It’s crazy how fast the time is running when you are not traveling. Another week has passed and all I have been doing was working and trying to manage other things with photography. Seems that I am really unable to finish my to do list it just keeps growing bigger.
And you know it sure is very nice to sit down for a moment and to reflect on my trip and to tell you guys about it. It makes me calm down a bit and remember more details from traveling. Because when I just think quickly about it I tend to remember only the good things but you know already that this trip was way harder than I had expected. Yet still here I am feeling lost and a bit confused because all I can dream of is traveling again even tho when I was there I was slightly dreaming of coming back ‘home’. Life is interesting.
So back to my Amazon trip
I always feel a bit uneasy about sharing certain things online but I think it’s important to talk about everything that we have on our mind. If certain platforms, from my experience especially Instagram become judgmental of things it's best to find another platform where people are there to support you. In life there have always been and always will be people who will judge you I will never fully understand that but one way I like to look at it is that maybe they are jealous of you or something.
Anyways. That morning me and Dorinda enjoyed the sunrise by ourselves. Then the rest of our group came back, we had breakfast. And prepared to go on a walk in the jungle. Had to wear long sleeves and a hat. It was actually extremely hot and super humid to the point where your clothes sort of get stuck to you. We took the boat to the starting point.
The walk
we parked the boat and after a short walk we were surrounded by the rainforest. This is our guide, one thing I will tell you about him is that he was actually quite rude. In our group of 5 girls there were 2 of us who didn’t understand Portuguese yet he continued speaking mainly Portuguese and he would only translate a small fraction into English. I didn’t mind in the beginning but it’s nice to know what is going on, at least I had another friend who was on the ‘same boat’ as me.
It was very interesting and pretty wild that these guides are so familiar with the forests. There are no clear paths, they carry this big knife to chop off some branches that come in the way. It’s like the forest absorbs you and you think you know where you’re going but you actually have no sense of direction. Of course I would never go on such a trip alone because you need professional guidance and even this area where we were at was sort of made for tourists it’s still fairly close to ‘the outside world’ and it’s looked after, they only take you to very specific areas.
We even had to cross a few trees that were fallen over deep ditches. It was quite a challenge to get over yourself.
Here is an audio recording from the walk:
The evening
We got back from the walk. Jumped in the river to get refreshed, took a shower and had lunch. One thing I forgot to mention was that there were a few people in the lodge who had gotten sick the night before and they were still not feeling well. People working there suspected it might have been some kind of virus but they were not sure as it could be anything.
Anyways, after lunch we packed and headed off to the camp ground. We were preparing to spend the night in the jungle.
We stopped to collect wood for the fire and that itself was a whole different experience.
After collecting dry wood from trees sticking out of the river we headed down to our spot for the night. We had loaded the food so had everything with us. And actually we decided to go camp together with another group and their guide so we were 8 people plus 2 guides.
As soon as we started bringing things from the boat up to the campsite I realised I was not feeling well. I was so out of it could barely understand what was happening. I told my friend I didn’t feel well and as soon as I did I had to run off to the forest and I threw up, my stomach and head did not feel well. I was so happy to have her by my side. I won’t go too much into details but you can imagine how unpleasant it is to be sick when you don’t have any luxury of going to the bathroom or a bed. We were gonna sleep in hammocks. It was still very humid. From my memory we arrived to this campsite at around 5pm and I was ill until about 4-5am. Every time I would drink water I would have to get up and let it out. My energy was fully drained. In the middle of the night a few others got sick too and they left at night but I didn’t want to go back to the lodge because I didn’t know anyone there I would rather wait it out while having Dorinda with me. I must tell you that was the longest night of my life. I couldn’t wait until morning.
One thing I did manage to do was record this audio of the sounds at night!!
Once the morning hit I was feeling a little better. We took the boat back but we did make one stop at a local family’s house. They had a cassava farm to make a living and they lived in a wooden house without glass windows. Just a simple life. And they were so happy. Once again makes you realise that you really don’t need much in life in order to be happy. They had wifi since about a year ago and that was one thing they were really proud of. People who live in these remote spaces they still have a lot of fun they go to church in the main town and they have parties every weekend and they also have schools in some villages.
The way back
So there I was back at the lodge where I decided that I will end the trip. I was supposed to stay there 2 more nights. But there was no way my body would have been able to handle that.
The trip back took about 3 hours, had to take a boat, a van, another boat and then a taxi to get back. And I ended up spending 3 days in bed with fever.
Later I found out that the guide actually assaulted one of the girls from my group and I still cannot believe that happened. She was scared to even tell anyone but I am glad she did because it is very important to talk about these things even if they are very traumatising. I later learnt that the state of Amazonas is quite sexist and it’s considered normal they don’t do anything about these things unfortunately. They don’t have ‘proof’ as they say. I think that is insane and so terrible but at the same time there is nothing we can do about it except to continue talking about it.
Maybe this was not the nicest story but I wanted to share the rawness of traveling. You never know what will happen. Traveling is hard. It’s not always amazing as we see on social media.
Love the openness and honesty! And mostly loved that I could share this adventure with you! ❤️