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Ahoy mericá,
I truly miss everyone in America, but what I saw today definitely was worth the thousand miles apartness. The morning started off good by having a great breakfast! After the breakfast, we gathered up to go on a 4-hour hike, but it ended up being a 3 hour-ish hike. There were two tour guides, the one behind everyone, and other one in front of everyone.
During the hiking, we saw many MANY spiders, birds and behold THE BEST PART, we saw monkeys! Few students were fortune enough to see black face spider monkey swinging across the tree. Black face spider monkey was swinging off the tree and disappeared into deeper part of Amazon Forest. However, all of us saw red howler monkey! There were two red howler monkeys, one watched us for short time then climbed out, whereas second one stayed still and stared at us! Wilmonda took great pictures of them. She always gets perfect shots of the animals, no kidding! When the tour heard the monkey, we went off the trail and followed the sounds. We ended up going through the jungle. After we all were satisfied seeing the monkeys, we returned back to the trail.
Another thing happened during the hiking, the tour gave all of us a leaf and he told us all to rub it. We all thought it was for moisturizer, but the tour guide collected all of the leaves that had turned into dark color from all of rubbing, and he squeezed it on Wilmonda's hand. It dripped purple liquid; it's dye color of purple. He used it to paint on our faces, and then he dyed some of girls' hair. After the perfect view of hiking and fun activities, we had finally completed the long trail. What a great way for us to start the day.
We had an okay-okay lunch, but the important part is everyone ate something. They provide desserts for lunch and dinner, and their dessert are WAY different from America, we had banana bread with fruit syrup on it, but the bread is brown, and its not burn. It tasted something new and interesting! After the lunch, we all had our break time at the outside of our hotel rooms. We have the best view! Some of students spent their time on reading book, nap, editing the vlog, and the blog; the best way for us to relax it all on the hammock. Definitely a relaxing feeling before other hours of hiking.
Instead of hours of hiking, we had a boat ride and went to other place. The boat ride is always good especially in dense and humid place, mainly because of the breezes. We then hiked to the small root of the main river. Guess what we fished for?!? Piranhas! Nobody reeled in anything except for one of our tour guide, who got a piranha. Some students teased that piranha by putting a leaf in his mouth, and the fish will bite it off. Most of us gave up with the fishing, and the bees started to pick on us. Some students rushed out with tour guide, while Nevan and Wilmonda got stung. Ouch! We all got back on the boat, and we all were collectively relieved from the breeze, after hours in a humid and sticky swamp.
We all had an interesting dinner, because we had a catfish for the dinner. The fish were cooked inside the leaves, and it seemed that it was cooked slowly. Most of us liked the fish, and they were served with fruits, and soup. The soup tasted like chicken, but there's no chicken in there. Madidi's fruits…OMG! It tasted so rich, not processed like America. After the dinner, we ran to our room and returned with our journals. Instead of writing for rest of the night, we all played telephone line and lipreading game. My group WON! My group: Nevan, Rebekah, Kodi, Steve, and me. We had great night! Can't wait for more excitement to come for next 10 days!!!
Sincerely,
Ashlene (Kangaroo)
- comments
Cynthia Foss Fantastic experiences!