Welcome to the Jungle

Jan. 27-31
We spent 5 days in the hot, humid jungle of Peru. Leaving cold Cusco and arriving in the hot Amazon was quite a shock to the body. We took a long boat to our lodge, Posada Amazona. It is jointly owned by the native community and a private company called Rainforest Expeditions. It's a beautiful lodge with in an open-air design. And when I say open-air I mean I was sharing my bathroom with the cockroaches.

As soon as we arrived we put on our rubber boots (necessary for dealing with the mud) and took the first of many walks. The schedule is basically up at 4am for your first activity, then breakfast at 7:30, on to your next activity (usually a walk), lunch, another walk, dinner and then possibly a lecture or night walk. During the five days we tooks lots of walks, had a lecture about the Macaw Project, and went to the Clay Licks to see the birds feeding on the clay cliffs on the river banks.

Things were good at the Posada but got even better when Matt and I left the rest of our tour group and headed to the Tambopata Research Centre. It is a working research centre that also has 16 guest rooms. We were lucky to be the only two guests our first night there and we had a native guide, Silverio, all to ourselves the whole time we were there. He was phenomenol at spotting wildlife and we were able to see so much more because of him, because we were 7 hours further from civilization (it was a long boat ride to get there) and because it was just the three of us. While we were at the Research Centre we saw all six types of macaws that live there, tons of parrots and parekeets, several types of monkies, capybaras, tapirs, a sloth, piranhas, bats (both in the wild and also in our room at night), butterflies, rabbits, frogs, toads, many different birds and some other rodent type things. It was awesome!

When we weren't out doing activities we played cards and napped in the hammocks. We also made friends with some of the staffs' kids who were there on their summer break. It was very peaceful and relaxing but it's probably not for everyone. I wasn't joking about the roaches. They came out every night and were especially fond of the mirror and sink area. I had to bring Matt with me to the bathroom to stand guard and chase them away. At the Research Centre the bats came every night (it was also an open air design) and flew around our room and made those crazy little bat noises. Luckily we had the mosquito net - it was keeping out more than just the mosquitos! Speaking of mosquitos, even though we used tons of bug juice and wore long sleeves I am still pretty eaten up. That said, we are really glad we went and experienced it in the way we did. Having Silverio as our personal guide was really amazing and we really enjoyed learning about the flora and fauna but also the community and their goals for the Posada and Research Centre.

This afternoon we flew from Puerto Maldonado in the jungle back to Lima. We have about a 7 hour layover here so I've been catching up on the blog. Tonight we take the red-eye back to Buenos Aires. We are really excited to have salad, huge steaks and a good bottle of wine. We're hoping to spend about 4 days in the city and two at a ranch in the country. After that we have two weeks in Chile and then back to Austin. It's hard to believe the first leg of our trip is almost over!