I think it’s fairly common knowledge that the Amazon River and the surrounding drainage basin are both massive. Incomprehensibly so. Let me start with a few quick facts:

• 40% of the entire continent of South America drains into the Amazon Basin
• The river, at its narrowest, is 1.6KM (1 mile) wide
• The flow of the Amazon is greater than the next 7 largest rivers COMBINED
• For perspective on the last fact, by my math (may be flawed) the Amazon could fill Lake Michigan in 17 seconds!
• 1/3 of all animal species on the face of the planet are found in the Amazon Basin
• The Amazon accounts for 20% of the world’s river flow

These facts do little to reveal the true scope of the Amazon and its drainage basin. I am quite simply, awestruck, after realizing that I was in constant motion for 4 days and only saw a sliver of this massive ecosystem.

The journey WAS the destination

I feel quite fortunate that this is my life. Imagine, sitting around the house one day and simply deciding to go! With no real plan we left the next Tuesday. Transport in Peru can be somewhat challenging, long bus rides cover vast distances at a fairly slow pace. Bus rides are quite commonly nine hours at a minimum. We decided that we would get a bus from Trujillo to Chacapoyas and from there make our way to Tarapoto and finally Yurimaquas where we would arrange passage on the river to Iquitos. It ended up working out surprisingly well.

15 hours on a bus got us to our first stop. Chachapoyas turned out to be an incredible place with many natural wonders and archaeological sites on offer. The area is best known for the ancient ruins of Kuelap, but we opted instead to visit the Sarcophagi of Karajía(click to embiggen).

We also did a bit of spelunking ‘ghetto style’ where our guide was equipped with a car battery in a backpack which was connected to a homemade lamp with a couple strands of discarded baling wire.

From Chachapoyas we backtracked a little bit to the crossroads town of Pedro Ruiz to catch a bus onward to Tarapoto. At the bus terminal, a lady had called the police to report the theft of her cell phone. She was pointing fingers, making accusations and demanded that the police do something. Eventually they gave in and started searching all of the males for the cell phone. As people were done being searched and boarded the bus, someone came back from the bus with her cell phone that they had found in her seat. This incident set the tone for the next eight hours on the bus.

We overnighted in Tarapoto and the next morning arranged transport to Yurimaguas. We knew that the boat trips between Yurimaguas and Iquitos are fairly spartan, so we knew that we would need to be gathering supplies. We had originally planned on spending the night in Yurimaguas so that we would have time to procure everything we would need (hammocks, rain gear, eating utensils, water and wine) but that proved to be unnecessary as out moto-taxi driver was more than willing to earn a commission by taking us to a local outfitter. The few soles extra that we spent by going with him was well worth it!

Everything that we had read indicated that this trip would likely take three to five days, so with our supplies purchased and passage booked we settled in for the cruise. We left Yurimaguas at sunset and hadn’t even pulled out of port yet before our first river dolphin sighting.

We ended up only taking two days to get to Iquitos, but it was a very interesting two days with many stops made to load and unload cargo at remote Amazonian villages along the river. By mid-morning on the second day we had made it to the confluence of the rivers Marañón and Ucayali which come together to officially start the Amazon. From there it was only a few hours to Iquitos.

The largest city in the world inaccessible by road

Iquitos turned out to be very interesting. It’s quite a scene, to say the least. We were surprised by the expat community there with an English language newspaper! We met a very interesting character who happened to be the proprietor of a floating bar/restaurant/hostel. I visited the shantytown of Belen, and we HAD to visit Casa Fitzcarralldo (which turned out to be somewhat disappointing). All in all a very rewarding trip!

Support local business owners!

Iquitos is fairly heavily touristed. One thing that has always bothered me about places that get a lot of tourist traffic is the number of foreign business that spring up to cater to these tourists. Travel agencies, booking offices, tour companies, hotels and restaurants are nearly all foreign owned so the locals end up benefiting very little. Whenever possible, I prefer to support locals who are often freelancers. While in Iquitos, we happened to meet a jungle guide from a nearby village. He spoke very good English and was quite friendly and comes highly recommended by past clients. His name is Pedro, but he’s known as “Wolf”. If you ever need a jungle guide in Iquitos, and especially if you don’t want to take some pre-packaged tour, you should get in contact with Pedro. He can be reached by email at pedro_wildlife AT hotmail DOT com or on facebook (Pedro Peña) in Iquitos, Peru. Seriously, this guy can set you up with whatever, whether it’s an ayahuasca ceremony, hallucenogenic toad licking or remote wildlife viewing, he’s your guy.

