The outfit we used, Otorongo Expeditions, is owned by a guy from NY who married a girl from Iquitos. He is extremely outdoorsy and the lodge is totally his dream come true. Definitely not mine, though! Haha. There was no electricity, hot water or refrigeration, so we were really roughing it! Four days was PLENTY.
So day one, we arrived and took a quick tour of the local market
Patrick's new dog. A Peruvian hairless.
( it was raining so we didn't get many pics), and then headed out to the lodge!
After lunch, took a tour of our surroundings. It was amazing how many crazy things were within a couple hundred feet of where we slept every night!
Oscar, our guide, did a great job at explaining all if the medicinal benefits of the plants/trees and pointing out what insects were poisonous and in what way (Wayyy too many for my liking!)
Did you know termites are a natural mosquito repellant? Just cover yourself in them and then rub their dead guts all over. Nbd.
We were only brave enough to rub it in our hands. Chickens.
Fungi everywhere. Most are hallucinogens, or deadly.
Nasty thorns on almost all the tree roots!
Cacao pods. The seeds in side were surrounded by a delicious pulpmthat you chew off.
One of the coolest things we saw was a tree called Dragon's Blood.
If you cut it with your machete, there is a blood red sap that oozes out which you put on wounds or cuts to help stop bleeding, kind of like a liquid bandage. He had us taste it, and it was soo weird because it was definitely a liquid but it tasted super dry in your mouth.
We also saw a rubber tree, and the dried sap is just like rubber bands!
We found a few frogs and TONS of spiders.
Some armored millipedes, can you tell I am happy to have it crawling on me?
Crazy huge bullet ants. At least one inch long! Too many bites and you die. Awesome.
Also spotted, a teeny tiny monkey up in the trees called a Pygmy marsupial. Apparently it is the smallest in the world! So tiny, and so quick, that we didn't get a pic :(
We then had a break until dinner, where we played with the lodge pets, a crazy toucan
and some Macaws that reminded me so much of Grammie's Lanza! Their squawks sure brought back memories!
After dinner, we went in search of tarantulas
and Caimans (same family as a crocodile). Yes, we caught that in the creek right by our room!
It was seriously like something out of your nightmares. We were trudging through mud and spider webs, in the pitch black in search of dangerous bugs and animals. I kept asking myself, why did you CHOOSE to do this? Haha.
Some really cool, but super hallucinogenic tree frogs.
We were very careful NOT to put our hands near our mouths or eyes after touching them!
It is so hot and muggy there that it wipes you of all energy, and since there is no electricity, you are more than happy to be in bed by 9 each night (under your mosquito nets!)
Every day follows the same routine, an adventure after breakfast, back to the lodge until lunch, followed by a siesta (loved this part! I always want a nap after lunch and here that's all everyone does!) and then another adventure. Then you hang out in the hammocks
until dinner
and try to do an adventure that night (although we had bad luck with rain so only got to go out that first night).
Highlights included tons of cool birds,
Check out those nests!
troops of monkeys (impossible to get a pic, they move soo fast!), spotting 4 sloths (one with a baby on it's back!),
swimming in the Amazon about 500 feet from pink and grey dolphins(!!!)
piranha fishing
(for the record, Patrick caught one and I caught two, thankyouverymuch),
washing Patrick's hair with Amazonian shampoo
Visiting an ENORMOUS Ceiba tree
And visiting two local villages.
This is why Patrick wasn't allowed to eat pork on his mission. So sad :( poor little piggy.
I'm a brave eater, but not brave enough to eat prehistoric catfish cooked by a local...
At one village, this lady had the craziest pet! It is basically a huge rat.
Considered a delicacy in the Amazon, people think she is crazy for keeping it as a pet, but you can tell by her face, she loves this thing like her own child.
The best part? It lives in a diet of coke and crackers!
So bizarre.
It was neat to see the villages, but also sad. Most of the girls are mothers at age 12 or 13 and they often claim to be impregnated by the Pink dolphins (local legend) to avoid getting in trouble with their parents, so they are almost all single moms. The villagers eek out a living off of basic fishing and farming rice & yucca. Their houses are just one room huts on stilts
with tons of relatives sleeping in each one. But they take pride in what they have, and seem pretty happy.
We watched one family weave palm leaves for their roof.
They said that they buy big bundles of leaves for 10 soles ( about $3) and have to carry them 5 hours back to their houses!
We had some crazy rain
and some gorgeous sunsets.
Oh, and on our last day, before heading back to Iquitos, we trekked out to some enormous Lilly pads. I'm talking HUGE! Several feet diameter.
The underside is super thick, like kelp!
And stopped by a Sugar Cane rum plantation. It was pretty neat to see how the sugar cane is still pressed by hand. And we picked up some fresh sugar cane molasses to take home!
Usually, there's a horse instead of a human, but I worked just fine!
Overall, we had a fabulous time and would definitely come back to the Amazon! It was a great way to end our time in Peru as well. Next stop? Ecuador!!
2 comments:
This looks so crazy! The bugs and animals, and the enormous rat pet. What an adventure!! I am so glad you're posting all these pictures as you go along, it is so fun to see your trip.
Wow. That is all.
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