ExplorNapo Lodge Iquitos

The Amazon can best be described by an expression that dominates the vocabulary of its inhabitants:¨¡Que Rico, How Rich!¨... the diversity of colors, customs, climate, wildlife, natural resources, food and music is rich beyond description, and unknown to any other part of the world. <br><br>In the two weeks that we have spent in the jungle we have: seen trees that walk, ran soaking wet through a tropical thunder storm, learned how to ...

... br><br>A rubber baron named Anselmo del Águila, who visited the Paris World Fair of 1889, bought an unusual house that was on display there. It was designed by non other than Gustave Eiffel, who also built the Eiffel Tower for the occasion of the World Fair. The house was made entirely of iron and is said to be the first prefab house in the world. Anselmo del Águila had it taken apart and shipped to Iquitos, where natives carried the iron parts through the jungle ...

... of the river where I was. I swam back to the shore towards Jen. I was completely unaware, but apparently the dolphins must have followed me back because when I was at a point shallow enough to stand up again, next to the group, the dolphins were still only 20 ft away. Everyone got a few good looks at them playfully jumping around in the water. By the time I was able to recover from the swim and look around they were gone again. <br> After spending an hour in the Ucayali ...

... dinner. Our guides make up some spaghetti and fruit. After dinner we all head into the jungle for some night wondering. Yes, walking into the most terrifying amazing place in the world at night. You try your hardest to avoid touching ANYTHING in fear of being attacked by some animal. In one day, i had more spiders crawling on me than my entire life combined. And these spiders are not the little ones you see back in alaska. I ended up catching the largest frog you ...

... and his expat friends that were having an animated discourse on how to work around the beauracracy of Peruvian government. I enjoyed a delicious 'Texas-style' pancake, which was actually not like anything I ever ate in Texas, but very large and tasty nevertheless.<br>I found a decent hotel to stay in and that evening I ran into a couple people I met on the riverboat a few days prior. We all wanted to go see the San Juan festival which was very big ...

... I was a little disappointed because I thought it would be nice to talk and connect with some other folks but...nothing to be done about it and I wasn't going to cancel if Bill wasn't! My guide, Gart, picked me up at the hotel at 8 Saturday morning and, guess what? Turns out he's Dutch! What fun! He was a great guy and I hope he enjoyed our time together as much as I did! In the end I was really glad ...

... due to the toliets being emptied straight into the water. This made is very hard as the sun was scorching down on us and all we wanted to do was jump in. We resisted of course and after 40 mintues we were dropped back at the base of the market which is on an elevated part of land. The market was very intriging and we saw many other fruits that we hadn`t seen before plus many herbs and remidies from the amazion being sold as cures to all different types of illnesses. We also ...

... night a snake had crawled into the boat. I was chatting away with our guest for the week, when a slight movement caught my eye and I spotted it, slowly crawling along, as snakes do. The captain soon caught it, even though it put up quite a fight. Whether it was or wasn't poisonous remains a topic of debate; even the experts couldn't agree. But we were able to set it free, and both the snake and we were unharmed.<br><br> We set off in our canoe to ...