El Dorado Iquitos

... 8230; All the creatures I’ve just mentioned were nothing like the ones you would find down Reddish Vale by the way… They were ALL effing enormous !!!
We stayed out until after dark when the jungle sounds changed totally, there were some weird noises coming out of the blackness, we tried fishing for Pirahnas, the intention was to take a canoe but we ended up having to dangle a line from the shore cos some thoughtless Peruvian neighbour of ...

... more time and showed us a rubber tree. A few nicks in the tree sends out a solid trickle of white sap. Taking in a little onto our fingers we were able to roll it together easily enough to make our own rubber. One tree can produce 25 kg of rubber. This was the main cash crop of the jungle 100 years ago before rubber tree seeds were smuggled out of the country. Now, oil is the main resource.
Back at the lodge Andy and Eric take the best refreshing ...

... within spear stabbing range. He just aimed at the fish and threw it! The spear landed solidly into the water and we paddled after it. As he dislodged the spear from the water, pulled it out, a wolf fish was flapping at the end of it! Unbelievable! It seemed so ridiculous that he actually nailed that the we just laughed. He felt bad after that and gave Andy and I the spear a bunch of times-although our throws were much less interesting. Eric got the spear again, outright ...

... everywhere on the ground and the elevated floor is safer. Fantastic.
We unloaded our stuff at the lodge and our guide, suggested a hike. He was raised in a small village inside the jungle and grew up knowing first hand the ins and outs of the wild. At this point we had already met a few jungle folk and appreciated the local flavor to which their names where chosen - Achilles, Diesel, and Gedrani. Our guide came from a family with no less imagination ...

... they picking on me? Do I have some sort of look? It started to become a little disconcerting after a while.

Continuing my gastronomic tour has been pretty easy in Iquitos. There are a lot of local specalities that are tasty - however, there are also lots of enangered species making an appearance on restaurant menus - I've seen turtle in numerous forms in the market stalls and on menus in restaurants. I was so tempted to try some in a restaurant in Iquitos the ...

... boat ride to Pucallpa, and then another flight to Lima because the road between them is too dangerous for buses.

After sulking for a while, we went to Port Henry to look at the boat. Only took about 4 minutes to decide just to fly out. The boat looked a bit scabby, no windows in the cabins, too many hammocks in the common area, and they flushed into the river, then used the water to cook with. We´re just not that adventurous.

Iquitos, Peru nathangie

... and that he is trying to stress to the women to provide a quality product. It would be interesting to come back and see how this project is progressing. On our last day we made two stops. The first was at Pilpintuwasi, a butterfly breeding center started by an Austrian woman years ago and she has also adopted some stray animals given to her...monkeys, a tapir, an anteater as well as a jaguar. I was ...

... the local branches and twigs as string. We set the fire up to get rid of the mossys which worked to some extent and then head out to explore. We immeditaly noticed the ants, in all sizes the largest being 2cm long and the ant moles up to 3m high on average and some even higher, they walk in droves and are often easy to spot because they are carrying big pieces of leaf they have taken from the tree tops. We decided to call the paths ant highways becasue they truly were, we ...

Using a reliable travel agent, a friend of my friends in Lima; really paid off on this trip. She put me in touch with Ricardo, a licensed jungle guide who runs a small tour company in Iquitos. I decided to go on a jungle excursion by myself, without any other tourists; a wise Ricardo turned out to be a reliable, knowledgeable guide, who spoke excellent English. He took care of the organization of my excursion, including a boat with a ...