My experience in Pacaya Samiria

Hi All,
I have just come back from one month in Peru and would like to share my 5 day experience in the Amazon, Pacaya Samiria area. I do that because I found it pretty difficult to organize but I am extremely happy of how it went. I was lucky enough to get in touch with a great guide, who is usually working for agencies but enjoys going privately to have more freedom and obviously gain a bit more. What I was looking for was living as they do in the jungle, not really interested in touristy stuff like traditional dance, traditional meals, traditional whatever which is, in the end, played for tourists.
My guide's name is Ricardo Padilla, he is based in Iquitos and usually enters into the jungle with a boat from Nauta. We had the 3 hour boat ride to get to the village where we would have slept the first night, no tourists there, we were sleeping in a house of one of the villagers, nothing fancy, we could hang our hammocks in the "patio", the husband brought us out in the night for the night walk and in the morning to explore a piece of jungle and the wife was preparing the food which in reality we bough in Nauta, she also had to look after 7 or 8 children. The next day we headed to another village, just a 40 minute walk from where, together with a native living there, we left aboard of 2 canoes heading upstream a nice quiet river. After few hours without seeing anyone we decided to stop on one bank and setup for the night, hanging the hammocks to the trees and preparing the dinner, a kind of rodent which I didn't really enjoy, after dinner we left again with the canoes and paddled a bit further up to see some wild life, a snake, a cayman, few birds, some spiders, quite interesting, everything was extremely calm, no noise a part from the 3 of us rowing. It was the first time for me sleeping in the jungle, I mean proper jungle, no house, hut or whatever, just hanging to a tree, it was full of mosquitoes but Ricardo had provided hammock which had a mosquito net attached hence the only hassle provided by the mosquitos was the noise.
We spent the third day on the river, again upstream where it became to get smaller and smaller, machete was needed to "open" the vegetation, in some points we even had to use an ax to cut trees fallen into the river and in some other parts we had to get off the canoe and push it up over the trees. Quite an exhausting day but i guess this is the way they negotiate the obstacles. On the fourth day we went back to the starting point, downstream was much faster, we fished on the way in order to have something for breakfast and we reached the community where we left 2 days before. There I could have a shower in the river, I washed my clothes and entered a couple of houses, we had breakfast at the place of the guy coming with us and then we went to another place to buy some Juanes (rice with some meat wrapped in a palm leave) for lunch. After that we headed back to the community where we arrived the first day, had some rest, lunch and off we went to spot river dolphins, this was the only place where I saw other tourists, it was a bit ambitious to have all the river dolphins for myself, there was plenty but Ricardo told me that usually there are less, BTW they don't jump much hence you are likely to see the back fin and the tale, not the whole body or the face.
After the dolphins we went with the same motor boat for some wild life and we met a cayman to finish our day.
On my last day, I was pretty happy it was the end, we went to a close by lake to check the fishing nets of our hosts and to fish a bit more, had a long tour on the lake to see some plants and then we headed back to Nauta from where we took a car to Iquitos.
The conclusion is that I could finally have a real jungle experience, Ricardo is extremely knowledgeable, he explained me a lot about medicinal plants, social life in the jungle, animals and had an attitude with me which I didn't feel like guide-customer, I felt him more like an elder brother. Speaking Spanish I had the chance to talk to my hosts, ask questions about their lives and the communities in general, I found it extremely interesting. My trip was pretty rough, the meals were not good but, to be honest, I expressly requested him not to bring fancy food and told him I can eat everything. I haven't used a toilet for 5 days, I could only have shower in the river but that was my plan and that's what I got.
Ricardo organises a broad range of trips, from survival experience to more traditional journeys sleeping in guesthouses, it really depends on what you want. After my experience I can strongly recommend him, his prices are fair and I saw him paying our hosts, bringing them supplies and sharing with them his knowledge, the kind of things you learn on the books because from the jungle itself they all know a lot since they live there. It has always been a pleasure to spend time with him, being alone I was pretty happy to have kind of a friend there.
In case you are looking for a journey in the jungle he might be one of the options, this is his e-mail address: ricardopadilla_75@hotmail.com
In case of any questions I am happy to help.
Have fun!!!
Federico

That sounds great!

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