Don´t let anyone tell you altitude sickness is a myth, it isn´t. Every year I spend several months a year at 6300 ft elevation with no ill effects and figured I´d have no trouble with Cuzco´s 10,000+ ft. Wrong. I spend yesterday fighting a killer headache and traveller´s tummy. For some this would be unmemorable, I don´t have a headache more often than every 2-3 years. Tomorrow it is on to Machu Picchu, then the next day back here to Cuzco before returning to Lima and then home.
We spent nearly a week cruising 400 miles on the upper Amazon River out of Iquitos, Peru. This was an amazing experience. Our "ship" was the La Aquamarina, run by Jungle Expeditions based in Iquitos. Actually the boat was comfortable, the food was good, and the crew were great; the quote marks around ship reflect the fact that she was no cruise liner. In fact she looked like the river boat she is, low freeboard and shallow draft. There were 20 passengers and about 15 crew and expedition staff, all locals. Each passenger couple had a stateroom with bath and there were an excellent indoor dining room and outdoor covered patio/bar.
This part of Peru is a world of water, particularly at this time of year (high water is usually reached in May). We got rained on plenty, once we were all soaked to the skin in spite of rubberized ponchos with hoods. Some small boat rides had to be rescheduled because of weather, flexibility was the watch word. We saw bunches of neat birds, river dolphins both grey and pink, a huge anaconda snake maybe 15 feet long and bigger around than a firehose, sloths, bats, boa constrictors, turtles, iguanas, and of course the local people, called Riberños, meaning people of the riverbank.
The locals are people of small stature, fit, and for the most part happy with their lives. They don´t have much material wealth but the countryside supports them with a combination of hunter-gatherer and agricultural lifestyles. Only the larger towns have electricity, nobody has TV but DVDs are in some use, radio does reach them and mp3 players are used. Cell phones only work in the two largest towns, short wave radio does exist in some few places. Houses are built on stilts, just above the highwater line, everybody has a dugout canoe and some larger boats exist. High status is conferred by owning an outboard motor or having front teeth capped in gold. The machete is called "my second wife" and is always at hand.
Peru is a nominally Catholic country but shamans provide much of the spiritual and medical support for the people. We met one and he was an oddly charismatic guy. Our guide described his people as animists, believers in everything having a spirit. He and our naturalist are planning a book on the shaman we met, that should be interesting. One of the shaman´s major instruments is a hallucinogin, not surprising in a country where everybody drinks coca tea. Yes, that coca, the one cocaine is made from. Coca tea tastes like something made from steeping bamboo in hot water, not terrible but not very interesting either. You spoon the leaves out of your cup and drink the resulting infusion, and I guess you could chew the leaves for additional stimulus if you don´t expect to have to pass a drug test anytime soon.
The other DrC and I will be home soon, and actually be there for a couple of months this time. I´m ready to be home, we´ve been "on the road or on the briny" for most of the past seven months. We should be back to geopolitical blogging by the end of the week.
