On the River

There was definitely an adventure sense to this experience. We flew across the country of Peru to a town where nobody speaks english, met up with a group of people we had never met before, and willingly got into a boat heading to ??. We knew we were heading to Piedras Biodiversity Station, and that it was about a 1o-hour boat ride up the river, away from civilization. Apart from that, that's all we knew. We didn't know how far up the river 10 hours is, or what to expect at all. Sure we had seen pictures online, but that did not do it justice.

The boat ride was long, yes, but enjoyable. After being cooped up in Ontario all winter, getting out on a warm river in the tropical jungle was heaven. We headed west on Rio Madre de Dios from Puerto Maldonado, then headed north on Rio las Piedras into the vast rainforest. We started out around 9 am, and ended up getting to the station around 7 pm. It rained at for at least half of the trip on the river. Raining means pouring in the rainforest. There is no such thing as a light rain, from our experiences anyways. We wore our rain ponchos pretty much the entire trip to the station. Well worth the cheap investment. It was the rainy season when we were traveling (in February), but we lucked out and had mostly sunny days during our 2 week period at the station. From what we've heard, that is very rare.

The river is surrounded by forest, and there are beaches along side the river periodically. Usually this is a day and a half boat ride to the station with the use of a peke-peke motor, which is typically used for river travel. These are basically small lawn mower engines with a long pole and a propeller on the end. It takes twice as long to get up the river with a peke-peke motor. If we had traveled to the station with that motor, we would have had to camp overnight on one of the beaches (an experience I'd like to try next time). Luckily, since they had a lot of gear and people (including their 2 year old son Joseph), they decided to use an 60-horsepower outboard motor for this trip.

Our river trip consisted of mainly wildlife viewing, which was mainly birds, caiman and a capybara. They provided us lunch on the boat (sandwiches and chips) as well as snacks (mini-bananas). We could also ask Emma and JJ whatever questions we had regarding the habitat, the station, what we would be doing and anything else that came to mind.

The sun went down around 5:30, so the last part of our trip was in the dark. We pulled out the head lamps and all was good. Once we arrived at the site, we had to lug all of our gear up their crooked, uneven staircase in the dark to reach the station. We got settled in, claimed rooms, had a spaghetti dinner and went to bed. Highlights from the two weeks at the station will be outlined in the next posts.