Get ready to be jealous...

Hello. I went to the Amazon rainforest last weekend. Here is an account of my experience.

Day 1

We traveled a lot. First we got on a private bus at 5:30 am to take us to the airport. At 8:00 am our flight left for Iquitos. We had a small stopover in another jungle town but we didn't even have to get out of the plane. We landed in Iquitos at 11ish and met our guide, Hulber. He showed us to our private bus where we each had 2 seats. So classy. We took the bus to a Manatee Rehabilitation Center!

This was probably one of my favorite things ever. Because you all know that since spring break I have been on a small manatee kick. They are so cute and so fat and they never hurt anyone. Their only mistake was taking forever to reproduce. Ugh, evolution sometimes, you know?

Anyways this is where baby manatees are taken when their mothers have been poached and someone finds them being kept as a pet. The first baby we saw was in quarantine because it had been fed the wrong kind of milk for its whole life (manatees are lactose intolerant) and had a vitamin deficiency. It was shedding its skin which happens to all baby manatees, but it was taking longer for her. The rehab center gets milk sent to it every 3 days from Texas. Special manatee milk.

The Amazonian manatee is endangered, like all other manatees. It can grow to be 3 meters long! That's really big! It eats water lettuce which can get out of control and keep oxygen from getting to the fish. So the manatees are really important for keeping this in check. In the Amazon, manatees are hunted by native people to be eaten. This is now illegal since manatees are very endangered. There are only 1000 left. That isn't a lot.

So then we went over to the weaning area where there were 7 baby manatees that we could touch and bottle feed and give lettuce and bananas. I had to keep reminding myself that keeping one forever is very illegal. But they were SO CUTE. They have like 100 little whiskers on their noses so when you put your hand in the water they immediately know and swim over and beg for love and food. Their skin kind of feels like vinyl only different. Kind of how you would imagine, but softer. They also don't have front teeth so don't even worry about getting bitten. Like I said, they never hurt anyone. Let's try to keep them around, okay?

Then we all got back into the bus and drove for an hour and a half to Nauta which is super close to where the Marañon and the Ucayali meet to form the Amazon. It was raining, like it does in the rainforest, so we just hopped into the boats to head upstream to our lodge.

We boated for about 40 minutes on the Marañon River to reach Pacaya Samiria National Reserve.

Our lodge was just across the river from the actual nature reserve. It was sweet. The lodge only had electricity from 6-10 pm everyday. It was fine, though, because we were only there for meals and sleeping. We were served gourmet jungle food like fish, palm hearts, rice, vegetables, chicken and all sorts of desserts. And lots of juice. And coffee!

We met our second guide, Rey at the lodge. Rey and Hulber both grew up in indigenous tribes in the Amazon. Rey moved to Iquitos when he was 6, but later returned to his tribe to find out where he came from. His father was a shaman, and always encouraged Rey to become a shaman. His other side of the family is Christian, though, and thinks of shamanism as evil. I think Rey started to train to be a shaman, so he knows a lot about the rainforest. He knows most animal calls. It was sweet, because he would make the sound of a dolphin breathing and then one would surface. He worked with a photographer from Animal Planet to get a good shot of the pink dolphins. He's pretty darn cool.

Once we ate and dropped our stuff off we went on a hike through the rainforest by the lodge. We saw bullet ants, which are like an inch long and super poisonous, huge spiders, leaf-cutter ants, squirrel monkeys, and crazy mushrooms. We also drank water out of a tree root. I know what you're thinking! Don't drink the water! Don't worry. The tree roots are like a super filter. They also make the water taste smokey. I don't know if that's the right word. It tasted like wood. We also saw a polka dot tree frog which was super cute. And the stars! We could see a thousand more stars than I have ever seen in my life! That night the bats on our porch kept us up. And my stomach hurt. But if you don't know about my stomach hurting, then you don't really know me.

Day 2

The second day we ate breakfast and then hopped in the boats once again. We motored along the coast edge of the reserve and saw about 4 sloths hanging out in the tops of trees. One of the sloths had a baby clinging to its back. How cute. We also saw a bunch of hawks and one iguana.

Once we got to the park, we entered via another river system that feeds into the Marañon. They call it the Río de los espejos, or the river of mirrors, because the water is black and reflects everything on a sunny day. It was so beautiful. Dolphins like to hang out where rivers meet, so we saw a lot of pink dolphins. If you have never heard of them, you should do a google search. They are funny looking and there are a lot of sweet river people myths about them. Well really, only one, but it is still kind of cool. Okay, I'll just tell you.

So the local people believe that the pink dolphins turn into beautiful young men and women at night and come out of the water to seduce their sons and daughters. Because of this, they stay far away from the river dolphins. It's cool, because the dolphins are protected this way. That might have been the porpoise of this dolphin myth (see what I did there?).

