Through the Mother of God: Andes to the Amazon

Chris Raven grabs his South American phrasebook and heads for the mountains of Peru where he catches a bus in Cusco and travels along the uncompleted Transoceanic Highway, on a bumpy 36 hour journey through the Mother of God.

At a food pit stop somewhere outside Mazuk, Peru. Photo Simon Raven tripsideways.com

by Chris Raven

www.chrisraven.com

AS I STAND HERE in Cusco bus station with a thumping hangover, it suddenly dawns on me that the idea of catching a 36 hour bus journey that starts at 16,000 feet above sea level in the Andes and finishes in the steamy jungles of the Peruvian Amazon is absolutely crazy.

It all happened last night while my brother Simon and I were celebrating our return from Matchu Pichu and drinking warm Chicha, a popular local drink made from fermented maize, in some drinking hole off Plaza de Armas. “Get the plane” a backpacker advised us, who after a few drinks confessed to suffering from parcopresis. Hmm, why didn’t we listen to him? We spot a lone kiosk with a brightly coloured sign above the desk that reads “Turismo Mendivil” and “Pto. Maldonado”. Our nightmare journey is about to begin.

I’m in Peru, a country in western South America bordering Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia. It’s a country famous for the Inca Empire (1438 to 1533) and Machu Picchu (the Lost City of the Incas discovered in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham), Nazca lines (ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru), Andes Mountains (stretching for 7,000 km), the Peruvian Amazon (largest number of bird species in the world), Llamas (originated from the central plains of North America about 40 million years ago), Traditional Andean music (panflute), Pisco (a strong, colourless grape brandy), fresh fish (861 different species), potatoes (5000 different types world wide), surfing (Máncora) and Lake Titicaca (the highest lake in the world).

So, at the kiosk local Peruvians crowd around and struggle with their luggage that’s tied up in enormous bundles. We follow suit and slip our rucksacks in thick yellow plastic bags that we’d bought from a hardware shop called ‘Plasticos’. There isn’t much to do here while we’re waiting, so we hang around drinking strong black coffee and observe our fellow passengers. They look like they might be market traders buying goods from Cusco to sell in Puerto Maldonado, or illegal loggers on their way to help cut down the Amazon rainforest for the wood or to help clear the area for the new 3,400 km transoceanic highway. At this moment in time as I write, this section of road in Peru hasn’t even been built yet. But Peruvian engineers will soon be hard at work on the road’s last, and most problematic, section: a tortuous, 460-mile stretch from the steamy Amazon Basin and over the frosty Andes, which will connect down to the Pacific coast.

Eventually, everyone slowly heads down to the platform, and we follow close behind and wait outside in the sunshine for the bus to arrive. It doesn’t. We take the delay in our stride and remind ourselves that when crossing a frontier like this nothing can be expected to go to plan.

Some hours later a huge noisy vehicle skids into the station, and as the fumes engulf us we realise our transport to the Amazon has finally arrived. The blue Volvo bus with “Turismo Mendivil” along the side appears to have a truck chassis with the body of a bus plonked on top. Raised high off the ground the truck has huge wheels with deep treads and is perfectly designed for off road driving. We feel more confident that if we are going to complete this journey at all, we’ll have a better chance if we’re travelling on one of these mean machines. Everybody immediately starts scrambling for position, but we choose to hang back and watch as they load the truck with everyone’s luggage. Hauling huge sacks onto the roof and lashing them to the metal frame. We feel relieved our bags are watertight.

Climbing aboard, we’re welcomed by a strong smell of the countryside and stale cheese and as soon as we’re settled into our seats I quickly slide open the window. Our fellow passengers are of all ages, from mothers with children to men on their own and even an elderly couple perhaps visiting family in Puerto Maldonado for the first time in their lives. It must be incredibly annoying for these people knowing that down the road is an airport where they can catch a one hour flight to Porto Maldindo instead of a nightmare 36 hour bus journey.

Before we know it we’re pulling out of the bus terminal. The driver seems to be extremely confident when it comes to controlling this tank, and I assume to drive these roads it would be a necessary requirement. We head out of Cuzco on the road to Urcos and hurtle through the beautiful countryside, passing the tranquil village of San Jeronimo on the Rio Huatanay. We drive on fairly good surfaced tarmac into the evening and watch the sun drop below the mountains, as we pass the town of Quincemil 240kms from Urcos. My ears keep popping and I guess we must be dropping in altitude quite quickly.

The road becomes suddenly more hazardous as it begins to grow dark, and I try to ignore the sound of the squealing brakes when we whip around sharp bends and skid along narrow mountain passes. Somehow, I drift off to sleep and some hours later I wake to the sound of the engine cutting out. I assume we’ve pulled up for the night at a rest stop and I feel relieved we’re not travelling in the dark. We both snuggle under our blankets and snooze until daylight.

