Ecovagabond Lodge Iquitos

... jungle was a 9 hole course take look .. http://www.amazongolfcourse.com/. I walked into the wooden shack that was the club house and paid for a round of 18 holes, hire of clubs, balls, tees, a caddy and two beers - All for 100 soles (4 soles to the euro - you do the sums). Not the best course I have ever played, but definately the most interesting, possibly the only ...

... a blizzard would just blow through for a little while.<br><br> At noon we arrived back at the campsite for a lunch of rice and more fish. After this, we headed to a nearby stream about a 15 minute walk from the camp. We brought two of the remaining uncooked fish with us and Gedrani cut them into bait sized chunks. We baited our hooks and dropped the lines in the water. Jen pulled out a puny little catfish within just a few minutes. A few minutes later ...

... around to one side of it. He signaled us to move to the side as well. The hole was easily 2 feet wide by a foot and a half high. &#8220;This is an anaconda hole. The anaconda must be 2 meters. You see this?&#8221; He pointed to the ground. We hadn&#8217;t noticed before, but now that he pointed it out, there were no leaves there. That was odd as there was about a half an inch of leaves covering the rest of the jungle floor. &#8220;The anaconda cleans it so when a rat comes ...

... turns holding the tarantula until he decided to run up Andy&#8217;s shoulder and Andy swatted him off. The tarantula didn&#8217;t seem to like that very much and ran-jumped away into the rice patties. We started to chase to pick up again, but he scrambled and proved pretty fast despite his &#8220;baby&#8221; size. After the third unsuccessful snatch, we thought to ourselves, &#8220;what are we doing!!??&#8221; We are trying to pick up an angry tarantula. So we ...

... was a hazy line going all the way across the sky. After staring at it for a few minutes, we realized it was probably the Milky Way Galaxy! We stared upwards at the galaxy as our boat continued along. There were shooting stars, satellites, and there were also fireflies buzzing around. And still surprisingly few mosquitoes. <br><br> All our meals were included, we slept in hammocks, and our entire 3 day boat ride set us back about 60 nuevos soles, or a whopping ...

... six), we spent relaxing, enjoying the warm weather, making some new friends, trying new foods (alligator anyone?, and surprise surprise it tastes a little like chicken), attempted to wander around the Belen market on the first day (but we were told off by the police who informed us it was dar too dangerous), successfully attempted to wander around and catch a boat taking us along the river on the second day, visited a butterfly farm and animal orphanage ...

... When Herzog was filming Fitzcarraldo, he used this part of the city for much of the footage since it hasn't changed much in 100 years. Gart arranged a guide for me - a young man named Jino who speaks excellent English. Jino showed me the main sites in the city: the Iron House, Plaza, church ...

... And has wifi! My next stop was the office of Dawn on the Amazon with whom I would take a 5 day river trip into the jungle. I had made all the arrangements on-line so I wanted to check in and let them know I actually made it. I'll write about that trip in a separate entry because I still need to assimilate it all. Suffice it say...it was incredible! Today, Iquitos is known as the biggest city that ...

... still amazing to see. The sounds of the forest, the dolphins and the still black waters made for an idyllic location to fish for Piranha. We had plenty of bites but we only caught one tidler between us and I didn't catch it. After an hour we left the still waters of the lagoon and rejoined the Yarbaba river in search of Woolly monkeys. Our guide said the Woolly monkey is the Amazon's friendliest primate and if we had banana's which we did, they would certainly come ...

... reason; there was a chunk missing in the side, so the guy in the back had to throw out the water that kept spilling in. Not a popular task, I gathered. There were several more night time canoe trips, day trips and jungle walks, searching for the local wildlife to enjoy the view of river dolphins, turtles, flocks of parrots, monkeys, and even a young tapir swimming across the river. And there were fish, and plenty of them. At times I ...