View from our room in San Andres

This was the view from the balcony of our hotel room at the Decameron Aquarium hotel in San Andres.

The parrots in Leticia

This was our early morning wake up call in Leticia, courtesy of the local parrots.

Gray and Mel's Holiday

Whilst I was in Colombia, Gray and Mel (and little Gray) went to Croatia, have a look at their flickr Croatia set.

Amazon - Day 4, part 3

Steven picked us up and took us down to the river, we got in to the boat and headed off towards a quiet part of the river, Stephen tried his luck at some fishing with a little home-made rod but didn't have any luck, it did give us a chance to enjoy the wildlife and the sunset though. We paddled back from where we were and headed to Isla del cacao, as we did we passed anumber of people coming back from some afternoon fishing, we stopped a few and had a look at what they'd caught, among them were Pirañas and othe nasty looking things.

We arrived at Isla del cacao and got out of the boat, Isla del cacao is a new island that has formed over the last 10 years or so, thats the thing with the Amazon, it changes all the time, becasue it's such a massive river you get lots of islands forming and moving all the time. Rice is now grown on this island and the 2 huts you can see in the photo are only used when the rice is harvested. We got back in to our kayak and headed home, all the time being overtaken by really old men, I know we had 3 people paddling but I told myself it was probably more to do with the power to weight ratio than a lack of paddling skills on our behalf, I didn't belive it for a second though, for the people of Puerto Nariño this is every day transport, we saw children as young as 6 paddling and the only people with them were their younger brother and sisters! We headed back to the hotel where we got ready for dinner, had dinner, after dinner Steven met us for a beer on what was our last night in Puerto Nariño.

Amazon - Day 4, part 2

I'm not going to go through everyone we met, mainly because I can't remember them all, so I'll just mention a few of the people we saw.

One of the first houses we came to had a football goal outside made from branches, Steven walked over to the house and spoke to the woman at the door, he then called us over and said we could have a look inside.
Like most of the houses we saw in Puerto Nariño this one had a small communal room which you entered in to which is pretty much empty and off of this you had a few more rooms. One of the first things I noticed inside the house which was quite surprising was the wall, it could have been any bedroom wall of a teenage boy anywhere in the world. You travel half way across the world, fly in to the amazon, take boat to a small town of indegenious people who live a simple life and what's on the wall inside there modest wooden house, a poster of Davaid Beckham! After asking if it would be OK to take a photo inside the house I did, and as you can see, as well as pictures of women in underwear and Michael Jackson, there's a poster of David Beckham!

It was also here we found out that the things that the indeginous people had been selling are really made here and we found out what their made from. The eldest woman of the house later insisted on showing us all of the trees and plants where each part of the jewellery comes from as well as what every other three is used for, such as natural remedies for just about everything.

We carried on to the next little “village” and found a man making things out of bloodwood which as you'd imagine is a red wood that when polished looks likes it's been heavily varnished. This again helped to ease the thoughts I'd been having about the wares we'd seen for sale over the last few days, they really do make them and selling these things is an important income for these families.

At lunch the day before, we'd tried something called farinha which we were told is made from Yuca, it's about the half the size of rice and is rock hard! It made from ground yuca which is then toasted. I'm not fan but Marcela loved the stuff, in fact fish and farinha make up a lot of what the local people eat. The next place we stopped was at what looked like the largest paella pan I've ever seen above a fire (see photo, it looked something like this). Stephen took us over to it and we said hello to the family around it, Stephen then explained that they were making farinha. Whilst there one of their children came back snacking on a big bunch of grapes, Stephen grabbed a handful and gave us some, unlike normal grapes though these don't come from a vine but from a tree that he later showed us, despite this they look and taste very similar to normal grapes.


Our next stop was to the local nursery, we knocked on the door and waiting for a reply, the teacher opened the door and stood in the doorway, she was surrounded by about 15 children all clinging to her legs, they all had a worried look on their faces. Slowly they relaxed and went back to what they were doing. The reason for their behaviour was explained to us, when they saw me they assumed I was the doctor that visits every now and then to give them their injections!

