Lagunas

17/09/2013 I finally got to Lagunas, after 13 hours trip on a river boats. This morning I got up at the sunrise, I took a cold shower (no hot water in this area, with this temperature it wasn't bad at all), I went to withdraw some money (where I'm now there is no bank) and to buy some food for the trip (they serve a meal on board, but nothing vegetarian). I left the hostel with the Israeli guy and we walked with all our backpacks to the port. Only one boat was leaving today for Lagunas : "Romantico", but don't expect something luxury, the name had nothing to do with the boat itself. These boats are much different to everything I knew before. There are few chairs and the passengers spend almost all the time of the trip on their hammock. Before leaving, many people got up to the boat to sell every kind of food and other stuff. I soon realised that me and the Israeli guy were the only gringos on the boat. People looked at us with a little bit of curiosity, in particular children.  I must admit that this journey was really pleasant, even if it lasted 5 hours more than what it was told us. The landscape was great (I know, I'm boring, I've already written this many times, but every time is something beautiful in a different way). The contrast between the green vegetation, the brown river and the blue sky was the landscape that we saw for all day long. Most of the people can get bored with it, but I simply loved to spend hours on my hammock looking at this scenery. It's just amazing how so many different plants grow up spontainely in this area. Sometimes I forgot I'm in the Amazonas, the place I was learning about when I was in the elementary school. And now it's real and it's much more beautiful than what I imagined. We stopped different times in some villages, sometimes to pick some passengers, sometimes just to leave some food or other products for the population. I spent hours talking with locals on the boat and each one of them told me their interesting stories. During the trip the only thing we were worried about was finding a place for the night. Instead arriving at 4 pm, we got at destination at 9:30 pm. I talked to some of the passengers and they suggested me to go to the hostel near the port. I thought that it was great, because I didn't really want to start looking for a place in the dark. In general when I take a bus, I always make sure to get to destinations before the sun goes down, so it will be much easier to find a hostel. But here we are in Perù, so everything works according Perù time:  a delay of 5-7 hours is more than normal. As soon as we got down from the boat, I was pleased hearing from a little kiosk Eros Ramazzotti singing in Spanish one of his songs. We got the the hostel at the port, at a first look it didn't look so good, but we were so tired that we wanted just to find somewhere to stay for the night. The man in charge, maybe the owner but I'm not sure about that, was sleeping and as soon as he woke up, I understood he was completely drunk. He let us wait for more than 15 minutes before coming to talk with us, but in the meantime we looked better at the place and we decided to leave (cocrochers were jumping on my hair!). A moto taxi stopped by and proposed us to take us to the tour agency he worked with where we could sleep for free, but because we didn't want to feel forced to take a tour with them the day after, we asked him to take us to another hostel. Of course he stopped also to the agency before taking us to a hostel and we briefly talked with the owner. I told him I would come back the day after to talk about a tour in the selva. And so here we are, in this little hostel, 2 $/night, enough clean, considering where we are. 10 minutes ago they just cut the electricity, I think that this is something that usually happens here. My bed has a mosquitoes net , but fortunately till know I didn't see any mosquitoes. However, I'm already under the net, just in case... Tomorrow I'll go in the city to look for a tour in Pacaya Samiria. This is the largest protected park in Perù, with the biggest biodiversity. I'm looking forward to enter into the selva.... Most probably tomorrow me and the Israeli guy will take different ways. He wants to visit the park without a guide (Israeli...) , while I prefer going with an organised tour and a guide... Time to go to sleep... Buenas noches!