From here on my pace of travel increases significantly.
After flying from Providencia to San Andres, and San Andres to Bogota on Friday, and swapping suitcase for rucksack, Saturday saw me catching a flight to Leticia, Colombia's most southerly city. There are no roads to Leticia, it can only be reached by air and water, due to its location in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. What also makes Leticia a fascinating place to visit is that it sits at the junction between the borders of Colombia, Peru and Brazil. Indeed, it is possible to walk from Colombia into Brazil without even noticing it, as there are no controls unless you wish to travel further into the interior.
Approach to Leticia
The flight itself was one a memorable one, as the last hour of the flight is over the rainforest, which is incredibly dramatic when you look down and all you can see is forest (or jungle? No one has been able to tell me which is correct...), broken only by the occasional meandering river. The final approach itself is worth a mention, as the plane comes in low and banks over the river itself before coming into the tiny airport, where it really does feel like you've just touched down in the middle of the jungle (or forest...)
The hostel I was staying at was a quirky place called "Mahatu", built on the outskirts of town on a wooded plot of land which means it's quite easy to forget that 5 minutes down the road is a modern (if poor) city. The owner, a guy called Gustavo was an eccentric individual - on the day I arrived he threw out a group of British students who had been quietly playing Monopoly in the bar, because apparently they had been "too vague about when they were leaving..." All the other guests I met while staying there agreed that he was an extremely temperamental character, and that kid-gloves were required when dealing with him (an assessment reinforced by the locals who said he was a notorious grouch). Thankfully, he was able to arrange for me to go on a 2-day jungle trip up-river to get a feel for the Amazon.
The trip involved an early morning start from the docks at Leticia in a small motor canoe, with myself, 2 guides and a young couple consisting of a Venezuelan and a Cuban (whose Spanish was almost unintelligible). We headed up the Amazon out of Leticia, stopping at a small nature reserve to see some examples of the large lily-like plants called "Victoria Regis" and where there were several tame monkeys and parrots for tourists to pose with.
The water level in the Amazon rainforest is currently exceptionally high (apparently 2 metres higher than average) meaning the base of every tree we saw was submerged, which was extremely odd to see. The one advantage of this was that it meant routes that were not usually possible for small boats to navigate became practicable, allowing us to take short cuts to avoid the busiest and windiest sections of the river, and instead go through the jungle itself, where there was a much better chance of seeing wildlife - on one such diversion we spotted iguanas and several types of monkey.
Further up-river we took a fork to one side which led to a dead end of thick reeds, from where it was possible to see a wide variety of bird life including some eagles, although too far off to get any decent photos.
It may be incredibly hard to see in this photo, but I did actually catch a piranha.
The tour concluded with a frantic journey from one side of Leticia to the other attempting to sort entry and exit stamps to go from Colombia into Peru, as my plan was to catch the fast passenger boat from Santa Rosa, on the Peruvian side of the border (and across the river from Leticia), at 0400 and go upriver to Iquitos, before flying to Lima the next day. To round this out, I had to deal with an outburst from the hostel owner regarding whether I should stay that night in Leticia or in Santa Rosa. Having decided to stay in Leticia that night, I bedded down for an earlyish night. Of course, I wasn't able to get to sleep until around 0100, so was not in the best of states when the hostel owner woke me telling me the taxi that was to take me to the docks was waiting. The next 40 minutes were amongst the most stressful of the entire trip, as I was convinced I was going to be late and would be left stranded in Santa Rosa, thus missing my flight, etc, The taxi deposited me on the Colombian bank of the river, where I spent what seemed like an age waiting for a water taxi to take me to Santa Rosa.
The crossing itself was fairly nerveracking, as the river was pitch-black, with only the pilot's handheld flashlight providing any illumination. I reached Santa Rosa around 0340, only to be told that I still had to sort my Peruvian entry documents. I therefore had to dash to the small border control hut, hammer on the door to wake up the man who worked there, and hurriedly scrawl my name and details multiple times on various forms before receiving my small slip of paper, and then running back to the quay where the boat was minutes from leaving. I fell into a seat, utterly exhausted, but indescribably relieved not to have missed the boat. The boat got underway through the darkness and I fell into a much needed sleep with an audiobook. I woke to dawn on the Amazon, as the boat made steady progress upriver towards Iquitos.
The journey took around 12 hours overall, and having fixed upon a hostel using Lonely Planet, took one of the local motor taxis to the city centre, stopping by at an ATM in which I proceeded to leave my card until the guard came running out after me as I was climbing back into the taxi. I spent an uneventful night at the hostel, taking advantage of the wifi to make plans for my onward travel plans, but too knackered to go further afield than a quick wander to the main town square.
