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Published: February 16th 2007
Belen
Pearse street kinsale after a heavy downpour?We caught a bus from from the desert to Lima, and from there we jumped on a plane to the jungle in the north of Peru. Destination - Iquitos. The largest city in the world (population roughly 400,000) that is inaccessible by road. The only ways to get in or out are plane or boat.
The main aim was to find ourselves a tour in to the jungle. We spent almost half a day being harassed by people and talking with potential groups before settling on Yarapa river lodge. This lodge has a great reputation and are associated with Cornell uni over in the U.S. As such they are a bit pricey. Due to it being the quiet time of year at the moment we managed to get them down to half price for a 4 day 3 night trip.
That afternoon we went and had a look at the Belen district of Iquitos. This is an area where all the houses are on water. A young local offered to take us around in his canoe. Was poorer than i had expected it to be...almost like a favela on water.
The lodgings were excellent. Far from roughing it
Amazon Jungle
The culprit - we thought he was just being friendly, or maybe we made him nervous. in tents, our room was the largest of the trip. All meals were provided as well as 3 excursions into the jungle per day.
Our first excursion was pirhana fishing and i can honestly say that Pop is looking down denying any knowledge of myself as his grandson...i was disgraceful. I caught 2 but i reckon i must have given away half a kilo of bait in getting them.
On the second day we were cruising along the river and Renee actually spotted some monkeys that the guides had missed. We pulled in close for a look, and one monkey in particular became very curious. He jumped in to the boat, up on to our guide then on to me - and shat on us both. Sly little bastard.
Other excursions included a canoe trip, bird spotting, jungle trek, pygmy monkey spotting, Caiman spotting etc basically checking out the flora/fauna in the area. We visited a tribe up river and had women tell us stories about giving birth to frogs.
MUM - SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH
On one of the nights we were told that we were going to go out looking for Tarantulas. Thought
Belen
Family size car this would involve a bit of a boat trip somewhere that they are commmon. Turns out they´re common everywhere. Only had to step outside and they were all over the place around where we were sleeping. And they´re massive.
Again our guides on the trip were excellent. One of them, Esteban, was in his 60´s and had worked with Harry Butler back in the day, when he was over doing some stuff on amazonian snakes. The way they picked different animals out of the foliage at a distance was pretty impressive.
Esteban was a bit of a story teller. The two best stories involved explanations of how he came to be married to his first and second wife. Stole the first from a tribe that was located four days up the river. She was then stolen from him a year later by a tribe from down river. Bought his second wife for 5 bottles of sugar cane rum and a packet of ciggies. Ahhh the good old days.
After being eaten alive (Renee especially) by mutant sized mozzies we were ready to move on to the final part of our trip in Peru.
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the big fella
non-member comment
she didnt skip
no further comment necessary. We won't be going