This is the fourth installment in a series by Wayne Zanardelli, an IE guest who generously shared notes from his recent Amazon adventure aboard La Amatista. Get caught up with Part I, Part II and Part III here.

The small village we will be visiting looks pretty ragged.  According to Victor, it has a population of 200 and there is a school there. We boarded the skiff, sailed around to the other side of the La Amatista, pulled up to a muddy bank and disembarked onto a partially grassy soccer field. Directly in front of us is our first stop — a one-room school house.

Inside the school, already seated in small chairs (there were no desks), were 21 village children ages four to 11 in kindergarten through sixth grade. They were all as cute as a button and well behaved. George, our resident raconteur, music rapper, naturalist speaker and gifted teacher, spoke to the kids, all the while moving his arms up and down and racing about the room making them laugh.

They sang a song, counted to 10 in English and we, in turn, sang to them, also in English (there are no linguists in the group). George had us introduce ourselves and the kids then repeated our names. Then George introduced the kids and we said their names. The kids then stood and sang the Peru National Anthem (a very long song, by the way). Hernando then gave our group school supplies to pass out to the kids and the anxiously awaiting adults. The adults may have been more excited than the kids to receive a pen. I was at once very happy and very sad.

In the village, a well constructed sidewalk runs perpendicular to the river. I’m guessing it is about 500 yards long. Along the length of the sidewalk were power lines. All the homes have electrical power.  The crops they grow here also ran the length of the sidewalk — cucumber and yucca where they harvest the manioc or tapioca root. One of the local men demonstrated the harvesting of the manioc. First, he cut down the tree with a machete. He then grabbed the trunk, gave a hardy pull and the tubers (roots) came out of the ground. Each plant has four to six large tubers each the size of a sweet potato.

Dan volunteered to harvest one as a demonstration of our groups’ capabilities. They handed him the machete and he handled it like a pro — chop, chop, chop, the tree was down, a manly yank and the manioc was out. We all cheered. He then became a folk hero to the local folks.

A tidbit:  George explained that a kid in the village can only continue his education past elementary school if he has friends or relatives in Requena who will provide room and board;  otherwise they are doomed to the rough life of their parents. It broke my heart.

Our next launch is at 4:15 to visit another village and meet their medicine man. Here again, the ride from our boat by skiff took 30 seconds to mud steps carved into a steep bank. The village was built perpendicular to the river. The current school building which lies about 200 feet from the river was one mile from the river just a few years ago. It is currently being dismantled and moved further inland. Can you imagine?

The main street is dirt — now mud from the rain. The houses are shabby huts on stilts with thatched roofs that look badly in need of repair. The town has a water tower and water purification system for drinking water and cooking. Prior to the system being installed several years ago, dysentery was a major health issue for the children of the village.

The town had a nice soccer field and a number of the locals were playing a game against some of the crew from our boat.  Three, four and five year old kids were running around playing and laughing and just being kids. They were all adorable.

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This is the third installment in a series by Wayne Zanardelli, an IE guest who generously shared notes from his recent Amazon adventure aboard La Amatista. Get caught up with Part I and Part II here.

The captain started the engines at 6:15. It is overcast and extremely humid. Yesterday felt long — I am hoping for more diversity today, and the early group returned and indicated they saw a large number of parrots, macaws and parakeets.

The water current is very swift. The shallow banks of the rivers are being constantly eroded by the current, causing the trees and vegetation to collapse into the water. We see examples of it every day — trees leaning precariously over the water.

We leave at 9:30 and will be taking a shortcut along a different body of water. How our skiff drivers navigate this place is amazing since it all looks alike in every direction — brown water and thick, impenetrable jungle.

The service on the ship is first rate. Everyone is very helpful, always polite, always smiling.  We are always greeted by name and everything is spic and span.

