Amazon Yarapa River Lodge Iquitos

I absolutely detested going back the same way I had come down to Peru. And being at Puno, the furthest south I was, I had to go north. I had decided a while ago that I would try to fly up to the Amazon basin, cross the boat border to Colombia and then fly up to Bogota. Well it cost a lot to do it originally, and today it became even more costly.<br><br>It all started this morning in Puno. Not so bad at all. Got up at 530 am left the hostel and caught a cheap combi ...

... floating market on canoes. It had absolutely no resemblance to Venice and we saw nothing but the most dirty and filthy market of our lives. This beats Ecuador, the rest of Peru, and even China. Garbage lined both the shoreline and the streets around the venders stalls. The smell of the trash was stronger than the smell of the food that was being sold. That is really pathetic for a fish market. A kid squatted and pooped, Chinese style, onto the pile of garbage that led the Amazon ...

... foxtail glued on the back. <br><br> We got to a lake and sat down, waiting for caiman. We had only seen little ones and Andy wanted to see a big 5m one. He mentioned several times that he had seen them on National Geographic, an Africa episode, where a huge crocodile lunged on the shoreline and pulled in a wildebeest. I think he wanted to see that live. Or a large anaconda eating something&#8230;or something. So we sat down by a swampy lake and waited. We ...

... the water at random and come up with a fish. Falcon must have liked the idea because he picked up the spear, waited for a splash, and just threw the spear. And sure enough, he got one. <br><br> As we headed back to our campsite, we passed one hawk, Mama Vieja (old mother), named after her grey head. Falcon dangled his speared fish on a stick and whistled at the bird. &#8220;A ver si tiene hambre,&#8221; (Let&#8217;s see if she&#8217;s hungry) he said, and chucked the fish ...

... is right on the amazon river. and what a wild city it is. it is the largest city in the world that is unaccesible by roads. it has 400,000 inhabitants, 100,000 motorcycles,100,000 mototaxis, and 30 cars. fact. there are so many motorcycles, and mototaxis that it seems like im in some asian city also in the middle of the jungle. the weather is humid, but not too hot. just perfect actually. its an old city that had its ...

... ride though was beautiful. We scaled the highlands of peru, a sight only comparable to alaskan beauty. Small villages lay along the mountainside. I took a few pictures, but my camera went dead. It was funny when you arrived into a town. Women would come up to the bus windows with long sticks attached to a basket with various types of food. You would give them the correct dinero amount and take the food from the basket. I bought a lot of shish kabobs on that trip ...

... a Margarita at a restaurant, Brando came by again and we chatted a while. He is way too worldly wise for someone of his age and I told him so. Makes me sad but that is the reality of so many children around the world...Slumdog Millionaire brings that point across very well. When I got back from my Rio Nanay trip I was eating lunch at the Yellow Rose of Texas (they have a great mixed salad with chonta - palm heart), Brando walked by ...

... but clearly it makes it difficult to sell artesania of there are no tourists to buy them. I did my part and bought a bracelet or 2 every day from a sweet young man named Brando. We had some nice talks but it was hard to realize how hardened to the world this 12 year old was. One of the thing I love most about Iquitos is the motocarro taxis. Okay, they're loud and bumpy (see video) but the skinny back ...

... up-river, we came across a group of capuchin monkeys as well. Meanwhile, we had already spotted a large number of birds, some of which weren't even included in the book we brought along to help us identify the animals we saw. There were kingfishers, the ever entertaining yellow-rumped caciques, different types of egrets and herons, turkey vultures and black vultures, hawks and falcons, caracaras, woodpeckers, parrots, anis great and small ...

... screamer, the hoatzin, and the sight of pink river dolphins coming to the surface of the black waters to breathe, away from any evidence of the industrialized world, made the discomforts worthwhile. Not once did I feel afraid. Not even when I was taking a bath in the river and a fish with sharp, pointy teeth decided to nibble at my upper arm. Nor when we went searching for tarantulas and instead came across a scorpion on a tree, which ...