We then headed back to the same restaurant we went to the day before for lunch, We had nothing planned for the afternoon but Steven said the day before that he'd take us out in a kayak so we arranged to meet up later on in the afternoon. After lunch we headed back to the hotel and had a sleep

Amazon - Day 4, Part 1

We had breakfast and waited for Stephen (Our guide whilst in Puerto Nariño) to arrive. Actually that might not be true it was probably more like, we had breakfast and Stepehen waited for us finish and get our things together, this wasn't because we were late, but despite being in a country that adopted the Spanish “Manana” attitude Stephen and probably everyone else in Puerto Nariño and possible the in Amazonia in general were different, they were on time or usually a bit early. I guess the reason for this is everyone's a fisherman and if you don't get up at 4am and go fishing, you won't catch your fish in time to get to market. In fact our previous guide already commented that he likes having groups of non-Colombians as when they agree to meet in reception at 8, they'll be ready in reception at 8. Any-hoo, back to Puerto Nariño! We headed off with Stephen walking along the neat paths, saying hello to everyone we passed, 10 minutes in to the walk and we then left the path and headed down by a small stream, crossed a small bridge that consisted of a plank of wood and headed towards the river. We'd told Steven the night before that we'd love to see pink river dolphins, despite the fact that we couldn't get to the lakes where we're most likely to see them because of the level of the water at this time of year he made a slight de-tour as this time of morning when it's quiet is a good time to spot dolphins. Sure enough walking along the river we spotted a couple of dolphins, not pink, but they were dolphins! Taking a photo of them is much harder than spotting them, unlike their trained cousins, who literally jump through hoops for you, they don't let you know where they're going to surface and when they do it's for no more than a second at a time.

We head along the river following Stephen, stopping every now and then for him to show us a plant, a tree or to say hello to some of the children in a kayak who's been out fishing or to get the morning shopping.

Amazon - Day 3, Part 3

We arrived at Puerto Nariño and headed straight to the restaurant for lunch. Puerto Nariño is facinating, it's an experimental ecological community made up of about 20 small indigenous communities with approximately 6000 people living there, some in the centre of Puerto Nariño and others in much more remote areas a few hours treck away. There are no cars, bikes or any other kind of vehicles (there's one exception to this, a small tractor used to collect the rubbish), you get everywhere by walking and they only have electricty between 5pm and 11pm. The first things you notice about Puerto Nariño are just how well orgnised everything is, how tidy and clean it is and how friendly everybody you see is, every single person you pass will smile and say hello to you. Almost all houses have neat little flower gardens outside and there's current a move to try and make it compulsary for everyone to have one!

After lunch we checked in to our hotel, “Casa Selva”, a wooden colonial style building in the centre of Puerto Nariño.



No mod cons here, but we did have running cold water and a ceiling fan, during the hours of 5pm and 11pm when the electricity is on. We put up the mosquito net, unpacked our stuff and had a shower, in 100 degree heat, humidity in to the high nineties and no air con this gives you about a 10 minutes restpite from the heat.



About an hour later there was a knock at our door and the receptionist told us our guide was waiitng for us in reception. Stephen our guide took us on a tour of Puerto Nariño, Stephen is from the Ticuna tribe and was brought up in Puerto Nariño, as such he knew just about everyone we saw.



At the end of the tour he took us to the viewing tower where enjoyed the views of Puerto Nariño and the Amazon and waited for sunset. We headed back to the hotel where we got changed and then had dinner. After dinner we had a walk down to the main area by the rvier where the local children were playing football, had a couple of beers, bought enough water for the next day and headed back to the hotel for an early night.

Amazon - Day 3, Part 2

Our next stop was to visit the Yaguas, we were greeted by an elder member of the group who painted our faces with paint made from achiote. At first I thought it was to welcome us and accept us as friends, but that niggling thought in the back of my mind was telling me this was just in case there was any doubt in the minds of the indigenous people who they should be selling to. A lot of the people here seem to have pets, not cats and dogs like us though, they tend to be things like parrots, snakes, crocodiles and sloths! Whilst visiting the Yaguas we had our photos taken with one of these birds and Marcela held a sloth. This was where we heard out first superstition / myth / belief. They believe a pregnant women should never look a sloth in eyes or their child will be born with Down’s syndrome! It was at this point we had our first sighting of river dolphins, unfortunately not pink, but they were river dolphins!

We went back to the boat and headed towards the Amacayacu Park (Stopping on the way at another indigenous community, where the only thing of note that happened was we held a crocodile!). This was one of the places we tried to book to stay in and now we know why we couldn’t, most of the park was shut, but we had a brief tour of the accommodation there. On the way back to the boat we saw a pineapple growing, now I knew how pineapples grew but I always thought the plants were much bigger and bore more than one pineapple at a time. Next to the pineapple plant was a cashew nut tree, now I had absolutely no idea how these grew, I would have guessed at a plant / tree but they’re actually just a part of a fruit about the size and shape of a pepper. The fruit is edible but despite being quite juicy it leaves a strange dry sensation in your mouth.

We left the park and headed off towards out next destination, Puerto Nariño.