Iquitos and the Amazon

Well we just got back from our 4 day, 3 night excursion into the Amazon rainforest. What an amazing place! We weren't but about 20 miles from Iquitos, in an area that 100 years ago would have been decimated from the logging and rubber industries. You'd have to go at least 100 miles in either direction to get to the real virgin jungle, but even still we were able to see lots of cool flora and fauna from our base at Cumaceba jungle lodge. First, lets start with Iquitos. We will spend just 2 nights here, and have pretty much no time to do any exploring, but it doesn't look like we're missing much. First thing you notice when coming to Iquitos is the motorcycles. The only way to get vehicles here is by boat, so motorcycles make up probably 95% of the traffic. Imagine if an entire town of 500,000 people was overrun by a Harley Davidson motorcycle gang, only instead they ride dinky, noisy little motorcycles. About half of them have little carts attached to the back and serve as taxis. Unfortunately we haven't gotten the privilege in riding in one of those. The second thing you notice here is the trash. Just really dirty, especially along the river, which is quite sad. The main Amazon river doesn't pass by here, but a large tributary does and it is extremely polluted and gross. Needless to say we were happy to spend most of our time in the jungle.

Lots of motorcycles, few cars

For our "jungle experience" we picked Cumaceba lodge mainly because (surprise!) they were the cheapest. For just over $200 each we got transfers to and from the airport (20 minutes and don't have to ride in a rickshaw), transfer to and from the lodge (45 minutes by boat), all food, excursions, and a little bungalow all to ourselves. We thought it was a great deal, especially since the other places were from about $300 to $600 for the same package. We were just happy to have someone pick us up from the airport and not have to face the crazy, yelling taxi drivers. The main thing the I wanted to see on this trip were the pink river dolphins, and it only took about 5 minutes after getting on the boat to see our first ones. They like to hang out near the mouths of tributaries as the run into the main Amazon river, so are surprisingly easy to see. There was a group of them really close to our lodge so we got to watch them pretty much every day, and even saw a baby one jump completely out of the water on a couple different occasions (if only we got a picture of that!).

hard to get a good shot of these guys

Every day consisted of breakfast, an excursion, lunch, excursion, dinner, then maybe a nighttime excursion (sweet!). We got to go out on a little canoe in complete darkness and look for baby caimans. Unfortunately we didn't catch any, but still a cool experience nonetheless. Other excursions included fishing for piranhas...

We both technically caught one, but Steph's was much bigger than mine

...swimming in the Amazon river...

...boat rides to bird-watch and see the giant lilypads...

these were only 3-4 feet wide but can get as big as 10 feet across

...trip to a native tribe's village...

me showing the chief how it's done

...but our favorite trip of all was to a nearby "zoo" that was nothing more than a little farm with all sorts of animals roaming around. The birds had clipped wings so couldn't exactly escape, but there were lots of monkeys and other animals that were free to go but stuck around for one reason: tourists with bananas. Our guide tipped us off to bring a couple extra, so we were able to lure a bunch of them and bribe them to hang out with us. You should have seen Steph playing and holding these monkeys. It was hilarious. Most of them were pretty shy and would grab some banana then leave, but there were some Wooly monkeys that were really friendly and liked you to hold them or to play with you. One of them was kinda the baby of the bunch and would just hug on Steph for 15 minutes at a time like she was its mom (and Steph acted like it was her baby). Another one I guess liked to lick the bug spray off of me, and couldn't be pried away from licking all over my neck and face...I can now say I have received a wet-willy from a monkey.

Steph and her baby

There were all kinds of other animals we got to hold there. A baby caiman, anaconda, toucan, macaw, but after the monkeys our favorite was the three-toed sloth. They really live up to their reputation by being incredibly slow to do anything. We couldn't get over just how slowly the little guy was "making a run" for a bigger tree to get away from all the people. He didn't make it. Not only that, but they have the cutest little face you've ever seen.

Overall our jungle experience was incredible. Aside from the animals at the zoo, we saw bats, tarantalas, lizards, wild(er) monkeys, colorful butterflies, some giant fish and lots of cool kinds of birds. We loved it. It'd be really cool to go back during the rainy season when the river can be over 50 feet higher and the entire lodge compound is flooded (it's built on stilts), so you have to do basically everything by boat but apparently get better wildlife viewing. Go to our Peru pictures to see the rest of our pics from the Amazon jungle and everything prior in Peru (scroll down to the bottom to see the Amazon pics). Tomorrow we fly back to Lima then on to Quito, Ecuador for 10 days at the middle of the world!