Ambassador Iquitos

... aligators, played futbol with the locals, held a six foot baby anaconda, and ate more locally made popcicles than I could possibly count... just to give you an idea.<br><br>It would be very hard to accuratly descibe this place, or our experience here, but let me try to paint a picture for you:<br><br>We spent the last few days of October floating down the Mariñon River to its confluance with the Amazon River. We spent the days ...

... the Plaza de Armas offers all the luxury and comfort you could desire. But for those who are happy with a more modest environment, there are plenty of possibilities.<br><br>Obviously, the rainforest is by far the most important reason why tourists come to this region. The Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, named after the two rivers that form its natural borders, is the main attraction. If you want to see the virgin rainforest and experience first hand what jungle life ...

... out to be the only redeeming attribute to the whole market, because when Eric and Andy got directed to the same &#8220;market&#8221; I did, she went up to him and said, &#8220;excuse me, are you Eric?&#8221; When he answered yes, she relayed the message that I had already left.<br> My run did not get any better. By 8 the temperature must have been 80 degrees. I ran back to Eric&#8217;s and my hotel to see if he was still there, and then to Mad Mick&#8217;s to see if maybe he ...

... ear. It was as bad or worse than a marsh in the Boundary Waters, except here one of these mosquitoes might be armed with malaria. We broke out our bug spray- 98% deet. And that didn&#8217;t do any good. So we put on the deet lotion. And that didn&#8217;t phase them either. We stared eating our meal alternating bites and mosquito swats, but it really makes for a lousy meal if you can&#8217;t pick up your spoon long enough to put something in your mouth before something bites ...

Iquitos is a pretty isolated city in the Amazon basin. Its deep in the rainforest and has no road access to the outside world, so if you want to go there, you either have to take a riverboat or fly there. I flew in on Monday and the first thing that happened was the heavens opened at it started to rain (first rain I'd seen in 3 weeks - duh, its the rainforest after all). Big old fat wet rain that we don't tend to get in Britain. The stuff that's really really wet. Iquitos ...

... back to camp at sundown and chill at the lodge for the night. The next morning we head back out on the boat for some pirahana fishing. We caught about a dozen pirahans and other types of fish. They have some pretty sharp teeth, and i nice jaw muscle. We take another swim in the river and head back to the lodge to pack and return to iquitos.<br><br>Iquitos is a beautiful city. It contains a little over half a million inhabitants and is the largest city in the ...

... far from hungry at any point on the trip. Gart &amp; I ate together and we invited Edson and Judy to join us but they weren't comfortable with that. I was totally pampered on the trip and it's always a bit difficult for me to accept that kind of deference from other people but it was clear that that was the way they wanted it so I graciously acquiesced. We all got along quite well and easily and the ...

... though the trees and forest of the jungle and a faster pace meanign you can go in further and you are much closer to the top of the trees in order to see the birds, nests, sloths, monkeys and many more creatures that live up there. back to spear fishing Falcon`s first few attemtps succeded and he passed the spear on to us to try, Jonathan didn`t succed and passed it to me who surprisingly caught a medium size fish on my first attempt. The fishes happend to be passing very ...

... it. Something that looked like a fair-sized twig, all of a sudden tried to run off and find a safe spot to hide: a walking stick, or stick insect, of about 6 inches in length. These are amazing, harmless creatures that can barely be distinguished from a dry twig. Even the way the head is attached to the body looks exactly like a piece of dry wood. <br>We decided to put our friend on a tree trunk, but this did not meet the approval of its tenants ...