Our pilot left the main river and turned into a narrow tributary.  As soon as we turned into the tributary, we saw more pink dolphins. We continued up the waterway and it felt like I was truly in the real Amazon for the first time — the thick, tall jungle surrounds you here and it is strangely quiet except for the birds and the occasional monkey. The water is crystal clear and is called “black water” since it is deep and clear and appears black as you look into the water from the boat. The surface is like a mirror. As we continued, we came to an area of dense vegetation covering the water’s surface and it went on acre after acre. The vegetation is water hyacinth in full bloom with large purple flowers standing erect above the greenery. Also part of this dense collection is water lettuce, a non-edible, small smooth leafy plant. These enormous masses float on the surface and are not anchored by roots to the bottom which is 20 feet down this time of year. Our pilot pushed against the mass with the bow of the skiff until a large section would start to move. He would reverse the engines to pull back and clear the props of vines and then push forward once again until he cleared a channel. It was a tedious procedure of slow, incremental progress, but amazing to see.

We saw a large number of bird species, several types of monkeys, tree sloths and frogs. The air was very still with temperature and humidity off the charts. Whew! Our guide handed us a chilled washcloth to cool off and freshen up. It was heaven.

Another tidbit: Each evening on the observation deck, e have a band made up of our guides, Victor and George, the expedition leader — Hernando, the chef — Pepe, and two cabin boys who play the keyboard, guitar and wooden flute. They play well, but are greater entertainers. The guides have an encyclopedic knowledge of anything that grows or lives in the rainforest. It is truly uncanny since there are 1,600 bird species alone. Their stories and insights about the people, their culture and the land are fascinating. Both George and Victor were born in the rainforest and grew up there until moving to Iquitos for their education. While both guides have accents (Victor heavier than George), both have a rich English and scientific vocabulary.

A small glimpse of American culture: Hernando was whistling the theme song from Sesame Street yesterday. I laughed since I recognized it immediately, but wasn’t sure I could have come up with the melody on my own.

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With school back in session and two full-time gardeners, a lot is happening at the IE-funded Las Malvinas urban garden project in Iquitos, Peru! During a typical week, over 300 students regularly come and go for classes in the gazebo and hands-on work in the garden. Our in-country partner sent this update.

The vegetable area is starting another season, and the beds have been replanted with a variety of vegetables — cucumbers, sweet peppers, cilantro. We also have some experimental plots dedicated to growing horseradish with different amounts of natural fertilizer (chicken droppings), plus peppers planted using two different methods of ground cover which protect the surrounding soil from serious rainwater leaching.  Implementation and evaluation of these experiments are being made by the students. Our papaya trees, only just recently planted, are quickly bearing fruit and our passion fruit plants are thriving.

The medicinal area of the garden is smaller by comparison but is showing strong growth as we’ve planted the most commonly used medicinal plants in the area — achiote, hierba luisa, hausai and rosa sisa.

The ornamental flower area is starting to get more attention.  This is a great asset to the garden as it brings together many examples of rainforest flowers all in one place for students and guests to enjoy.  Rarely does one see a broad range of rainforest flowers together in the wild.  We’ve been nurturing a number of new marigold plants and we’re buying seeds to plant more.  Marigolds are a great deterrent for ants which continue to be a challenge to control in the garden since we’re using only natural methods. We recently made the purchase of almost 100 bougainvillea flowering plants to run along our fence line.

About Las Malvinas: Housed at a public school, the Las Malvinas urban garden project is the centerpiece of an IE-funded environmental education program. Teachers use this outdoor classroom to teach environmental awareness, biology and language arts to the school’s 1,000 students. The Garden is home to a vegetable garden, medicinal plant garden and two ponds.

Learn more about the Las Malvinas Garden and how you can support the project at Traveler’s Philanthropy.

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This is the second installment in a series by Wayne Zanardelli, an IE Guest who was kind enough to pass along observations about his latest Amazon adventure. Read Part I here.

We landed in Lima at 5:00 AM, cleared passport control and customs and were met outside for our ride to the Swissôtel. The hotel is beautiful; too bad all we have time for is a shower and a change of clothes. We placed our bags outside our rooms at 8:30 and were downstairs to meet the rest of the group, a group with a lot of “birders.” We’ll have lunch at 12:00 and leave for the airport for our flight to Iquitos at 1:30. I am whipped.

