and squirrel monkeys approach, darting furtively from branch to branch, hiding in the thick green canopy.  A few lucky photos are all I can manage at first.

Patience pays off though as their curiosity begins to out weigh their fear and both species come closer and check us out, also clearly hunting for food.  We spend a solid half an hour with these incredible monkeys, both species are big groups though there seems to be more capuchins.  We end up back tracking along the path we’ve come quite some distant, following these friendly and curious primates as they watch us from the canopy, jumping around and playing with incredible grace that I would kill to possess.

Eventually our guide tells us we have to get back to the boats if we want to go out to the lake at all, and of course we do, because lake Sandoval is home to two families of giant otters, an animal I would kill to see, even though I know the chances are still slim. For those that don’t know the giant otters, I highly recommend watching this documentary or any other about them.

We say goodbye to our monkey friends, these ones who are entirely wild as feeding them in the reserve is strictly prohibited and climb into a leaky and veery old looking wooden boat, slipping out through the narrow swampy canals of the jungle towards the lake.  It’s funny, back in Tapiche Reserve it wouldn’t have surprised me for us to be walking through the swamp.

Before long we leave the clustered and thick undergrowth behind and slip out onto a surprisingly large and beautiful lake in the middle of the jungle.  Not more than a few seconds later we’re all pining for the protection of the plants though as the sun angrily beats down on us and I pull out my jungle hat purchased in Iquitos. In the bright rays of the sun butterflies flutter and dance around us, landing on various items as we paddle across the still water lake, watching carefully for monkeys, birds, and of course giant otters.

 

We take turns helping our guide paddle as we head around the lake towards a small lodge where you can stay if you have a little more money than me and sara, (nightly excursions from there are your best bet to see the giant otters).  I keep my eyes peeled but there’s no sign of them, of course that doesn’t mean the amazon rainforest is deserted.  We pass a cormorant,a pair of turtles and then pull up at the edge of a thick leafy tree where, hiding in the foliage, is a single red howler monkey feeding on whatever fruit the tree grows, and watching us quizzically, secure in his perch. I’m pleased, it;s the first wild howler I’ve seen since i Was 16 in Costa Rica with my family.

Eventually we continue on, passing another boat who’ve found another red howler and frustratingly not stopping for a closer look as we continue on towards the lodge, stopping at a few large trees overhanging the lake, covered in lines of odd bumps on the bark.  As we draw closer I realize they’re not umps, their bats, sleeping and almost seeming to vibrate as they do it.  Fascinating. Vultures look down from the bare branches above the canopy, waiting for the sun to finish the job on one of us.  An all together ominous scene.

We eventually make it to the far end of the lake pulling up to the lodge, anchoring the boat and climbing up to a crowded little structure with a few readily occupied hammocks and, mercifully a drink stand.  I buy a semi cold coca cola and then pass out on the floor, which my friend Javier graciously captures for me.  (My dad always warned me not to trust strange foreign men who photograph you as you sleep, but Javier seems like a nice fellow)

 

After a break and a nice little drift between reality and dreams we’re roused and told it’s time to go back.  This time we stay in the middle of the lake for the boat ride as we’re running late, and frustratingly there’s not a single trace of the Otters and I’m left with that goal still not ticked off the bucket list.  (I feel like if i actually ever made a bucket list it would take the form of a novel out of sheer length.. Anyone else?)  Still, we do get some great views of the lake and manage to spot a few more turtles on our way into the narrow jungle canals.

We get our boat back moored up, Ida and Julia both thrilled to not have to bail it out anymore, as it had steady leaks from both sides, and start the 3 km walk back, the sun now much higher in the sky, cutting through the canopy in thin shafts of bright light, attracting countless butterflies in the muddy middles of the path.  They flutter and dance on the air, soaking up the sun, pausing to land on the mud every so often, to give weary wings a well earned rest.

The sun cuts through the trees in the most delightful way, if only it weren’t so gosh darn powerful we’d all be happy campers.  The walk back brings no more monkeys sadly, but lots of the above butterflies and many distant bird calls and brief glimpses of colourful wings taking flight above all that green.  As we near the end though we hear something out of place, sort of like the ribbit of a bull frog but endlessly louder, deeper, and more alien like.  Sara, who was walking ahead of me, later confided she thought for sure everyone was about to die. It turns out the cause of the sound is a bid which burrows down under the earth several meters during the day, and makes this sound most of the day before emerging to eat and live during the night.  Goodness but  the jungle is strange sometimes. (sadly the camera doesn’t really capture the magnitude of the sound)

We reach the riverbanks, rejoin the Bulgarians, and wait a few minutes for our boat back to the lodge. It’s now about 2pm and everyone is exhausted,having started the day around 5:30. Luckily we now have the afternoon largely free to relax and unwind, our only other activity for the day a night walk which comes after a delicious lunch and dinner.  But first here’s a few final photos from our Lago Sandoval adventure.

 

After a delicious lunch and dinner, a much needed nap, and even more needed hammock reading session digging into some Brandon Sanderson and then challenging myself with some Spanish literature courtesy of the man who took some of the incredible photos in this entry (Javier gave me his novelette El Retroceso to read and I can highly recommend it for anyone who speaks good enough Spanish!  It’s fascinating and lots of fun to read. A group I was thrilled to find I’ve become a part of over the last 6 months or so.) we head out for our night walk just in the jungle behind the lodge complex.

the jungle is a different place at night, with all different life forms coming out.  Sure there’s lots of snakes, there’s the jaguars, the capybaras, but the biggest difference is the insects.  They are everywhere, and the jungle sure does grow them big.  Walking through the darkness with just small headlamps on we pass by some incredible crickets, grasshoppers and of course countless tarantulas.  Here there are two common types to see, the Pink tarantula, usually solitary, and the chicken tarantula, which can jump a little and is named the chicken because the young tarantulas’s follow their mother around like chicks to a mother hen.  I do apologize for some of the photos, I’m still wrestling with how to best use my new camera in low light, though some turned out fairly okay.

We also pass some more terrifying spiders and my personal highlight of the night, an actual stick insect, which I have never seen in the wild, though I have long been fascinated by their incredible camouflage skills after seeing them in zoos.  We end up finding two of the highly deadly wolf spiders, both bright yellow legged creatures spinning their webs and they suddenly seem more menacing when you know their venom will see you dead in a matter of hours.  Shiver.

 

Sara and I both crawl into bed fairly early, tired but not too tired to watch an episode of firefly.  It’s an odd sensation being on the computer in the jungle, but the show’s god enough to justify it, and we drift off to sleep before it gets too late, knowing we have another pre dawn wake up call the coming day.