One of the first Australian films I ever showed Doug was The Old Man who Read Love Stories, Rolf de Heer’s divine piece about the Amazon jungle with Richard Dreyfus as an old man learning to read. He has this beautiful latino accent as he reads these trashy love stories and then they go out into the jungle to hunt a jaguar.
Getting up at four in the morning to walk five kilometers to see giant otters felt a little like we were in the film. Our guide spoke halting English with a Puerto Maldonado accent. The walk was brisk and the otters obliged by poking their heads out of the water and playing about 400 meters from us. On the way back, we walked more slowly and saw enormous Morpho butterflies, blue and heavenly, laughing around us. We saw green creatures and frogs and bright red and yellow flowers. We saw strangler figs and enormous walking palms and the “malaria tree” whose bark apparently cures malaria and “cat’s claw” which is being researched for AIDS. It really is the pharmacy of the world.
We heard the howler monkeys and saw dusky titi monkeys and then after lunch we saw tiny little tamarin monkeys. We have so many gorgeous photos.
Then we had a nap! Whee! And then walked to sunset point to watch the sunset. Back to the lodge for a quick talk on caimans (they lay ping-pong ball eggs and the temperature of the soil they’re in determines the gender of the young just like turtles), out into a boat, saw a smallish black caiman (1.5m) and then within ten minutes, the sky opened and water fell out in a torrential downpour unlike anything we’d ever seen. Back to the lodge swiftly for dinner to find the rain had flushed out a baby red-tailed boa constrictor and the cook had picked it up. I got to hold it… it was beautiful!
Then to bed again and this morning, the boat trip back, still in torrential rain (it is a rainforest after all) and now we’re in Cuzco, in a gorgeous little inn called Pampa Wasi high on the hillside overlooking the town, with a little yellow room, hot water (!!!) and Internet (as you can see). We also have altitude sickness (which we knew would happen) so we’ve rested all afternoon, downloaded images from the camera to Doug’s special hard drive, watched my laptop die due to getting a little damp (I’m guessing during the transfer from the airport onto the plane) and drunk coca leaf tea for the altitude sickness (it really works!).
And now I’m going to go and join Doug at the bar up the road before he drinks all the drinks. Love to all, updates as they come.