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After meeting Matt and our friend Jane in Bogota airport we took another flight to Leticia, a town in the middle of the rainforest with no access by road. From our plane we had our first viewing of the Amazon River which we could see meandering through the jungle which stretched as far as the eye could see. We were enticed into a hotel just on the Brazilian border because we were told about the swimming pool, which turned out to be very muddy! We explored the town and Matt enjoyed some fish cooked on a street bbq. The following day we went to Brazil to book our speed boat to Iquitos in Peru, we enjoyed a beer on the riverside of Brazil, another border area in which you can pass between towns in Brazil, Peru and Columbia without immigration. We had an amazing dinner at a local steak house before heading to bed ready for our first jungle trip!
The following day we took a boat up the river to a small town called Puerto Narino. We stayed at a place owned by a friar, who had pet monkeys, as the monkeys are free to roam sadly we didn't see them as they were out in the jungle. We did see a baby Cayman in the pond, two Macaws, one of which bit Matt's arm, and a beautiful puppy! The same day we went out on a river trip. Our guide, Delfonso managed first time to spear a small fish through the muddy Amazon water to use as bait. We fished of the side of our tiny canoe boat for piranhas before Delfonso cooked the catch on a fire on the bank- they tasted delicious! We then went onto the bigger river to see the pink river dolphins! There was both pink and tiny grey dolphins playing, the pink ones are surprisingly ugly and look like their skin has been removed! Jane managed to fall asleep on the boat during dolphin watching, a trait we quickly learnt happens a lot on all types of transportation. After a lovely day we slept in the jungle lodge and returned to Leticia the following day to be stamped out of Columbia before heading upriver to Peru. The speed boat left at 3am, so after being stamped into Peru in the tiny village of Santa Rosa we decided not to spend the money on a room and instead to stay up in the pub until leaving time! Sadly most places closed around 10pm and so we ended up sitting playing cards and drinking some rum on the local bench! This wasn't a situation that posed well for the 12+ hours speed boat journey, which was pretty awful!
We arrived tired and grumpy in Iquitos, Peru, the largest city in the world that cannot be accessed by road! Our welcome was pretty awful, after being overly hassled by tuk tuk drivers trying to sell their taxi service and hotels, Will and I discovered that we had misplaced both our cash cards and could only withdraw money on Will's other account! Luckily we found them within a few minutes of getting to a hotel! We all needed a sleep before exploring the town and realising it was above our first impressions!
We had one of our worst experiences here, when we decided to go to the cheapest guesthouse in town to save a bit of money! It was all fine when we left for dinner, but on return we realised there was in fact a cockroach infestation, and in our time away they had got onto everything, inside Will's bag and were running across the beds! Matt and Will had a killing fest, whilst Jane and I hid in the other room, as there was no staff on site overnight we decided to return to our old hotel and not to clean the remains of the dead cockroaches as justification for not paying the bill!
The next morning, after not really sleeping well due to the cockroach nightmares that they may have come to our hotel with us! We headed into the jungle on a three day trip with our guide Raul. An hour car journey to a nearby river port and a couple of hours on a long boat took us to the jungle lodge we would stay at our first night. Within minutes of arrival Raul had pointed out two salamanders and several tiny pigmy monkeys, the smallest in the world. We had a bit of time to settle in before heading out on the boat to a nearby village with the hope, or not in my case, of seeing an anaconda! Luckily the anaconda that had been caught by the villagers had been taken out for release the day before so we were saved this scary experience!! In the evening we were taken for a night jungle walk which turned out to be an arachnid walk- meeting Gordon the tarantula was quite an experience, especially for Matt who is terrified of spiders! We had to wrap our heads in t-shirts for the walk to avoid the massive mosquitoes.
The following day we went for a morning boat ride, spotted some monkeys in their home up a tree and some beautiful birds flying through the morning mist! The river was very low as it was low season and the boat ran aground twice, the first time through me backwards almost onto Matt's lap and dipping one of Will's arms in the river, and the second time nearly knocking the whole think over. The driver had to jump into the water in order to get us off the sandbank! We were a little bit worried about the cameras! We returned for a jungle breakfast and to get ready for our night camping in the jungle! A river boat and a walk away we set up camp in a clearing in the jungle, camp consisted of hammocks with mosquito tents! We took several jungle walks, walking through mud and bamboo forest that felt like anaconda land, chasing the sound of howler monkeys until we could see them playing in the trees and spotting a horn squealer which is a massive bird and the recent tracks of a jaguar. The highlight though was the night walking when we realised the real dangers of the jungle appear! After jungle pasta dinner Raul said he was going to show us night animals, we weren't expecting him to shine his torch on the tree a couple of metres from our hammocks to show us a scorpion, and then Will spotted a scorpion spider just below it! Without going more than a few minutes from our camp we saw a coral snake, more scorpions, massive toads and our other guide even climbed onto a tiny raft on the alligator lake and caught a baby alligator which we all got to meet and hold! Jane and I decided to hide in the hammocks after the walk to avoid the massive mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies. Will and Matt convinced Raul to show them some spear fishing and teach them, Will managed to get a fish first time which he was very proud of, the fish were sleeping though!
The next morning, following broken sleep we packed up camp and headed back to the jungle lodge for a jungle pancake! Halfway through eating a tiny two month old woolly monkey walked into the room from the kitchen! Jose was found abandoned in the jungle by some tourists on a previous trip and had been taken in by the locals, he is free to leave whenever he wants but is too young now to survive on his own. We all got to have a cuddle with Jose and he was amazing, he had tiny human like ears and his tail wrapped around your arm when you held him so he could hold on! We left the camp that morning to return to Iquitos and for our long river boat journey. Unfortunately Matt had been bitten by something and his arm had swollen right up so we decided that we would not get the boat that evening but instead get a shorter boat for only 3 days, instead of 5/6, and go a different route to get to Lima. We then got caught in a the first storm of the year on the river when our boat engine died and the boat slammed against the bank, the driver had to get in waist deep to stop the boat being damaged while we waited for help. This meant we would have missed the long boat anyway!
We found we had an extra day anyway as the boat did not leave the following day either; apparently this is quite normal! It wasn't looking good for meeting Beastie at this point but we still had a chance! We used our extra day to visit the butterfly farm, run by a German woman who also rescued orphaned or abused animals. The farm was really interesting and the highlights included a monkey pulling Matt's dreads and being able to release butterflies, although mine wasn't ready and couldn't fly and had to be put back in the building!
We finally boarded the long boat the next day; it consisted of three levels, lower for cargo and two for passengers. The deck was open with people putting up hammocks so close to each other that everyone touched! We hired a two-man cabin between us to keep our bags safe and Jane and i ended up sleeping in the cabin and leaving the boys to their hammocks! The boat was long, and day longer than expected due to the low river level and the repeated groundings in the night! We mostly just chilled, studied a bit of Spanish, met local people and had a few drinks, when the bar actually had stocks! After four relaxing days on the boat we docked and jumped on an hour bus to the town of Tarapoto, hoping to get a night bus and meet Beastie in Huanchaco, maybe a few hours late!! We had already realised that we couldn't make it to the airport and instead decided that if he got a bus up north we would arrive to the coast at the same time! Until we got to the bus station and found that there were no night buses until the following day and it was much further than we thought! So we had to hold Beastie off to spend his first night alone in Lima! Sorry Beastie!! After a lovely dinner we a slept early and boarded the 18 hour bus to the coast the following afternoon to meet Beastie in Trijillo on the coast the following day and met Beastie, already with a hip flask of whiskey in his hands, despite the 9am time! And headed to Huanchaco....
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