Pacaya Samiria Amazon Lodge Iquitos

... ans a load of natives. An hour and a half later, after a couple of stops to drop of the natives in remote villages en route, we pulled off the Amazon and into the river Tapira, 10 minutes later we came to the lodge &#8211; When I say we, I mean me, I was the only gringo in the place, in fact I had the whole lodge to myself.<br><br>After being issued with a pair of wellies - Standard jungle wear and VERY neccesary ( I once tried explaining to my guide that ...

... town, surprisingly open-minded, with a very young population. It has a fun and exciting nightlife of many bars and discos and a large, thriving gay community.<br><br>If you want to know more about this city, its people and about the Amazon rainforest, you can visit ikitos.com. There you will find a lot of fun, interesting and useful information in English and Spanish. And if you decide to visit Iquitos, make sure you contact me at ikitos travel. You will be glad you did.

<br> Our last day in the jungle and Eric&#8217;s birthday. We had a 3 hour canoe ride back to the camp so we decided we would leave super early in the morning when the wildlife is the most active - and may still see some nightlife critters. It should help to make 3 hours of canoe paddling go by quicker. We were up by 4am but it took us a good ½ an hour to pack everything up and get into the canoe. We only had a few minutes of night canoeing before the sun ...

... stepped on it. We didn&#8217;t know much about snakes but we knew not to get close to a brightly colored one! Falcon turned back and identified it as a land coral snake. It is one of the most venomous in the jungle and with a unique ability to sting from the tail as well as bite with their teeth. Not knowing if we would be as lucky as Falcon and Andy, we walked well clear of it on our way past and paid a little more attention to the jungle floor as well as the canopy ...

... was about 6 inches long or more, and Eric took the first throw. He nailed it! Gedrani took the fish off of the spear, Falcon spotted a few more wolf fish on the shore, and Gedrani passed the spear to me. I had a clear shot, stabbed the spear into the water, and pulled out a string of&#8230;river plants! Eric made it look really easy. I pulled the plants of and passed the spear to Andy. We found more fish, he stabbed the spear into the water, and&#8230;sticks. Andy passed ...

... The dude selling jungle cigars was his uncle. George has lived his whole life in Belén - he was born there and is raising his own family there now (4 very sweet kids under the age of 6 - I met them too). He lives in one of the floating houses on rafts which he built himself and is making a modest living by showing tourists around what is basically river squalor. He, his wife and their 4 kids live in a two-room wooden shack on a raft on the Ucayali that is smaller than ...

... what chiggers are, count yourself lucky! And let me say that itchy bites and hot, humid jungle weather don´t go together too well.<br><br>Iquitos is...interesting. Pretty enough town, some cool old buildings from the rubber boom era. The city is crawling with self-proclaimed jungle guides trying to sell their very expensive tours. They follow tourists around, wait for them outside of restaurants and hotels, learn their names, do follow up ...

... Really fun and interesting. At Lagunas we met a guide who led us through the jungle to the village of Samitos where Don Edson met us with the boat. This man was less garrulous and seemed to be doing the job only for the money. But Gart and I both agreed that we could hardly absorb more information anyway so we were happy to enjoy just hiking. At Samitos, a village of about 2000, we visited the ...

... up to our amazment and handed it to us which Jonathan gladly held it, he assured us that it wont bite as it is too young. They were roughly 30-40cm long and actually quite cute but even so I let Jon hold it, not really a great appeal for me. We failed to find any large ones but we were very satisfied with what we did see and headed back to the lodge. The sound of the jungle at night is so much more loud and intense, while sleeping it doesn`t really disturb us too much but when ...

... who took on the form of a tiger (jaguar), killed many of the Iquito, and many of them fled. The tiger chased them, trying to eat them.<br>One old lady tricked the tiger and blinded him. She was able to kill him. She cooked the claws of the tiger and used the nails to make a necklace. She put this necklace on a parrot, which then flew across the jungle, looking for smoke plumes of the various Iquito in hiding. They saw the necklace on the parrot ...