My trip to the Amazon

Adamson

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Apr 29, 2012
576
42
61
Switzerland
It has been about a month since I got back from my trip to the Amazon, here is my attempt at trying to explain how it went. Thanks for reading!

This was my second time going to Colombia, my girlfriend's Mom is from Bogota, so I figure this is something we will probably do every couple years. This time we visited Santa Marta, Bogota (obviously), and luckily had the chance to go to Leticia and deep into the Amazon.

Santa Marta was strictly to relax on the beach, but it definitely had a jungle. I won't get into that unless someone wants me to talk about it, but my god was it beautiful.

After a few days there, we flew back to Bogota and flew to Leticia.

Now if you don't know where Leticia is, it is the Southern most tip of Colombia. It borders Peru and Brazil. It was about an hour plane ride from Bogota, however you need to take a plane to get here, as there is no driving access to it. I was very excited to even go to this small city. I had heard of it before because Jeremy Wade (River Monsters) has filmed a couple episodes here (the Arapaima one, a Piranha one as well I believe), and once I got there I was very impressed.
Right away, we jumped in a taxi that took us to a tributary where everyone boards their chalupas (no not the taco! Big canoes with small engines on the back), on the way there in the center of the town there was a statue with what I thought was an arowana on it, but it turns out it was an arapaima.
Anyway, we get on the boat and are taken about 45 minutes towards Iquitos to a house like hotel that is actually floating on the Amazon. Surprisingly it was not sketchy at all, it was somewhat luxurious. Nice furnishing and all. No hot water, and the power was only on from 7-9pm, but if you know the area, that is actually not half bad.
Here, the local caretaker took us on a walk through the jungle behind it. He took us over this pond where he said electric eels lived, and took us further into the jungle and showed us some trees and insects and all that exciting stuff. We came back and had dinner, which I later found out would be the exact same thing I'd be eating for my next 5 dinners. Arapaima, rice, and beans! With some yuca and plantains here and there as well.
Anyway, it was a cool experience. The river was low at this time due to the dry season, so at about 3 am we were woken by several ships that were going from Manaus and Leticia to Iquitos, but that is just part of the fun.

We left at about 8am the next morning to our next destination. This time we were staying DEEP in the jungle. It was a 5 hour boat ride east and then south, and then west of Leticia. We started on the actual Amazon River, but eventually took the Jaguar River and down some tributaries, and across a lake to get to where we would stay the next 4 nights.
This place was the best. It was on the Peru/Brazil boarder, on the Peru side. 5 hours away from anything if there was an emergency.
Though electricity was sparse (only on in one building for 2 hours a night), it was my favorite. We stayed in these little bungalows where you needed to wear your rubber boots at all times (you don't want to get bit by some poisonous spider, do ya?) and slept under mosquito netting.

Right away we got to go fishing. The whole trip I was a little bummed that I didn't get to bring my own fishing gear, but to bring that on several flights would have been a real pita. The fishing equipment we used were as follows: A 6 foot stick, 6 feet of fishing line, and a hook on the end. For bait we used raw beef, and when we caught our first piranhas, we used the piranha meat as bait.
I wasn't able to catch anything huge, mainly because I couldn't get my bait deep enough to get to the big guys, but it was still loads of fun.
I caught all kinds of goodies, many MANY what appeared to be Manuelies, a lot of rhoms, pacus, Brycon Dentex, others that I can't think of right now. It was a lot of fun. I would have loved to ship some fish back, but considering we didn't even have enough clean fresh water to drink, I knew there was no chance of that.
Other things we did include deep jungle hikes where our guide would suddenly stop us in fear of snakes (he said he could smell them), visiting native communities in Peru and Brazil, going Cayman "Hunting" which was basically our guide sitting on the front of the chulupa at dawn, having us drive the boat into the side of the river/trees and he would attempt to grab a small alligator with his hands, and going on deep hikes to freshwater streams that had all kinds of little tetras and dwarf cichlids in them.

