Day 16 - Dolphins, Poison Dart Frogs, and Tarantulas

We started at 6:30 AM today - pick up from the hostel. At 7:00 AM, we went up the Amazon with Lineas Amazonas SAS, the Colombian Cologne-Dusseldorf, so to speak - left bank Peru, right bank Colombia. Our destination was Puerto Nariño, a town with about 3,000 inhabitants in the middle of nowhere. The boat ride lasted about 2 hours, with a few stops along the shore to drop off passengers. By the way, the boat was very fast, while the captain zigzagged through all the debris.

In Puerto Nariño at the dock, our guide Ignazio was waiting for us. Ignazio spoke English and he had his friend Eduard with him, who was born here and knows his way around.

First activity today: watching dolphins. There are gray ones here, as we know them, and pink ones. It took a while, but we really saw some, they would come to the surface of the water near the boat from time to time. However, they were too far away to be considered spectacular.

After that, a 2-hour hike through the jungle. The biggest challenge - not falling into the mud. The second biggest challenge - not collapsing. It was brutally hot and we were wearing long pants and rubber boots. Even the two guides were sweating a bit, but we were completely drenched. We saw plenty of interesting plants and trees, but unfortunately no animals. Only in a natural pond, there was a huge freshwater fish (3m long!), a small caiman, and water turtles. After the tour, we took a nap for an hour - this humid heat really wears you out if you're not used to it.

At 6:30 PM, the night hike was on the program. Ok, 6:30 PM is not really night, but it won't get any darker now. Eduard had a long knife with him like Crocodile Dundee - very reassuring 😜

Aside from the fact that I was sweating again after 5 minutes, the night tour was better than the day tour. We saw many crazy insects 🐞, frogs 🐸, and tarantulas 🕷. Or rather, our guide saw them and showed them to us. The guy knew exactly where to look. Without him, we would have definitely only seen trees.

This place consists of many simple and simplest houses, a church, a school, a restaurant, a youth club, and a bar. For Julia and me, it would be unimaginable to live here. It takes 2 hours by boat to get to the nearest Media Markt and another 2 hours by plane. I don't even know if Amazon delivers to the Amazon 😂😂

Although there is actually nothing here, there is a lot of military presence here. There was a soldier sitting at the next table with a loaded submachine gun while we were having a beer. So we looked it up. On the one hand, there is a military training camp nearby, and on the other hand, large quantities of drugs are still brought through the Amazon river system to the Atlantic coast of Brazil. After all, the European and American drug markets also need to be supplied...