Dolores C. Hall
Day One - Saturday, March 25, 2000
Our Amazon expedition began at the Miami International Airport, where we were met and assisted in preparation for an evening departure on American Airlines. Dinner was served aboard our nonstop 4 1/2-hour jet flight to Lima, Peru, the capital city located on a desert coastal plain between the foothills of the Andes and the curving shores of the Pacific Ocean. Upon arrival, we cleared customs, reclaimed our baggage and transferred to the beautiful Sheraton Lima Hotel and Casino. Since it was late (after 10 p.m.), some of us "old folks" hit the sack immediately. Others checked out the gambling.
Our intrepid little band of adventurers from Louisiana's Cajun Country was comprised of: Daisy and Bob Chaboudy, Betty and Ronald Loumiet and Yours Truly, all of whom were already experienced world travelers and veterans of trips to such locales as; Nepal, the Great Wall of China, Istanbul, Singapore, the Canary Islands and other such exotic and interesting places.
After breakfast, we enjoyed a wonderful city tour of Lima, the Spanish colonial capital of Latin America for almost 350 years. We visited a park on the Pacific Ocean, and we were shown the ornate balconies (depicting Moorish designs) and the beautiful churches and living quarters of the city. After a sumptuous lunch at one of the fine restaurants in Lima, we boarded an Aeroperu flight for a short trip over the Andes to Iquitos, a lively frontier city on the banks of the Amazon River. We once again reclaimed our baggage and transferred to the big river cruiser, La Esmeralda, which was to be our home for the next eight days. As soon as everyone was aboard and settled into their cabins, we were off to begin our cruise into the greatest wilderness on Earth. As we left civilization and the river became our environ, we were able to view incredible spectacles of stars and constellations, both northern and southern.
Day Three - Monday, March 27
We awoke on our first morning on the mighty Amazon, to find an ever-changing panorama of incredibly abundant life all around us as we sailed along. Small villages dotted the shoreline and channels weaving through small islands provided us with glimpses of an astounding variety of wildlife. We boarded the ship's small boat to explore some of those channels, watching monkeys playing in the trees, sloths hanging on the sides of trees and numerous birds of magnificent colors flitting about. We continued through a maze of islands which provided us with close-up views of a variety of marsh birds, including the Oriole Blackbird, the Purple Gallinule and the Yellow-Headed Caracara. In the afternoon, we arrived at the junction of Rio Ucayali and Rio Maranon, the confluence where most maps indicate the beginning of the Amazon River, about 2,400 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Our route today is along the right fork, up the Maranon River. One outstanding feature of the Maranon is its large population of both Gray and Pink Amazon River Dolphins. It was a pleasure to watch them as they cavorted near La Esmeralda and along the shoreline.
That entire day was spent exploring two really beautiful "blackwater rivers" that flow out of the Pacaya-Samiria Reserve, which is the largest wetlands reserve in the world. Our first early-morning excursion was a pre-breakfast outing in one of the ship's small boats. We searched for birds and other wildlife on the Rio Pucate. This was a marvelous introduction to the world of the tropical rainforest. The Pucate is a small forest-lined stream, where trees hang out over the water and where smaller creeks invite you to explore the shadowy jungle. We saw numerous birds as they flashed across the river; Masked Crimson Tanagers, Red-Capped Cardinals and Rufescent Tiger Herons, to name just a few of them.
