Friday, 31 May 2013

Chapter 16: Trip Cusco-Iquitos

My trip to Iquitos was a nightmare. I knew that the shortest would be a 24h ride to Lima plus a 20h bus to Pucallpa, then 5 days boat trip to Iquitos. I was fine with the boat part, but 2 days in a bus? No way!
Then I discovered that the Amazon river, going to Iquitos, has an affluent in Urubamba, an hour away from Cusco! But we were too high in the mountains. So I decided to go straight North, following the river, in order to take a boat either in Ayacucho or for sure in Huancayo.
The first bus ride was actually 12h just to get middle way to Ayacucho, followed by a 2-flat-tyres-12h-more-bus to the actual town. 24h. In Ayacucho, the Peruvian precision about space and time made me miss the bus station... the bus was actually going directly to Lima! What the hell? I end up staying in the bus for another... 12h to Lima! 36h in a row! Started to get insane, but no way I would stay a night in Lima, so took the first bus to Pucallpa. 55h. Just that. Believe me, that open air 5 days boat trip was more than welcome!!

Living on a boat for 4 days was amazing, spending most of your time making sure that your hammock is balancing because of the heat, relaxing, admiring the landscape... I loved it. Not much to tell about though, but that one night we had to stop because of heavy fog; that the following night the captain and some guys of the crew came back with 2 water turtles to eat later on the land; and that the ports and boats in the jungle have the highest rate of gay people! Such a warm atmosphere!

On the boat I met an Italian photographer, Guiseppe Bartuccio (www.gbarte.com) who gave me the honour of using his photos for the blog because I lost my camera during the trip... (all rights reserved). Have a look:
























The legend of the pink dolphin:

At many confluences of the Amazon river, where lots of fish congregate, you can see beautiful pink dolphins! Yeah, you can actually find dolphins in a river!

The legend said they are kind of “mermen”, transforming into attractive young men at night in order to seduce girls on the river banks.
The little Rosita, 18, who use to wash clothes in the river everyday, once fell asleep and woke up at night lying next to a handsome young man pretending he was a fisherman. After several night spent together, she said to her dad she was in love and wanted to get married. He accepted and also offered the boy to stay at their place. Mysteriously, the boy would always disappear before dawn and never come back before sunset. One fateful morning, he slept in, and Rosita woke up next to something wet and cold... a pink dolphin! She screamed, and her dad, in panic, shot the animal.
The young fishermen never came to visit Rosita after that day and was never seen again.
Rosita, who discovered soon after that she was pregnant, was heartbroken and could never believe that her lover left her.

But another part of the legend is that some bad dolphins would drown people to bring them to their underwater world.
I just red an article in the newspaper telling the story of Roxanne, a passionate for dolphins, who came in 1982 to observe them. She was in a canoe with her guide at a place where you can find them, and soon they started to circle the canoe and dance around flapping their paddles and splashing with their blow-holes. Dolphins are very friendly animals, so totally exited she jumped in the water and swam with them... until she got hit by something! She hurried back into the canoe and saw twilling in the water for a moment, then all was calm. The dolphins had made the predator go away and saved her! Later, she got told she was attacked by a bull shark. Yeah, shark also can live in big rivers! But apparently at that time, even local people wouldn't believe her. This can explain this other part of the legend accusing the dolphins of drowning people.


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