The travelling begins
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2007
1
13
17
Trip End
Sep 21, 2007
Coca, Ecuador
Monday, August 27, 2007
Two days after finishing volunteering and saying all our goodbyes, Tasha, Jess and I set of on the first leg of our travels. Although we had discussed our plans fairly extensively in the weeks leading up to our departure, we had little in the way of concrete plans and certainly nothing booked in advance, which is a slightly risky but exciting way of going about these things. The aim for the first week was to somehow make our way along the Río Napo from Coca in Ecuador to Iquitos in Peru, preferably without having to swim any of the way. So, after an overnight bus ride from Quito, we arrived in Coca just after sunrise, armed with the Rough Guide and the knowledge that it is possible to hitch a ride on a boat through the Amazon. Not so many minutes later we spotted people piling on to a long canoe-shaped passenger boat. Not at all ready to leave (having not stocked up on food or found out anything about other boats and immigration procedures), we tentatively asked whether there was another similar boat leaving the next day. There certainly was, but there was also about another 3 spaces left on this one, so, in the spontaneous nature of our trip, we decided to run to the toilet and then hop on.
The boat trip was underway then, boat no.1 (out of 5...) taking 13 hours to get to Nuevo Rocafuerte on the Ecuador side of the border, a relatively short amount of time considering the distance. We met the first of our travel companions there - Philip from France, who was thankfully very clued-up on the practicalities of boat travel through the jungle. He's a professional photographer and reporter who's been reporting on the illegal deforestation in the Amazon and is on his way to Brazil eventually. We would have muddled through without his help, but sorting out food, hostel and boat across the border was a lot easier with him than it might have been otherwise.
On Tuesday morning we chartered a ride across the border on boat no.2, a shorter and faster ride than the day before on which we were caught, with nothing to protect us, in a refreshing tropical rain storm. We arrived in the Peruvian border town of Pantoja in time for lunch. Pantoja was a great place; our first real taste of a truly Amazonian village. Although it had a wonderfully authentic jungle village feel to it, it had (as did most villages and towns we came across) conspicuous signs of development, from the paved paths and electricity and phone lines, to the western clothes. Still, I loved the place. Spent most of the afternoon playing football with the locals in my bare feet (which wasn't so comfortable on concrete). We met our second travel companion in Pantoja - Federico (aka Poli), a bubbly Argentinian, who was another welcome addition to the team, not least given his native Spanish language prowess.
Boat no.3, 'Jeisawell' was already there waiting for us when we rocked up to Pantoja, ready to leave the next day. Now this was more like it - a rusty old beast of a cargo boat that looked like it had been out of use for decades and had been designed with comfort as the least important consideration. It was a pretty horrible boat, the oldest and least luxurious of the fleet, but it had a lot of character and an undeniable charm. We could've stayed in the local hostel/hotel but decided instead to set up our hammocks on board the passenger deck whilst it was still quite empty. Expecting the food on board to be inedible, we stocked up on supplies before Jeisawell set off...
