I woke up at Julian’s hotel feeling pretty good and ate my leftover Chinese food. David left around 11am and I just lounged around trying to figure out what to do as my waterfall trip had been cancelled. I eventually decided I would go deep into the jungle to a place called Iwokrama and stay at an “ecolodge” for a while. The prices at the ecolodge were really outrageous but I called and hassled them and eventually figured out that it’s only $30 for a “research bed” with a shared bathroom. That’s a lot cheaper than the $200 they put on their website for their tourist cabins. A lot of the pricing on stuff is really ridiculous around here and there’s a good deal of greed similar to Belize where you could pay the equivalent of a fortune for a 5 minute taxi if you don’t know what you’re doing.
My plan was to take a bus overnight to Iwokrama which I was warned many times that the bus ride would be miserable and that white people never do it. The bus guy told me to show up at 5pm to catch the bus. For the life of me I can’t understand why he wanted me to show up then. I soon found out it was scheduled for 630pm and we didn’t actually leave until well after 730pm. There was a lot of sitting and people not knowing or caring what was going on. It was $75 for a bus ride to Iwokrama. Same price if you’re going all the way to Lethen. I cannot understand how they can charge those prices. It was an absurdly small bus and they packed 14 people inside. It would turn out the be by far the worst bus experience of my life. The bus driver turned out to be an asshole who would point at you yell something and expect him to know what he was trying to say to you.
We were all trying to sleep and he blasted his Carribean gospel music. Blasted. I asked him to turn it down once because everyone was sleeping as I was sitting in the front so he could actually hear me. He didn’t say anything and turned it up a little. I sat next to this Brazilian dude who was a pretty nice guy and he got the shittiest seat in the house. The front middle. It rides 2 inches higher than everywhere else and slopes into the front passenger and driver seats. He chose to slope into my space which was unavoidable. Yes he was a nice dude. But I spent the whole ride with 90% of my sweating leg pressed against 90% of his. As our legs rubbed against each other, the Carribean gospel music blasted and I eventually started to fall asleep. Then for some reason the driver turned the AC on and put it to full cold. It wasn’t even hot anymore. I woke up shaking. I pointed at the AC and asked him to turn it down and he didn’t respond. I was literally hypothermic and it got worse and worse. I just used my cold weather training and sat there and tried to sleep as I lost feeling in my entire arms and legs. Once I finally got into another kinda sorta sleep with the Brazilians head bobbing it’s way closer and closer to my shoulder we hit the first police checkpoint.
I didn’t really know anything about these checkpoints but I quickly learned. The police are corrupt as f*ck. They took us all out of the truck lined us up in front of their little shack. They had masks on and the big officer yelled at the female officer that she didn’t do a good job lining us up. He wanted the people waiting to be further away from the hut. So he grabbed the German dude I had just met by the shoulders and shoved him back. He then called us in one at a time. I was up 3rd and went in, showed my passport. He shook my hand and said, “Hello American!” I said hello and he went into this weird thing about how most people bought him water. I figured he was asking for a bribe but his way of asking was super odd and I didn’t catch it at first. I pointed at his back and said you have water right there.. He said no! That water is empty when it clearly wasn’t. I just started to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about as he was a douche and I really didn’t know what he was talking about. He finally told me to get out so I went back to the van. I talked to the Brazilian a little who said that he made him pay $5 for passage, which is a pretty good chunk of money when there’s a police stop every hour down the road.
It’s such a dumb broken system I can’t write enough about it. These assholes are benefiting off of their own poor. At almost all the stations they asked me what I did for work and told me to get lost. They required bribes from the Brazilians and the local family that were traveling through when they clearly had nothing.
After freezing for hours and hours and having my ears blasted by his shit music I finally made it to Iwokrama. The driver threw my bag on the ground and didn’t tell me which direction the walk. The worst $75 I’ve spent in my life. There was a guy riding by on a motorcycle at the perfect time. I stuck my thumb out and he saved me about a 20 minute walk to the lodge.
I got to the lodge around 8am and soon found out that no one did what I was doing. It was all group stuff done by extremely rich people. To hike their favorite trail it was over $200!! Who can afford that? The canopy tour was $25 but $150 for transportation there. However, the guide who showed me around the complex was really cool. His name was Owen, he was 19, and he showed me the Caiman who swims around the river and is kind of the lodge’s pet in the dry season. I think his name was Saunker or something like that. He fed him a few innards and I watched him chomp them down. I thought Caiman were much smaller, this guy was clearly twice my size.
I checked into my room which are two tiny twin beds where anyone’s feet would hang off the edge and promptly fell into a deep sleep. After the rough busride the sleep was delicious. It was the type of sleep you could eat, the kind where you wake up and feel like you just ate an entire delicious vanilla cake.
After shaking off the tired I went in and talked to some of the people working here a little more. I can tell they really never get people like me here. People just traveling on their own without a group so they didn’t really know what to say to me. The prices are so outrageous. I decided to walk into town, a tiny town called Fairview. The main guy here at the lodge said I should ask permission from the leader of the village first. I wasn’t really sure how to do that so when I got to the village and saw there was no one there I just walked down the street for a few minutes. I saw one woman airing out a carpet or something so I walked towards her intending to do the whole “take me to your leader” thing the guide suggested. She scurried off and I felt imposy so I walked back towards the road.
I ran into an old dude walking there and I asked him about walking through the village. He said it was totally chill but I didn’t really want to go back so I found this little store and bought a coke. They only had 1 liter bottles and though it was way too much I always try to buy something to support the locals. These two little kids showed up and I asked them if they wanted the rest of the coke. They were super shy and eventually their mom said yes and I gave them the bottle with some cups. They seemed a little excited but still wouldn’t dare to glance at me.I walked back to the lodge and though I was exhausted I felt like I wanted to do a few more things before the sun went down. I started hiking down one of the trails and after a while turned around. It was a little spooky thinking about all the leopards that are here. There was a spotting yesterday and I saw one at the zoo a few days ago and they are enormous.
I then rented a canoe and set off into the river and paddled all the way to “Indian Island.” The story is some Indian guy lived there and killed his wife there so that’s where it got its name. I knew there were Caiman in the river but didn’t fully realize what that meant until I was coming back and the sun was as such that I saw bubbles bubbling all around me. One group of bubble were absolutely enormous.
I canoed a little faster, got back to shore and decided that was enough for one day. Ps it was a very unstable and leaky canoe obviously made in the bush for the Bush. Got back. Took a shower and had the dinner at the lodge. I was literally the only person there. It was a little sad. A huge table set just for one. One plate, one fork. But Owen the guide hung out with me for part of it and I read my book for the rest. The food was good. It tasted like great homemade food. Some of the best homemade Mac and cheese I’ve had, decent fried chicken all washed down with passion fruit juice. But the price was an outrageous $23. I then read my book relaxed some, and crashlanded into my bed.