Monday 12 October:

Itinerary:  Blanquillo Lodge to Puerto Maldonado. The end of our Manu experience, but not before another early morning visit by camouflaged catamaran to the largest macaw lick in the area. Later we will continue down river for four hours towards Colorado village, from where we will be driven to Puerto Maldonado, a frontier town of 25,000 people on the confluence of the Tambopata and Madre de Dios rivers. Lodge accommodation.

The day was scheduled for a fairly late start, but as the party of Swiss folk also in the lodge left at 5am - presumably heading for the clay lick - everyone was up and ready to roll, after breakfast, by 7am.  I had even managed to get a tickable view of the local hummingbird in the interim.

The trip down river was pretty much of a blat, with a significant bird halt for a pair of nesting Scarlet Macaws.  There are shown, blurrily, to the left.  Note the patch of yellow on the top of the wings - this and the different tone of red are what distinguish this species from the Red and Green Macaws seen the previous day.

The trip took 2.25 hours, pretty much as predicted by Ribellino.  We passed a few settlements of one sort or another and came across a number of fishing camps.  These were mainly 1 household items, but must still have posed a number of problems for enumeration in the Census.  Note the local type canoe moored on the bank: it would be the only way in or out.

As we drew closer to Colorado various gold mining activities, ranging from 1-man panning operations to sophisticated dredge activities, became evident in the river.  That is the main industry here, and the place looked like a frontier gold mining town.  I didn't bother wandering off to try and get a bargain!  There was a huge kettle of Black Vultures over the town {probably checking the remains of the last tourist who tried to drive a hard bargain}.

The main action at the wharf where we pulled in was unloading some of the rafts of logs.  I think I have referred elsewhere in this blog to jobs I am not keen on occupying.  Add one more to the list.  3m long logs of hardwood are always going to be heavy but after they have been in a river for a couple of days must have been excruciatingly so.

The guy up to his chest in the river possibly had it a bit easier, but I suspect he had firmly walled off the section of his brain which included the word 'caiman'.





It was then time to farewell our boat crews who were about to head off back upstream to the town from which we started this leg.  It would take them two days of plugging against the current and they would use a full 200l tank of fuel in so doing.  They would probably go a good bit faster with the boats not being so low in the water sans gringos, but would obviously try to get some paying passengers as a backload.  Ian made a nice speech in Spanish thanking them for their hard work and their skill, which the rest of us fully endorsed. 

The clients and guides then piled into 4 taxis and pointed ourselves in the direction of the next river.  A brief Bano stop was taken in the centre of town.  The image to the left gives an idea of the town and the taxis.  To our surprise Mandrake the cook came with us on this leg: he was unceremoniously put in the luggage area of our taxi, which wasn't too bad (apart from a few Occupational Health and Safety issues for those who obsess about such things) until most of the kit off the roof joined him, due to a rain shower!  He probably continued to rate it as better than walking!

Two of the 4 cabs, including ours, made it to the end of this leg without punctures.  The main interest along the way was the techniques used by the driver on the many bridges we crossed.  For the first 90% of the trip the basic bridge design was with the body of the bridge perpendicular to the direction of travel with a further couple of wheel tracks on top, pointing the way we were travelling.  In most cases the driver straddled the tracks: as he has been along the road a few hundred more times than us we accepted he knew his business - since we didn't have much in the way of common language there was no choice!  In the last 10% (5 or 6 minutes) the alignment changed with the bridges comprising tree trunks, roughly smoothed off, and set parallel to our direction of travel, and with not too many gaps between the logs.

This leg ended up on a stony riverbed, about 300 from the shore, with lots of canoes pulled up to cart us across the water.  The astute viewer will notice the dark clouds above the river.  These soon assisted in gaining a further understanding of the term 'rain forest" although the boat drivers produced tarps which went over the tourists and their luggage.  As a result we had no idea where the boat went, but it seemed to stop in about the correct place and we all piled out to eat our lunch in a local cafe.
After consuming our lunch and farewelling Mandrake - who got into another vehicle, in a significantly more comfortable position,  for a 10 hour drive back to Cusco.  That car would drive through the night - rated as safer because lights can be seen coming towards you.

Some 3 hours later (including a loo stop) we got to beautiful downtown Puero Maldonando.  Notice the little taxis in the image above: the common way of local public transport in the Andean area.   Here we got ice cream.  While eating the ice cream a funeral cortege went past: unusually with a brass band following in a second truck - had we moved to New Orleans?  

After moving into a very comfortable hotel I had a swim in the pool and a couple of Cusqueno beers.   that was actually an error on my behalf since we left the town before anything was open the next morning so my chance of exploring the place and buying some souvenirs was gone.  What a goose.

The day was pretty much a transport day, but had social history with our look at Colorado and to some extent the new road being built to Puerto Maldonado.  I guess until matter transmission is invented  (go to transporter but don't hold your breath) that will always be the case.