Swimming with the Piranhas
Trip Start
Jun 19, 2010
1
10
19
Trip End
Jun 18, 2011
Tabatinga, Estado do Amazonas, Brazil
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Finally back on land and sweating like a crazy dragging my rucksack up and down the streets of Tabatinga.
Six of us are marching to get our passports stamped on the Policia Deferal office, and they are closed for siesta – how typical. We say good byes to three of the guys from the boat and three of us head to a hostel. After haggling with the hostel tour operator we agree to take an 3 day jungle excursion with them. This way we break down our boat trips and get to see the real Amazon already before heading to Peru.
We see pink and grey dolphins, small cayman crocodiles, monkeys, anaconda, one deadly spider and loads of birds: king fisher, black and brown eagle.... We swim on the Amazon next to others fishing piranhas next to us, we go trekking in the jungle, see deadly trees, rubber trees and trees that can be used for healing We fish piranhas for our lunch and take kayaks to explore the smaller rivers. All this is good, unfortunate is that it is raining two days of our trip, so most of the animals are hiding and we, we are soaked!
Miguel, our tour guide tells us stories, some more believable some less. Anyway we have a great humour between our group. We have Gerrardo a bask guy from the Manaus boat, Miguel a Columbian extrovert who is super funny and studying to be a lawyer and his companion Richard from France who is an older gentleman and they make a strange but funny partnership.
On our last night in Tabatinga after our excursion Miguel and Richard make us a big meal. This apparently is Miguels first time ever cooking and there is much laughter, screams and jokes flying around the kitchen. We have a nice evening chatting away and are sad to leave the two behind. They are going for spiritual experiences with a local Shaman and we head to Iquitos.
TOP:
The members of our trip crew!
FLOP:
Saw very few animals or amazing things in the actual jungle.
