This morning we returned to Puerto Maldonado via three hour boat ride after an amazing week.
We stayed at a guest house called El Gato (named because there used to be a lot of panthers in the area) run by a family who has lived there for quite a while. It is the last community before the Tambotata Reserve- a huge preserve that is almost entirely untouchable land. During the week we worked with Camino Verde, an NGO started by this cool guy named Robin from Boston. Though Camino Verde is a multi-faceted organization, the past week we focused entirely on reforesting an area of slash and burn with species of trees from the primary forest. We started days fairly early to avoid the sun and worked until lunch (which was always delicious and almost entirely made from foods in Robin{s garden). After lunch we had much needed siestas and later in the day we spent time walking through a section of primary forest, distilling essential oil, or learning to make sourkraut. A note on the essential oil- one of Camino Verde{s goal is finding alternative sources of income other than timber. Instead of cutting down trees, Robin is looking into harvesting essential oils (for which there is a growing and rather lucrative market for) instead, which doesn{t kill the tree.
All in all it was a very rewarding week and although finding very large spiders in inconvinient places was a reoccuring theme, we avoided any dangerous and obscure Amazonian injuries.