Booked a three day jungle trip from Iquitos, Peru. Within the first few hours, thanks to the extremely negligent (bordering on the reckless) decisions of the company and guide (edit: see company name below), we were completely lost deep in the Amazon jungle with no food, water or any safety supplies. Guide had collapsed from exhaustion and lay down to die, refusing to get up. Rescue was nothing short of a miracle. Full story is below - Any thoughts on how to make the company take some sort of responsibility are appreciated.
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My brother (21M) and I (27F) have always wanted to do a trip into the jungle, so planned an entire itinerary in Peru around doing so. We looked at a few different online tours, and booked a two-night tour leaving from Iquitos and going into the Amazon. The tour was one of the less luxurious options but had very good reviews so we felt it was a safe choice. We spent the days leading up to it in Lima procuring and stocking our day packs with safety supplies (correct clothing and gear, strong insect repellent, flashlights, medicines) and researching how to be safe. We were worried about lethal snake or spider bites, jaguars, caimans, mosquito-borne diseases etc, but the golden rule from all of the advice online was to always trust and follow your guide and you’ll be safe, as they know the jungle and will always cut a safe path for you and point out dangers. Thousands of people do Amazon tours every year and have a great time. We were really excited.
On the day the trip was starting, we met at the office in Iquitos and then took a boat for about an hour and a half down the Amazon river. The small group doing our tour included our guide (Peruvian ~35M but seemed to speak good English), a young girl who seemed to serve no purpose except to accompany him, and a mother and daughter (~55F and 30F), the latter of which spoke fluent English and Spanish.
The boat made a couple of five minute stops along the way, firstly to get some gas and then to let some other guests off. It stopped a third time at about 11am and our guide motioned for us to get off. We thought we must be starting the tour so picked up our bags, but he told us to leave our bags on the boat. We assumed this was just another five minute stop. We asked if we needed our gumboots, and he said no.
We follow him off the boat. When we get up the river bank, he looks at our empty hands and asks “do you not have any water?” We were extremely confused as he had told us to leave our things on the boat and hadn’t explained what we were doing. He says “don’t worry, we are just doing a short 20-minute walk down the the track to a local village so you'll be fine.” The guide didn't have any water either. My brother and I are a bit concerned, but by the time we turn around the boat has already left with our stuff (including our water, carefully chosen repellent etc), so we trust that we only have a short period of walking and we follow the guide down the track into the jungle.
The first 20 minutes are lovely and the guide is exemplary of what we had read online, pointing out interesting insects and telling us which ones to avoid, and showing us the safe places to step. At some point though, he leads us off the track and into the deep jungle. I’m completely unconcerned and assuming this is all part of the plan. He tells us later that this is because he came across a large fallen tree over the track and we had to go around it.
Things start to go a bit awry from here. We walk through the deep jungle for an hour or so, and our guide is becoming less responsible. He’s charging ahead and leaving us to cut our own path (he doesn’t have a machete or delicate instructions of where to step like the guides we read about online). We have to clamber over trunks, under vines, avoid vicious ants, and get stuck in mud. Luckily we didn’t encounter anything more deadly; god knows it was definitely lurking. The mother who was with us fell over a few times and the guide didn't seem to care.
Eventually we make it to a small clearing and are starting to get a bit fed up, given we are yet to reach the village and are getting hungry, thirsty, sweaty, muddy and bitten. But, we are relieved to be out of the thick forest. The clearing has a basic bamboo shelter, and a little stream with two small aluminium boats. Is this the village? Our guide tells us to wait here and disappears for another half an hour without communicating anything to us, which is extremely irritating. He eventually returns and explains that we have to go back as “the boat that was meant to pick us up isn’t there”, which doesn’t make any sense as we thought we were heading to a village. He says it will be 20 minutes maximum to get back to the river and, to our relief, starts leading us along a small dirt track. At this point (probably around 2pm) we just want to get back ASAP - we’re hungry and thirsty. To our dismay, he shortly leads us off the track again back into the jungle, pointing at the sun and saying that he can tell which direction the river is in. Although annoyed that we have to wade through mud again, I still at this point have no suspicion that we are lost, and trust that he knows exactly where he’s taking us. My brother isn’t so sure, and says to us “if he’s using the sun as navigation I’m not that confident about this”. The rest of us laugh and follow our guide as all of the online advice told us to do. Stick with the guide, you’ll be fine.
We stumble our way through the deep jungle without any assistance. By now, the guide is charging so far ahead that we can barely see him and have to keep yelling out to him. We are being bitten by red ants which is very painful, falling over and wading through mud, where we could hear running water bubbling underneath us. At one point, I fell thigh-deep into a muddy swamp and screamed, half expecting a caiman to bite my legs off (our gumboots would have come in handy if we hadn't been told leave them behind). The guide did not seem to care. At this point we scream to him to slow the fuck down and wait for us because this is extremely dangerous. He eventually does and stops to talk to us, saying that we should wait here (in the middle of nowhere) and his colleague will bring us food and water. Again, we are confused. He then leaves again into the jungle before we can stop him. We are in disbelief. We look around and there is dense forest/swamp in all directions and we are being constantly bitten by mosquitos. We don't want to wait here for long, especially without water and repellent.
He returns a few minutes later looking extremely exhausted, having taken off his shirt, and collapses onto the forest floor. Between desperate gasps for breath, he finally drops the act and admits he has no idea where we are. We are completely lost.
It soon becomes clear that we have been lost for hours. We figure the guide was charging ahead to try and find a familiar path and completely exhausted himself doing so. He has collapsed shirtless on a muddy log, with loads of insects biting him. He is too exhausted to care. He is delirious and completely incoherent, seemingly forgetting how to speak English except to ask for water (which we didn’t have) - luckily the daughter in our group could translate for us, because he managed to get a bit of phone reception and called his boss. We learned from her that he could not explain to his boss where on earth we were. He was even trying to describe the clearing with the two boats (which the boss did not recognise), showing that we were already lost all the way back then, and he had tried to hide it from us all that time. He had nothing with him to prepare for this situation: no flare, no water, no machete, no GPS, not even a compass.
We spend the next hour or so trying to think logically about how to survive. We got the guide’s phone password and contacts as it seemed that we were going to lose him at any minute. Although I didn’t have reception, my google map had partially loaded so that we could perhaps see the direction of the river and hack through the jungle to make our way to it and hopefully flag someone down. I was nervous about doing this because (1) it meant leaving the guide (who kept insisting he couldn't stand), leaving us without his knowledge of the jungle but also leaving him to die; (2) I really doubted whether the map was correct and (3) it would mean hours navigating the thick jungle by ourselves, risking encountering deadly animals, dangerous tribes, anything. And, we probably only had an hour of sunlight left...
We were all extremely thirsty and were trying not to panic, but things were not looking good. It was extremely hot and muddy, mosquitoes were flying everywhere, and we were on constant alert for snakes, spiders, jaguars etc. Everyone remained extremely calm and thought logically which was a blessing (the mother and I shared a hug; I think she suspected I was about to get upset), and we were so lucky to have the other two in our group, but it was looking like we were going to have to try and survive the night (or longer) in the Amazon jungle without water, without a guide, and without any of our supplies.
The daughter then manages to get a bit of reception on her phone and can speak directly to the boss herself, although we still have no way of describing our whereabouts. We send him a screenshot of my half-loaded map image. She contacts her boyfriend and tells him that she will likely die in the jungle and that she loves him, but can he please contact the authorities asap. We ask our guide what the emergency number in Peru is and he brazenly refuses to tell us (I guess because he was worried about getting in trouble).
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