And now, the photos:

Ultimately, I travel for the experience. Without immersing myself in the local culture, I may as well stay home. Bullfighting is an important part of Peruvian culture, though it is losing favor. I can’t say that I’m glad that it happens, but I can say that I’m glad for the experience.

Not to judge, not to condemn no condone but merely to observe

Located in northern Peru near the city of Trujillo is the ancient temple of Huaca de la Luna.  Together with the Huaca del Sol the temples make up the Huacas de Moche named for the Moche people who once dominated the area.  The site was occupied between about 800 A.D. and 500 A.D.  Huaca de la Luna served primarily as the a ceremonial and religous temple while the Huaca del Sol was dedicated to administrative and governmental purposes.  Much evidence of human sacrifice has been discovered on the site including skeletal remains that have been analyzed as well as artwork commemorating the condemned.

There is a wonderful museum at the site that has a great collection of Moche pottery that has been excavated at the site.

We hired a guide at our favorite coffee shop in Huanchaco, Peru and took a tour.  The tour included a visit to a museum in Trujillo that gave a good point of reference of both the topographical layout of the major valleys in Peru and the chronology of the various empires that have dominated Peru throughout ancient history.  Our guide provided not only great knowledge of the ancient people of Peru, but also never-ending entertainment such as when he told us the story of taking San Pedro cactus (mescaline) while he was at the Nazca Lines watching the stars.  We also learned that marigold is fed to chickens to make their eggs have yolks that are more yellow.  A very informative tour to be sure.

The pictures below do very little justice to the Huaca de la Luna or the Huaca del Sol.  This is a site that needs to be seen in order to really grasp its magnitude and splendor.

My travel habit probably started when I was three or four years old. One of my earliest childhood memories was taking a cross-country trip to visit my grandmother for Christmas (or some other holiday). I spent a lot of time in my youth staring out the windshield of my mom’s truck going from horse show to horse show, I left the country for the first time when I was in high school. I joined the military after high school, and of course that led to even more overseas travel and working in foreign countries. In 2005 I took my first overseas contract job working in Antarctica. I started traveling for extended periods after that and haven’t looked back.

Even though, technically, I had lived in foreign countries during my time in the military I hadn’t really experienced life in a foreign country the way that the people from there do. Living on a military base shares many similarities with living in the U.S. The food is familiar, the products in the store are familiar and things work just like they do back home.

One year ago, I took a job overseas, working and living in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The challenges of living in a foreign city turned out to be pretty grand. Things that I would take for granted in the U.S., e.g. trash removal, mail service, grocery shopping were done differently, and in a language I didn’t understand. The food smelled bad, and was unfamiliar. The products in the grocery store were strange and I damn sure couldn’t read the labels. I became overly self-conscious about my consumerism at trash time. It was the strangest thing. You see, there are no dumpsters in Taiwan, instead, the trash trucks circle the city playing ice-cream truck music and everyone rushes out to the street with their bag of garbage to throw in the truck. Every day when trash time would roll around, I would grab my massive bag of trash and share an elevator for 24 floors with my neighbors who barely appeared to consume anything. For every 40-gallon hefty I filled up, my neighbors filled up something that was equivalent in size to a sandwich bag.

When my job in Taiwan ended, my wife and I moved to Hunachaco, Peru. Huanchaco is a place that I had traveled to once before. The differences that I am noticing between traveling in Peru and living in Peru are pretty immense. Eating in Peru isn’t expensive, and if you’re o.k. with goat stew it can be downright cheap to eat in Peru. Hostels and hotels in Peru don’t tend to have kitchens because it is so easy and convenient to eat out. But, now that we live here, and saving money is a greater concern, I’ve had to explore shopping

photo credit: codybanger

for food at the local mercado. If the food had packaging, I could probably safely say that the packaging and labeling were different, but alas, it’s not packaged at all. Fruits, veggies and grains are all easy enough, but meat is something else, entirely. I don’t know how to ask for “rack of goat ribs” and I wouldn’t know what to do with a whole chicken, on full display with half-formed eggs still attached. What is the best cut of manta ray?