I wake up in morning to find we’re the only ones sitting on the bus. Where is everybody? I ask Si, but he just shrugs his shoulders and tucks into a bruised apple. “Why has everyone got off?” Suddenly, the driver sparks up the tank and cranks it into gear. I peer out of the window and can see the other passengers standing on the corner. There has been a landslide and mud has covered a small section of the mountain dirt road. We’re literally balancing on a cliff edge thousands of feet up. One wrong move and we’ll be kissing the metal roof and wishing we’d got the plane. No wonder the driver waited until the morning to attempt this. We’re paralysed with fear and accept our fate; it’s too late to get off. The bus rocks slowly and the wheels spin as they battle to cross through the mud. I can’t believe no one woke us up. The driver creeps forward slowly, but stops when the bus leans over the edge at an angle which quite literally causes me to pee in my pants. Finally, the bus makes it over to the other side and the passengers all quickly leap back on board. “Thanks for waking us us!” I consider shouting. But I chicken out. We continue on our way. All in  a day’s work.

After filling up with fuel in the small town of Mazuk 1,000 feet above sea level, we continue our decent and I notice everywhere is much greener and lush with thick jungle vegetation. We pull up outside of a small restaurant. There’s a sign outside which reads, “BAR RESTARANT, EL CHEF MAGALY”, and we follow the other passengers into a dimly lit wooden building. We perch ourselves on the end of a long wooden table and wait to be served. A pretty young girl with rosy cheeks and petite features serves us a plate of rice with steaming meat and vegetables pilled on top of it. I’m not sure when we’ll get another chance to eat, so I happily tuck into the morning’s feast. The curious dark faces sat around the table glance up at us and shyly look away and a guy with a Nike baseball cap smiles. With stomachs bursting, we climb aboard the bus and once again we hit the dirt road and continue our decent through the lush jungle.

I feel hot so I wipe my sticky forehead on my T-shirt. Si rocks backwards and forwards and nods his head in time to the unpredictable motion of the bus. I pull the thin red curtain to one side and poke my head out of the window; smelling the sweet jungle. The road we’re driving on is a stony unsurfaced dirt track similar to the road we travelled on across the Andes. We approach a red iron bridge and the truck mounts the wooden boards. It seems incredible that a vehicle of this size can drive across wooden planks without them buckling under the weight, but we make it across the wide river without collapsing into the water. We cross many more of these identical red bridges, and I blink in disbelief when we pass a large billboard in the middle of nowhere promoting the construction of the new ‘Trans-Oceanica’. It shows a picture of a luxury coach cruising down a beautifully paved highway. The modern world has come knocking on the door of one of the world’s most amazing wildernesses, and nothing is going to stop it ploughing down the trees and thundering right through.

The deeper we penetrate through the Madre de Dios (Mother of God) the more trucks begin to appear, as they make the long journey over the Andes to the Pacific coast where their cargo of lucrative mahogany will be loaded onto ships bound for the United States and Europe. It’s the first signs of deforestation; the first signs of this highway cutting out the lungs of the earth.  Pulling over to allow the trucks to squeeze by I look at the faces of the loggers and construction workers travelling between Puerto Maldonado and Cuzco. It’s slow going as we reverse and shunt in the depths of the jungle.

Observing the natural beauty of the green jungle I study the tall trees and their thick vines. Grabbing my camera, I photograph the bright red tropical flowers growing at the roadside, which until now I had only ever seen plonked in vases on office reception desks or in hotel lobbies. All of a sudden I hear squawking above my head, I look up and see a flock of grey parrots with white clown faces flying alongside the truck. They’re so close I can practically reach out and touch them. They look like miniature macaws with small eyes and wrinkles on their white faces. They look at me with keen interest and continue to chase us through the forest. It’s a deeply surreal experience and I try to imagine what we must look like from above, as this strange manmade vehicle speeds through millions of hectares of sub-tropical rainforest. The parrots fly off and we struggle to pass a queue of trucks carrying wood on a sharp bend, which loops around a twenty-foot high waterfall. Fears of a paved highway immediately disappear.

