Jungle Boogie

And now for something completely different. Back in February when we decided that the Galapagos Islands were out of our price range this trip around, we agreed we would go to the jungle instead and spend a week catching piranhas and lying about in hammocks. Unfortunately this plan didn't work out in Ecuador because we had to high-tail it to the border, so when we found out that we could take a week off from our childcare placement and spend it doing conservation volunteering in the jungle for only $5 a day we leapt at the chance. And so we found ourselves on our way to Manu National Park, the Peruvian chunk of the Amazon rainforest.

We almost didn't make it. About 5 hours into the 9 hour bus ride the bus started to make a screeeeeeeeeee noise and then pulled over. It was then announced that the bus would be going back to the nearest town to be replaced. All the Peruvians got off and onto a sheep truck but we stayed put. Quite how the bus was functional enough to go back uphill but not continue downhill was never explained to us but there you go. If, as suspected, screeeeeeeeeeeeee means brake failure I'm glad of the delay as the last three hours of the journey were really quite hairy- a single track dirt road snaking down through forested ravines and with two wheels hanging over the abyss. The rainy season is over, thank goodness, but they don't do a lot of road maintenance in these parts. 12 hours later we reached the lodge.

Oue home for the next five days consisted of a large wooden 'bungalow' on stilts with a long trestle table and a kitchen, and a separate bamboo structure which served as a dormitory for the 20 or so volunteers and staff. If you can envisage a POW camp from Bridge over the River Kwai you'll have a good idea what the dormitory looked like, with mosquito-netted bunks a foot apart. Drying underwear was festooned from washing lines around each bunk. The noise of crickets was deafening. We were strictly warned not to eat in our sleeping quarters. Food means jungle rats and jungle rats mean snakes coming into your bed. After Cusco, this felt like another planet. No electricity. No meat (no fridge). Everyone went to bed an hour after sunset (that's about 7.30pm folks) and got up at dawn. We washed our hair ina waterfall like that Herbal Essences advert and learnt how to do massage. We ate chickpeas. There was a didgeridoo. In short, we had sort of joined a cult.

In the mornings we worked.This consisted of gardening, composting, and for the girls, skipping through forested glades picking medicinal leaves. For the boys, lugging boxes of rocks up a hill to make a path. Hooray for sexism. We also spent time on the jungle trails, doing inventories of jungle plants (medicine ones) and counting animals. We saw a snake! But mainly it was butterflies. They have some brilliant butterflies called Morphos which are metallic blue andkind of special. In the afternoons we did more hiking and tried not to get lost. Chris got to be in charge of a machete and combined with his hat, which looked less foolish in the jungle, he looked quite macho and Indiana Jonesish.
Back at the lodge in the afternoons we went and washed the filth off in the nearby watering hole and played with the pet monkeys, who were something of a pest. My newly acquired monkey bite is the result of trying to get the boy monkey, Chico, to stop rubbing his face and genitals all over my bedclothes. Sometimes we chased the tayra, a Peruvian weasel-thing that lives in the garden and ran off with a bag full of breakfast bread. Otherwise we read until dinner time, which was basically variations on a cauliflower theme. Meals were generally enlivened by grasshoppers and other large insects hopping onto your plate or the discovery of a tiny slug amidst the beans. As we ate by candle light you had to pay quite close attention to avoid accidental ingestions but on the plus side it added some much needed protein.
And thus the days passed in enforced relaxation and we admired the outstanding natural beauty of the Amazon rainforest, perspiring peacefully. And when this all became too relaxing, we hiked up to the nearest village and stocked up on cookies and a cold beer or swam in a river. It was wonderful, idyllic. I could have stayed forever- or at least until the start of the football season.