The next morning, a rickshaw delivered me to the airport for my flight to Lima, where I would be staying with a British woman and her daughter whom I had met on the boat from San Andres to Providencia a month before.
Next time: Lima, Arequipa and the Colca Canyon
The trip involved an early morning start from the docks at Leticia in a small motor canoe, with myself, 2 guides and a young couple consisting of a Venezuelan and a Cuban (whose Spanish was almost unintelligible). We headed up the Amazon out of Leticia, stopping at a small nature reserve to see some examples of the large lily-like plants called "Victoria Regis" and where there were several tame monkeys and parrots for tourists to pose with.
For lunch we stopped at a series of small wooden buildings held aloft of the water on stilts - this was where we would be spending the night. After a lunch of fresh fish, we went back to the boat and headed further upriver to one of the few bits of dry ground for miles around. Here we met up with a local who took us on a 3 hour hike along a jungle trail, him clearing a way with his machete, repeatedly reminding us to keep a weather eye out for snakes on the forest floor. By the time we got back to the boat, the light was beginning to fade, so we headed back for dinner. We turned in early, as at 3am we were woken to go on a nightime expedition by paddle-canoe to look for Caymans. With no light pollution and no clouds the night sky was fantastic, with a tremendous number of stars visible. Unfortunately, we didn't have much luck on the Cayman front, as the one we did see by the reflection of torchlight in its eye soon vanished as we approached, even though we canoed amidst the trees themselves. We did see a poisonous watersnake, which necessitated some frantic paddling to put some distance between it and ourselves! After an hour or so, we returned to the stilted houses and sleep.
Evening in the Amazon
The next morning we again travelled up river to find a spot to do some piranha fishing. Although one of the guides caught the first piranha, I was the first (and only!) member of the group to catch a red-bellied piranha (which are the supposedly vicious ones people think of). Although my technique could definitely do with some work (my line seemed to end up in a tree every time I tried to haul a fish out of the water...) I weas still incredibly pleased with myself. After an hour or so of fishing, we moved on reaching a lagoon-like area we were told was safe to swim in (thoughts of the dreaded penis-fish giving a moment's pause for thought).
No penis-fish thankfully
After lunch, we began the return journey to Leticia, but via a different route, which allowed us to stop off at the Brazilian port of Benjamin Constant, where we saw the comercial life of the Amazon, with huge barges carrying enormous quantities of lumber downriver to the Atlantic coast.
The tour concluded with a frantic journey from one side of Leticia to the other attempting to sort entry and exit stamps to go from Colombia into Peru, as my plan was to catch the fast passenger boat from Santa Rosa, on the Peruvian side of the border (and across the river from Leticia), at 0400 and go upriver to Iquitos, before flying to Lima the next day. To round this out, I had to deal with an outburst from the hostel owner regarding whether I should stay that night in Leticia or in Santa Rosa. Having decided to stay in Leticia that night, I bedded down for an earlyish night. Of course, I wasn't able to get to sleep until around 0100, so was not in the best of states when the hostel owner woke me telling me the taxi that was to take me to the docks was waiting. The next 40 minutes were amongst the most stressful of the entire trip, as I was convinced I was going to be late and would be left stranded in Santa Rosa, thus missing my flight, etc, The taxi deposited me on the Colombian bank of the river, where I spent what seemed like an age waiting for a water taxi to take me to Santa Rosa.
The crossing itself was fairly nerveracking, as the river was pitch-black, with only the pilot's handheld flashlight providing any illumination. I reached Santa Rosa around 0340, only to be told that I still had to sort my Peruvian entry documents. I therefore had to dash to the small border control hut, hammer on the door to wake up the man who worked there, and hurriedly scrawl my name and details multiple times on various forms before receiving my small slip of paper, and then running back to the quay where the boat was minutes from leaving. I fell into a seat, utterly exhausted, but indescribably relieved not to have missed the boat. The boat got underway through the darkness and I fell into a much needed sleep with an audiobook. I woke to dawn on the Amazon, as the boat made steady progress upriver towards Iquitos.
It's moments like this that make me wish for a better camera
The journey took around 12 hours overall, and having fixed upon a hostel using Lonely Planet, took one of the local motor taxis to the city centre, stopping by at an ATM in which I proceeded to leave my card until the guard came running out after me as I was climbing back into the taxi. I spent an uneventful night at the hostel, taking advantage of the wifi to make plans for my onward travel plans, but too knackered to go further afield than a quick wander to the main town square.
The next morning, a rickshaw delivered me to the airport for my flight to Lima, where I would be staying with a British woman and her daughter whom I had met on the boat from San Andres to Providencia a month before.
Next time: Lima, Arequipa and the Colca Canyon
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