The Amazon

Yup, the real deal. I went to the jungle, and it was awsome! In 3 days and 2 nights, we saw alot of the jungle! We really lucked out and got a great guide...the kind of guy that you would want to be with if you got stuck in the middle of the rain forest. He spent time with the Peruvian military, stationed on the boarder of Ecuador and Peru, in the jungle, and he grew up only a few hours from the area we were in....he knew his stuff.

We choose for the more hard core expierence (of course), so we didn´t exactly stay in some ritzy eco lodge with a swimming pool and such. It was non-stop action from the moment we left Iquitos....at 6 in the morning the first day. It was like expierencing the evolution of transportation systems from the last 200 years in half a day. First, a 2 hour taxi ride on decent roads, then 2 hour water taxi that was basically a nice canoe with a motor on the back, then we switch to paddle power for about half an hour, and finally a 15 minute hike to base camp. Welcome, you have officially transported yourself back in time 200 years. The villages we pass on the way are made entirely of the local timber, complete with palm leaved roofs- it really looks like not much has changed here for a while, except peoples clothing....which is surprisingly normal. Also stricking on the journey was the sheer size and might of the amazon river. It is huge!! Im talking 5 times as wide as the mississippi, 3 times as deep, and twice as muddy! And this is at the very begining of the river!

As soon as we reach the first nights destination, we put our stuff down and trade in our comfy sandels for jungle boots. Which are thick rubber, knee high boots. They look really cool when you tuck in your long pants into them too...and yes its required, you know- so the spiders don´t crawl up your pants! It´s dusk now, and our first venture out was more about the plants than the animals. We didn´t need to go far before our guide was telling us, this tree cures this, this plants helps that, and these leaves can build you this. It is truley full of everything you need to survive...and live quite comfortably, except of course that you are in the middle of nowhere. Our guide stops and tells us of a vine that has water in it. Being from the ´show me´state, I needed to see, so he cut off a nice chunk, and sure enough, the water poured out as if it was a giant straw, we all drank our fill. A bit later he showed us of a ´good´tasting bug that was inside a rotten fruit dropped from a tree, I had to try it!...even though it looked more or less like a magot, I ate it, and it actually tasted like coconut (the fruit it was eating), but the texture I could do with out!

We got back and quickly boarded the canoe, because its dolphin spotting time! Sure enough, not far from the house pink dolphins are swimming in the river. I didn´t even know there were fresh water dolphins!?! Very cool. At night is when the jungle truley comes alive....and not just the mosquitos...although they do too. Everything is out at night, escaping the heat. We went out on a hike and saw countless spiders, bats, frogs, and crazy looking bugs! If any of you are divers, I really think going into the jungle at night is a similar expierence to diving in the ocean, you are even supposed to keep your hands in the same resting position...the general rule is don´t touch anything! Finally into my mosquito net for the night, I slept like a baby- relived from the constant battle to keep my blood from everything trying to eat me!

The next day we set out via conoe for piranah fishing! Yup, piranahs!!! I´m excited, but I was blown away when our guide called in a bunch of monkeys to us as we were fishing! It was unbelievable, they hopped right into our canoe! He came preparred with bananas and bread (aparently he has done this before) and the monkeys would literally take the bread from your hands, sit there and eat, and let you pet them! It was really an impactful expierence being able to pet, feed, and hang out with wild monkeys! Having exhausted our food suply and our memory cards, we returned home for lunch and to prepare for our journey to the next camp.

A couple of hours more of paddle power and we arrive in a secluded lake, where we check out giant lilly pads, and an amazing sunset. Here we set up camp....jungle style. We sleep in hammocks tied to trees, with mosquito nets over them, then a tarp on top of that for the rain. But before sleep we go off on another night hike, where we see some giant bullfrogs, more spiders (including a huge tarantula!...only about 15 feet from my hammock:), scorpians, a ´jungle´mouse (which is about 10x the size), and what I think is called a mormoset. Then out to the lake....which is again a whole other world at night. Some sort of glowing worms sit atop the giant lillies at light up the shores like minuture neon green lanterns. But we have bigger fish to fry, we are hunting for alligators! Using a spotlight, we endlessly search for their big eyes relecting the light from the shores. Finally one is spotted, but upon closing in, it escapes into the water. Another one is spotted, and this time success! It a baby though, just a couple of feet long, but holding a live alligator in the amazon is still cool! Our guide caught one more, also a little one, and we played with the two gators pretty much all night long! I wanted to see a fight between them and the tarantula, but he wasn´t having it.

After all the action we return to base camp to start our journey back to Iquitos. Just as I was a little sad that I hadn´t yet wrestled a giant anaconda, our guide spots a rainbow boa constrictor, just chilling out on the roof of the shelter! After sending someone up to retrive him, again we all got to hold, this very beautiful boa, native to the region. What a perfect ending to my jungle expierence, anyone who wants to see a different world and enjoys nature, truley needs to go to the Amazon.