Day 84: Tuesday 20th March: Amazonas aboard the Amatista (Peru)

Day 4 of G-Adventures of Amazon river boat adventures in depth PVIIA

First night on the Amatista.

20.03.2018 06:00 S 04°23.0420′ W 073°24.3782′ altitude: 88 masl @ Amazon river before Marañon is joining

We get a wake-up concert by the junky monkeys at 06:00 am.

At 06:30 am we board the skiff. We travel to the river join Rio Ucayali and Rio Marañon and both get the Amazon.

We see some pink dolphins hunting.

Then Juan Carlos spots a dead pink dolphin. It seems that it died in a fishernet what is considered a cultural crime here. No one is allowed to kill a amazonian dolphin. If you kill a dolphin bad karma will kill a person close to you.

It starts to rain a lot …

At 08:00 am we are back and have breakfast on board

The Amatista is travelling up Rio Ucanyali.

We visit a village with a Butterfly breeding. It is used as education for kids and locals to, to teach them what the butterflys are for and why there should not be a mass killing of them. Some of the species are already endangered.

While we visit the butterflys the crew of amatista is playing soccer with the communities men. JC explains later, that the catholic monks invented soccer in the communities to create social interactions between the communities to solve the existing problems of human inbreeding. They already had a lot of handicapped people in the amazonian communities.

A woman of the village catches a baby Cayman.

After the butterfly breeding a local farmer shows us different plants they grow. Amongst others they grow the Corozanut, also known as vegan ebony. They dry the semen a carve handicraft. Years ago a lot was sold to Europe a topcarvings of walking sticks.

They have a lot of banana trees, too.

We pass by the school. First class is empty. In the second class only the (new) teacher is in. I have a seat on a chair. Suddenly a small girl comes in and sits beside me. We start and paint animals.

Then we walk to a local family to have a local lunch altogether there. On our way we see a man putting wooden beams into the ground. JC explains that the man is the engineer of the community and maybe moves a house from the river shore to the landside. Every year the Amazonian communities loose around 15 feet of land to the river. Along the whole riverbanks we see all the time landslides and fallen trees cause by the river erosion.

The man builds with experience. He uses a hammer and nails, no spirit level to level the house. Wood is cutted by hand with a chain saw. That’s how the wooden beams and planks look like. They donot take any care of statics … . We walk around the village. We donot see one stone in buildings or a hard road. Everything is very muddy.

At 12:30 pm we go for lunch. There is fish, chicken, rat, rice, yucca and of course chica Morada to drink. Chica Morada is a non alcoholic drink made of purple corn (like a lemonade).

After lunch we go back to the ship. I go to the top, my favorite place.

At 03:30 pm Victor gives us a geography lesson about the amazon, where we are and where we go in the library. A room on the top floor of the boat, which is closed and always about 15 ° C colder then outside. In the twilight the only place where we are safe from mosquitos.

At 3:00 pm we board the skiff again to explore a river arm of Rio Ucayali. We find different species of monkeys playing in the trees.

The we reach stairs in the river bank.

We go on land to find the gigantic Victoria Regia water lilies. There is a huge tree and then djungle and 1.000.000 mosquitos. I killed 1, 1 didnot bite me.