Thursday, July 16, 2009

The Amazon!

Here are some pictures of the lodge we stayed at in the Amazon. From Cuzco, we took at 45min plane ride, then a half hour bus ride then an hour and a half boat ride down the river then a 10 minute walk up to the lodge. It was a really nice lodge too. All meals included and they were all wonderful. We were very busy each day but it was worth it.

NO hot water at all.

The rooms only had 3 (very very thin) walls and this was the forth one.

This is the dining room and bar we ate our meals at, it was very nice.
All the food there was amazing and buffet style.

Lunch we had wrapped in a leaf on the way there sooo good.

Turtle with butterflies on his face
Monday afternoon after we got there we went on a hike to the canopy tower way above most of the trees. Every time we left the lodge they gave us big rainboots to wear because it was so muddy everywhere.

At the top...

The next morning we had to wake up at 4am because they said that's when all the wildlife is out even though we were very tired it was cool to see the sunrise and be up before it got too humid and hot. We went to a lake and floated around on a boat and looked at wildlife. Before we left we saw the human size otters that live in the lake off in the distance. There were about 4 of them playing and swimming around and making funny noises. I couldn't get good pictures from far away but that and the piranha fishing were the highlights of the morning.

We fished for piranhas, not man-eating like they are in the movies but they do have very sharp teeth. Here's the one we caught, we threw it back afterwards.


We also went to a medicinal farm where there's plants they make medicine out of

They make Pisco, the alcohol of Peru, out of this plant.
We got facepainted with one of the plants the indigenous people use it too
The shaman with the ayahuasca plant

Biggest tree I saw there!
A bunch of trees had these weird trunks...
Wednesday we got up at 5am to go to a parrot lake and unfortunately we waited around and only saw one bird that's just the way wildlife is sometimes I guess can't always plan on it. The one we did see was cool though...
A sunset from the river

Huge spider
We went to a farm where they grow bananas and papayas and avocados and more. Very different from farms in the US.
Here's a banana tree...

The last night we went on a night hike to the top of the canopy tower way up above the trees. The stars were amazing I thought I'd seen a lot camping before but this was totally different no light pollution anywhere I wish I could have taken pictures. We saw the Milky Way and the Southern Cross and lots of shooting stars
We saw some creepy crawlers along the way too
I saved the best for last
Wednesday we were getting ready to go to watch a soccer game between the guides, the cooks and our group but then we saw monkeys right outside of our room! it was definitely the highlight for me. I was later told they were spider monkeys, they were very small and cute and just eating leaves and jumping around. We ended up seeing about 4 or 5 around the lodge when we started looking around. The wildlife always comes when you're not expecting it



I took so many pictures but these are just the highlights. Each day was very long after getting up so early. It was basically get up go hike come back and rest then eat then hike again then rest again then another activity. It also rained one day we were there which was cool. I was worried about bugs but the beds had mosquito nets over them which made me feel better at night even though you could still hear bats above us in the room. ewww. Parts of it looked like we were in a movie, I still can't believe we were there It was so cool

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