Back to the Reserve

After the boat excitement from the previous day, we were relieved to find out that we would be taking the "rapido" boat back. This is essentially a speedboat. Initially we were going to take an 18 hour boatride back to our reserve, where we would sleep in hammocks, but everyone was too worn out and wanted to be back NOW.

Well...that did not turn out. The rapido turned out to be more despacio (spanish word for slow). The huge storm caused many logs and obstacles along the river, plus we were going upstream. The engine choked a lot and got caught in weeds far too easily. Sometimes, the driver would reverse the boat and that was all that was needed. Othertimes we had to cut the engine completely. That is all fine and dandy, except the quality of these boats is nothing compared to the US. The engine had a lot of trouble starting back up. We should have arrived back to the reserve around 1:30pm. Instead, we had just hit the outer edge of our city around 6pm. No food, no water, no bathrooms. Lovely. Our engine completely was shot at that point. Another peki peki came along side us. We hopped from our boat to that one, with all our backpacks in the middle of the river. This boat was slow.

The engine worked but we did not arrive back to the reserve until probably 7:30 that night. Riding in the boat at night was pretty interesting. We could not see a thing. We actually ran into another boat along the way, but no damage was done. I felt something wet hit my leg and then I heard fluttering. I quickly turned on my head lamp and saw a small silver fish had jumped into our boat! I´ve never successfully caught a fish using a pole, but I guess I can say I have caught a fish now. The time dragged on and on. We were all starving, dehydrated, and exhausted. Don´t worry. I had my glucagon shot and a whole bunch of pharmacy students waiting to practice in case I got too low of a blood sugar!
The Amazon certainly has its trials. You cannot expect anything to go correctly and must plan for the worst (but always hope for the best!). Everyone is alive and well though.