Make room for me Sven. (Part 1 - Travel to the heart of the Amazon)

To truly “get away from it all” you must cheat death. I learnt this over a harrowing 2 day journey to, literally, the heart of the Amazon.

Departing our comfortable Cuzco hotel before dawn, Barry and I, joined by 4 Australians, 2 Israeli’s and a Swede bumped along the Peruvian pavement for what turned out to be 30 glorious minutes – and then the pavement ran out. Initially the following 45 min along the dirt road seemed like an eternity…until hit our first obstacle…predictably – road construction.

Our guide Jose relayed to us that the delay was going to be “30 min” (Peruvian time). As time slowly ticked by, we sat on the side of the road and watched the construction crew in action. It seems they were attempting to widen the road at one particularly dangerous bend by chipping away at a large rock face with a pick axe and crow bar. The rock chips would then be loaded into wheelbarrows and taken to be dumped down a nearby ravine. To reach the higher parts of this cliff – they attacked from above. I watched as one guy, in what appeared to be the standard uniform of rubber boots and hard hats, loop a twine rope around a tree and then lower himself down before starting to chip away. No safety harness…just boots and some impressive upper body strength. After about 15 min of chipping away, it appears as though he chipped himself in to a sticky spot. Unable to maneuver any further, he called down to some coworkers who then ran off to the woods while he just hung there patiently.

No word of a lie, not 10 min later these men emerged from the woods carrying a crudely made ladder that they had evidently just constructed but cutting down trees and binding them together. They simply leaned the ladder against the rock face and – voila – worker rescued.

With the construction drama dissipated, we passed some more time there by trying to converse with the locals from a village up the road. With no traffic able to reach their village, he locals would hike down to the main road with a crazy load of produce strapped to their backs (potatoes, beans, carrots etc) and just wait for a car to come. When a car would slow down at all there would be a mad scramble to get your produce and yourself in the car (it would seem their compact cars can hold up to 10 Peruvians with goods) for the ride to Cuzco. They had to relocate this "bus stop" every now and then because rocks would fall on them.

Our journey eventually continued and we barreled down a road that eventually turned into a trail. I refuse to continue to call it a road because I have seen hiking trails that are both wider and better maintained. The next portion of the journey faced intermittent delays due to livestock. Most commonly we would come across little kids, in traditional Peruvian garb, twig in hand trying to herd 35 sheep while the driver would be frantically honking and we would be leaning on the window snapping photos of this unusual sight. (NB – it wasn’t always sheep…out passage was also thwarted by cows, llamas, pigs and alpacas.)

Overall it was surprising how fast we were moving considering we were snaking our way through the Andes crossing over two mountain passes while dodging domestic animals. By lunch “time” we had finally reached the edge of the massive Manu Nature Reserve and arrived in the Elfin forest. At this altitude very little grows and what does grow is stunted in appearance. But the lack of vegetation is made up for by clouds, dense, wall-forming clouds. Not exactly ideal driving conditions really when you are barely perched on a one lane trail next to a cliff with no guard rails.

To avoid slowing down at all on blind corners, (there are so many corners it would take years to reach your destination if you slowed for them all) a system seems to have evolved where the drivers just honk to signal their approach. This of course means that we had almost a dozen head on collisions and with no room to pass - one vehicle now must slowly back down the trail until they find a tiny spot of solid earth and squirm over while the other vehicle slowly inches by…very scary.

After a nerve wracking morning, I think we were all greteful for the brief picnic stip at the memorial monolith to Dr. Sven Ericsson.  Located at the top pf Acjanaco pass (11,870 feet) in the dense fog…I couldn’t actually see the plaque to tell you why Dr. Ericsson was significant…but I can guess that the commemorative monument was located here, in remote Peru, after he perished on these roads. If my memorial statue ends up there, next to Sven’s…come visit us.

To be continued…