People and noise

Dolphins

Yesterday I was tired, a touch hungover, listless and not really feeling like doing much, so in the middle of the afternoon we popped to the Amazon river and sat in a little boat while pink river dolphins swam around us.

For newcomers to the blog, I promise it won’t all be as smug as that opening line. In fact, it’s more a reminder to myself, than a brag at any of you (though yes, it probably is that too). It’s quite easy to get caught up in the grind of Iquitos and forget about the little bits of amazingness that are more or less on your doorstep.

There are times when Iquitos feels quite locked off from the jungle. (In fact, it feels quite locked off from everywhere, what with the absence of roads connecting the city to the rest of Peru.) If you want to come here and get the full Amazon experience, you certainly won’t get it straight off the plane. Sure, there’s the heat, the tropical rainstorms and the occasional glimpse of an unusual animal, but Iquitos is a city and, whilst some way from being a normal city, it does have a lot of the trappings that go with the title. If you want to really experience the Amazon, you get on a boat and get the hell out of here.

I’d forgotten, however, there was a place you could do that which is about a 15 minute motortaxi ride away from our home. Bellavista Nanay is a bustling port and marketplace, where you can hire a little motorboat to take you the short distance out to the point the river Nanay meets the Amazon (this is actually visible from the shore, although I don’t think the Amazon itself ever comes into contact with Iquitos). This momentous meeting place is much more inspiring psychologically than it is visually (basically the water gets darker) but if you’re lucky, and we were, you might also be greeted by a few pink amazon river dolphins as you drift on the newly dark and powerful waters.

Pink river dolphins are funny-looking, perhaps even ugly, and some of them aren’t even very pink, but this doesn’t detract from the wow factor of seeing one break the surface of the river or coming to nosey around your boat. On this occasion we actually got an even closer and pinker viewing of a dolphin than we had on our stay in a lodge deep in the jungle (though on that occasion we swam in the river, which maybe counts for more. Swimming in the river near Nanay seems less of a great idea, as the random blobs of pollution which float along the surface fairly regularly testify.)

We were out in the boat for an hour and a half before heading back to shore to watch the sunset. On our way back we noticed that some of the boats had covered their roofs with images from advertising hoardings. A special mention goes to the boatmen making good use of the public health warning from an alcohol advert, “Tomar bebidas alcoholicas en exceso es dañino”. Discovering it was just two words too long for his roof, he had removed the part that means “is harmful” so that his boat now proudly displayed the legend “Drink Alcohol in Excess”.

1 Comment »

1. 

   cool !!! lucky swines!

   Comment by Andrzej — August 6, 2009 @ 4:53 am

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