We booked our jungle tour quickly. The first place we went to were offering a really cheesy touristy tour which included a dubious "shaman", indigenous people of questionable heritage, and a nice comfortable lodge. Pass. We were seeking the "real thing". We wanted tough jungle living without touristy accoutrements. We wanted it 100% authentic, warts and all.
We were walking down the street looking for our next potential tour when we allowed ourselves to be intercepted by an old (but far from decrepit) man who ran a company called EcoExplorer. His name was Carlos Grandez Java (aka Carlos the Jackal). The literature promised "Be prepared for the most primitive, rough and rugged experience of your life. Not for the faint hearted. Good physical fitness and a high level of patience are important to fully enjoy this trip". Where do we sign up?!
Boy were we in for a shock.
The first five minutes of the five day trip went absolutely flawlessly and we soon found ourselves standing by a shoddy public bus which was to take us to a place called Nauta where the boat would leave from, which was about a two hour bus ride from Iquitos. A French couple arrived a couple of minutes later, who we had known would be our only other company on the tour. Suddenly confusion engulfed us. The couple seemed upset. Carlos disappeared and left us with his henchman, also called Carlos (would you believe that the third evil genius behind this operation was also called Carlos?!), who proceeded to bang on (repetetively and at length) about how "lindo" (nice) the whole experience was going to be "mooooochos animales, es muy muy lindo, mooooochos animales" etc.
Whilst having our ears bent by Carlos#2, Carlos#1 was busy flitting around. Occasionally he would pop up and feed us some paranoia-inducing mis/disinformation about how the French couple didn´t want to come on the trip with us and that they would have to go with a different guide, although rest assured that he, Carlos, was still coming with us. Viewed through our new X10 suspicion bifocals we soon came to regard these miserable French bastards with distrust. Perhaps "un ratito" should have been smelled at this point.... It later transpired that the couple had negotiated and paid for a private trip and had every right to be upset. It also turned out that Carlos had told them the same as us - that we were going with a different guide, and that he, Carlos, was going with them. Total bull. In the end we all went on the trip togther. It really seemed as though he was trying to drive a wedge between us and keep us separate, probably so that we would not discuss the fact that we had paid $400 for the tour, whereas the French couple had paid $500. Had it not been for the fact that I spoke French he probably would have got away with it. When the French couple found out that they were paying more (because we told them), yet another pall was cast over the trip. In the end they got a $100 refund, after much fighting.
Anway, everyone loaded their kit on top of the bus and boarded. Two hours later we arrived at Nauta, still without having exchanged a word or a glance with les Francais, where cock up number two awaited us (or maybe a flamingo up - like a cock up only much much bigger). As the kit was unloaded from the bus it became appararent that Carlos´s rucksack was not there - the one that contained essentials such as hammocks, mosquito nets, torches, etc. Oh dear. English decency behoved me to assure him that it wasn´t his fault - some Dutch friends we had met previously had had their rucksack fall off the top of the bus too, and had had to replace everything.
Except that it slowly became clear that the useless tw*t had simply forgotten it. The blame fell on Carlos#2, naturally.
Of course this smoothly running Rolls Royce of an operation had not discovered the delights of mobile telephony, and nobody was at the office to receive a landline call, so Carlos´s wife had to be sent back to get the rucksack. So, without any kind of assurances or other useful information (the facts from this whole narrative have often been pieced together after the event) we were left milling around aimlessly in extreme heat and humidity, regretting our folly.
About three hours into the five hour wait (I kid you not), we finally coalesced with the French couple - there is nothing like a shared situation and a common enemy to thaw frosty international stereotypes (although, note to self: concoct some kind of convincing riposte for the hackneyed "English food is crap and consists only of fish and chips"). In a mixture of rusty Spanish and even rustier French, and some English, we were all able to communicate admirably, and I am pleased to say that Gerard (who actually looked very similar to Monsieur Depardieu) and Laetitia grew to become incredibly good friends over the course of the next five days. Their previous contact with English travellers had not been very good and so we were all really pleased with this budding Anglo-Franco-Teutonic entente cordiale. There were to be many huddled conversations in French about Carlos´s ineptitude and downright lies over the next few days. They also flattered us greatly by telling us that we were the most interesting travellers they had met in 10 months of worldwide travels.
Finally the infamous ruck sack arrived and we were got into the boat and set off. The boat was owned and driven by the amiable "Robinson" (pronounced Rob-een-son, with a rolled R and the O as in "gone"). Four hours of calm ensued as we chugged up the Maranon river, which is just before the start of the Amazon. Everyone just sat back and watched the trees roll by, in silence.
At about 6pm, just as dusk was kicking in, we arrived at a little village called "20th January" (I think). At this point "Hitalo" appeared on the scene who was to turn out to be our actual jungle guide, but at this point he was just another bizarre indigenous dude of unknown purpose, who was to be distrusted by default (the normal and necessary stance of a traveller, unfortunately). We settled down to the usual chunk of grim chicken with rice fried in pork fat, and did our best to stuff it down.
The plan, according to Carlos, was to get up at 5am and travel by boat a further three hours into the jungle, which was good because we wanted to go as deep as possible so we could see as much wildlife as possible. This applied double to the French couple who were avid wildlife photographers [stifles a little ironic snigger]. What we were to find out on our return, from another traveller, is that to see a reasonable amount of wildlife you need to travel a full 24 hours by motor boat followed by 4 days of canoeing.... Still, we had been promised that we were going to go pretty deep and see lots of animals, and at this point we still believed it.
However, after dinner Carlos struck again and suddenly said that we would get up around 6.30, have breakfast and go on a local tour with Hitalo (who we still didn´t know was actually our guide), and then, after lunch we would travel an hour or so by boat. Why the change of plan? We were all mystified and pissed off. This wasn´t going to get us into "deep jungle" where we would see "mooooochos animales....". Damn you Carlos. Still, we played along, as what did we know?
After a nutritious and healthy breakfast of fried bananas we headed off with Hitalo, who proved to be a pretty good guide.
Stay tuned for part 2 of "rumble in the jungle"....
