Well the plan was that we’d be out at 5:15 for the clay lick unless it was raining. And it rained. And rained. I heard it start around 1 a.m. and heard it on and off all night. There was thunder, lightning and winds to go with it. When I woke at 4:30 and it was still coming down in buckets, I reset the alarm for 7:30 since Plan B was breakfast here at 8. I ended up getting a fairly sound 10 hours of sleep, which I think I desperately needed after the ridiculous treks to and from Sandoval Lodge.
At breakfast we discussed Plan B, which was essentially wait it out. It seemed to almost stop around 9, so we said we’d reevaluate at 10 and maybe do a walk on nearby trails. But the rain picked up again and continued until lunchtime. At lunch we decided we’d try to go out at 3:00 and do a catamaran ride around another oxbow lake.
Breakfast was another good one with scrambled eggs, pancakes, fruit cocktail and starfruit and banana juice. Lunch was a potato and egg salad with a light creamy chili sauce, a Peruvian speciality, followed by spaghetti with soy meat, tomato and onion. Another fruit design for dessert, this one shaped like a bird in flight out of honeydew melon.
The in-between parts here were spent chatting, reading, talking about wildlife, talking to Pepe, a quick catnap and drinking lots of hot tea and hot chocolate. With the rain and the wind and no sun, it’s gotten cold here. Who’d have though the Amazon would be this cold? Fortunately I threw one long sleeved shirt in my knapsack and I’m glad I have it, but I have a T-shirt and hoodie sweatshirt on too, and I’m still shivering. My rain coat is apparently not waterproof, only water resistant, and will never dry out by the time I leave here. Everything else is in various stages of damp. I was most concerned about my camera but I think the silicon packets I learned about at Hunt’s photo class were a smart idea because so far so good.
We regrouped at 3:00 and took our boat from our Bolivian side of the Heath River over to the Peru side, jet setters that we are. When the driver pulled the boat up to this steep muddy cliff, I thought they were joking that this is where we were getting out, but I should know better by now, they don’t joke. So we climbed to the tip of the boat, across a narrow gangplank they threw down and then the two guys who drove the boat helped yank us up the muddy slope to a set of steps that led into the jungle. We walked in about 5 minutes and then there was a little thatch-roofed covered dock there with a homemade catamaran (two canoes with a platform across them) waiting for us. The guys scooped out all the water in the canoes and we climbed on the platform where we could sit on benches (with railings around them). I know, if you’d told me I’d be doing any of this, I’d never have believed you. Just getting to that point was a lot and now here I was on a catamaran in Peru on a lake with no one else there? Crazy.
Pepe brought three fishing poles with him and some raw meat for bait. He asked if we wanted to fish but only William, the gentleman from Australia, wanted to. Pat and I took photos. It took all of 2 minutes and Pepe was holding a piranha in his hand! It was small and yellow and had a great set of teeth! The good thing I learned is that piranha will only go after you if they smell blood. But since I had no intention of going in the water anyway, that wasn’t a concern. Pepe asked if we wanted it for dinner but I told him to throw it back. Now that I’d met it and put a face with a name it didn’t feel right to eat it. We didn’t catch any more fish.
The guys started to paddle and we drifted along, seeing a few stinky birds (quoatail?) and hearing some macaws. Suddenly we saw three heads pop up ahead of us and it was another family of otters! Pepe said they don’t often see them in this lake and since there aren’t a lot of visitors here, they aren’t habituated to humans, so they were chuffing at us telling us to get lost. The guys stopped paddling and just drifted as we watched them cross in front of us and beat feet away. That was pretty cool though, I wasn’t expecting to see them again. We didn’t see much else of interest, it was just neat to be floating in such silence and surround by so much and so many shades of green! Every few minutes there’d be something that would break the surface of the lake and pop back down leaving bubbles and the circles on the surface cascading behind it. We never saw what it was but we wondered if it wasn’t a bigger fish.
It started to get dark so we turned around and head back. I successfully made it down the muddy slope without nosediving into the river and we came back to the lodge for a hot shower. It felt great! Pepe says it’ll be warmer tomorrow, so I just have to suffer through one night of being cold. The cabins here are essentially screened in porches with privacy screens 3/4 of the way up, so no way to shut out the wind or the cold, but I have three beds in this room so I may take the comforters off the other two and pile them on mine for added layers!
There are two resident cats here, a black calico one and a white one with stripey paws and back. I swear that one is female the way she is vocalizing. They are meant to keep the rodent population under control but they know where the food comes from and sit at the kitchen door waiting for handouts. Hearing and seeing them makes me miss my kids!
The chef here is really trying to accommodate both my vegetarian diet as well as Pat’s lactose intolerance. In some cases, it means making three meals, one for her, one for me and one for Wally and Pepe. He doesn’t seem to mind and he’s a very jovial, funny guy. So far so good, but tonight was crazy good for me. We started with a noodle soup, which they swear wasn’t made with chicken. It didn’t taste like it was, but the others had chunks of chicken in theirs while mine did not. My main course though was divine. I got a huge plate of guacamole and chips! It’s like a dream meal! All to myself! The avocado here is to die for, so much more flavorful than what we get at home, so this was insanely awesome for me. I don’t even remember what the others had, I was so consumed with mine! Oh and the chef has also been making homemade chips for us before dinner; tonight’s was sweet potato, the night before was plantain. Delicious! Our dessert was done by young Jesus again, this time it was a papaya cut to look like a piranha with sharp pointy teeth and a papaya sauce inside. It was served with flambé bananas which we put the sauce over. It was cute and very tasty.
We all hit the hay early since we are going to try for the macaw clay lick again tomorrow. Fingers crossed!
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