From a previous post about moving overseas:

I don’t know how to butcher a chicken. It’s not pre-packaged for me in Styrofoam and plastic wrap. I could very well starve to death, not for a lack of food, but for a lack of knowledge.

I will admit this, however, the lack of packaging on my food sure has cut down on my daily waste. Also, consider this interesting fact about Peru: You can’t flush toilet paper. The plumbing simply can’t deal with it. Now, if you’re traveling and staying in hostels or hotels and forget, or simply blow it off, no big deal, right? If somebody else’s plumbing gets clogged up, it’s not really your problem is it? But when you live here…I don’t even want to try to negotiate with a plumber.

Or is it?

I’m referring, of course, to my nomadic lifestyle and how it is perceived by people who have chosen to toe the line and work their 9 to 5 in the pursuit of the 2.5 children, white picket fence, keeping up with the Jones’ life. As often happens when I’m back in the States, or even abroad and meet people who lead what is perceived as a ‘normal’ life. I’m pretty happy to talk about how I live and the ‘oohhhs and ahhhs’ that I get encourage me to open up and probably glorify and romanticize my life’s path.

As an example, during my most recent stopover in the U.S. while traveling from Asia to South America, I met a young lady who was genuinely full of admiration and envy when I explained how I live. During the course of the conversation, she remarked that she would like to live like this, to do what I do. To me, it seems easy. To most people, it seems impossible. “How do you afford it?” “Won’t scary brown people eat your children if you leave the safety and security of the United States?” “I don’t speak the language”. All of these questions and concerns (and more) come up when, for a fleeting moment, people are caught up in the romance of world travel and living abroad and working overseas.

You Probably Can’t Have it Both Ways

I’m an American, and as such, I’m probably culturally predisposed to the never-ending pursuit of material things. I’m very detached from my food source and I take a great many things for granted such as safe drinking water and trash removal. During my youth, I grew accustomed to the American lifestyle and that lifestyle is my comfort zone. I’m reluctant to step outside of it. There’s a certain feeling of security that comes with a full-time job and being amongst people who dress the same way that I do and speak the same language that I do. This is where the divide happens. This is the basis for why more Americans don’t chose to live the way I do. I’ll certainly admit that for every bit of envy that people have for my life, I envy theirs equally. Sometimes I yearn for the stability that comes with living in a 3-bedroom ranch style house in the suburbs. A washer and dryer. 64 channels of shit on my T.V. Going from point A to point B in my vehicle on my schedule. Resolving conflicts and making deals in my native language. Being able to flush toilet paper in the toilet. So, while the young lady certainly seemed excited and was ready to buy an airplane ticket to some far-flung, exotic destination, she probably won’t, and I can certainly understand why not.

I hold a firm belief that we, as humans, are nothing if not a sum of our experiences, so all of these experiences enrich who I am, but they are EXHAUSTING! These experiences are also very humbling. For all that I think I know how to do, if, for example, I buy a chicken at the local mercado, I don’t know how to butcher a chicken. It’s not pre-packaged for me in Styrofoam and plastic wrap. I could very well starve to death, not for a lack of food, but for a lack of knowledge.

Consider this: For me, a cup of espresso means carrying a 20-Liter (5 gallon) bottle of water on my back for a half-mile. 40-minutes round-trip on an overcrowded death-trap of a bus to buy coffee. A negotiation in a language I don’t understand very well to arrive at a quantity of coffee, a price for the quantity and an acceptable grind of the beans for my purposes. Hoping that the electricity is on when I try to make the coffee, another negotiation for the removal of any waste that is generated by the making and consumption of coffee – I drink a lot of coffee, but when I consider how much time and effort is invested, perhaps I should just learn to deal with the caffeine withdrawals instead. And that’s just a cup of coffee. That doesn’t begin to address the myriad other tasks that will come up.

Whether to live a vagabonding lifestyle or to stick more to a traditional one is a choice. I feel fortunate that I know what both are like, and for now, I plan on continuing to buck tradition and collect more experiences.