Right up and away by 730 everything is water proofed except for me and it should all be safe if it rains or the waterfalls are heavy. Today we should be able to hit the base camp for lunch and then the first camp for dinner, I thought this was a big aim considering it was two days to get up. However there has still been no rain since we started trekking so the waterfalls and the rivers should not be heavy or high but Alex our guide says these things can change quickly.
This time I have been preparing and have my camera ready to give you some idea of the climb. Rose and Beatrice, hired a personal porter as they didn't want to have to carry a bag on the decent. I won't say it was easy, but slow and steady made it down in one piece. After a brief lunch we started out for the first camp, hoping again our luck holds and there is no rain. The hardest aspect of the next part was the sun, we started out just after 12, I had covered up as I didn't want to get burnt but this meant I was even hotter and by 2, I was out of water, and my shirt and trousers were almost dripping wet (yes I felt disgusting).
Our luck held and the rivers were even lower meant the second one could be crossed without getting wet. Now I'm at the first camp only a short walk and a car ride tomorrow and I'll be back at the hostel, let's hope they have water this time, as last week they didn't have any in Santa Elena. Grrrr.
So the group left the camp just before 8 in the morning, and my legs were killing me, walking back was hard work after the hard decent the day before but well worth it, the weather held off raining till we were back at the camp. Once back we learnt that the boiliver had strengthened against the dollar as the president said he was going to buy more forgiven currency so last week we got 70 boiliver for a dollar today 45 was the best we could get and only if changing a huge amount of currency. Therefore me and Johannes decided to just run back to Brazil, given that we only had 200 riels between it us it was going to be tight to get back to boa vista. We managed with a little bit of luck and some hard bargaining. That evening trying to get money out of the banks was hard we tried banco Brazil, 2 different Santander branches and finally a little service station let us take out some money. Nice to sleep in a bed for the first time in a week and not be super cold.
Got some dollars the next day and I headed back to Manaus by bus to get a flight to Lima. This turned into a huge mess, I had looked at flight timed on the net and assumed that 3:41 was in the afternoon naively. So now I'm here and I have a second problem, my debit card has been cloned and someone in america has been with drawing money from my account, the money will come back but the card is now useless and I only have 100 riels left, not enough to get a taxi to town and back. All my money is in dollars or Peruvian Pecos, so stuck in the airport for 15 hours with luggage and everything. I had downloaded a little app to learn some Spanish so I have been going over and over it on my phone. But later tonight I head to Lima and maybe a beach day or two before moving on.
