Survived the Amazon

Hey friends,



We´re coming to a close...4 days left. Most of the last of our journey has been transportation, but not without adventure. From Iquitos, which is the biggest city in the world not reachable by road, we took a three day boat ride down the Amazon and some other rivers to a town called Yurimaguas. The trip was unbelievable. It was really so much to put into words, but I´ll try to paint a picture for you...



First imagine a 3 floor cargo boat called Eduardo VIII. The first floor is all cargo...who knows what it all was. The second floor is for passengers. At one point it was just a big flat, open air room with a few poles. By 3 pm (boat left at 6.30), it was full of hammocks strung from the ceiling with people everywhere. The third floor is ¨tourist class¨ (ha!), which at 3 pm had far fewer people than below) but essentially looked the same but smaller with more natural light. We had bought hammocks earlier in the day at the market and staked out our space on the third floor. We spread ourselves apart and naively thought that we´d remain so. The guy who I thought would be my next door neighbor actually ended up three hammocks away from me...we were close. A taste of what we saw and experienced in the next 72 hours:

• A soccer team of 20 ten year olds from Colombia and their chaperones...they were so cute, had their hammocks strung so close together, moved constantly, and did warm ups on the upper deck that sounded like thunder...
• Another soccer team of 20 20 something year-old guys and one of their girl friends on their way to a huge soccer tournament in Yurimaguas. They were so curious about us, asked a ton of questions, made annoying animal noises, fell in love with my iPod, and were overall an endearing group.
• Two flaming chefs who smiled a lot and attracted more than their fair share of attention :)
• A lady who brought her cake aboard to sell piece by piece along the ride...I ate a couple.
• 250ish other passengers!
• Parrots, monkeys, turtles, a baby alligator. Everytime we stopped a port, people got on selling all of the above. The parrots were my favorite. They were sold for 1 sol or about thirty cents. For the last two days of the trip one was perched on a hammock that I would frequently pass by as it squawked in my face.
• A tank on the top of the ship that would overflow once in awhile and send a river of water down the side of the boat, under an old man, and straight into his potato sack of belongings. Everytime he had to get all nervous and move his bags...sad story, really.
• A stop at one port where we stood at the back of the ship and watched pink river dolphins jumping and thousands of fish eating our mango peels and pits as we threw them in the water.
• Unbelievable sunsets over the trees and water with beautiful white birds flying across it.
• Some people with huge hammocks that could have fit them plus and elephant and then Breanna and I (me likely being the tallest person aboard) with hammocks that fit like a peel around a banana.
• Teaching two university students how to play go fish...ha :)
• A family with mom, dad, and 4 kids. Dad would sleep all day on the hammock while mom and kids would sit/sleep under the hammock on a tarp. The kids were so well behaved and two of the sisters were always picking lice out of one another´s hair...sad.
• Combined bathrooms/showers with a spigget above the toilet that acted as a shower...better than no shower at all, I guess.
• Stops at ports that weren´t ports at all. Docks don´t exist, so they´d just run this huge boat into the dirt until it stopped, put down a plank and start the loading and unloading process.
• A boat almost the size of our boat that pulled alongside one evening attached itself to ours with a tire for a few minutes while a group of people jumped from our ship to theirs...they wanted to go the other direction. Layover Amazon style...hm.

Hard to say whether or not that paints an accurate picture, but take from it what you will. It really was 3 days of relaxation and constant stimulation. I could have stayed another 3 days without batting an eye.

We´re down to three more full days of South America. Tomorrow we take a 28 hour bus ride back to Lima where we fly home from Thursday night. We actually bought a movie today to give to the bus driver to put in to hopefully avoid watching any more peruvian music videos or jackie chan movies...

Leticia

On Friday morning, Breanna and I took at super early flight from Bogota to Leticia--a town on the Amazon and on the border of Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. Highlights:

• Motorcycles...they are everywhere. There are almost no acutal cars in the city. When we got off of our plane, we walked out the door with backpacks on and hopped on the back of two motorcycles. So much fun. Everyone in the town drives them and when they`re waiting at stoplights it always looks like a really exciting race is starting.
• Hotel...unlike any hotel so far. It was actually more like staying with a host family. We were one of very few people staying there and Francisco (the ¨dad¨) really acted like a Dad. He would just walk into our room to do things like turn the fan on or replace the air freshener, and always brought us new things to try or see like fruits from the region. Cute. And, he preferred way of watching tv was lounging in a hammock in the dining room. Hilarious :)
• Sunset over the Amazon...I just like sunsets and love that I´ve been able to appreciate them so much here.
• ¨Market¨. Francisco told us that there was a cool market 6 km out of town. We got some motos to take us and they brought us to a house with one table with some stuff on it and another box with more stuff in it...not a market. So, we hopped back on the motos. The ride was cool enough as is, and then it rained. Not like a pouring down cold rain, but a warm soft rain that was so amazing on a motorcycle.
• Park... we sat in the town´s park for most of the afternoon and mostly just watched people and then a military band came to play music in this little ampitheatre thing. It was fun to just watch, but then it got better when two soldiers asked us to dance. So, we got up and danced with 2 colombian soldiers in the middle of all of these families on a lovely Saturday afternoon...fun.
• Brazil... we got to go to Brazil. No border crossing craziness necessary. The town was called Tabatinga and was really just a dusty town with not too much more than a port to the Amazon river. But, it was Brazil! We could just walk from Leticia... I enjoyed the fact that I could go and that I could be around Portuguese, which I want to learn more and more everyday. Such a fun challenge.

We left Leticia Sunday morning on a 12 hour long boat ride down the amazon to Iquitos, Peru. It was the most comfortable boat ride ever that felt downright posh. Some may say that I have lower standards than ever before...I wouldn´t disagree :) They even gave us two meals and water. The tv entertainment: mexican mariachi music videos, salsa music videos, a jackie chan movie, and american 80s music videos to top it all off.

So, we`re in iquitos and heading out on a two day jungle tour tomorrow. I´m hoping for monkeys, dolphins, bullfrogs, and pirahnas.