Good bye World....(Part 2 - Travel to the Heart of the Amazon)

Our tummies sufficiently full, we started our descent out of the Andes and into the Amazon. The glee and excitement we were feeling was palpable…not only were we going to see amazing things…the roads would surely be better! Wrong…in fact dead, pardon the very nearly ironic pun, wrong.

It seems the roads had just recently re-opened (my guess is in the hours before we arrived) after the rainy season. This resulted in us driving through actual flowing water, not little streams, full-fledged shallow rivers that were following the same path as our van down the mountains. At one point we drove through a waterfall; a genuine, post card worthy waterfall.

 And as terrifying as that all was – it was nothing compared to the mud slide. Roads in Peru frequently wash out. At least once a year there is an international news article about tourists who are stranded somewhere in the Sacred Valley because of roads or rail tracks washed away. This year the story was close, very close, to being about some foreigners who died en route to the Amazon when there trail/road slid out from under them.


I remember taking this photo as we were sliding...

As we approached the slide area, a few locals were waving frantically at us - I waved back, thinking they were just being friendly. It wasn’t until the driver started a string of what I assume was local dialect profanity and I physically felt the van slipping sideways while still inching forward that I realized the waves were actually ‘stop you are about to die’ waves. I will credit our drivers impressive skill at getting us through that but even he got out afterwards and with shaky knees collapsed and kissed the ground.

The next few hours of bumping along the rocky path and through rivers seemed rather tame in comparison as we slowly started to descend to the Amazon Basin. We arrived at the picturesque Cloud Forest Lodge just before dusk and had to rush to see the local “celebrity” in the area – the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock (The National Bird of Peru that is only found in the mountains around the altitude of 5000 feet).

The lodge itself is spectacular. All of our rooms over look a raging river that is providing the soundtrack for the evening. A small glitch in the generator means that we have to enjoy our stay without power. No hot water or heat is going to mean an extra bundled up evening as we get to meet our fellow travelers over what I am hoping is a delicious dinner around the fireplace.

Good night and I will write more tomorrow, providing this lodge doesn’t get swept into the scenic river tonight.