Day 3 onboard was completely packed full of fun activities! First up – a picnic on the river!! We all piled into the skiffs at 730am and took a 20min or so boat ride (pausing to see some more pink and grey dolphins along the way that are impossible to photograph) to meet up with an Aqua Nera boat, staffed by Edwin and team, which was fully loaded with breakfast trays, ready and waiting for us! (fortunately it wasn’t raining this time!). Breakfast was served in mason jars and greaseproof paper – fruit salad, poached eggs and avocado, a ham and cheese toastie and a little muffin. Washed down with orange juice and black coffee, it was certainly a different way to start the day! I do have to wonder what the staff thinks about special types of events like these – are they are complete ass ache for them and they dread them every week – or do they find them fun? Or is it neither and it just is what it is? Anyway, we certainly appreciated the effort that it obviously involves to curate unique experiences like this for us.
After breakfast, it was time for the next thing on the agenda – fishing!! Yep, it was time for the much anticipated piranha fishing!! There are many different species of piranha in the Amazon, one of the most common being the red-bellied piranha. We were given a fishing pole which was nothing more than a glorified stick with a bit of line and a hook on the end and our guide demonstrated how to do it – put your pole into the water, waggle it about a bit to disturb the surface, then pull it out as soon as you feel the piranha nibble on your bait. If you leave it too long, they will strip off the chunk of beef you have on your hook and you’ll be left with nothing!
It was easier said than done! Even yanking your pole out straightaway, most of the time you came up short – though they didn’t nobble your bait every time. But with patience and practice, after about 10 mins I caught my first one!!! (ManpanionTM had given up, bored, by this stage!). It is catch and release, so our guide carefully took it off the hook and then showed us the double row of sharp teeth insides its jaw! (in the picture you can only see 1 row – there is another smaller row further down its throat!!). He threw it back in and I had another go – after 5 mins, I caught another one! A smaller one this time – unlike in Doubtful Sound in New Zealand where I caught the same poor fish 3 times!! After that excitement, fishing was done and it was time to move onto the next activity – canoeing!
After fishing, we then motored down river a bit, back towards the little village we’d passed by earlier, where a bunch of locals (all ladies as it turned out) were waiting to take us on a canoe paddle. The process of carving these authentic canoes had been described to us the previous day (short explanation: it takes ages and a village to make them) so it was cool we would get to have a trip in them. The paddles are a distinctive shape – great for paddling, but also good for spearing wildlife and for jamming into the mud to act as an anchor. The canoes actually felt pretty solid and sturdy, despite their appearance, and our lady propelled us around for 20 mins or so (sometimes “helped” by me also paddling), ably assisted by the river current which was stronger than it looked. It was a nice experience – uneventful (which I suppose is good) and afterwards, we decanted back into our skiffs ready for the final item on the morning’s agenda – swimming!
Yes. I know. We had JUST finished catching – and releasing – piranhas, of which there was absolutely no shortage. And now it was time for us to go swimming? We, of course, asked our guide about this and he said there was no need to worry as the piranhas only live at the sides of the river, not in the middle part. I guess at this point I should have asked “well, what lives in the middle part then?” but that slipped my mind at the time and instead my response was “oh, OK then!”. I wasn’t 100% sure I would jump in the river from my perfectly nice, dry boat – but you usually regret the things you don’t do, rather than those you do do – so I thought bugger it, let’s go! So in I jumped – and it was actually quite pleasant. The water was warm and brown and I didn’t get nibbled by anything as I floated around on my pool noodle. I remembered later the stories our guides had told us the day before about the locals drinking unfiltered river water and getting sick from all the parasites – so I guess we’ll see what happens!! (I am assuming, however, that Aqua Nera doesn’t want to get all its guests sick and so its safe (enough)).
After swimming (it was just me and the 2 crazy Icelanders), it was time to head back to the boat, wash all the bits and bobs out of my hair and chill out until it was time for lunch. After lunch, I blogged and napped until my massage at 2pm, then it was time for our afternoon excursion – a jungle walk! We had been issued big rubber boots as the part of the jungle we’d be walking through was only fractionally more solid than the river. As well as our Aqua Nera guide, we were also accompanied by a local with a big machete who would hack any stray bits of vegetation (or fauna) out of our path. Before we set off, our guide gave us very strict instructions to NOT TOUCH ANYTHING – the reason for which became very clear almost immediately. Basically there is a lot of stuff in this forest that would do some damage to you – from the poisonous tree whose sap would burn your skin (who knew?!!) to the tree covered in fire ants, whose bites are one of the most painful in the world. We came across both of these within the first 5 minutes! We got lucky and checked the anaconda snake off our Amazon Wildlife Bingo card – it was up in a tree, hanging out and waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting monkey. We also saw a juvenile boa constrictor as well as a pink-toed tarantula. With all this dangerous flora and fauna, plus the challenge of squelching your way through the muddy undergrowth, I wouldn’t say its the most relaxing walk in the woods I’ve ever had – but it was certainly memorable!
After 30 mins or so, we made our back (thankfully) to our skiffs and headed back to the boat – but en route, we made a stop at the exact point where the Amazon river becomes the Amazon river – at the confluence of the Ucayali and Samiria Rivers. It was very cool. And, of course, we celebrated in style with a cocktail as the Aqua Nera team met us with a boat to serve us drinks (reminiscent of the hot chocolate boat in Antarctica!)
And then that was a wrap for the day. A very busy and enjoyable day, filled with fun activities. Before dinner, there was a slideshow of the trip that the guides had prepared, with all the photos and videos of us they had been taking over the last 3 days. Tomorrow, everyone except us 7 nighters are disembarking from the boat, so it’s a fun souvenir to take with you (I guess we will get ours when we leave on Saturday). We also got to meet the whole crew – including Oscar, the incredible 1 man band who is responsible for doing everyone’s laundry!! The presentation concluded with some music from the onboard in-house band (the Chunky Monkeys) who went to prove that not all music is good music. We have another 4 days on board, so plenty of time to see more wildlife – and another crew presentation/concert!
1 Comment
Piranhas, incendiary ants, gay spiders, a dip in the river and a chunky monkey band..exhausting! I won’t have had a dip though, knowing my infamous “it’s a Louise thing” would have seen me chomped by an adventurous piranha who didnt get the boundary memo, or every known parasite leap on me as their own pleasure craft. Brave lady!
That mud was very squelchy, and the canoeing ladies were slightly intimidating!
But well done for hooking one of those little chompers! And an anaconda to boot, noice!