Victoria Regia Hotel Iquitos

... it rains EVERY day, usually around one o’clock and only for about 15-20 minutes, but we are talking rain here, it makes an English downpour seem like a shower, after the rain the heat builds up to a steaming humidity, I have never sweated so much. Fanbloodytastic !!!Got back to Iquitos in plenty of time to pick up laundry, have a couple of beers in the Yellow Rose of Texas and get this typed out .. Tomorrow its adios Iquitos and Hola Cusco. - I will return !!

... 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. <br> Back at the lodge Andy and Eric take the best refreshing ...

... when the water level drops the fish just have less space to swim in and make for easy pickin&#8217;s. By the end of the night we 5 fish literally jump into our boat! The next morning we just sat out and watched the steam in the distance. Fish were jumping out or just bobbing up for insects so much that it looked like rain was fallling on the slow moving stream. Considering all the wildlife in the jungle I guess we shouldn&#8217;t be so surprised that the waters are also teaming with life.

... calls. We saw hawks, termite nests the size refrigerators, loads of butterflies, and a group of monkeys. The monkeys jumped from tree to tree and made an impressive amount of noise for their small size. On a smaller termite nest near the ground falcon chopped off a corner with his machete, exposing hundreds of small brown termites. He showed us how you can hold your hand to the nest and let the termites crawl up your arm. You can then rub your hands and arms ...

Okay so actually getting to this town to catch this boat turned out not nearly as difficult as i am probably going to make it sound. From Chachapoyas we first had a two hour minivan ride (with Nikki and i sharing the front with the driver) to the town of Pedro Ruiz. Following a break of about an hour for some lunch, we then hopped on the nearest bus taking us straight to Taropoto. Now this was your usual seven hour bus trip, boring boring boring, though i ...

... time in a week, joy! We took one walk into the jungle to look for the giant lilypads, and guess what we found? That´s right, more chiggers! Also mud like you´ve never seen. Also a tarantula. But it wasn´t all bad, we stumbled across a Great Potoo sleeping in a tree, and finally caught up with a Cotinga (Plum-throated for those keeping score). <br><br> Back on the boat, we were served a wonderful lunch, and we headed up a smaller tributary ...

... sting visit but it was hard to say no to buying a bunch of stuff...especially since I was the only tourist in this group. Before docking at Bellavista-Nanay, we cruised the area where the Nanay empties in tot he Amazon. These areas where the black waters of the tributaries empty in to the muddy Amazon are prime Bufeo Colorado habitat. This is the pink river dolphin that also captured my attention so ...

... The day was more of the same but more differnent animals, we saw more monkeys and path of either a big caimen or anaconda, we also saw suck monekys which are very rare and we were very fortunate finally returning to the lodge on the third day, fithly tired and biten to death. The lodge was very basic and had no showers only the river which we both didn`t really fancy and the toliet were to the far back of the lodge in a wooden hut but becasue of the water level you need wellys ...

... Samiria Reserve. By nightfall, we stopped at a small village called Arequipa, with about 70 inhabitants. Wherever I walked, a small group of children followed me. They didn't speak, but just stared and laughed at everything I said. By 7.00 PM it was pitch-dark. There was no moon and there were no clouds, so the conditions for a night canoe trip were excellent. The light of billions of stars proved to be sufficient to light our way. The ...