Day 41: Boat Ride and Swimming at a Waterfall Two Hours Away
On day two we ate breakfast together around 7:30 — coffee, tapioca balls, homemade corn cake, cut fruit, pao de quiejo and juice. Another yummy spread.
We packed up and set out with two guides from the boat, our boatmate Laura and our family in a 20-foot aluminum boat with an outboard motor. We ventured up a much smaller stream for 2.5 hours to reach a swimming hole with a waterfall. A second boat followed with two more guys carrying drinks and lunch.
We cruised slowly through narrow streams flanked on both sides by trees 150 feet tall. If you hired the most imaginative set designer and paid top dollar to have him/her create the most spectacular “jungle scene” ever, they couldn’t dream up what we saw. Comical, cartoon-ish vines and oversized angular-trunked trees with snake-y roots. It was out of a movie.
About every half mile or so we’d encounter a fallen tree or white water, and the guys would pull over, let us out to hike on the banks while they chopped through with machetes and/or pulled the boat through. Sometimes if it was just a matter a fallen log, we could all sit in the bottom of the boat and limbo under. At some points our guide Joshua was in over his head in the water, hacking through dead vines to clear the way.
The guy operating the motor was Jose (J pronounced), who grew up in the rainforest and had .001% body fat and never wore shoes. Flip flops, maybe. We literally picked him up on the side of the river on our first day — lives with his extended family in a jungle house on stilts.
No English but encyclopedic knowledge of this part of the world’s geography and a layer of instincts about the wild that we New Yorkers do not even remotely possess.
So we traveled on up the stream, while the guys hacked and maneuvered us along.
Stopped once for an up-close encounter with a lizard.
By lunch we arrived at the waterfall and swimming hole. The shallow water was sandy and appeared canary yellow, and then as it got deeper, turned orange then red then black. Seemed like the perfect home for gators, but we were assured there was little no life in the water because of the rushing water.
So, we jumped in. Swimming was fun and not as scary as I imagined it would be.
Now would be a good time to mention that I have a life-long phobia of fish. Those who know me well are aware of this crippling fear. But I do my best to conquer it (some will recall I had a taxidermied barricuda on my office wall for years).
We stayed in the fish-free water for a while, then went onto the shore to watch the guys prepare lunch.
They made the following out of materials they machete’d in the forest: A fire, grill, buffet table and platters. They grilled steaks, two tambaqui fish and a bunch of sausages.
Most important, they whipped up fresh “jungle juice” aka caipirinhas with limes halved and sliced via machete, and then muddled with a piece of jungle wood whittled on the spot. Best caipirinhas we’ve ever had in our lives.
Laura proceeded to pour us two more, making this the best *afternoon* of our lives. 🙂
We did some more swimming, playing, enjoyed the food, the lowering sun, and even found a beautiful (empty) tortoise shell about 1.5’ long. The kids were in heaven.
Eventually we piled back in the boats and headed downstream back to the big boat. Arrived there about 5 pm.
We were sweaty, stinky and tired but so happy when we got home. We ate dinner as a group, then retired around 8 after unsuccessfully trying to identify constellations from the deck. Note to self: study up on the stars.
We thought it was a day to remember, but we had no idea what was awaiting us on day three…
