Pieces of Sky

News Bulletins

Planes, taxis and anything that'll get us to the River

As with all things travel related, best laid plans of mice and men often go out the window in the cold light of life here in Peru, Bolivia and pretty much anywhere else in South America. Getting to Peru with our many bags proved a long but relatively easy journey, in the grand scheme of things. Since first reaching the Americas we spent a week in Cusco catching up with good friends and celebrating Chris' birthday. Cake and pisco sours in the Norton Rats Tavern was the order of the day. For those of you who have fond memories of the place, it’s still the same old local and Jeff says ‘Hi’. For those of you who have yet enjoy the tavern it’s the closest thing you’ll find to the good old ‘local pub’ in South America. It has some of the best English real ales on tap and a spirits bar that puts any of the UK chain pubs to shame. It’s a little inconvenient that our favorite drinking hole is on the other side of the world from our home but that’s life.

It was after an indulgent week in the Nortern Rats that life got a little more complicated. We took a quick flight down the eastern side of the Andes to Puerto Maldonado, swapping the cold and dizzy altitude of Cusco for temperatures in the high 30`s and 100% humidity. Arriving at the airport with 10 large bags always proves a challenge. Not so much the carrying of said equipment but the fending off the attention of the porters and taxi drivers anticipating a large tip. Many of our bags, or at least the contents are ever so slightly fragile and stopping the mad grab of hands is interesting. Getting everyone to slow down and think about how to get all those bags into one car had Chris biting his lip several times.

Puerto Maldonado or P.M. as its known amongst the locals, is a busy bustling frontier town, a river port with lots of traffic, mostly 3 wheeled moto-taxis which weave in and around the cars. Our hotel was beside the great river Madre De Dios, just a short walk from the dusty town centre, from where we planned to buy our supplies and arrange the next leg of transport. Before we left the UK we’d discovered it was possible to get an entry stamp into Bolivia from Puerto Maldonado, so all was well. Or so we thought.
We settled into our hotel room by stuffing it so full of equipment that it was difficult to find the bed. We got the impression quite quickly that the hotel staff didn’t consider us to be their average kind of guest. Nothing was ever said but we were always greeted with a quizzical look. Early on the first morning having turned our room into a temporary warehouse we were out of the sagging bed and walking to the anticipated Bolivian Consulate. Up and down the streets around the Plaza we went. No sign of it to be found anywhere, we asked a few people and received blank looks. No one seemed to know anything about it. It was beginning to get hot so we jump in a little spluttering moto-taxi and kangarooed off down the road to the Peruvian Immigration Office. They would know about the Bolivian Consulate, we felt sure. A long confusing conversation ensued. Eventually we discovered that it had shut up shop and gone home some three years ago! No one knew for sure if we could get an entry stamp at the border on the river but the probability was that we couldn’t. Frustration was growing in both of us so we decided to sleep on the problem. The morning of day 2 arrived and we asked around a little at the hotel to see if there was any reliable local information to be gained, but the staff seemed to be on another planet, as they say. We were greeted with the usual bemused looks, and this time it wasn’t just as a result of the mountains of equipment we had with us. No one could provide us with any information or think of anything that might help until eventually one bright spark said we could email the hotel owner who might just be able to help. We thought we’d been talking to the owner all along but evidently not!

A quick email later proved the turning point. By this time we had been in the town for 3 days, slowly buying food supplies and accumulating more bags. Our new contact was Boris. Boris was the local fixer; a bear of a man who like his name was far more Hungarian than South American. He informed us that the area we wished to visit is very beautiful and remote (which we knew already) and that there was no one of any authority in that area who could stamp us into Bolivia. However we needed to enter Bolivia legally, not wishing to see the inside of a Bolivian jail so a solution had to be found. His advice was to take a long road trip north into Brazil, then across its border for a hundred miles or so more to the Bolivian border and from there to Cobija; the most northwesterly town in the country. Our river trip was turning into a version of planes, taxi´s and moto´s. Where was the river? We had yet to see it but rest assured were going to be floating on its waters sooner or later, no matter what.

The first leg of the journey was in a car with driven by a particularly obnoxious little man who clutched the steering wheel with one hand while with his other hand he alternated between gouging ear wax out of his head with an old tooth pick and plucking clumps of facial hair off his cheeks with a bent pair of tweezers. Four hours of wax, hair and road dust had us at the Brazilian border where we negotiated with a collection of road warriors to take us thought the country and into Bolivia. Our negotiations eventually lead us into the back of a black nineteen-eighties Nissan Cherry that had long ago been graced with oversized wheels and a spoiler that may well have once been the bar in the Nortern Rats Tavern. With our gear and the thousand decibel stereo system with a dodgy CD player that jumped several lyrics each time we went round a left hand bend there wasn’t much room for us. Eventually our somewhat more pleasant driver, Diago, was kind enough to take the passenger seats out of the car and stash them behind a pig shed so that we could get in. His taste in music was educational and we can now see why the Brazilian people have such a successful Formula 1 legacy but we made it to the next border in one piece after a long delay while we tracked down the Peruvian Immigration Officer who was ensconced with a lady who was paid by the hour. The unexpected benefit of our delayed departure from Peru was that we didn’t reach the Brazilian/Bolivian border until the small hours, when the Customs and Immigration Offices had closed, so our gear and food entered Bolivia unchecked and unbribed. The following morning we simply walked back to the border as a couple of innocuous back packers and got our passports stamped without fuss.

Now, after a long and convoluted journey into Bolivia a 4x4 will pick us up at 5am tomorrow morning and take us along the final road leg to a small jungle village called San Silvestre. There we will finally unpack the canoe and set off along an unknown river in search of Manchester, undoubtedly watched by half the village!
We’ve yet to see any wildlife, oh sorry I forgot, there was a beetle in our room this morning but unfortunately Chris didn’t see it as he came out the shower and crushed it under foot! The only other signs that we might be in this vast jungle are the mosquitoes (yes we have a few bites), the heat and the strange looking fruits which people keep trying to get us to buy. It feels good to be back in South America and we’re now both looking forward to the next leg of our adventure. We’ll post another update when we next can but that may not be for quite some time!