Michael Luke Grande

I know this probably isn’t what our parents want to hear after 4 days in the Amazon Jungle, but here it goes: we entered the jungle as boys and have emerged as men--with a baby named in our honor.

You can exhale, it’s neither of ours. However, it turns out Luke and I are pretty likeable people and when you put us together, it’s really hard not to love us. Ok, I’m being slightly narcissistic—but let the facts speak for themselves.

Middle of nowhere, Requena, Peru--the Amazon

We entered the Amazon Jungle a hostile 400 kilometers away from the nearest town, Iquitos. Now, that sounds pretty intense in and of itself, but combine that with the fact that Iquitos is already pretty much in the middle of nowhere taking the title as the largest city that is inaccessible by car in the world—we couldn’t have been more isolated. In fact, one of the reasons we were hesitant to take this particular tour was because it was an hour away from a phone. Considering it takes a measly 1.5 hours for a Amazonian Green Viper to kill you, we weren’t reassured.

Our journey to Tapiche Ohara Reserve required a 20 minute taxi ride, 2 hour bus ride, 2 hour speed boat, and a 4 hour speed boat thereafter. In all, it tooks us about 11 hours to get to this desolate but beautiful place.

Really beautiful...

That’s really beside the point. It was worth it. We arrived to our little hut with hammocks inside. Now, as most of you know, I am usually pretty good at being in the outdoors and living like a rugged mountain man. The jungle is different. For one, it’s like living in a steam room in Death Valley with boiling water being poured over your head. Number two, there is so much life in the jungle that everywhere you look you’re staring at some animal or plant that will do you harm. Number three, mosquitos are absolutely Satan’s minions—and this place could very well be the biggest city in hell. Number four, I’ve never seen so many spiders in my life. I wish I could explain this to you or show a picture, but I can’t. In our little hut, the entire ceiling was covered in hundreds if not thousands of spiders the size of a hand. We turned off the light and I put my headlamp on and looked up. Biggest mistake of my life. I could literally see thousands of yellow reflectors looking back at me. Apparently spider eyes reflect yellow with LEDs. For someone who likes spiders, I had a really hard time with this.

It's glowing and it's right above my head.


This one is for Pablo. Massive.

It was extremely hard to sleep in this place. Absolutely the biggest negative. Luke was so terrified of the spiders he slept completely encapsulated in his sleeping bag in 80 degree heat and 80% humidity. Apparently sleeping bags can protect people from spiders. Who knew?

Luke about to encase himself in his sleeping bag for added heat and protection.

The first day was our lagoon adventure. We took another 2 hour boat ride to the second biggest lake in Peru. It was so peaceful with thousands and thousands of birds flying everywhere and even nesting on one end of the lake. What we learned is that Caiman’s like to live where birds nest so when the baby’s drop into the water, they have lunch.

I thought it was land. We just breezed through it. 

 Anyway, we somehow managed to get the boat into the swamp at the end of the lake and realized we were literally in Caiman heaven. The first Caiman we saw was bordering on 15 feet according to our guide.

The 15-footer, I dove in after her but she escaped.

After admiring the Caimans for about thirty minutes, I decided I was ready to replace Steve Irwin and take one of these damn things on. We snuck up in the boat on a Caiman that was 12 feet long (see below). I realized this was one of those times that there was no room for hesitation. Unfortunately, I hesitated. I reached my hand own on the damn Caiman’s neck and pretty much snapped it back because I was convinced I was lunchmeat for this thing.

If you look closely, you can see the monster that almost took off my hand.

No Caiman for lunch on Thursday. Instead we headed over to the fishing grounds where I racked up a solid contribution to our lunch. A whole two piranhas. More than anyone else, except our guide, but still not sufficient.

My first piranha. It looks small but it was the biggest one we caught. 

Luckily, we had put down a 200 meter net down the river to catch some bigger fish in case we sucked at fishing, which apparently we did. After finding our catch and getting rid of the one fish that had been torn apart by piranhas and the other one that was attacked by a Caiman, we had scrounged up enough food to call it a lunch.

Victor with the fish that was devoured by the piranhas...

Now we kind of arrive at the part where Michael and Luke have to make everything a little bit more dangerous/exciting/terrifying/stupid. Our guide Victor had mentioned that we shouldn’t swim in the Amazon as it was a really dangerous body of water. We kind of already knew that. Luke watched House once and wouldn’t stop talking about the fish that swims up your urethra when you jump in the Amazon. He also couldn’t stop talking about the 15 foot Caimans or the piranhas that can pick a corpse of all its meat within 5 minutes. None of that phased me. Or Luke, in fact. On our way back home, we asked our guide where we could swim in the Amazon because we couldn’t leave without at least jumping in. He said we shouldn’t do it anywhere but if we were going to do it we should do it in the middle of the lake. Well, we just happened to be in the middle of the lake. This is the same lake we caught piranha in. This is also the same lake that a 15 foot Caiman passed under our boat and ate one of our fish.

