Despite being very relaxed I didn`t sleep very well the Wednesday evening due to digestive problems and as such slept in, only getting to leave the town at around 9ooam. According to my guidebook this meant a long day of hiking and I set out downhill, towards the east and El Chaco and alongside the river at a decent pace determined to make my camp in good time. I passed some old ruins abandoned centuries ago after a landslide - my hurry kept me from exploring them properly but they looked interesting enough.
I continued on the gravel road for 10 km, crossing the river and back again and seeing what I thought at first was a logging coupe but turned out to be the passage of a massive landslide stretching hundreds of metres up into the hills. The campesinos (country folk) colonise wherever they can, hacking into the hillside for timber and then grazing dairy cows subsequently. ·%&/"· campos!! I know what you`re saying right now, `It`s not their fault; they`re born into poverty, unedumecated and just trying to survive as best they can`. Well, ok, but it`s not my fault I`m born into being a callous and judgmental bastard either :) Mind you their lack of machinery and infrastructure makes this logging far less destructive than if it were industrial and broad-scale and if I didn`t know better I might`ve assumed they were intentionally logging `sustainably`!
Speaking of a lack of education, that day I followed a campo (campesino) down the road for several kilometres with myself walking slightly faster than he. He knew I was there and kept looking back checking how far away I was - when I`d caught up some he would run ahead to get away from me!! Bizarre. And quite sad, really. Also very sad was seeing this cow and her mate with their front hooves tied together in the middle of the road; for what reason I can`t imagine. When the road finally petered out into the cobblestone trail the rainforest was still very much under arrest, and the whole day I was continuously being surprised and angered by how far into the steep river valley that was an `Ecological Reserve` they were allowed to penetrate. Their mules and cows were also the main culprits of making the track into the mudbath that it was.
Speaking of mudbaths, Mark Thurber had recommended me wear rubber boots - I didn`t. VERY muddy and swampy for long stretches at a time. A mudfight. The trek is classified in Mark`s book as difficult and I concurred - based upon my own difficulty rating system of how furiously and many times I said F%·*"· matrixed against how many times I slipped, fell over or nearly seriously injured myself.
The rainforest however became more and more intact and it was beautiful to be in. The already raging Oyacachi was a faithful companion throughout my trip - the only humans I passed were impressed (and/or bewildered) at my solito effort trekking to El Chaco and one young man seemingly jealous at my bravery insisted there were jaguars and bears in the selva that would eat me. I`d certainly have been lucky to see either of those! As I stumbled towards the finish line of the Cedro River I disturbed a pair of what I think were hoatzin, clumsy flyers about the size of guinea fowl. I set camp near the junction of the two rivers, removed my mudden boots and relaxed in a cosy beached cove, reflecting on my day in the wettest ecosystem I`d ever been in.
And so to describing the Friday - the wildest but most exhausting experience of my life... or something like that.
Despite the knowledge that in all probability there weren`t any predators of humans around such a disturbed area, the thought of a jaguar prowling around my tent at night was a little disconcerting. But my morning reality was much more beastly. Ants had eaten holes through my quite robust tent floor in many places and were crawling about my sleeping mat. The workers were much the same size as Australian coastal browns but the upgrades were impressive - beef-headed double sized soldier ants with decent nippers. F$&%$ campo ants!! Ok, so I packed up and turned the tent over to inspect the damage. There I discovered a quadruple sized terminator ant going hammer and tongs and he did not want to let go. It was only after I flicked his body from his head did the pincers eventually stop into lockjaw position - see photo.
Crossing the suspension bridge (which was the limit for how far mules and cows went on the track) I immediately encountered my first taste of the complete grit-teeth mud slog climb scramble that would be my day - climbing over and through fallen trees, traversing precariously slippery cliffery and circumventing many landslides that were across the path. I travelled always near the river through rainforest slowly changing due to the drop in altitude - these forests reminded me a lot of the sub-tropical rainforests of South-east Australia, although with less large trees but far more water. The larger and more buttressed trees like strangler figs started to appear the lower I went along with palms. The dense vegetation was thick with vines and heavy with mosses, fungi and lichens.
After an hourish I arrived at a rushing creek, my first checkpoint. Earlier that morning I had identified that it was within the realms of possiblity to reach El Chaco that night, and I was pretty keen on the idea of not spending another night/day in the wetness. As such I avoided the main trail wandering off upstream and uphill to cross the creek much higher up at a waterfall and I descended to the confluence, pausing to snack on a sanga. A quick reconassaince mission to the cliffs beside the river revealed a vaguely feasible route of slippery rock-climbing followed by literal jungle-tackling through the entwined undergrowth. I figured in this way I`d find the track soon enough so I shouldered my pack and smashed it up there. After some quite intense exertion I cleared through the vegetation and to my surprise found the track! It was right there. Cool!
The roaring Oyachachi intensified with the addition of its many tributaries. I found the river bank for lunch and continued hiking along the boulder bank for a little after. If only it was all that easy!! The path soon re-entered the jungle and so I continued my journey of slipping, sliding, falling over and being scratched, spiked, jabbed and called names by cheeky forest birds. I also calculated I had broken about 2359 spiders webs, mostly with my face. F#@~# campo spiders!!
I was exhausted - everything started to become a blur and I just focussed on the path ahead of me. I don`t remember too much detail from the day. At around 300pm I made it to the Santa Maria River where the path had turned to swamp again due to ~#@€ campos and their grazing animals. I followed the swamp upriver to the suspension bridge across the wide stoney river bed - there was no access to the 2 metre-higher-than-me bridge save for a few unattached branches in the form of a ladder - it was very dangerous climbing it with a heavy pack on. I stopped in the middle of the bridge to survey the panorama. Up the two river valleys was virgin forest, and furher down the catchment started the farmland. The other side of the bridge was dug into a hill creating a dell of about 7m depth and almost vertical walls complete with mini-lake for footwear bathing. I saw no other option but to climb out. The vegetation was not well established into the dell walls and came away on several occasions - this was actually the most dangerous part of my hike.
I then followed cow swamps along the elevated river bank past a farming hut to descend to the river proper and found the powerlines which would eventually lead to El Chaco. A steady stream of farms lined the river until another suspension bridge where I paused to admire the river for the last time. My final leg was a 3.5hr walk along a gravel road to the town. By now I was literally and figuratively tripping with exhaustion. As I walked I watched, heard and felt a distant thunderstorm approach and enjoyed the light rain and cool breeze it brought. After 2 hours of painful squleching some locals stopped and I jumped into the tray. I think they might have expected some $ for the ride but being on a super-tight budget once we got to El Chaco I adiosed away feeling gay with a spring in my step and a carefree wave.
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