Leticia, Colombia

I left Bogotá on a Monday afternoon. The flight took about 2 hours. It was pretty cool seeing the jungle on the descent into Leticia. Leticia is in the south of Colombia on the Amazon, and it borders with Tabatinga, Brazil and Santa Rosa, Peru. I knew that it would be hot when I got off the plane, but it was really hot! Steaming hot. These guys with swine flu masks on made me go through one door because I had never been to Leticia before. Then this military police guy asked me all these questions about my health, but it was through the swine flu mask and I had a really hard time understanding him. I saw this sign that said something about vaccinations and I was like—no way are they putting a needle in me in this place! Good thing I had my yellow fever card. I had to go through that door because I had to pay a fee in order to enter Leticia. And there were a million ants crawling around on the ceiling, and I was thinking the whole time….if this is what the airport looks like, what will my bed be like?! Take me back to Bogotá!

I made it through and got my stuff, then grabbed a cab. The city is pretty cool. It is small and lots of the roads are flooded because the Amazon is pretty high right now. Also it rains and when it rains it really rains, as you will hear about in a second. I arrived at the place I was staying, which is kind of like a jungle house. That is what it says online, but it is not that exotic and crazy. It just has a few rooms and some bunk beds and lots of plants, but no animals or anything like that. Anyway, I met the owner, I put my stuff down, and we talked for a minute. He told me about a jungle tour the next day I could go on if I wanted to. I said I was interested.

He told me then that if I did that and wanted to leave on Wednesday, I needed to stamp my passport that day. You see, the boat leaves early in the morning for Manaus (two days on the Amazon, which you will read about in a few blog posts!) and if I was out in the jungle on Tuesday, I needed to get my stuff done Monday because the consulates aren’t open when the boat leaves. There in Leticia you can cross into Brazil or Peru without showing your passport. In theory you can enter any of the three countries illegally, but be careful because those police don’t mess around, as you will see in a later post while I am on my boat ride.

So Gustavo, the owner, says—here, take this bike, ride back to the airport, get your exit stamp from the Colombian police. Then get back on the road, come back to this road here, and ride for a while into Brazil and get your entry stamp from the Brazilian police. Oh, and the Brazilian police closes at 6, but do it as soon as you can because Brazil is an hour ahead. I knew this would be a pretty interesting trip. It was raining really hard, so I didn’t leave right away. He gave me a rain jacket, and then I left once it had stopped raining. Oh, and if his bike got stolen, I owed him $100.

I haven’t been on a bike since I was on my mission, and only did that a few times. That was never fun. I rode so much in a day that my butt hurt big time, but since I never rode consistently, my butt never got used to it. And I crashed big time, face first, in front of a truck full of fruit farmers. I don’t really like bikes. But it had to be done. Like I said, the roads were kind of under water in many places, which made riding interesting. But the water was really warm and so it was not bad. I made it to the Colombian police and got my exit stamp.

By then it had stopped raining, but that meant that it was really humid and I was sweating big time under that rain jacket. Now I had to go all the way back to where I had come from, the jungle house, and then like two or three times that distance into Brazil. I almost hit a little kid on his bike and it was tricky riding with a million motos and cars around, especially when they just kind of cross an intersection without really stopping. A few minutes later, I arrived at the Brazilian border. The border is in the town, but the police station is a little bit inside the border. My first time in Brazil! And I was riding a bike (with no gears, by the way). It was pretty cool to cross the border like that.

So I’m making my way down the avenue in Tabatinga. Same troubles as in Leticia with lots of motos and all. I am cruising along there, and then I see a big group of people on the street. I had run into this big protest or something! I couldn’t believe it. It turned out to be like a parade of school kids or something, but it was all the same—I couldn’t get past them. I could try the other side of the avenue, but that was risky going against traffic. I kept going and thought that I had passed it because it had been so long. I thought to ask someone…my first Portuguese moment in Brazil. It all came out fine, but it sounded like he responded in Spanish. It seems like everyone there speaks both and he may not have been Brazilian! I finally made it after a while of riding on the bike.

I hooked my bike up to the police station sign, got in there, gave my passport to the guy, and he asked me if it was an entry stamp. I said that it was, and he said that the electricity had gone out and they could only do exit stamps. The electricity went out that night for about two hours, so it seemed like a pretty natural thing. At this point I didn’t care what happened, and just waited for a little. It all came back on and I got my entry stamp. The first guy was easy to understand, the second guy was mumbling quite a bit and the guy next to me had to tell me what he said in Spanish for me to understand. I hate talking through those window things in my own language, let alone another. But I got my stamp, made my way back to the jungle house, and went out to check out the city finally.

I ate dinner at this place and it was not all that great. He gave me some juice too with it and I was like—this is Leticia water, and I know that’s not sanitary! So I dumped it into my soup so it looked like I had at least had some, and I dumped some of my food in my soup too because it was embarrassing to leave without having eaten it all. I know that is ridiculous, but I just had to do it. I don’t think I am super picky, but this was not that good. That night I sat in bed in the dark for two hours or so, maybe it was less. I had nothing else to do and there was no electricity. Luckily there weren’t really any bugs in my room or the bed, so it seemed. I had my super deet skin cancer causing mosquito repellant on and malaria pills, and that was good. I only had one or two bites, and they weren’t bad. It was a pretty crazy day.