Amazon

The morning after arriving in Peru I catch a flight to Puerto Maldonado. This town is one of the good access points for the Peruvian Amazon.

This is not the plane I flew in on.

Puerto Maldonado is the last road in this direction. We must take a boat about two hours up river from here. The scenery reminds me of Apocalypse Now.

Occasionally you see a small house along the river. Not even a village, these are small farmers that live along the river.

Poor people from the Andes also come here to mine gold in the river. They pump sludge up from river muck, then filter out the water and the mud so that only sand and gold remain. They add mercury which binds to the gold. You can then pour out the mercury and heat it until the mercury boils away leaving small amounts of pure gold.

Mercury, you ask? Doesn't that sound dangerous? Mercury can make you mad as a hatter in liquid form, and I imagine it's no less dangerous when boiled into a gaseous form. Can you imagine breathing in mercury vapors? The government tries to get the miners to use companies that capture and re-use the mercury. But the miners don't like the nanny state telling them what to do, so they keep doing it the old way. The miners want more money in their pocket to bring back to their families in the Andes. I hear that some miners also use that money to buy alcohol and other vices in Puerto Maldonado.

About two hours up river we arrive at the lodge, Refugio Amazones. Each day we'll hike or take the boat to a clay lick, or a small lake or other things nearby. The hiking is not hard but it requires patience, something I've been eagerly trying to acquire. You can hear animals frequently but it's hard to see them. We try to be quiet but the animals probably hear us before we hear them.

A frog sits by my window while I brush my teeth. He doesn't seem to mind my intrusion into his jungle.


Sometimes we talk while hiking.
One guide explains his thoughts on the economic recession that he heard from the Peruvian Economics Minister: "People with four houses suddenly found that they could only afford two of them, and people with four cars now can only afford two of them. Do you have any extra houses or cars? No? Then don't worry about the economy and go on with your life."

What is that? That's a picture of me and my guide, Jose Antonio. I'm not sure why he's holding the banana leaves near my ears.

We're waiting at a hideout and Jose notices a spot on a root in a creek about 30 meters from us. "Es una anaconda." I take a few pictures from where we are. We stealthily work out way down to the creek until we are about 5 feet from him. This is the third time that Jose Antonio has seen an anaconda, he's quite excited. I'm able to get a short movie of the back half of it before it slithers back into the muddy creek.