This region is harsh terrain and we wait, once again, for a few trucks to squeeze past before attempting the bend. I look to my right and wonder where the smart guy has gone who was sitting across the aisle from Simon. He was reading a translated copy of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown. I look up and down the truck, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I wonder if he jumped out somewhere along route, although, we haven’t passed any towns for ages and he looked too well groomed to be a logger. I look to the front of the truck and suddenly realise he’s driving! Stripped down to his white vest, he’s covered in sweat and battles with the steering wheel. The muscles on his arms look tense, but I catch a glimpse of his face in the large rear view mirror and I can see he’s laughing and having the time of his life. It fascinates me to think that a few hours ago he was reading ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and possibly imagining he was in Paris or London, and now he’s behind the wheel of a truck battling along a dirt track in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon. The bus slows down and the guy jumps out and chats to a truck driver. I look out of my window and realise we’re facing a wide river. There doesn’t appear to be a bridge anywhere in sight and the dirt track simply disappears into the water. Climbing back into the truck, the guy cracks his fingers, exercises his arms and cranks the bus into gear. We head straight for the water and I look out of my window in amazement, as the wheels gradually disappear below the surface. We slowly head down stream and hit boulders and sink into potholes. The truck rocks from side-to-side and the driver shunts and battles against the flow, causing the truck to lean sharply to the right. A few people scream and then laugh, my buttocks clench the seat and I wipe sweat from my forehead. The truck once again leans to the right and then sharply to the left. The potholes are deep and the truck struggles to get through them. As it jerks violently to the left again, a bag stored up above the seats falls onto a woman’s head. She screams and throws the bag to the floor. It all seems to be getting a little nasty. The truck suddenly leans to the right and stays at that angle for 20 seconds before correcting itself. I grasp the armrests and turn to Si. We’re speechless. This is all too much for us. If the truck leans a little bit further we’re fucked. I look for exit points in case it tips onto its side in the deep water, but realise there aren’t any. The truck is packed with people. They’ll be panic if it rolls. The windows only open a small amount, not enough to climb through. It seems the main door is the only way out. That’s if you can get there before you drown. I hate the thought of drowning with my brother sitting next to me. If I have to drown I’d prefer to do it in private. The wheels disappear completely, and the water level reaches the luggage compartment beneath the bus, which is well over a metre high. I think about our bags sloshing around in a foot of water in the luggage compartment. Our nightmare river journey from hell lasts for over an hour, and we thankfully emerge on the other side of the river and wheel spin onto the bank. I feel relieved to be back on dry land, and I’m close to handing the guy a $20 note as a thank you for not killing us. I still cannot believe this dude was originally a passenger. Sadly, this isn’t the last of our river experiences and we battle across many more flooded areas.

In the early evening we find ourselves on a dirt track again, and begin to pass shacks along the roadside. Thirty-three hours have passed since we left Cuzco and we haven’t had a pit stop for hours. As it begins to grow dark the skies open up, and hot tropical rain thunders down overhead. I feel physically and mentally exhausted. My body aches and my face is sore and my mouth is as dry as a bone. Simon looks like he’s just fought a battle and lost miserably. The thought of being close to the bright lights of Puerto Maldonado makes me want to jump out of my seat and kiss every single person on this putrid smelling truck. Cusco seems like another trip, another month, another year.

Bright lights appear on the horizon as we approach the frontier town of Puerto Maldonado. The truck is on a tarmac road now, and it truly feels like we’re driving over silk. People shelter from the rain outside the rows of tatty shops and karaoke bars and young teenagers on mopeds watch as our tank makes its presence known. It seems to be a fairly rundown place, which I kind of expect from a frontier town at the end of the line. People around us stand up and organize their belongings, and the driver/passenger who has returned to his seat quickly finishes the last page of his book. He slams it shut and blinks at his reflection in the window. We too gather our bags together, and release a sigh of relief when the bus jerks to a halt for the last time. The doors swing open and everyone charges down the aisle and pushes for the exit. We’re the last ones off. I step down and look around. It’s stiflingly hot and I’m instantly swarmed by a group of taxi drivers. They shout out to grab my attention and wave leaflets in my face. Everything seems to be in slow motion. I look down at the side of the bus and see our yellow sacks lying on the wet pavement. Simon falls off the bus close behind and runs over to the bags. They follow him too and shout in his face. It is madness, but we calmly grab our bags and walk over to a three-wheeled moto-taxi parked up nearby. The guy strikes the two-stroke engine and we speed away from the chaos  and zig-zag through the wet streets of Porto Maldonado.

We have made it to our destination. It has been one hell of a bus ride and the scariest and most dramatic journey I have ever been on. I praise the driver’s who have to battle along this road and the concentration they endure must be physically exhausting. The construction of the new highway isn’t popular with a lot of people living around here, but for the bus drivers the transoceanic highway will be a gift from heaven.

We pull up outside a hotel and fall into a small dark room. At this moment in time I’m so tired I wouldn’t have cared if the room didn’t come with a roof and four walls. My last delirious thought as I lay back on the lumpy hard bed – bollocks, the mosquitoes are going to eat us alive.

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