Amazonia: departure from Madrid

Night in Madrid Airport is quiet and deserted, what is typical in European airports. Just a few shops and cafes working  late, and, in particular, Starbucks, where I'm waiting for my flight.

The ‘sleeping&waiting’ passengers made up their beds - everyone according to his or her level of tiredness and personal importance of the rules of good form and comfort. Well-dressed Chinese and Japanese are nodding off to their electronic devices, Germans sprawled on the sofas; and young backpackers of all nationalities are curled under the sockets with their telephones charging, landing their adventurous heads on their rucksacks.


It is almost two hours till the departure of my flight to Lima; and already fourteen hours after I left Malta. It might seem that these hours are hard and useless, but I don't agree with that: for me it is a time when one can totally concentrate on himself. All your acquaintances know that you are away and leave you alone; in the meantime, for the people rushing around you, you are just  part of a landscape, nothing more. Sometimes, during the hours of inevitable idleness between the flights I can plan, think about and reconsider much more than it is usually possible in the comfortable home conditions for a week.

Tomorrow I'm going to be immensely far away from here, at the other end of the World. Tomorrow, I'm planning to go to Amazonia.

It was my very old dream, the spores of which were brought to my soul with the childish Russian song "I have never been in the far Amazonia, Neither trains go there, no planes fly there...".

Then, after several, seemed-to-be occasional meets and articles, it becomes an obsession, which last summer took me to the clinic to take a vaccination against yellow fever - just in case. Over the last two years, during the bad attacks of ‘nostalgia for something genuine’, I was surfing the Net for volunteer and extreme travel sites. Finally, I came to the decision, and I hence made reservation for the flight - actually, five flights - to Puerto Maldonado.

Thanks to my life experience, I perfectly know that the only way to get rid of a wish is easy: realise it.

In fact, I decided to join the biosphere expedition provided by Fauna Forever, since their proposal, their experience and detailed advice in return to my uncountable questions looked the best of everything I found before.

Leaping ahead, I can tell that I couldn't think up of any questions about the travel in this region that Chris Kirkby, the founder and executive manager of this project, wouldn't be able to answer - thoroughly and in detail as well as to organise any trip - whatever the direction, budget and goals.

What and how does one feel when his or her dream comes true?

During the last week, I felt anxious, if not stressed. It was a new feeling for me – even after so many years of travel experience. But this was not anything like the usual trip with good hotels and a rental car. Anastasia will be staying alone (I know that she is 18 and that she doesn't mind, but I'm still nervous!). And I read some stuff about Amazonia that sent some shivers down my spine. For instance,  the rain season in the rainforest is the worst time of the year!. My last backpack experience was in my childhood, I don't know how to set up the tent; I can't carry two rucksacks and, in the end of the day, for what at all I'm doing it?

But at the moment I feel almost nothing - just a usual “time-absence”, what is so natural when I’m sitting in the departure’s lounge waiting for my flight at the airport. Everything I could change now is already finished, and only what I can do is to go with the flow and adhere to my itinerary.

05.03.2015