Amazon River Cruise

COMPLETE

Note almost all of the photos and videos will look better on a laptop or desktop computer.

After our Machu Picchu adventure we flew north to start our cruise on the Aqua Aria. To get to Iquitos from Cusco we had to fly to Lima and then connect to a flight to Iquitos.

Peru is a very mountainous country and this is one mountain we flew over on the way to Lima.

This trip was one that we'd talked about with our friends Gordon and Barbara Russell of Boston. We've cruised with them a couple times now, the first time was unplanned and the second time they invited us to go with them, and although they are older than us (especially Gordon who is over 90) we have a good time when we get together. They have done the Amazon trip twice now and were so enthusiastic about it I knew would have to do it and that we'd enjoy it.

So like Lima and Cusco, Iquitos is not a place you'd go just for the hell of it.  It's a busy place - just about every one travels by tuk-tuks, there was just nothing about it that I could recommend.  Except it's where you must go to do the Aqua Aria cruise.

Below is the main city square and it's pretty enough.

And the tuk-tuks for anyone who doesn't know what they are. Essentially the front of a motorcycle with a two seat caboose sewn on the back. Just about all traffic in Iquitos was by tuk-tuks. They are cheap and plentiful.

The main picture on this page is the Aqua Aria. To get to it we had to take a "skiff" (a small motorboat) from a dock in town to a place across the river.  I don't know why it was anchored so far out of town.

This is a gas station in the middle of the river.

And this is a bar / restaurant.  

In between the airport and the dock where we caught the skiff there was a small game preserve where they were fixing up animals that had been hurt or captured as pets (illegal pets that is).

Macaws.

Manatees. I can't imagine how these things were once mistaken for mermaids. I guess after months at sea anything might look good.

And the guys below are Caimans. We were told someone tried to smuggle them into the country to be sold as food.

A monkey. He kind of looks like Mini-Me.

A river otter.

A shot of our room.  Al the rooms are the same.  Eight on deck one and eight on deck two.  16 rooms total. 32 people max.  On our cruise there were 33 people. 15 Ukrainians, 14 Taiwanese, two from Madrid, Spain and us. I don't know where the 33rd person went - maybe there was some kinky business going on on in one cabin.

The sink area.

Shower.

The room was very small and not like what we're used to on the ocean going ship we normally travel on.

Terri and I were the only native English speaking people. The other could all speak and understand English. Some of the Taiwanese not so much.  But they all preferred to stick together and speak their own language.

We were teamed up with the couple from Madrid. They grudgingly spoke to us in English but spoke to the guides in Spanish and insisted that the guides answer them back in Spanish. It was quite fucking frustrating at times.

The bar. Deserted as usual. Wine and beer were included in the price. Cocktails were extra.

The other shot of the bar area.  A bit blurry. Sorry.

The only outside area was at the front  boat where people were allowed to smoke - and guess what - many of the Ukrainian smoked.

This is a shot of the dining room.  Small but functional. The two oriental guys standing up are Joe and Theo. They were the "chaperones" of the Taiwanese group. They both turned out to be good guys. Joe wanted Taiwan to reunite with mainland China and Theo was dead set against it. It's good when people can get along even when they have differing views. The two standing guys in the background with white shirts were two crew members:  Bill and Percy.

This is some of the Ukrainian mob. What a miserable bunch. They would answer you if you said hello but they would never say hello first. If you met them coming up the stairs they would not even acknowledge you unless you said something.  Ignorant fuckers I thought.

This is the only picture I have of the two from Madrid that we were teamed up with. His name was Javier and her name was Sol (Solidad) - decent enough folks and we became friends in the short time we were a team. It was taken the morning of day four when they and everyone else left the ship for good. It was a great day!  More on that later.

Another shot of part of the restaurant. This was the breakfast buffet layout. A good variety of fruit, pastries, cereals, meat, cheese, etc. Really quite good considering the size of ship. You could also order a la carte which I did.

Each day someone from the crew wrote our daily activities on a blackboard outside the dining room. One of the Chinese chaperones would then translate and ad the same info in Chinese.

Interesting - there is no translation for the last line above - "Have a great day"...maybe there is no concept of a great day in Chinese.

The main reason most people take this cruise is to see the Amazon jungle and the birds and animals that exist there.  There are many very small tributaries, as shown below, where we explored looking for wildlife.

The skiffs are flat bottomed and can get into some pretty shallow areas. They are powered with a gasoline engine and I think that the noise does disturb the animals a bit.

