The flight to Leticia took a couple of hours, and as we descended through the clouds we began to see jungle and rivers below us.
I actually got fooled at one point and thought I was seeing the Amazon. Once I actually saw the Amazon, I realized how wrong I was. Even this far inland the Amazon is absolutely massive.
Once we landed we deplaned and realized immediately that we were going to be very hot and very sweaty. I bargained for a cab that drove us bouncing along to our hostel.
The Hostel Mahatu is a collection of buildings on an acreage. It's a little piece of the jungle on the outskirts of the town, and literally across the street from the border with Brazil. There were hammocks by the pool in case people wanted to sleep in the open air.
Even the bathroom stalls were open air.
Our beds were in the blue building.
Once we had checked in, dropped off our backpacks, and looked around the hostel grounds some, we headed across the border on foot. Our goal was to find a boat to take us across the Amazon, but all I knew was that we had to get to the port in Tabatinga to do so. Leticia is in Colombia, and Tabatinga is in Brazil, and they are more or less sister cities, with a main road running between them across the border.
There was little more than a sign and a clock letting us know we were moving from one country (and time zone) to the next. There was no passport control, nor customs or anything. It is certainly the easiest I have ever gone from one country to another!
I regret choosing to walk, and my brother probably disliked it even more than I did. For one thing the heat was unbearable, and for another we had further to walk than I expected. But at the time I didn't know how far we would have to go, and I wasn't sure where or how to catch a bus.
So we walked for several long, hot, Tabatinga blocks.
Finally we passed through a market and were at the port. There I still didn't know what to do, but I found a policeman and wrote in my notebook the words "Benjamin Constant." Benjamin Constant is the name of the village across the river from Tabatinga. He pointed in roughly the direction we were to go, and my brother caught the Portuguese word for green, so we looked for a green boat launch.
Sure enough, we found it, and we eventually ended up in a speed boat that sat about fifteen or so people.
I was right behind the pilot.
I thought the cab ride had been bouncy, but our trip across the river was even more so. Apparently the river is about 40 kilometers wide at that point, and since it took about half an hour to cross, so I calculate we must have been traveling at something like 80 kmph!
We had no reason to go to Benjamin Constant, except that it was an easy way to see the Amazon. Speeding across the water also turned out to be the best way to stay cool!
We saw other boats, many of which were much larger than I expected, including a Brazilian naval vessel.
We also saw some very primitive looking canoes with indigenous families in them. We saw various birds, and even a floating dentist's office!
Benjamin Constant was a surprisingly rugged place.
We did not spend much time there, nor did we walk far, but we did see a large pack of stray dogs fight, leaving one dog limping and bleeding badly. It didn't give us a great impression of the village. We returned to Tabatinga exactly as we had come, only this time I sat behind a cute little boy who looked at me a lot.
On shore, I suggested we take a bus back to Leticia, and my brother was all over that like a stray dog on garbage (that's the best Leticia-appropriate metaphor I can think of).
For something like a dollar the little van took the two of us back in about an 1/8th of the time it had taken us to walk. Things you learn . . .
Back in Leticia we visited its famous central park, where parrots gather at dusk.
Unfortunately my camera was inadequate to capture any of them flitting around, and once they settled down, it was dark.
Then we ate a dinner of fish on a patio. I had two whole piranhas, teeth, eyes, tails, and all.
That night I had an awful time sleeping in the heat, and I was up early. Thankfully though an early morning downpour cooled things off finally, and I relaxed under cover by the pool reading a novel while my brother slept in.
He slept a lot more than I did, and I remain jealous to this day.
Eventually I had to wake him up, and then we loaded up our packs and walked into town for breakfast. We ate stew at a covered sidewalk patio while the rain continued to come down and Leticia began its day around us--children going to school, adults to work, and stray dogs to their begging.
After breakfast we wanted to go to the zoo, so we found a taxi and tried to communicate that we wanted him to take us to the zoo. Our communication failed. Instead I told him to take us to the airport, because the zoo is right by the airport.
Unfortunately, the zoo is, in the body language of our taxi driver "hand across the neck." He dropped us off anyway, and this is what we saw.
Looks like it might have been a cool zoo at one point. I was really disappointed, because I had been quite excited to see it--it's not every day that you can visit a jungle zoo right before your flight!
Instead, we simply walked to the airport a bit early, along this very beautifully decorated wall.
Interestingly, the phrase in the last picture translates something like "tourism and water have no borders"--which seemed quite insightful to me in this tri-border Amazonian region (a Peruvian island is just off the shore of Leticia).
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