Lima is very, very big geographically with a gazillion buses, give or take, of all shapes, sizes and conditions. We boarded a large, modern bus and drove to our first stop, the oldest home in Lima located in the center of the town. It was built in the 16th century and has been in the same family for 16 generations. We entered from a side street through an inconspicuous door that led to the only parking spot on this street behind the walls of the home. The home was deceptively cavernous because of the front access. It was filled with priceless antiques from over 500 years and intricately carved wooden furniture, moldings and picture frames. It was a bit much for my taste, but beautiful nonetheless. Every wall was adorned with a huge picture complete with large ornate wooden or brass frames. The center of the home was an open two-story skylight with a three-tier fountain on the ground floor and a huge old tree pushing toward the sky past the roofline. It was elegant old-world.

We next walked to the oldest cathedral in Lima founded by Fransisco Pizzaro and logically called the Lima Cathedral. It was another example of over-the-top wood carving on every wall with cedar being the wood of choice.

Next up, a church and then a monastery where the bones of 20,000 dead are on display in the catacombs, neatly arranged in bins by type of bone, i.e. femurs, tibias, ulnas, clavicles, skulls, etc. It’s a tad ghoulish, in my opinion. Thankfully, the practice of burying someone below the monastery is no longer allowed.

The city has a number of beautiful and interesting town squares that were very attractive. They help brighten up the rather gloomy surroundings.

We left for the airport and all flights were on time. We landed in Iquitos at 6:00 after a 90-minute flight. It was a very cloudy day which obscured any view we may have had of the Andes Mountains. It was 88 degrees when we landed. There is only one road through the jungle from Iquitos to Nauta, our destination. Nauta is a jungle town of 16,000 located in the middle of nowhere. The trip is a 90-minute drive along a narrow two-lane asphalt road that took 30 years to construct by cutting through the jungle. It is from there we will board skiffs to cross the river to our boat, La Amatista.

Along the road we passed a number of small settlements along with squatters that migrated to this area from other parts of the rainforest. Electricity in Nauta is supplied by diesel generators. Everything in this part of the world is brought in by river barge — cars, buses, machinery, building supplies, food, fuel and clothing and you name it.

It is very dark — jungle dark — and the southern sky is alive, sparkling with millions of bright stars. What a sight.

We had dinner on board at 9:15. I am exhausted. The captain pulled over and tied up to a tree at 10:30. He won’t start the engines again until 5:00 AM giving everyone the ability to sleep without the loud engines running. That is the procedure every day. Oh, and anchors don’t work here — the bottom is heavy with silt and the current too swift. How the captain manages to navigate at night in this ever changing, unmarked waterway is a mystery to me.

Breakfast was at 7:30 in the dining room. It was very good and the dining room is very nice with floor to ceiling windows all around enabling everyone to watch the luscious scenery drift by as we enjoy our meals.  hey manually ring a large brass bell for meals here. It may sound like a corny idea, but it is actually kind of nice.

The river is huge and we are only in one of the many tributaries. Along the river bank there are small villages here and there usually comprised of four to 10 poorly constructed wooden shacks on stilts with thatched roofs and we see kids, lots of kids waving as we go by. These small settlements do not have electricity, as you may have guessed, and no pure drinking water, but worse, no easy access to anything except the river.

Our first outing started at 9:00 AM. Boarding was easy even though La Amatista and the skiff were moving quickly through the water. We passed a number of solitary, poorly constructed shacks built on stilts near the river bank. They live on a parcel of land that will soon be claimed by the water, so they move and move and move to higher ground and rebuild their huts and clear the land (slash and burn) and plant their meager crops. There were many of these isolated houses, but all were separated by long distances.

Along the way we passed by a small village where the banks of the river were lined with grapefruit trees all heavy with fruit.  Grapefruit grows wild here, but these were planted by the villagers.

I am living out another of my fantasies. I consider the Amazon River and rainforest a natural wonder of the world and the last great untamed frontier for man with the potential to change the world in many ways.

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Avid traveler Wayne Zanardelli has chronicled his adventures to 83 countries in a series of more than 30 journals. Highlights of Mr. Zanardelli’s travels include meeting the sons of both Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay; a private train trip between Beijing and Moscow; and sleeping in a tented oasis in Tunisia. Now Mr. Zanardelli shares journal excerpts from his Amazon River cruise with IE.

