Day 14 - Cumaceba Lodge Iquitos

Today was our last day at the lodge, we were all up at 6:00am and went bird watching in the lagoon behind the lodge the same spot were we went Caiman spotting last night.

The Irish girls didn’t turn up this morning as they did the tribal medicine thing (Shamanism) where you hallucinate from this drink that comes from some Jungle tree, it take the evil spirits out let's you see back in your past, see into your future, shows all the good and bad you have done and cleansers your soul. (Look it up in Google and have a read)

It was another warm morning and plenty of wildlife around the lagoon with some funny looking birds, frogs and fish jumping. After about 40 minutes of the guide explaining the wildlife in the lagoon area we then headed back to the lodge for breakfast that consisted of scrambled eggs with potato and bread rolls.

The girls turned up and they were worse for wear as they hadn't slept at all. They were telling our little group about the experiences they had and what they saw and felt, it really freaked them out but they weren’t scared at all through this ordeal (and it is the quietest they have been). From seeing their past, evil spirits, to vomiting and hallucinating for 3 hours they were totally exhausted. They described the feeling at being with peace within yourself, it was as though you were watching it all unfold within in you and releasing it, one of the girls starting crying at the table and had to leave.

Around 9:00am we headed upstream in a motor boat to visit a local farm, these Amazon farmers don’t need much as they live off the land and river and are very content in what they have and welcome everyone in with open arms. The kids are amazing and whether they are from Australia or here they still get up to the same mischief. This family work on the land and the mother had 12 children, the other family members also live here and there just seems to be heaps of them, who own what child I don’t know how they figure it out. After about and hour we then boarded our boat and headed out to the other side of the Amazon to try our luck at Piranha fishing. A tiny hook is used and fresh meat. I mentioned to someone we used monkey fingers for bait, the boatman must have understood me and cracked up laughing, I thought he only spoke Spanish...it just goes to show, you never know. Once you have the bait on, you thrash your rod (which is a bamboo pole) in the water to attract the fish and drop the bait in, within seconds you have a few tugs on your line. It took awhile but Jeff managed to catch the first fish.... a fresh water sardine. About 5 minutes later I caught a Piranha, massive it was all of two inches long. Our guide and a couple of others caught piranha and Sardines.

We headed back to the lodge for our last lunch together which consisted of fish, which again was very nice, then packed up and made our way back to the launch to take us back to Iquitos. About two minutes after leaving the lodge, the motor on the boat started to play up, it was as though the prop was slipping and couldn't get the boat to plane, after numerous attempts he cut the motor and a fellow in a canoe helped him tighten the prop nut...and away we went again (bush mechanics)

We jumped into a couple of motor taxis and headed of to our Hostel to pick our gear up, as we arrived a Cumaceba Lodge car pulled up to take us to the airport.

Jeff and I both thought how strange it was, we spent three days with these other six people and didn't even get to say goodbye to any of them and we were just whisked away in a taxi and taken to the airport.

We were sitting in our plane wondering why it was taking so long to get moving when a security officer came on board and yelled at a woman who was lead off the plane, some other woman kicked up a fuss and went off with her, only one lady came back on the other led away by security. This is where Spanish would have been real handy to see what went on. Well we think the pilot got a little peeved of by this because as he taxied down the runway he was going a little faster than normal and when he turned to line up on the main runway he had already put the throttle down, so around the corner we went and we were up in the air in about half the time it should have taken....talk about a cranky pilot

Besides all that the flight was good and got back to Barranco around 10:15 and headed out for our last meal, didn't leave must choice but to have Pizza at this time of night.

Tomorrow we head back to Oz.

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