Amazonia the second

Leticia is exactly on the triangle border Brazil, Colombia and Peru. No street leads to the capital of the Colombian province Amazonas. Leticia is the southernmost town of Colombia and an important port city of the Amazon river. It is a bustling town of approximately 40,000 inhabitants more or less grown together with the Brazilian town Tabatinga. There are no real border between Brazil, Colombia and Peru on the other side of mighty Amazon, and it is possible to pass the virtual borders without passports, stamps or visas. The people living here are feeling like Amazon citizens and not Brazilians, Colombians or Peruvians. Most of them speak Spanish as well as Portuguese. Thanks to its remoteness the jungle in this region is relatively well preserved with huge trees, abundant wild life and some indigenous tribes.

When we came to the nice hostel La Jangada owned by the Swiss guy Herve, he convinced us to do a three days trip on Rio Yavari together with the German / Australian couple Anna and Duncan.

Herve is famous in this region because he crossed the whole Amazon river with a bicycle driven boat, see his website HervePuraVida. Thus he knows some of the best places around Leticia like gorgeous Rio Yavari. Thus we took a taxi from Colombian Leticia to Brazilian Tabatinga in the early morning of the next day. Then we cruised two hours with a typical smaller Amazon boat to the Zacambu lodge on the Peruvian shore of Rio Javari. The landscape was totally differently to our first trip to Amazonia in August 2013, see our article Amazonia in Peru because now we were being on the trip in the rainy season. Most of the ground was flooded including the lower parts of the trees - incredible beautiful.

After a delicious lunch we went fishing for piranha. We drove over a marvelous lake into the forest again. Together we caught just one fish. When we came back we saw some jumping dolphins in the lake at sunset.

In the late evening we went in a very small boat for baby crocodile watching in a small lagoon behind the Zacambu lodge. Together with Anna, Duncan and our boatman the edge of the ship was just 3 to 5 centimeters away from the water. If somebody moved in the boat water swashed into the boat. We wondered what will happen if the ship capsizes. Sometime the Ladies were screaming. Suddenly our boatman did a fierce movement and he had a baby crocodile in his hands, which looked a little bit oafishly. We wondered where its parents were.

After a peaceful night we hiked a little bit in the drier but still muddy part of the jungle - Marion with her crutches. The vegetation was amazingly.

In the afternoon we visited a family which takes care of some strange animals of the Amazon rain forest. It was an excellent opportunity to see these animals which is very difficult in the dense and lush rain forest.

The top highlight of this trip was in the evening: We dared to stay the night in the jungle in a hammock. Our boatman Ruben and two guides came with us two. They did a perfect job to establish our camp with hammocks and very important with fine-meshed nets for proper protection against mosquitoes.

Before we went sleeping we explored the nightly wild life around our sleeping place like huge spiders and scorpions - A little bit scary!

Fishing piranhas was the target again on the next morning. This time we were a little bit more successful, at least four fishes, which we ate at dinner - tasty but bony. On the afternoon Ruben took a very special way back to Leticia mainly in the forest with the boat instead on the river. When we came to the hostel we said sadly goodby to Anna and Duncan - Thank you we had so much fun together.

Puerto Nariño is the second city in the Amazon department of Colombia 80 kilometers upstream the Amazon. It is a green, ecological, clean and remote town without cars or bikes. We just saw a garbage truck and an ambulance vehicle. There is public rapid boat service from Leticia to Puerto Nariño which is a drive of about 2 hours. In Puerto Nariño we found the wonderful hostel Paraiso Ayahuasca driven by Ileana from Cuba. When we found this hostel we were invited to a birthday celebration.

It was so nice - Thank you very much Ileana, Nancy and Harry.

Puerto Nariño offers some nice walks and interesting food. We hiked to the little village San Francisco and half the way to Puerto Esperanza along the Amazon to a look-out.

A must to do in Puerto Nariño is the half an hour cruise to the lake Lago Tarapoto. We saw a lot of dolphins on the way - pink as well as gray ones.

For more pictures, please click here fffffffffff For a map of our itineraries, click here

To download the GPS coordinates, click here

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