This Amazon trip with International Expeditions (my second with them – the first was Botswana and Namibia in April 2008) begins in Lima, Peru on February 12 and ends in Lima on February 20. The trip is a 600 mile cruise down the Amazon River, stopping at remote villages along the way and using smaller craft to go through some of the many tributaries that thread their way through the Amazon rainforest. We fly north from Lima over the Andes (average height 13,000 feet, with Aconcogua at 22,841 feet the highest peak) to the city of Iquitos, Peru located at the headwaters of the river. It is from there we depart for our trip aboard the river boat, La Amatista, a three deck, flat bottom boat, 127 feet long with a 28 foot beam. It carries a crew of 13 and a total of 28 passengers. Each cabin has A/C, en suite facilities, and large windows for panoramic views of the tropical forests as we sail down river.

The river itself is a staggering natural wonder. It is the largest river system in the world.  An unbelievable two thirds of the unfrozen fresh water in the world is found in the Amazon Basin. At 4,000 miles long, it is the second longest in the world after the Nile (this is an ongoing dispute, however). It was discovered in 1500 by the Spanish navigator, explorer and conquistador, Vincenté Yanez Pinzon, who hailed from Seville. He first called the river, Maria de la Mar Dulce or sweet sea, referring to the fresh water pushed out into the sea. It was later called, Grande Rio, Mar Dulce. Pinzon was also captain of the Nina when Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492.

The majority of the people who live on the Amazon River are not, as popularly imagined, groups of headhunters and wearers of strange lip ornaments. Headhunters are people of legend and television documentaries. Such people do exist even now, but they are rare and endangered whose future is cause for despair among anthropologists and whose culture won’t survive against the onslaught of the 21^st century. And head-hunting is long gone.

Most of the people in the rainforest are not indigenous, though they have lived there a long time. They are usually descended from both European and Indian ancestors who migrated here to work on rubber plantations or other short-lived booms of the exploited rainforest. They are called Mestizos. In Peru they are called Riberenos. They speak a mix of Spanish and Quechua (a language derived from the Incas) as well as their indigenous languages.

They are a people who live with minimum amounts of cash; they harvest the jungle judiciously; they build their canoes and fish the river; they grow gardens in small plots; they build their houses of wood and plants from the forest and raise their livestock on a bit of pasture supplemented with forest and garden grazing. Making a living is tough. Selling produce or fish or meat is very difficult since the only market is Iquitos and the distances from the villages can be great. Five hundred years ago there were 10 million Indians living in Amazonia — today there are only 200,000 indigenous people. Over 90 tribes have been destroyed since the early 1900s.

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IE Creative Services Editor Emily Harley recently traveled on our Amazon River cruise! Now she shares thoughts on this unique small-ship adventure aboard La Amatista.

While I’ve already had a wonderful meeting our Expedition Leader Hernando and eating and touring my way around Lima, I know from years at IE that our Amazon tour doesn’t start until we’re on the boat.

Once flying into the frontier city of Iquitos, we boarded a bus bound for the port town of Nauta, where we would embark La Amatista. Driving along the dark road between Iquitos and Nauta is an adventure in itself. Lush swaths of plants and trees are broken only by intermittent settlements — three or four houses clustered together, where on this Saturday night the people are dancing and socializing right on the edge of the road. This drive is also the first opportunity we have to chat with our fellow travelers and guides. I’m sitting next to naturalist George Davila, who brags to me about the writing award his daughter just won for her compilation of Amazonian lore. Our group is an eclectic mix — a college professor, a nurse, a zoo newsletter editor, a retired kindergarten teacher and boisterous world travelers. Traveling in such a small group — 27 guests including my mom and me — it’s amazing how quickly you get to know your fellow travelers.

When at last we arrived on the dock and boarded motorized skiffs to travel across the Rio Maranon to the waiting Amatista, it was like a true beginning to our expedition. Fishing bats dove into the dark waters as we crossed the river and found our cabins. And a tart Pisco sour was the perfect beginning to seven nights of adventure.

Side note: At this point in the Amazon River cruise, I did actually have cell service. While contact with the “real world” is spotty in the remote jungle, Nauta is a large enough town to have its own cell tower. So, once embarking La Amatista, shoot a note to family in the U.S. assuring them you are safe and they won’t be hearing from you until the end of the week.

