I´m in Puerto Maldonado, the gateway to the Southern Peruvian Amazon Basin, and what a shithole it is...
Luckily enough I´m away out of here tomorrow to my Jungle research centre. But the journey here was unbelievably long... It was 26 hours of backbreacking, skullshaking, eardrumbaking, crazymaking bus... It was just a local bus, there´s none of this posh tourist bed buses here... so I was thrown in with all the toothless peruvians and was the only gringo on the bus...
We were treated to the two worst movies in the history of cinematography... the first was about a chimpanzee called Jake, who is an ice-hockey star and manages to be a world-class skateboarder in his spare time... the ultimate in daytime shite movie! But the second was called Night of the living Dead (part 7 if you don´t mind) and had zombies terrorising some small town for a change... Now to tell you the truth, I am actually a bit of a fan of zombie flicks (a foible of mine), but this was a complete farce... First of all, the zombies spoke... I mean, the first rule about zombies is that they are devoid-of-personality, flesh-crazed halfwits... they do not assemble and debate the pro´s and con´s of their actions... Yet the zombies in this film actually held conferences and spoke to each other (in Spanish)... You can get the picture!
Anyway, when the television wasn´t blaring out this ridiculous shite, it was used to play terrible soppy folk music (= love songs of every concoction... yo perdio mi amor, el amor, grande amor, amor en mi casa, amor perdido, mejor amor etc. etc. etc.). So anyway, I only managed to get asleep cos I tanked myself full of valium (Mum, ignore that remark), but the road stopped after about two minutes and we had a dirt track for most of the time, so I was shaken to pieces... The bus shook so much that I got a rash on the back of my head where it touched the seat...
One good thing about the trip was the scenery... We left Cusco at 3pm and climbed until about 7pm when it started snowing... We continued in very heavy snow, with a very bright full moon among mountainy peaks until we started to descend at about 3am in the morning... After that, the mountains were barren at first but then got plusher and plusher until it was thick jungle at about 10am this morning. Eventually we arrived into the flatland jungle (pampas at about 2pm and arrived in the town at 5pm.
Anyway, I bumped into the owner of the lodge here earlier so that took care of a lot of info getting for me... I have a six hour boat trip upriver tomorrow and then my time the Jungle can begin...
The owner said that I might be able to make it up to the town in about a week or two so I`ll update then... I´m thinking of continuing in the written form and then uploading it, but I´ll probably be too lazy...
Seeya soon
PS: When the bus stopped for lunch today, the only thing on the menu was Cordero, so I went for it not knowing what it is... Anyway, its guinea pig... lovely stuff though!
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