The Colombian Amazon

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Buenos Tardes,

We arrived in Leticia without any issues. Fortunatly, the humidity wasn´t as bad as Cartagena, but it was still over 30 degrees there! Upon landing, we were surprised with an arrival tax that is only applicable to tourists. They horde you off and you have to take a separate entrance and pay or you cannot enter the country.

We went into town where we could pick up a bus to take us 11km along the 28km road to nowhere. The road is in very good conditions, but stops at the jungle after 28km for no apparent reason. We stopped at the 11km mark because our accomodation Omshanty was there. We met the owner of Omshanty, Enrique, who is a Basque biologist but would not be out of place at a Lamb of God concert due to the amount of facial piercings he had!

We got to our cabin which is basically a rustic cabi with plenty of mosquito netting in the middle of the jublge except for the fact that it had drinkable water and cooking facilities.

The next morning, Val and Peter woke up at 330am so they could go for a walk in the jungle with Esteban, an ornithologist, and Walter, and local native. We saw many birds including toucans, hawks, falcons, macaws and vultures, as well as monkeys, many irridescently blue Morphus butterflies and a boa constrictor. The jungle walk was fun but tiring.

After we got back to the Omshanty, Val and Peter headed into Leticia itself where they crossed the border to Tabatinga, Brazil, just because they could. They then went down to the Amazon River itself and were amazed by the size of it and the amount of traffic on it before heading back to the hostel and leaving Leticia, for Bogota once more.

Bye for now,
Peter and Val

Things we learned in Leticia:
-Hot water is not available. There have been nothing but cold showers the whole trip so far. It´s good in hot climates, not so much at 2600 metres
-Peter´s new title is ¨insect killer¨
-Peter had his first vivid dream, a side effect of the anti-malaria medication. It involved a murder, family retribution and a hot dog cart. Don´t ask, it didn´t make much sense.

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