Deluge

Bonanza Lodge, Manu NP. 14.00.

After a full week of clear skies, Peru has decided to remind me that we are still in the rainy season.

When Sirius, the Dog Star, disappeared beneath a looming dark shroud and the first drops of rain began to fall, I knew we were in for a tropical storm, but I underestimated both its ferocity and its stamina. The heavens opened around eight o’clock last night and it was well past nine the following morning when it finally stopped. The reprieve was brief – brief enough to see us up the Madre de Diós river to our base camp at Bonanza Lodge, at any rate – before the rains returned with a vengeance. As I write, I do not know how long this spell will last, but I can only pray it is a passing tempest.

If it rains this hard again, our chances of seeing anything at the clay lick tonight are next to zero. We may even have to swim there.

This explains the look of concern on the manager’s face and her repeated plea to stay positive. I knew I was chancing it coming here in the rainy season, but the driest season is also the busiest, and I did so want to avoid the crowds. Besides, it’s not like I had the economy of choice. As a teacher my hands are tied when it comes to holidays.

So here I am, deep in the Amazon, bracing myself for a long, dark and probably very wet night.

Mary, mother of God. The river that brought me here was named for you. Show mercy and spare us from this endless downpour.

Fourteen Hours Later

The rain has returned. We were spared for the afternoon and most of the evening, but shortly before midnight it came down hard. It’s not torrential, but it is constant, beating down upon the iron roof of the lodge like a thousand furious fists.

But we did it. We saw the tapirs. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t worth bringing the camera, but I wasn’t to know. They’re tremendously skittish for such great beasts. A couple of seconds of Rive’s flashlight beam was enough to send them lurching off into the trees.

I’ll need to be up and ready to leave after five, so there’s little point in sleeping now. I might as well write and record.

After docking at Bonanza Lodge, we had an hour or so to prepare a night kit and then we set out into the forest after Rive, our guide. He packed light: a couple of strong torches and a machete. I don’t suppose you need much more to cut a path through the forest, day or night.

The rain had swelled the river considerably, so naturally it had a similar effect on the creeks between the lodge and the clay lick. Some of them had makeshift bridges laid across them. Others didn’t. The water was never as high as we had feared – that is, chest height – but it did reach well above the tops of my boots, so as well as wading through the water, we had to stop after each crossing to empty out half the contents of the creek.

All around us was the forest. In the dying light of the afternoon, it is a truly magical place. The flash of electric blue of a morpho butterfly. The eerie descending trill of an ant-thrush. The hooting call of some kind of monkey, faraway, indistinct. Crickets – everywhere. Every now and again, the enormous roots of a magnificent kapok tree, the true lord of the rainforest, towering above the canopy.

I often needed to remind myself to look down at the path ahead, which was perilous – if not for the thick, sucking mud around the creeks, then for the armies of tropical insects all about. Leafcutter ants marching in single file along branches that might have acted as guide ropes. Spiders the size of butterflies lurking in webs strung out across the path. At least once, I saw a bullet ant, a fearsome denizen of the forest, recognisable by both its size and its solitary habits. Their bite is what gave them their name. A creature best given a very wide berth.

We reached the clay lick shortly after dusk, just as the light was beginning to fail. The watchtower sits well above the forest floor, overlooking a muddy clearing, pockmarked with the sunken wells of animal prints. A large bird – like a guan, but even bigger – kept us company as we laid out the mattresses and mosquito nets and laid out for a long vigil. Rive said it was a blue-throated piping-guan. I couldn’t see in the dark, so he showed himself once again a bloody good guide.

I might have got some sleep here or there. Or I might not. I’m not sure. I know I was woken when the first tapir arrived, and that I was already awake when the second appeared. I know that my camera struggled to lock onto the great beast, despite the brilliance of Rive’s torch beam.

Rive gave us the order around three o’clock to return to camp. Leading the way with light and knife, he escorted our sodden party back through the woods. I cared little for wet feet this time and simply plowed through the creeks up to my thighs. When the rest of you is already soaking, wading through a river isn’t as bad as it sounds.

We made it back to camp within forty minutes or so. I’ve left my boots out to dry on the steps, upside-down, and have used my shirt to dry their insides as best I can – they’ll be more useful from here on out than my hiking shoes. In a minute, I’ll need to be up and dressed again. The rain hasn’t let up, and it’s showing no signs of doing so, but we still have a long way to go – two days of travel around its border and we aren’t even in the reserve yet. That’s just how big Manu is.

Was it worth it? To see a tapir – a secretive creature of the forest? Absolutely. To have even a glimpse at what Vietnam must have been like? Of course. But for me, the best of all was the soundscape. No YouTube video could ever recreate the all-encompassing magic of the rainforest at night.