checking in from the inexpicable silences

Just down from a blissful time in some cloudforest south west of Vilcabamba, and about to set off for the border crossing that's not in any guidebooks, and that if you ask locals about, they say "well if you find out, can you write it up and let us know, in case anyone else ever asks again?"

So ... off the map for a day or two, then I'll be inthe northern highlands of Peru: in Chachapoyas, which will serve as my Machu Picchu (it's all mummies left untouched in the rockfaces beneath jungley creepers, from what I can find out), cos I'm not bloody going there (compare and contrast; I heard pensioners whingeing on about Machu Picchu, british ones, saying they should be shut down cos you have to mix your own hot/cold taps in the poshest hotels...).

After that, the river terrors begin.

Thinking back about in, in my hammock, last week, I realised the last entry was assuming you know what a bad three day river journey is like.

• When I travelled up the River Ou, in Laos, the boat was a dug out canoe. You couldn't stand let alone move. For 6-10 hours, typically. The boat sank two times on the way. Other boats would pick up rucksacks or floating three legged stools for us, toss them over as they passed.
• When I travelled up the Mekhong, a two day journey (ie, short compared to the Amazon), I lay groaning on a wooden plank amongst the tribeswomen who had adopted me (if they hadn't, I'd have had to stay upright). No food or drink that you didn't bring yourself. The toilet is a cabin covered in old shit. The bog itself is a hole in the floor, also covered in old shit. There's no paper, no flush, countless flies, no water, no soap. But that's okay, because by that point you're usually way beyond the point where it feels shocking to wipe your diarrhoea infested uncontrollable arse with your own hand, then pathetically try a bit of hand disinfectant gel (if you're bloody forward thinking and brought it in your pocket, not in the pack on the roof) before you have to eat with it (no cutlery in Laos).
• Add to that trying to work out where to put the used tampons (pocket of course).
• Or getting up from where you're groaning inside a cocoon of flies, and carrying 25 kilo of pack up a steep sand slippey river bank then hiking through tropical heat across single plank bridges a mile into town, after, looking for a hotel room that night, before day two happens 6 hours later.

These would be why I'm a little antipathetic to long periods of river travel.

But hey! It might not be like that. tock tock tock