I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane

June 3rd 2013

Time in transit: 18 hours by air, 1 hour by car, 6 hours by motorized canoe, and travel within Puerto Maldonado on the back of taxi motorcycles

Items forgotten: hairbrush, pen, bug spray, Spanish-English dictionary

Time luggage was lost: 42 hours

Items stolen from luggage: laptop charger, camera battery, charger and memory cards, the water-tight container that kept then all safe from:
 

Damage incurred to luggage: left out in Miami rain for apparently the entire time it was lost, soaked in a combination of shampoo,deodorant, and watercolor pencils. The books didn’t fare well,but I have some remarkably colorful socks. At 4:30 AM, approximately halfway to my destination, I realized that my luggage had not reached the country with me. When I got it back over  a day and a half later, I realized it had been left on the rainy Miami tarmac. There is something part humility, part hysteria that one feels when the belongings that you need to survive in the jungle are lost, you don’t remember the name of your hotel, your phone doesn’t work internationally to check the name of your hotel, and you don’t have the dictionary you need to express this to anyone of authority. That’s before you're asked to sign a Spanish document with seemingly important details left blank. On the plus side, the airline did give us a full dinner at 2 AM.
 

After the overnight flight, the helmet-less motorcycle taxis seemed

like a relaxing ride as they sped over dirt roads. And I tried to take the time to appreciate my first stay at a hostel, although next time I think I’ll spring for the $20 room with a private bathroom; I’ll be spending enough time soon sharing one shower with a dozen strangers. It was worth every nuevo sole for the unpublished perk: a fuzzy lab mix puppy newly adopted by the owner. Loopey Puppies: treat travel stress even more than a few pisco sours. I shared an odd half-van vehicle with 7 day workers to the next town, feeling every bit the out-of-place American tourist that I was.

 

Puerto Maldonado: not where I am. Where I am: 5 hours away. 

 

And then, as I approached the canoe ‘dock’, the Rio Madre de Dios came into view. Across the rushing muddy water, and on either side of the small town, there were shallow banks and reaching trees and, at understory, there were familiar herons, egrets and wood storks, and dense flocks of multicolor butterflies hovering around mineral-dense patches on the banks. I’m actually in the AMAZON JUNGLE!

Animals seen:
2 hummingbird species
Toad
Black vulture and turkey vulture