Aventuras en la Amazon

This is the Amazon River

We said goodbye to our Cajamarcan home April 12.  Our bus driver was CRAZY!  We were sitting on the top floor at the very front so we got a great view of him passing all the other cars and almost going off the road, it was certainly a roller coaster.  Because of his craziness we got to Lima an hour early.  We stayed then night of the 12th with the wonderful Zara who took us to the Lima airport the morning of the 14th where we caught our flight to Iquitos- aka the Amazon Jungle.  

Relation status being painted on Cynthia's face (single)

We got picked up at the airport and took a boat to our lodge.  It was a beautiful 45 minute boat ride on the Amazon River. It was pretty hot our first day.  There were also about a billion mosquitoes-- we used 98% deet.  So the lodge we were staying in was pretty cool.  There's no electricity, so we used Kerosene lamps for light at night.  One of the walls in our room and the ceiling was just made out of netting, which was kinda cool too.  That day we also went to visit some places to show us "how Amazonian life is."  We got to try our hand at the blowgun and get our faces painted with our "relationship status."  We also got some sugar cane juice, which is delicious.

Me in knee high mud water

Beautiful jungle flowers

The next morning it was really rainy and actually a little chilly.  First thing we went dolphin watching and I got to see two pink dolphins!  Sadly my timing was bad, so I only saw their backs and not their heads, but it was still awesome!  Next we went to the primary forest where the vegetation was a lot thicker and there were way more mosquitoes.  We went wading through a flooded area to see a huge tree and we got to swing on vines like Tarzan.  We were wearing gum boots, but the water was a lot higher, so we just ended up with boots full of water.  On the way out I was trying to get mosquitoes out of my face by shaking my head.  And my glasses went into the river.  Luckily we were close to the shore and our two guides hopped in the brown water to look for them.  After a few stressful minutes they actually found them.  Which was a miracle because my glasses are about the same color as the river!  The afternoon was beautiful and we saw some cool wildlife.  We also went on a night walk where we saw lots of cool bugs and got to hear the cool sounds of the jungle at night.

Cynthia loved playing with the monkeys

The last day in the Amazon we went to a wildlife reserve.  When I read that I thought we would go look at things in cages.  But no, the animals were just roaming in this one open area.  The monkeys literally walked onto our boat when we got there.  They run and jump on you, so I ended up screaming quite a bit when they came to visit me.....  We also held a sloth and an anaconda.  I refused to hold the head of the anaconda though.   It peed on my jacket while I was holding it...

After the wildlife reserve we went home and packed our bags for our Cuzco Adventure!