To Allpahuayo Mishana

The day after I arrived was the last day we spent in Iquitos before heading out to Allpahuayo Mishana. The bus was scheduled to arrive around noon so I had a full half day to wander around the city before needing to repack my gear and clothing. I opted to go for a walk which was less of an adventure than I thought it would be.

More moto taxis!

El Tiempo no es Oro/ El Tiempo es Arte/ Estamos en la Calle

Time isn't gold/ Time is  art/ We are in the streets

What's really neat about this plaza (which is a small square with two statues in it) is that it opens out into the Amazon. So, standing by the blue and white rail you're standing on the very edge of Iquitos with nothing in front of you really, but rainforest.
   

Looking out over the Amazon

About a half gallon of sweat later, it was back to La Pascana for a final round of packing and reorganizing. Little did I know that I would make critical errors in this key process, inadvertently leaving behind half my field shirts, most of my socks, my book, and my newly purchased anti fungal and bacteria foot powder. And where I could somewhat easily wash and rotate clothing, let me just say there is no substitute for reading material in the field and absolutely no surrogate for foot powder when it comes to killing the strange and sometimes horrifying things that like the spaces between your toes.

But it was rather blithely and carelessly that I left things to be stored at La Pascana and joined the rest of the group in the main sala where we watched with mounting disbelief as Judit (the project head) began to drag a veritable Mt. Everest of food and gear out of her room. (On the way back we would calculate that, including people, everything totaled about 1.5 tonnes and by then we had already eaten most of the supplies and used most of the gas.) "Don't worry," Judit told us as we looked on at the mountain of nets, poles, eggs, backpacks, banding equipment, cabbages, tents, boots, and canned tuna that had once been a hostel sala. "We're taking a 40 person bus."

Which of course filled our heads with the image of one of those air conditioned giant tour buses- Oh good, we thought, plenty of room, good seats, space for everyone and everything.

This is what pulled up:

And this is what pulled up after we had been crammed in it. If you zoom in, you can find me. Judit is about to board, scrambling over the pile of gear in the doorway.

Click on this pic and find me :)

(But as silly as this might look (and as improbable), it was nothing compared to our mode of transportation on the way back. More on that later!)

And so, balancing on each other's laps, on top of day packs, and the sacks of harder vegetables, we finally began our trip to Allpahuayo Mishana National Reserve. The best thing about the bus (which had only 11, 2 person seats) was the lack of glass in the windows so although you were packed in, you could stick your head out if you were lucky enough to be in an aisle and get some much needed breeze.

Buses. I learned, are always operated by two people. The driver, and the doorman who seems to have a perpetual death wish

The ride was only about an hour but we passed a great billboard that said something to the effect of "HERE BE MALARIA" before we had even really left Iquitos. After a brief pitstop in a tiny gas station so the bus driver could fill up on gas and we could splurge on our last cold drinks for a while (Inca Kola!), the bus lurched off the road and rolled 20 feet or so into a nondescript patch of white sand.

Home sweet home.

Ok, admittedly there's a little guard house and a pavilion type area off to the left of that photo but the first thing you really see getting off that bus is the patch of white sand that is now your living space. And my first thought was: Oh, crap. What have I gotten myself into?

But after a bit of unloading and unpacking, we got our neighborhood up and running and things started looking...you know, civilized. :)

 

Recognize my tent, Mom? :)

In the end, we finished unpacking with just enough time for some much needed relaxation before sunset.

(This is the cleanest my tent ever looked, FYI. All that white sand you see around it? Yeah. By the end of two weeks, I was rooming with half of it.)

And that was day .5 in the field.