Colombian Amazon: Getting Around.

Friends, the number one reader for this blog is my Mom, Eleanore Meinhardt.
She's always asking me just how we get around from place to place.  :-)
So, Mom, here's a "typical" trip.

My buddy, Ted Gutierrez, visited from New York to see the Colombian Amazon.  The two of us rendezvoused at the Bogota airport, and slept at the nearby Marriott so we could catch an early morning flight to Leticia, a Colombian border town as far from Bogota as you could get (and still be in Colombia).

 (Remember, Gentle reader, that Colombia is bigger than France and Germany combined.)


We were greeted by our liaison, Adriana, who accompanied us by taxi to the Amazon riverbank.  Here Adriana pockets the cash balance we owed for the guides' services.








The riverbank was crammed with floating docks to adapt to the changing water levels of the Amazon.  Leticia is a frontier town, the crossing point into Brazil, and with Peru directly across the river.  Think of El Paso, Texas in the 1850's.  But for all the craziness, there was time for Ted and me to enjoy a snack before going up river.  (Colombianos thrive on fresh-squeezed juices and pastries.  There's no such thing as bottled juice or day-old bread.)


Down to the river bank to look for our dock.
 Not here...

Or here...

But eventually Adriana shows us to the right spot.  We join the crowd.
 

Adriana has done her job and we're confirmed on the passenger manifest.  They're expecting us on board this luxury liner.












It's much more refined than the motorized canoe that Lauren, Luke and I took on the Ecuadoran rivers.  Four seats across!

We don life preservers and settle in.  The luggage and supplies are tied to the roof.







We're underway and the driver keeps a constant vigil for debris floating on the Amazon, dodging logs.  I calculate the volume of trees I see going by, and it's impressive.  It's easy to see how the Amazon delta got so big.

The Colombian Navy sits astride the triple border of Brazil and Peru.  We watch the river go by for two hours at 30 knots, making our way upriver to reach the mouth of the Amacayacu River.  There's a large tree that serves as our rendezvous point.

A few people of the river pass by, but generally this part of the world is sparsely populated.

Our native guide is there. Hurray! Reinaldo is accompanied by a translator, Lola, from
Germany.  Lola is volunteering her services as part of the WorkAway volunteer program. (See www.workaway.info if you're interested.)









Ted and I join Reinaldo and Lola in a small boat for the trip up the Amacayacu.

After 30 minutes, we pass a small indigenous village of the Ticuna people, San Martin.  Women wash clothes and the children play in the water.

600 people live in this village, which was founded in the early 1970s after a campaign by missionaries and the government to gather indigenous peoples into a central location.  In hindsight, a proposal of dubious merit.

Here's a time lapse video of the river.

We arrive at the Yoi Ecolodge in the late afternoon, and prepare for our night hike.

Ok, Mom, how was that?

Love,

Mel