Riverboat side trip
Now that the biking is done, we woke up the next day to our next mini-adventure - a boat ride on the Ucayali river with an overnight camping visit to the small Indian village of San Francisco.
We started by packing into moto-taxis for the 10K trip to the waterfront. Here we are enroute - an e-ticket that sounded just like autopia:
A strange statue as we entered Pucallpa - note that most people walking around in the rain forest were carrying machetes, as is the statue:
At a small shop in a shack at the waterfront, you could buy one:
Then it was onto the boat (another term used loosely). Originally we were supposed to sleeping on the boat, and going on canoe paddling trips on the river. Well, apparently things change often down here, so we were quite surprised when we saw our rides:
Yep; sitting in the lap of luxury. Very low in the water. Leaking through the sides. Very noisy. Nancy and I played some cribbage to help pass the time on the 4 hour trip. Eventually we Rick and Lori joined, and we ended up playing teams, guys vs gals, for 1 soles/point. Of course it's below me to make a big deal about how much we won, so I won't stoop that low. Heh heh.
The Ucayali is a huge river, larger than the Mississippi from what I could tell, and it is low this time of year. It is one of the major feeder rivers into the Amazon (down-river at Iquitos), and we're still a couple thousand miles from the ocean. Overwhelming. We took a few shortcuts on smaller sections, including one where there was a logjam we had to crawl through:
Eventually we made it to San Francisco, where we set up the tents and camped out on last time. We were again surrounded by the kids - below they are looking at themselves in the LCD screen of Rick's DV recorder. Later they danced for us, at one point grabbing gringos to join them.
They had some stands set up to sell us some crafts of the area - I got a very cool blowgun - works quite well, and includes a piranha jawbone (with teeth) used to sharpen the darts. Also picked up a small rain stick, jewelry, and the usual assorted tourist items. Very cheap prices.
The next day we took boats/taxis back to Pucallpa, rented a hotel for a few hours to clean up, and eventually went to the airport for a flight to Lima. Most stayed for a flight to Cuzco the next day and the Machu Picchu hike, but I took a red-eye flight back to the states and home, trying to ignore what happened to AA earlier in the day. A quiet end to a great trip. Never did get the "revenge", and came back healthy. Amazing....
Bicycle Post-mortem:
Had to replace my headset, which was trashed from all the pounding, even with dual shocks. Replaced the chain, even though I put a new one on right before the trip - impossible to get all the fine grit and sand from between the links. Extensive cleaning/rebuilding required of the freewheel, shiftters, cable housings etc to remove grit; at least by rear derailleur works again.