Day 49 - down the Manu River.

Day 48 – Manu river



Awake before 5.30am. A bit befuddled, since my watch is on Mexican time (GMT - 7 hours) and Peru is six hours behind the UK. My sleepy self can’t figure out whether I should be adding or subtracting an hour.

As we chug past the nearby village of Boca Manu, Nicolás explains that the 350 people living there are going through hard times because they make a living as boat builders (we pass a few along the shore) and nowadays people prefer to buy boats made of aluminium rather than wood, as it’s cheaper.

We pass a boat ferrying bags of produce to Boca Manu and wave to the woman steering. “It’s very rare to see a woman driving,” Nicolás comments.

The difference between Manu River, which we take today into the heart of the protected area, and Madre de Diós, is that the former has fever shallow places, no settlements along its banks, and sandy beaches rather than stony banks.


Our boat ride takes six hours. Saddle soreness is a minor issue. Am beginning to both acclimatise to life in the jungle, and to feel the mosquito bites from the day before. Even more birds than the day before – lovely capped herons with their blue faces, lemon yellow breasts and two dangly feathers down their backs, a flock of storks which runs away from us along a beach, kingfishers, macaws, and a whole bunch of vultures – yellow headed, black, king – circling overhead; something big must’ve died. I’m beginning to recognise birds from their flight patterns alone: the clumsy, irregular dives of the toucan, the sweeping circles made by birds of prey, the long-tailed shadows of pairs of scarlet and green macaws, the swift flapping of little wings of a flock of parakeets, the skimmers’ beaks almost touching the surface of the water…it’s fascinating.

Nicolás and I get onto the subject of taxes. He complains how many businesses dodge them, especially big, powerful companies like LAN and Peru Rail – companies that can afford to pay them. “If everyone paid taxes,” he reasons, “we’d have better schools, better roads…small children wouldn’t have to go around selling this” – he points at the woven bracelet on my wrist. He reckons that if more people (including foreigners) were to ask for a ‘factura’ or a ‘boleto de venta’ whenever buying something worth more than five soles, then more and more businesses would be forced to pay taxes, and while this may not make an immediate difference, in twenty years’ time, it will. I decide to put an appropriate box in the book.

We compare political situations in Peru and Russia in the 1980s. Peru under García (currently president again) meant hyperinflation, shortages, and queues for everything at 3am. And in Cusco it’s cold. The queues sound familiar. And the shortages. One winter, there was a surprise delivery of tinned green beans from Hungary and we bought so many tins, we had to stack them on my toboggan. We ate the beans all winter; it’s just as well that I liked them.

Ask Nicolás about his job, about the different tour agencies running trips into Manu. He lists them in order of client popularity. It seems that the difference between the ones running more expensive trips are the plusher lodges.

Ahead on a sandy bank we see what looks like a log. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a huge black caiman, eyeing us warily. We pause near it, the motor switched off, but we still seem to disturb it, because it slides slowly into the water, only the snout and the eyes showing. We pause many times along the banks – to see squirrel monkeys (favourite prey of harpy eagles) leap from branch to branch, catching insects, or to look at a particularly rare and beautiful bird, such as the spoonbill. Nicolás is very good at animal and bird calls.

Lunch is on the boat, since we’re taking so long to get to our campsite in the heart of Manu; it’s ají de gallina – chicken in a yellow garlic sauce, a typical Peruvian dish. I'm not used to eating three square meals a day; so much for coming back from the jungle, looking leaner and meaner.

When we dock at our destination, the boast captain’s helper, Carlitos, jumps down into the mud with bare feet. He’s a native Machiguenga, and his feet have never know shoes: his big toes stick out at forty five degree angles from the rest of his toes and the soles of his feet look hard. This puts me in mind of “The Sign of Four”, where Sherlock Holmes encounters a man our for revenge, whose assistant is a native of some Pacific island where they shoot poisoned darts and wear no footwear. Carlitos does not shoot poisoned darts, and he reminds me of Michael Jackson – there’s something about his smile, and the high voice.

We follow Nicolás through the dank jungle, carefully stepping over fallen trees in case a snake is sleeping underneath, trudging through the mud in our wellies, and pausing by the huge fig trees, their massive roots reminding me of the banyan tree in Thailand that Nikolai and I saw on our jungle hike. Because the jungle soil is low in nutrients, the trees have to extend their roots over as large an area as possible.

The jungle smells strongly of wet mulch, and of rotting vegetation. Army ants scurry along the putrefying logs. Shy black spider monkeys leap from tree to tree in the canopy. Lake Sandoval, when we see it, is the picture of utter tranquillity – completely still and silent, the trees around it reflected perfectly in its surface. We board the catamaran (a catama-raft, really), and Carlitos and Nicolás row us along the left bend. Lake Sandoval is an oxbow lake, formerly part of the river that got cut off by the buildup of sediment. Our slow, silent progress allows us to get really close to the vegetation and watch the animal life in action. On one tree, two hoazins with crowns of yellow feathers are preening themselves. A rainbow-coloured coot steps awkwardly through the undergrowth at the water’s edge on its stilt-like legs. There are tiny bats sleeping on a dead tree stump, right near the water. A kingfisher flashes by, rattling rapidly. A tall tree erupts with the chatter of macaws in its crown. The silent forms of caimans glide across the still water, sometimes only their heads showing.

I get stung by something that looks like a cross between a flying ant and a small bee. The insect repellent is duly repelling mosquitoes, but not the tiny bloodsucking flies. I wonder if they are the ones carrying bott fly eggs. Not looking forward to sticking masking tape over the tiny wounds in order to suffocate bott fly larvae buried in my flesh.

Back to the huts in the fading light. Though we don’t see them, we hear peccaries in the undergrowth and Nicolás points out fresh tapir footprints and the imprint of a jaguar paw in the mud.

Over dinner, we tick off the animals and birds we have seen so far in our information books and I learn that the road from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado has been mostly paved by now, reducing travel time to fifteen hours from thirty six. Shame I have a plane ticket already. However, if I get rumbled at the airport and have to pay extra costs as a foreigner, I will take the bus back from Puerto Maldonado rather than fly. It’d be good to see the new route.