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Published: June 13th 2009
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Probably, but not noticeable. I'm referring to the spider monkey that jumped on my head on Monday and started looking for bugs. Hope he didn't find any. I'll put up pictures later, but I forgot my camera in the hotel room for now.
The trip here was uneventful; the long layover in NY was interesting as the terminal was full of people going to the Middle East, South America, and Ireland. LAN airlines is THE nicest airline I've ever used; friendly staff, good food (but seriously, serving supper
and wine at 1 am? 😊 I passed on that.). Got to Lima, went through customs, rechecked in, and got on a flight to Puerto Maldonado via Cusco. Absolutely beautiful... the Andes are enormous, expansive, and look completely different from above as the towns in them are small, the roads are curvy, and there's not nearly as much development as at home. Flying over the rainforest, too, post-Cusco (which looks awesome. Can't wait to go.), was incredible; I have never seen so much total green in my life.
After landing in Puerto Maldonado, Maria picked me up and I took a motorcart to the Brombus Hotel, the base for the conservation
project. Turns out the only other American on the project, who is on staff to help Marco, a "butterfly guy" from Arequipa (a lot of the people here are from Arequipa), is from Minnesota, as well. We sat at the hotel for a while and talked, then went down to the ferry and met the rest of the group, and took the Taricaya Reserve boat ( a long, thin, wooden boat with a big canopy over the top- same as most of the boats, although not all of them have canopies) an hour or so downstream to the reserve. Pictures later, too, but I got a brief tour and went to bed.
Brief summary of the week: MWF is activities from 5:45am to 7:45am, then breakfast, activities from 9 to 11, lunch, siesta till 3:30, and another activity until 5:30. Dinner is at 7, and we have free time (and can use the electricity, which is only on from 6 to 9) till whenever we want to go to bed. TTh is activities from 8 to 11 and then again from 3:30 to 5:30. Thursday, though, we had a talk about ants by Stuart, the guy in charge of
the lodge. REALLY interesting. Ask me about it sometime; I don´t want to use my time talking about that right now. Activities so far have included lots of birdwatching (first morning on the canopy platform, which was pretty scary for me as it's one of the tallest canopy platforms in the Amazon, and the walkway to get to it swings and has nets & cables for railings. Needless to say, the little walkways above water on the paths were NOTHING on the way back to the reserve. Otherwise, feeding the animals (spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys, parrots of several kinds, macaws, toucans, jaguar!!, margay, jaguarundi, tapirs, coati, pacaraña), birdwatching at the other platforms, clearing trails and forest (with machetes, which is sweet), ... lots to do. Lots of downtime, too, which has been a bit tough for me to get used to. Next week I'm giving myself a project-
consciously learning Spanish, and maybe going to the sandbar to swim (there are anacondas, caiman, and pirahnas, though, so maybe not).
Food is pretty good. I am tired of rice. 😊 Yesterday morning we got homemade donuts with chocolate sauce, which was great. Otherwise it´s lots of potatoes, rice,
and meat in gravy with small amounts of vegetables. Not much fruit... although Myrian, the older French woman here, begged some bananas from the kitchen the morning we had crepes, so we had bananas rolled in crepes with chocolate sauce... I´m drinking the water (it´s from a creek in the reserve) and have felt fine. Actually no issues yet. Knock on wood.
Ok, I think I´m going to go track down my group as we are going to eat lunch somewhere here soon, but shoot me emails or comment if you like! I can´t promise that I will be able to reply to them all, but I still read them! Hope you are all doing well, and miss you!
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dad
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you hate heights!
Having fun in the trees??No monkeys yet here, but the birds are plentiful, if not all too common-three sets of orioles again this summer.. Enjoying the pics-kepp 'em coming Love,dad