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Hi all,
Gem here, thought i should update you before we hit the road for the final part of our trip... our American Road trip.
Ash left you when we had completed the Inca Trail and were heading to the Amazon so this is where i will pick up!
The Amazon was amazeing, I loved it! It started with a very, very, very long motorised canoe trip up one of the Amazon Rivers deltas, we got given a lunch of cooked rice served in palm tree leaves. Along the way we saw capibaras includeing a family with lots of babies and a couple of tortoises. When we got to the lodge, it was like something you see in the brochures and never think that things like it really exsist. So we could get close to nature there were no outside walls to any of the rooms or the main building, this meant that is it so fancied we could wake up to find a ouma sitting on the end of our bed. All that protected us from the hungry mossies were mosquito nets and at dawn and dusk the noise of the wildlife was deafening. Once I got used to my new spider philosophy that if i cant see it, it doesnt exsist I could relax, although it meant i walked around with my eyes closed quite alot. One night I came back to the room to find a rather large frog in our shower, I thought Id leave him but when we decided to go to bed he had moved to on top of the mirror and I then very hilariously attempted to remove him out of the way of Nath.
Our time in the Amazon was spent firstly hunting for Caimen, of which we saw 3, one was even kind enougth to climb up onto the river bank for us. We also got chance to look at the stars, of which there were millions! The next day we awoke very early before the sun rose to climb a canopy tower, sadly no monkeys but we saw lots of birds and far to many bees for my likeing. Afterwards we crossed the river to tour an Amazon farm and sample its produce, which included bananas, star fruit, oranges and sugar cane. It was very very hot so we got the chance to cool off in the river, (the same river that we had been looking for caimans in the previous night)! Next we went to learn about the harvesting of Brazil nuts, which is actually really dangerous, each year someone dies when a nut falls on their head! A siesta followed lunch and we then went on a boat trip of an oxbow lake before walking to some very big trees! Our amazon visit ended with another very long canoe trip back to civilisation.
Our fondest memories of the Amazon will probably be the wellie boot eating mud that seemed certain to suck Ashlee in and at some points came up and over my wellie tops. We feared for our lives! The food was amazeing, really yummy and plenty of it, plus it gave us the chance to sample local delicaies. Finally just lazeing in the hammocks watching the world and insects go by!
After the Amazon we flew back to Lima in search of Oasis tickets, alas we were to late so caught a bus down to a town called Ica. Ica is surrounded by desert and about 10km outside is a little oasis.(yes they really do exsist) This place was a little backward and very weird, described as a backpackers heaven, it seemed we were the only people there. Its basicly a lagoon surrounded by hostels and restaurants and very high sand dunes. Ashlees attempts at haggeling resulted in her bearing a resemblace to an Isralie (apparantly they are stngey)! It also didnt work. The sole reason we went to this backwards place was to go sandboarding and we left the next morning and hit the dunes. We had an excellant time, tearing around the dunes on a buggey driven by a grumpy and semi helpful man. We ten attempted to sand board, firstly starting on our bellies, before Tom and Nath upgraded to standing up. All was going well till Tom started to head down before he had strapped his foot in, the result was a really painful looking sumersault, dont worry Tom was ok. Next it was my time to man up, and I failed misserably somehow manageing to flip round and land on my head. The poor driver must have been fearing a law suit! I returned back to slideing on my stomach. Sandboarding basicly involves driveing to the top of a sand dune, jumping on a snow boarding type board and speeding incredibly fast to the bottom! At the end of it we looked like the sand monster and took half the desert back to the hostel with us.
The next day saw us bid farewell to South America and head to LA, the land of the rich and famous. We meet up with my Bother Ed and Tom left us to go and watch the Hatton fight in Vegas, despite a disastorous second round knockout he seemed to have a great time. The four of us decided to make ourselves feel inadequate and toured the stars homes, we saw to many designer clothes, fast cars and massive homes, my poor KA doesnt even compare!
Well welcome to America!
Love Gem xxx
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