Hi from Colombia! My last two weeks were spent off the beaten track exploring and surviving the Amazon Rainforest. I started off in Manaus—a city that defies logic. It is a port city of 1.5 million people that is located over 1000km from either ocean. Manaus boomed in the rubber days of the 19th century, as it was conveniently close to a huge number of rubber trees. Rubber trees contain milk that bleeds from them when their bark is cut. When the milk hardens it becomes rubber. I always assumed that rubber had to be processed, but this was basically a rubber band coming out of the tree! The highlight of Manaus is the beautiful Teatro Amazonas, a big Opera house that was built in 1896 with a colourful tiled dome. Opera and Amazon are two words I never expected to hear in the same sentence.
I took two trips into the jungle: one near Manaus and one near Leticia on the Brazil-Colombia-Peru tri-border. Both were excellent. The jungle has always been a place that has intrigued and fascinated me—probably because we have nothing even similar to it at home.
The Manaus trip started on a very strange note. We arrived at the jungle lodge to find out that it had been the scene of a boat-by shooting just two nights earlier. Apparently two disgruntled men came by and fired shots at a guide who was sitting on a bench on the front deck. Sure enough, when we went to look we could see holes from the shots in the bench and the cabin wall behind. Not exactly the note that we had hoped to start the trip on. I might have expected something like that in Rio, but not in the Amazon. Besides the bad start, the trip was great. We saw the beautiful giant Amazonian water lilies, played Tarzan on jungle vines, spotted wildlife like sloths, alligators, squirrel monkeys, parrot snakes, and tarantulas and were constantly in awe of the beautiful jungle vegetation. I was amazed by the number of different shades of green that I saw. The lodge was located on the glassy jet black Rio Negro, a main tributary of the Amazon River that comes from Colombia. Swimming in the warm river was one of the best parts of the trip. The weather was consistently hot and humid and I was in the water every chance that I got. The water was quite high when we visited, about 6-7 meters above low season levels, which made for great canoeing. We could literally canoe through the forest, dodging trees, vines and bushes constantly. At one point we even had to take out the machete to help get us through a particularly dense section. It also made for great wildlife watching because we could get up close without making too much noise. The reflection of the trees on the calm black water was a beautiful sight.
My highlight of the trip was sleeping one night in the jungle and doing a trek the following day. We came to a spot where we were surrounded by dense jungle and decided that this would be the spot for our camp. It was amazing watching our guides turn the jungle into a campsite. It went from raw jungle to mini lodge in just over an hour, using nothing except for two machetes; all the materials came from the jungle. They built a structure for the group to hang hammocks from and put a tarp over top for rain protection. We had a delicious meal of fire roasted chicken and rice, which we ate out of bowls made of leaves and spoons that were carved from wood. It certainly wasn’t a quiet night—the jungle insects all come out after dark. I didn’t find the mosquitoes bad at all…Winnipeg in early July is much worse. We did a great jungle trek as well. There is a certain vine that contains water that is potable, which came in very useful when our water bottles were running low!
We also swam with Pink Dolphins in the river, which was an incredible experience! While the dolphins were feeding they were close enough to touch. Their skin is extremely soft and smooth and they have a very friendly personality. It was always a shock when a dolphin fin or tail would hit my leg.
When I wasn’t in the jungle, I was making the epic 5 and ½ day boat journey from Manaus to Tabitinga-Leticia (the Brazil-Colombia border town). The trip was about 1100km and I made it in a typical Amazonian “slow boat.” Slow boats work in the following way: you buy a hammock, board the boat well before departure time, carve out a small piece of real estate for yourself, and tie up your hammock. This hammock serves as your home for the next 6 days. On the boat the concept of the “personal bubble” simply doesn’t exist. I had people right below me on either side. While this may sound like a painful experience, I really enjoyed it. I swayed down the Amazon in my hammock and watched the world go by, and had lots of time to read and think. Also, I met some nice locals and had conversations in broken Portuguese and also met a few English speaking backpackers, which was fortunate. The boat had TV’s that played all of the world cup games as well, which helped to keep me entertained. Also, the top deck had a nice lounge area, meaning you could get some breathing room during the day. It was a cruise by day, refugee ship by night.
The forest I saw near Leticia was even more impressive than the jungle near Manaus. The trees were massive and varied and the vegetation was dense. We saw many different species of spider, some monkeys, the fastidious leaf-cutter ants, macaws, and other birds. More amazing than the wildlife was the beauty of the jungle itself. We also saw a young ocelot, which is a smaller cousin of the jaguar. It was separated from its parents at birth and a local lady has been raising it for the last 9 months and plans to release it to the wild soon. The ocelot is an incredibly agile, powerful, and graceful animal. I visited the jungle in Leticia with my friend Mike from the boat ride and we decided that sleeping in the jungle in hammocks sounded like a good idea. While this may sound romantic, it was a painful experience. We were plagued by bad mosquito nets and we were absolutely eaten alive. This night was definitely the worst mosquito experience of my life.
On my last day in Leticia, I woke up in Peru (the jungle we visited was technically in Peru), went to Brazil during the day to get my passport stamped, and finished the day off in Bogota, Colombia! I met up with Minju in Bogota and we have 3 weeks together to explore Colombia!
-MB
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