Amazon Jungle, Peru

Aug 9-11

A bus came to pick us up very early to begin our journey to the Amazon. Bini and I had only gotten about 2 hours sleep and were perhaps a wee bit hungover. In the bus, just a few blocks down from our hostel, Laura checked that we had all remembered our passports...which of course the two of us had not. We sprinted out of the bus and began running back up hill to the hostel. I can't even begin to explain how difficult this was. Being hungover + having barely slept + running at very high altitude = death.

Luckily, we still made it to the airport with plenty of time. A short (and bumpy!) flight, followed by a bus and a boat ride eventually landed us at our lodge. 

We stayed in gorgeous little bungalows, tucked away in the jungle.

As soon as we arrived we got straight into the buffet lunch. A sneaky monkey managed to get inside and pinch a few bananas from the fruit supply! Very entertaining.

Our first activity was a walk through the jungle. We saw some guinea pigs which were HUGE! Bigger than a possum. There was also a strange bird which loved to be patted on the head. Certainly not by me though... 

We eventually arrived at the Caiman lake. Initially, we couldn't see any caimans but no more than ten seconds later two of them hopped out of the water, right in front of us! There were soooo many of them, varied in size. Apparently caimans are cannibals, the big ones eat the little ones. There was one massive caiman clearly dominating the lake, who chased a couple of the little ones but never managed to make a meal. It was incredibly cool to watch!

Before dinner we cooled off in the icy cold pool and had a nap. After dinner we were taken out on a boat, where we floated down the river spotting many more caimans. Super creepy at night, with their eyes lighting up red! The stars were incredible too, so so many of them were out.

We had another early morning, allowing us to jam as much into our day as possible. Unfortunately it was an incredibly rainy day...and all our waterproof jackets proved to be not very waterproof! Eek! We started the day with a boat ride down the river, then began trekking through the jungle. 

We found a garlic tree, which apparently you can only smell so strongly when it's raining, and luckily it was pouring! We also spotted tarantulas and a huge toad along the paths.

We hopped in a boat and paddled down the river, seeing squirrel monkeys, caimans and a huge variety of birds. 

A short walk from there took us to a viewpoint, where all you could see was endless jungle!

Then we walked along a 750m-long slippery, unstable bridge without any railing. At one point a massive branch fell somewhere just above my head and everyone freaked out, thinking that the noise was me, stacking it.

 Another boat ride and short walk brought us back to the viewpoint. The final walk back home was 5km. On the way I had a taste of beetle larvae - and my reaction put everyone else off trying it! It popped when I first bit down and then was all chewy. On the plus side it had a coconutty after taste.

We came back to the lodge to dry off and eat lunch. Our afternoon adventure was to Monkey Island! This was a small island (1km wide, 2km long) inhabited by a variety of a monkeys. We saw spider monkeys and kapuchean monkeys, both white and black ones. The had left out lots of bananas for the monkeys to come and get. They would climb down the tree and try to stuff as many as possible into their mouths and hands before retreating back up. Sometimes guides held out bananas so that they would come down to the ground. They were pretty hesitant and when they got down most of them just snatched the banana and quickly hopped back up the tree. One of them came and grabbed a water bottle off the guide. He smelt it, then tasted it, didn't like it...so he poured it all out!