An account of a night spent in the Amazon rainforest, experiencing the unique noises and challenges of jungle life.
I can’t blame the mysterious gunshot, the hysterical scream or the prolonged rustling – which, in the pitch-blackness, my true-crime-bingeing brain imagines is a corpse being dragged through the undergrowth – for waking me. No, even after the four flights required to land in Peru ’s remote north-east Amazon from Australia, the jungle decrees that I shall not sleep tonight. Amazon ian insomnia is extraordinary, unassailable, sometimes unsettling but, ultimately, absolutely worth the puffy eyes.
Dressed as nature intended, I’ve been swaddled in a hammock strung across the netted balcony of my jungle-backed room at Heliconia Amazon River Lodge since a scheduled power cut nixed the fan’s soothing draught hours ago. My ear drums feel muscular, absorbing a hullaballoo of unseen frogs croaking rainforest patois, gifting the darkness an almost tactile texture. My capillaries course with natural sugars of unfamiliar fruit juices and my stomach’s still unsure what to make of the Capybara-like-rodent soup I gingerly slurped for lunch at a local village (as to not cause offence). Over four days, the root of the perplexing nocturnal noises will fall into place, simply curious elements of the story about this relatively small frontage of the 6400-kilometre Amazon River. The scream? An American guest left her door open, letting in an unconfirmed creepy-crawly she assumed in the darkness was a hand-sized tarantula. There are squillions here, including one deadly variety. The gunshot? Probably a hunter filling their larder with a mammal. The rustling? A small-alligator-sized redhead iguana cruising for midnight snacks under my stilted room. The small central pool is an antidote to brutal humidity, and a chilled space to chat with staff from local villages. The adventure begins in Iquitos, capital of Peru’s largest province, Loreto. The isolated, 600,000-strong city, unconnected by roads to the outside world, grew from whatever could be shipped along the rive
AMAZON JUNGLE TRAVEL PERU NATURE
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