There are many indigenous families still living in the jungle beside the river. Sometimes you'll see a solar panel and a satellite TV dish.  I asked one of our guides about their toilet activities...apparently they just take a shovel and head into the bush and do what they need to do and cover it up.

Direct TV in the Amazon jungle.

The kids would usually wave as we went by.

There are also eco lodges along the river  -  a bit too rustic for us I'm afraid. Especially considering the toilet routine.

The sack things hanging down from the tree branches are birds nests.

Each male bird has a small harem - each nest has a lady bird in it and the small baby birds.  I guess he stays busy feeding them all.

A turkey buzzard waiting for something to die.  Buzzards are the cleanup crew of the jungle.

A termite (or maybe ant) nest.  There were gobs and gobs of these things

And a tiny frog.

Another one.

This is one of the skiffs. There are 12 people in it plus the guide and the skiff driver.  There are some Ukrainians and some Chinese and the noise generated by this mob would scare away most critters. The Ukrainians never shut up - they talked amongst themselves continually. If you put rocks in a blender it sounds like a bunch of Ukrainians talking.

We visited the area at the start of the rainy season.  These tributaries drain a HUGE area of land and when the rain comes the water depth increases dramatically. Look at the trees in the middle of the pic below.  Look about half way up.  The bottom half of the tree trunks are darker that the top half. The dark part of the trunk is the part that is under water during the wettest period of the rainy rainy season.  Probably about 6 - 10 feet higher than at present.

One day Chef Irwin did a cooking demonstration in the bar.

Something called Pachamanca.  A fish dish containing all the ingredients shown below.  A real pachamanca is cooled in earth under some hot stones.  

Then wrapped up in some sort of large leaf and cooked.

The finished product was very tasty and he made small portions for everyone to taste. Of course the Ukrainians were not in attendance and very few of the Chinese.

Another day bartender Nelson did a demonstration showing how to make a Pisco Sour. Terri was chosen to assist.

In the middle of the pic below is a small black blob.  A spider monkey.

Zoomed in a bit.

He came all the way down from the tree top and sat just feet away from us and gave us shit!

Terri thought that the way he was hollering at us was clear that he did not appreciate our presence.  I thought that he was just interested in us and wondered what kind of monkeys we were and did we have any food for him.

Another monkey we saw the same day as the spider monkey.  A bit out of focus.

There are some fantastic sunsets on the river.

And the one below was taken very early morning.  For some reason they thought it would be a cool thing to have breakfast on the skiffs on the river. It was not in my opinion.

It's a very green and watery place.

One day we did a jungle hike and came upon this massive tree,

And another, different type of monkey.

One day we visited a jungle village and gave some gifts, we had purchased on the ship, to the village kids.  Stuff like notebooks, pens, ...school stuff. I'm sure the kids would have preferred some toys.

The Taiwanese bunch participated. The Ukrainians didn't. Cheap pricks!

A village home. What's interesting is they have electricity.

A little guy who'll find himself in the cookpot sooner or later.

Later we were out looking for wildlife again and we came upon these proboscis bats. Look close - they're hard to see.  There were about eight to 10 hanging upside down on the tree trunk. When we got close they all started vibrating so they kind of looked like a snake.  When we got closer they all flew away.

We kayaked a couple times. The kayaks were pretty crappy but it was still fun.

We had a little fishing trip one day to try to catch Piranhas and Terri caught a poisonous catfish instead. It had to be thrown back.

We saw an awful lot of birds. I remember what some are called but not all.

Some type of crane or egret.

This guy and the one following are turkey buzzards.

A flock of cranes.

A Black Screamer - or something like that - some sort of goose that made a lot of noise.

Some sort of hawk.

I don't recall what this guy is called but the guide said it is a very ancient species of bird. nIt certainly looks a it dinosaur-ish.

We also saw lots of frogs and turtles.

...and insects...

A tarantula spider.

We saw lots of turtles but not up close - they were very skittish.

Lots of interesting plants

Earlier I mentioned that half way through the trip all the other people got off the boat and we acquired only two new passengers.

This is a shot of some of the Ukranians leaving.  I wouldn't say it was THE happiest day of my life but certainly one of them.

Our new guests Ebony and Samantha. Ebony (on the left) was from England and Samantha a native Peruvian.

Our final four days were much nicer with these two. Despite our age difference we got along very well.

In the restaurant we sat at separate tables but close enough that we could talk.

They had their own skiff and guide as we did.

All in all it was a pretty good week.  A very expensive one but you only go around once. I recommend this trip to all adventurous people.

I'm going to stop here.  

I may insert some videos or links to pictures on Dropbox later but it won't be at least until April that I'll get to it.