viajes de Alex Umbers: Jungle Fever

After a few days chillin’ in Cusco, and a few more sneaky nights boogying at Mama Africa with Claire and Sarah it was time to lift my game and get on down to the Amazon Basin, Madre de Dios in Peru. This time I was not getting screwed by a local guide, and asked advice from my lovely local liquados (fruit smoothie) lady ‘Linda’. She was on the money with young local superstar from Puerto Escondido. Abed who has worked on BBC docos as a guide, and lead me into the bowels of the jungle guns blazing. Actually it was a slow slow slow boat ride with a terrible hangover, eventually arriving to an old man Francisco’s cabana, complete with tens of chickens, Sam the dog, and fresh papaya, mangoes, coconuts picked straight from our dusty chicken run backyard. The toilet at night crawled with frogs, giant grasshoppers, beetles and god knows what else. Lucy, I had a moment here for you!

Lake Sandoval prohibits motor boats, so all exploration was paddle powered. Ouch. Hours we spent silently advancing on unassuming critters. The first sense to be aroused was my hearing. Totally saturated with the rattle and hum of jungle life. Monkeys, exotic birds, caiman, lilies, green, bugs, frogs, butterflies, teeming with life. Alas no giant otters. I wondered how such an ecosystem could exist.

Symbiosis was the answer. It was lying under every lily pad, every leaf, and every tree trunk. Two species of monkeys hang out together, one guides the smaller species to the fruit, while the cunning little species keep an eye out for hungry condors. Poisonous ants nest in tunnels through native tree trunks in exchange clear the surrounding competing fauna. The enigmatic giant otters dominate the lake over crocodiles and 6m long anacondas by feeding and swimming and meandering as a pack. If only us humans could take a page out of these little critters books.

I saw a mutant night Lillie flower in the middle of the day, lop sided and not sure of itself. Mutants in nature are rare and equally beautiful. I thought how phyto-hormones regulate the opening and closing of flowers.

Hormones are so cool, human or plant, they totally float my pad!

Back to new heights at 3000m. NYs in Cucso went off, I mean, these Peruvians know how to bring in the year with a bang. The main plaza was rife with dynamite blasts, the smell of gun powder and Latino beats well into the small wee ones.