Hi again,
After a few days in Cusco recovering from the Inca Trail, I headed off into the Peruvian Jungle for a few days of walking, mountain biking, white water rafting and doing some crazy flying fox jungle canopy tour on suspended cables.
The first day was a hell bus ride. Got a flat tyre 30 mins onto the single lane gravel track over the mountains. The bus had no jack and the spare was balder than my head. After an hour and a half changing a bus tyre on stones and rocks (very interesting), we continued to the next town only to discover we had another flat. 2 hours later one of the tyres was repaired and we had another 9 hours in the bus to get to our first stop. The driver tried to make up time by overtaking trucks on blind corners on gravel roads with no barriers and sheer drops to certain death. Best just not to look.
Day 2 was better. We started off by mountain biking down the last 1000m of altitude through beautiful cloud forrest and lush jungle for 3 hours. It was a tough road and only 3 of the 6 bikes survived, the rest having punctures and brake failures. We then transferred to a raft for some white water rafting down through the rapids for a few km. Finally we joined a small long boat for the last few hours to our remote jungle lodge. That night we also went for a tour of the jungle canopy on a series of flying fox type cables. It was really fun, even though I think I´m pretty scared of heights. Finally, after the 5 cables we had to rapell down on a rope to the jungle floor. That was really scarey but lots of fun.
The third day we went for some jungle walks and bird watching. It was 98% humidity and we just sweat like nothing else. Saw lots of birds and even a giant Cayman (very rare). Explored lagoons and managed to avoid the mosquito´s.
The last day we were returning to Cusco. Being the dry season the river was low and the boat was struggling so all the guys had to jump out and push the boat against the flow for a few km. Hard work. Then we found our bus which had become bogged in a river crossing and had to be pulled out by a truck. We finally got on the road for our 10 hour bus trip back to Cusco.
As usual, getting there and back is often more of an adventure than actually being there. There was even an American family on the trip taking their 2 and 5 year old kids which was pretty impressive. They were going to live in the jungle for 3 months.
Now I´m back in Cusco suffering a bit of altitude sickness after going from the jungle (500m), over a 4200m mountain pass, back to Cusco (3500m) all in the space of 12 hours. Need to chill out for a few more days to re-adjust to the altitude before heading off again.
Cheers
Jeff