We were ready to go. After about 15 minutes of contemplating what exactly we wanted Victor to tell our parents if we didn’t make it out alive, we counted down from 3 in German (that was to please our Swiss friends in the boat with us—at least they weren’t French-Swiss). We jumped into what we thought would be our death.

 

Just before the jump. Unfortunately, we only have video of the swim so you'll have to see it later.

I’d like to tell you we swam around for 20 minutes enjoying our incredibly warm water and petting the Caimans but that would be an absolute farce. If we stayed in the water more than 5 seconds I’d buy everyone reading this blog a beer. I don’t think the guide had ever seen anyone get back into a canoe so fast in his life. He was keeled over laughing so hard he almost coughed up his fake teeth.

We finally arrived back in the spider-filled rooms for a wonderful night sleep… sarcasm. It’s kind of hard to sleep when you know spiders are falling from the ceiling into your hammock. We knew this was happening because the first morning we woke up and turned on the lights, there were about 5 spiders on the floor dead and there happened to be one abseiling from the ceiling and missing Luke’s hammock by an inch at most.

The next day was nice, though. We took off on a hike through the rainforest. Apparently the hike was supposed to be a couple hours, but our wonderful guide Victor, who loves us, decided to take us on a 7 hour hike to the point where he was literally lost and I began to think of ways to survive one night in the jungle.

 

Luckily, when we ran out of water, Victor knew exactly where to find some.

He also taught us that if we break a termite nest and let the termites crawl on our hands then rub them together, we can put it all over our body and it acts as a mosquito repellant. It was also used to mask the smell of hunters as they hunted big animals.

However, during this 7-hour journey we saw 8 species of monkeys. An average group sees about 2-3. We aren’t average. We also saw an ant-eater and we are the first group to ever see River Otters in this area of the Amazon. Victor had treated us well.

We had an incredible day and it got even more incredible when we finally found our boat.

After lunch, Victor asked us if we wanted to do another walk through the jungle… of course we did. Walking through the jungle isn’t necessarily for the faint of heart. There are millions of things you have to worry about that could kill you—or just hurt you a lot. I was bit by a fire ant and thought I was going to lose my entire arm I was in so much pain. There are dozens of species of snakes that can kill a person within hours. In fact, Victor lost his grandmother to one of these snakes. Cougars, frogs, snakes, spiders, just about anything in the jungle can kill you if you aren’t careful.

We entered the jungle one more time. As we were driving the boat to a remote part of the jungle… again… we heard some howler monkeys in the distance. Howler monkeys are famous for howling so loud you can hear them over 3 miles away. We heard them and they were close.

Victor asked us if we wanted to try and see them. Of course we did. He said we had to get off the boat and run when we hit shore. As soon as we touched the ground, we took off running through spiderwebs and just about anything that before we were terrified of. After running for about 20 minutes, we finally found the howlers. Victor was so excited. He said he was worried we missed them and he would not have been content until he found them. An incredible way to finish the day. Especially since it was getting dark and we were in prime cougar-hunting territory. And I'm not talking about the bars I frequent at home kind of cougar hunting.

We spent another night in the jungle and made it out alive. It was honestly one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever been through. I’ve lived in some very dire situations but none can quite live up to the incredible terror I felt during my time in the jungle. On the one hand it was absolutely liberating because we were completely cut off from the world. The nearest phone was an hour away. On the other hand, it made it so much more frightening knowing that even if something bad happened, we couldn’t really be saved.

I’m glad we are out alive but I also can’t wait to go back. But I need to finish the story about the one person in the world that has taken a liking to Luke and me. His name is Victor, our guide. He had so much fun listening to us scream out country music lyrics and talk about life in the jungle from an American perspective that he decided he wanted to remember us always. His wife is expecting their 5^th child in the next couple days. He told us that if he has a son, he will name him Michael Luke Grande. I can’t make this up.

I know this blog has a lot of jest and is generally one big joke about stuff that happens while I’m traveling, but this is completely different. It’s kind of mesmerizing what we can do by just being kind and making people feel like they are equal to you no matter who they are. I’m not trying to get preachy, but the fact is that we met Victor, our guide, and decided he was going to be our friend first and foremost. When we made that decision, he decided that he wanted to give us, his friends, the best adventure in the jungle possible. We talked to him like a friend, not an employee, and he treated us in kind. I don’t know if he really will name his son after us or not, but the reality is, it doesn’t matter. Victor, myself, and Luke, were able to spend 4 days in the jungle laughing and having a great time learning more about each other. Apparently that’s all it takes to make someone take a picture of you and send it to his wife and tell her that their next son will be named after you.

The power of love and friendship… it’s incredible.

God Bless.

Michael

Couple more pictures of the beautiful scenery:

Green Tree Frog

Great Egret

Black Caiman

Sunset

It really looks like this in the sky!

This is Luke climbing up to the roof of our hostel to dry our clothes in Iquitos.

Caiman is technically a threatened species and after eating it, I know why. So good. 

Just cruising the jungle.