I am admittedly biased, but I can’t imagine a better way to spend a week on the Amazon than the Amatista. There are “fancier” options for an Amazon cruise, but frankly, I didn’t want a Caribbean cruise through the jungle…I wanted an expedition! On the covered top deck I was able to laze away my siesta time in the afternoon with a frosty Amazonica beer and a good book. While at meals we enjoyed a buffet of home-style Peruvian dishes, fresh fruit and ice cream. And the ice cream isn’t just plain old vanilla! We actually were treated to a Peruvian fruit flavor – Lucuma (everything comes back to food with me!).

Up next: Hawks, villages and pink dolphins (oh my!) on our excursions. Plus! Beatles night in the heart of the jungle.

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For former International Expeditions guest Dr. Linnea Smith, her time on an Amazon rainforest tour was truly a life-changing journey that is now having a positive impact on the people of the rainforest. This Wisconsin-based doctor gave up her practice to open a medical clinic in 1990 serving the Yagua and Ribereno people of the Upper Amazon Basin.

Until Linnea arrived, the local people had no access to health care. Now 2,000-2,500 patients arrive each year — most by dug-out canoe or on foot — seeking treatment for malaria, infectious diseases, dental care, and even prenatal care and birthing.

Guests on three special Amazon River cruise departures this May and July will have an opportunity to visit Linnea’s medical clinic as well as four other IE-funded conservation and community projects in the Peruvian Amazon.

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Spotting the first light-pink river dolphin rippling the murky waters is an excursion highlight for everyone on our Amazon River cruise. After their last Amazon tour aboard La Amatista, our friends at WWF shared five myths about the Amazon’s pink river dolphins they learned from our Peruvian naturalists.

1. During the day, river dolphins conduct their usual dolphin business. But once the sun goes down, they morph into handsome young men dressed in all white. They come ashore, strictly for the purpose of seducing the wives and women of local villages.
2. Someone swimming alone in the river could be whisked away by a shape-shifting dolphin to a magical underwater city called Encante. They’ll live out the rest of their lives there, never to return to land again. Perhaps this myth started as a way to get people, particularly youngsters, to be careful when swimming. The dolphins can bite, as can the piranhas that patrol the Amazon and its tributaries.
3. If you wish to find a rare Amazonian manatee, you must first locate an Amazon dolphin and make peace with it. The dolphin is considered the manatee’s guardian.
4. Don’t ever make eye contact with a pink dolphin or you’ll have nightmares for the rest of your life.
5. It’s bad luck to kill an Amazon river dolphin — and even worse luck to eat one. Many Indian tribes still consider them to be sacred creatures and thus bestow a great deal of reverence on them. Rainforest-dwelling shamans have been known to learn medicinal techniques from the dolphins.

© World Wildlife Fund. Reprinted with Permission.

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Recently, IE guests from around the country told us why they loved the Amazon. All of the participants were entered into a drawing for the book Tree of Rivers. The lucky winner was Jo Ann Schermerhorn of Magnolia, Texas.

“My husband and I had planned to go to the Amazon but it was never convenient. A few days before he died he asked me to promise him I would go even if I had to go alone. I told him I would. I went alone and had the most incredible time.

I didn’t want to come home. Thanks to Jorge and the crew and the other passengers I saw everything and did everything. They took such good care of me. It would take too long to name the favorite memories because each one was my favorite. My most unfavorite memory was the last night in Lima, after dinner, when I suddenly realized I was waking up from an incredible dream.”

Visit the International Expeditions Facebook page to read more stories of guests who raved about our Amazon tour.

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Writer Susan Stafford cruised to the Peruvian Amazon aboard La Amatista, now she’s telling the world about this life-changing Amazon tour.

“Yikes! It’s not often that a pink-toed tarantula seeks to make your acquaintance. One did just that, however, when it casually hopped on board our skiff as we began to pull away from the bank of the Ucayalli River in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon.

Pink Toes is just one of many unexpected pleasures that my husband, David, and I encountered on our International Expeditions cruise aboard the 28-passenger La Amatista as it motored 400 miles/644 kilometers up the Ucayalli River to the Pacaya-Samiria Natural Reserve, and back. If supersized bugs, jewel-like birds, acres of rainforest, and one giant anaconda of a river whet your appetite for adventure, the Peruvian Amazon belongs right at the top of your bucket list.”

Read more of Susan’s story at www.travelwithachallenge.com or in the Miami Herald.

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