Travel Weekly reporter Michelle Baran is spending two weeks in Peru. Her trip includes an Amazon River cruise and a visit to Machu Picchu. Baran’s first dispatch follows.
I am writing from my bed in my cabin aboard La Amatista, the vessel chartered by International Expeditions for its eight-day Amazon River expedition.
I came back from this morning’s excursion to a local river community on Peru’s Ucayali River, a tributary of the Amazon, with a case of jungle fever.
Don’t get me wrong, I have definitely contemplated jumping overboard and living out my days the simple way, off the land, in the warmth of Peru’s northeastern Amazon Basin. But, alas, I am actually feverish.
This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen, and why I went through yellow fever and Hepatitis A shots, typhoid and malaria pills. This is why I packed bug spray and Wet Wipes. Granted, it’s nothing serious, a minor stomach bug, and I still stand by all those precautions.
But a couple days before I left, reading up on all the health hazards of entering Peru’s rainforest, I had a fleeting thought a lot of people probably have when they’re embarking on trips to far-flung destinations, complete with all their risks: Why did I need all this, again?
Then, I found out there wasn’t going to be Internet aboard the ship. And another degree of panic, probably more severe than the uneasiness about disease, set in. No Internet? How am I going to stay in touch with, oh, I don’t know, my life? This is a first on any trip in recent memory. More hassle.
But sitting here, a bit light-headed from the jungle fever, it dawned on me. Actually, a travel agent onboard the ship from Florida said it best.
We were talking about how we were grateful that we’re relatively young and don’t necessarily have to worry right now about the economy sucking the life and soul out of our 401(k)s. The market has time to rise and fall a few more times before we need to pull out that cash.
She said she was happy to invest most of her money in travel, something no one can take away from her.
Whether everyone feeling the pinch of the economic downturn will see travel as a priceless return on their investment, and whether people who believe in and make that investment will buoy the industry through a difficult year, we’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, looking out my cabin window at some local villagers staring at me curiously -- talk about worlds apart, me on my MacBook in an air-conditioned cabin, them running towards their hut, barefoot in muddied clothes, getting ready for what appears to be the afternoon rainstorm -- I guess I realize why people go through all of the hassle … the shots, the flights, the bug bites, the jungle fever, the no Internet.
Being somewhere far, far away and unreachable is not a bad thing. There’s a reason why most fairy tales start off that way.