Being in Peru, I decided to also visit the Amazon. It is not typical to see the 2nd largest river here, mainly as everyone is connecting Brazil with the Amazon, but also Peru has a part of the Amazon. I decided to stay at a lodge and do day trips rather than go camping while going down the river further and further. The possibilities of river cruises start from Kanu and sleeping in tents and end with big cruise ships and sitting on a balcony while sipping champagne. But yeah, I decided on the Maniti Lodge, roughly 2 hours away via boat from Iquitos: “the door to the Amazon”. One sentence about the beauty of Iquitos: does not exist. If you can, go directly from the airport on your Amazon trip… skip the idea of spending nights in Iquitos!
Living in the lodge was an outstanding experience. It’s basically in the middle of nowhere, with no internet and only 3 hours of electricity every day. So I read books, I slept a lot, I ate the basic food made by the chief, AND I made trips to the Amazon. The lodge was organized that every morning at 8 after breakfast, one tour started; after dinner (which was at 1 p.m.), the next tour started, and in rare cases, after dinner (at 7 p.m.), a night tour started. Almost every tour begins with the boat.
Monkey Island and the “Zoological El Encanto de Rony”
On one tour, we went to an island called Monkey Island. In the past, locals did terrible things to monkeys, like having them at home to play with them or using them to entertain people. If the police got them out of that martyrium, they brought them all on this island. Now you can walk on that island, and I saw some monkeys and a very cute anteater.
From there, it’s just a 5-minute boat ride to a zoo-like sanctuary. I got an anaconda on my shoulder, hugged a sloth, and talked to a parrot. All in all, it was a very nice experience and only one animal that might be able to kill me. 🙂
On the boat rides, it’s also possible to see dolphins (grey and pink dolphins), but hell, it’s hard to take a picture of them 🙂
On the night walk, it looked different. Walking from the camp, we saw a lot of spiders which can kill you. As well as bullet ants. Sure, one bite gives you only a fever of 24 hours, but some more bites of it and your body might collapse.
Some other animals I saw during these days:
- a giant bug (not dangerous)
- a poisonous frog: DO NOT TOUCH IT!
- a giant caterpillar: the fart is toxic!
- two parrots living in the camp
- a bird (just annoyingly loud, but not dangerous)
- a “pocket monkey”, the 2nd smallest monkey of the world
- a butterfly (also not dangerous)
Piranha Fishing
This was a fantastic experience on two of my days, fishing piranhas and preparing them for dinner. It takes a lot of work to catch them as they know how to eat the bate off the hook, so you have to be fast and grab them while they try to steal the bate.
In the end, I was successful and had something for dinner. To get full, you might need 10 or more piranhas, as they have only a little meat. But they have been really delicious.
Hikes in the nature
And last but not least, some hikes in nature, either from the camp or via boat from another starting point. In October, nature is not colorful as the blooming season ends in September.
I skipped two activities: swimming in the Amazon river and (for obvious reasons) the sleep at night in a tent somewhere in the jungle.
But all in all, it was a really fantastic experience, living in nature, hearing nature, and being disconnected from the rest (currently mostly cruel) world.
One Remark about movies in the Amazon
The locals are really unhappy about movies showing anacondas and piranhas as killer machines. After the first Anaconda movie, they really saw a rais of cancelations and a drop in bookings. But no one ever saw an anaconda attacking a human being. And they get big, but not like in the movie. And piranhas are bitting, which happens every day, but it’s not that 100 of them are attacking you to eat you completely; It’s not gonna happen 🙂
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