The Amazon trip near Puerto Maldonado
Our first big adventure, once getting to Peru, was a three day trip in the Amazon. We signed up through Peru For Less to stay in a "lodge" in the jungle. This was probably in my top three of things of the trip that we did while in Peru. We took a flight from Cuzco to Puerto Maldonado (the flight was only 30 minutes long and we never plateaued, we just went up and then down). It was a great experience because everything was taken care of for us in the trip; we just had to show up at the airport baggage claim and be ready for an adventure.
The view of the Amazon River from the plane
The River
The Amazon River was incredible; I absolutely loved it. Even though it was muddy on the edges and probably full of parasites I thought it was beautiful, calm and natural. In order to get to the lodge we had to take an hour boat ride on the river to get there. Once at the lodge we still took a boat to get to our adventures; the claycliffs, hikes, and the piranhas!
On our way to the lodge. The only time we actually wore our life jackets.
Our tour guide handed us each a banana leaf that was folded and had a tie on it and told us it was lunch. I was a little skeptical but it tasted so good! It was just rice, egg, cheese and veggies stir fried, I loved it.
On the river one morning with a little fog over the river
The lodge was basically a giant grass hut. I felt like I was slightly living with the Swiss Family Robinsons. The ceiling and the walls did not meet and so there was air flow. At night I could hear bats flapping around up in the top of the ceilings. The lodge only had electricity in the dinning area and the water was turned off every night at 9pm and turned on again at 6am. We had little candles for lights at night in our room.
There were two tour groups at the lodge; our group and then a college class group from North Carolina. We felt like were back in college again and living in the dorms; it sounds annoying but the students were actually really cool and fun to talk to. One night this cute lady in our group came running into Krista's and my room and told us we had to hurry and see something in her room. We ran into her room where she showed us a spider the size of my hand on her curtain doorway (I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE LET US WALK UNDER THE CURTAIN!) Some of the college guys heard us gasp at the large harry spider and ran into the room to take a picture of it. Long story short the spider dropped off the curtain, every screamed and laughed A LOT and the boys killed it for us.
The lodge
Our room and the mosquito nets around our beds
I'm not going to lie, I was a little paranoid about bugs crawling on me in my sleep but I got over it.
The doorway to our bathroom... yes curtains for doors
Our shower
It was too hot to truly shower but we would take a cold shower every night to feel somewhat fresh.
One of the pathways at the lodge... this one led to the "dinning room" ... very important route
Just hanging out in a hammock with my super dirty socks and one of my most favorite travel snacks
Just acting not my age and playing with the fossils
(It's ok, our tour guide thought I was like 16 so it was easy getting away acting like a dork)
Our Tour Group!
Elaine, me, Juan, Krista and Guiermo
We had a small group and an odd group but we loved it. Elaine late 40s nurse from Canada who said "Aye" a lot. She was our "mom" (in a good way!) of our trip and made our top three list of people we met. Juan was a super nice smart recent college grad who hated bugs, hikes, climbing stairs and getting dirty. Not quite sure why he signed up for this but we're glad he did. Every time we had to climb the stairs from the river up to the lodge he would say, "Sheesh!" when we made it to the top. Krista and I said "Sheesh!" every time we had to do anything physically difficult the remainder of our time in Peru.
Guiermo was out tour guide and NONE of us in our group knew what his name was until the last day of our Amazon adventure.
There are these cliffs along the river that are made out of clay and they are called Clay Cliffs. Haha, I bet you didn't see that coming. In the early morning birds, mostly parakeets and some macaws, like to fly to the cliffs and lick the clay for nutrients. We got up at 5am to go down the river to a tree house to watch the birds.
The parakeets on the cliff. There were some vines hanging just over the cliffs and sometimes the birds would grab onto those and swing around; it was pretty entertaining
Bird watching
The treehouse
Nature Walks
Guiermo took us on several nature walks and taught us about the plants and animals that we saw. While we learned about the plants Guiermo would tell us what they would use the plant for, especially in the "medicine" department. We laughed because almost every plant was, "Good for the stomach." I didn't get a chance to take many pictures of the animals but we did get to see a tarantula, spider monkeys, possum rat, night monkeys, fire ants, capybaras and caiman (little mini alligators). I REALLY wanted to see a sloth but we never did. We did keep teasing Guiermo that we wanted to see a jaguar, I don't think he knew we were kidding, and he would just look at us like we were crazy.
A Saba Tree
Guiermo kept telling us that this was the Avatar tree because it is the tree from the movie. It took me awhile to realize that the didn't believe they actually filmed the movie here but that this tree was like the one in the movie. This tree is very sacred to cultures in Central and South America.
A Walking Palm Tree
This tree's roots are above the ground and when it needs to shift in a way to get more sun light it grow another root to help it shift towards more light.
A Capybara!
This is the world's largest rodent; looks like a big guinea pig.
While walking on a path I saw this giant root and casually said, "Oh cool, Snake." Juan jumped and turned around to check it out. Oops.
An abandoned snail shell. I had Krista put her shoe next to it so that you could see, comparably, how massive the shell was.
Banana Trees
Bananas
It was fun, they had these clusters at the lodge for us just to grab a banana to snack on whenever we wanted. I liked it because it was a covered fruit so I could eat it.
Flowers
On one of our nature walks Guiermo dressed us up in plants like the natives, that live in the area, do for parties and celebrations.
We thought it was just going to be the "skirts"
Nope, he put things on our heads and faces too.
We secretly think these tour guides make this up and just put these plants on tourists and then laugh about it later telling their buddies, "Guess what I got some tourists to wear today!"
Our last adventures in the Amazon was going on a hike into the jungle to a lake with Piranhas. We got to fish for piranhas and eat them for dinner! I thought they tasted like chicken.
The lake
The boat without a motor but with this strange paddle that motorized the boat.
Krista and I went swimming with the piranhas; they only nibbled on our toes a little bit. Just kidding, I didn't even notice the piranhas.
When we got back to civilization and emailed our families about our Amazon adventures Krista received an email back from her mom forbidding her to go swimming in anymore murky bodies of water because of "unknown germs." We had a good chuckle about the email.
Fishing
My catch of the day!
Since I had limited clothing options for the trip I decided to wear the same outfit the entire time we were in the Amazon as to only dirty ONE outfit. As Krista and I were getting ready to board our plane, Juan turned to me and said, "I didn't want to say anything the past few days but now that we are parting ways... I've noticed that you have been wearing the same shirt the entire time." Krista and I busted up laughing and I just replied with, "Yup! This is true!" No shame, I embraced the gross life of backpacking on this trip.
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