At the ranger station there is a community of native people. There were little kids running around, being cute, and when we saw a jungle cat in a tree they took us to see it up close. It ran away before we could get there, but it was sweet nonetheless.

Then we went farther up the river to the community called 20 de Enero. A lot of communities are named after the date when they were founded. A local man showed us where they press aguaje fruits to extract oils used to make make-up in Europe. It has a lot of female hormones in it and makes your skin look younger. The local women use leftovers and say their skin looks 10 years younger overnight! They can sell a huge bag of this for 25 soles in Iquitos. A tiny bottle of it sells for 35 dollars in drug stores. I think that's a rip off.

Then we went behind the fruit press to see the aguaje trees that they climb to get the aguaje. They used to cut the trees down to get the fruits. Now they climb them using simple rope tools and collect from the same trees all year. A few of us tried to climb. Not me. It was harder than he made it look.

Then the locals took us for a ride in their dug out canoes. My canoe driver was named Haber and he was 13 years old. What a cutie. They have to have really good balance. The canoes ride really low in the water so they are super easy to tip. Thankfully none of us fell overboard.

After we said our goodbyes and thank-yous we got back in the boats and went to a little pond just off the river where we were able to swim! The water was sort of chilly, but definitely warm enough. There were dolphins nearby, which was a good sign. Dolphins eat piranhas. It was roughly 5 meters deep where we were so it was a solid 20 minutes of treading water. But it was so fun.

Then we had lunch which was a traditional Peruvian dish served only in June because it is eaten to celebrate El Día de San Juan. I think I read somewhere that this is because the way it is wrapped in lettuce resembles John's head being served to Harod on a platter. But don't quote me on that. This is when I got eaten by mosquitos because my bug spray washed off and I was still too wet to reapply. No fair.

After lunch we fished for piranhas. Don't get too excited, they weren't very big. These ones couldn't have even fit my finger in their mouth. But it was still super cool. I caught a freshwater sardine. We ate the piranhas at dinner. They were served to us whole. We had to like, pop the head off and then just eat the meat even though I wasn't sure where the bones were. Because of this, I am 98.9% sure I ate some ribs.

Then we went back to the lodge. On the way it poured. This was rainforest rain. It was nothing like anything I had ever experienced before. There was so much rain. At one point it felt like I was being shot with tiny round things (I would say paintballs, but I haven't experienced that and don't want to). It was awful. Everything we took with us got soaked except for the few valuables we stashed behing a seat. Since the humidity is around 100% in the rainforest, nothing dried. Our clothing options were extremely limited for the rest of the trip.

Before dinner we went looking for caiman. Caiman are just like alligators, only a little different. When it gets dark, you can boat along the rivers and shine your flashlight along the banks. Their eyes glow red in the light. It's sweet. One of the guides caught a baby and we each took turns holding it. Just call me Bindi (The Crocodile Hunter's daughter, of course). We also got another good look at the stars. I wish I could see that every night.

After dinner, some locals from the San Jorge community came over to show us their dances and music. It was really cool. Their dances are a lot of kicking and hopping on your toes. Nothing too fancy, but enough to make my calves really sore. Members of the San Jorge community work at the lodge. They have an agreement to help take care of the environment around the lodge in exchange for jobs and tourist activities.

Day 3

We got up bright and early for birdwatching and a visit to San Jorge. We saw parakeets and a few hawks. We also stopped at a small community and a 6th grade boy showed us the fish he had caught that morning. In those communities there is no adolescence. It is child then man. At 11 years old he already has a lot of responsibility.

At the San Jorge community we were able to buy souvenirs made by the local women. They were really cool and really cheap. And I got to say I was supporting the local economy. This provides money for them that doesn't come from exploiting the rainforest, so I think that's pretty cool. San Jorge is very organized. They have local elections every year for mayor and 2 other positions. Their first project was concrete paths so that they wouldn't step on snakes. Then they wanted a school. Now they are in the process of getting 24 hour electricity and soon they will have internet. It was a great example of how they aren't lacking in resources, or really even poor. This is just their lifestyle. 

After breakfast we loaded up our stuff and boated back to Nauta. From Nauta we went up to where the Amazon River is formed. The Amazon is the largest river by volume and length in the world. The Congo and Mississippi are second and third, respectively, by volume, but it would take two Congos and one Mississippi to fill the Amazon. The Peruvian military reports the Amazon at 15 meters in some points and Brazil reports 100 meters! So yeah, it's pretty big. At some points you can't see the other side. Where we were, I kept thinking we were on a lake. Nope, it's definitely a river.

Eventually we made our way back to Nauta where we got on a bus that took us to our plane. We were all sad to be leaving, but excited to get back to warm showers, electricity, and internet. I'm still really tired, but it was probably one of the most exciting weekends of my life.