One thing that I noticed was the NO ONE actually swam in the big river (Amazon, Jaguar River) in fear of the little fish that swim up your urethra and get all spiny.
It certainly wasn't a Jeremy Wade fishing trip, but considering my girlfriend and her mom (my travel buddies) had never even thought of going to the Amazon, and me convincing them to go, and go fishing while we were there, I'm very very satisfied with my experience. It was amazing to see how simple these people's lives were. Every place we went, we were the only tourists. In fact the first Americans (USA people) to visit the places we went. It was also interesting to go into these native communities (they wore western style clothes, but lived the indigenous lifestyle) where you can tell these people would not even believe the type of houses we live in. I had to ask our tour guide if Christian churches ever took mission trips to the poor indigenous community we went into, he reluctantly said yes. I asked him this because I saw what appeared to be a small church that had been built, and clearly not used at all since it was built several years prior. People, if you want to show god's love or whatever to these poor Indians, build them a well or something they can use, not a church that they won't care about.
Our guide (Pablo) was excellent. He was a native person himself and was absolutely convinced that witch craft was real. He said that if you mocked the night birds (the birds and jungle were so loud at night) that you would be cursed, and the only way to get better was to visit the shaman. This was just one of his witch craft tails there were wildly entertaining.
It was also an experience going into Brazil. For someone that has been struggling to learn Spanish the past few years, Portuguese threw everything off for me. Oh, and one more thing about the native communities, when we were walking through one, I noticed some fish meat drying on this little hand made wrack thing, I asked what kind of fish it was, the guide said Arowana, I just laughed. All your precious giant Black and Silver arowanas are a poor man's meal down there. These poor locals were also astounded when I told them that some of these piranhas that were so common in their front yards, sold for up to $500 each in the US.
Anyway, too much talking, thanks for reading. Here are the pictures!


Santa Marta, the view from our Bungalow.


Don't some of you guys keep these?


Just some jungle path


Snorkeling


Horseback riding



"More than 100 people have drowned here, don't become part of the statistic"





In front of the Bungalows in Santa Marta.





Simon Bolivar place of death





El Pibe!





Landing in Leticia





Leticia





Boarding the Chulupas





Chulupa, notice the houses on the other side of the river how they are raised. The water level is normally that high.





Colombian Coast Guard, I did not know that I would be boarding this ship the following morning.





The floating house we stayed on





Inside of it





Inside





Inside









Electric eel swamp





Walking tree





Ant nest





The mighty Amazon





Wild birds









Small town in Brazil we stopped to get fuel.





Our boat was the rainbow one across the water, we took it for 5 hours to get to our destination.





First cast! Lol









Brycon Dentex





Baby piranha





Stream that was home to tetras and small cichlids





Huge spider





500 year old tree





Native town, this is our tour guide who was with us 24hrs a day for 4 nights





Peru ninos





Rio Jaguar and the native town





In the middle of the small native town there was a little general store type of hut/stand that sold little goodies like water, beer, and crackers. This poster was there which warned the locals which snakes and creatures were poisonous etc.





This peacock bass was on the poster too haha





My native tattoo





Where we were in relation to Leticia





A sad sad sight







Pacu





















They made me do it, they wanted Piranha stew





Paolo





Piranha stew





Tasted so nasty





He loved it





So I ate it anyway





Need fuel?





Name that fish





Checking in at the airport, oh there is our plane!







Arapaima for dinner every night! I haven't had fish since...





I made a short video of the random video clips I took while on the trip. If you are bored you might find it interesting
http://youtu.be/jO8T4Nl7QSA


Anyway, thanks for reading! If you have any questions, please ask away!
 

krichardson

Bronze Tier VIP
MFK Member
Jun 19, 2006
27,561
14,448
480
Datnoid Island
An Amazon trip is definitely on my bucket list...love those huge trees with the roots dangling from the branches.
 

lix.ma14

Hydrolycus Armatus
MFK Member
Jan 7, 2011
7,181
20
92
Ontario, Canada
I'll add this to my to-do list.....

Did you catch any monster fish?
 

SePPii

Dovii
MFK Member
May 21, 2011
3,373
371
107
Chesapeake, OH

fish042099

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Nov 24, 2011
2,947
0
66
Northern N.J.
Simply incredible! I wish i was lucky enough to go. Seems like it is mostly characin dominated huh?
 

Aquaman_95

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Apr 6, 2007
2,019
2
38
29
Warner Robins Georgia
It looks like you definitely had a wonderful time, and it's always nice to see aquarium fish in their native habitats. Thank you for sharing with us. :)
 
zoomed.com
hikariusa.com
aqaimports.com
Store