Surprisingly, we made it out of the jungle with only a few scratches! We arrived in the very warm Iquitos Monday afternoon. We were really surprised by how different the jungle is than the rest of Perú. Peru has a very conservative culture, so it was weird to see women in tank tops and very short skirts and shorts. It was quite an adjustment! That night we had a tasty dinner of alligator nuggets and manioc/yucca and fell asleep pretty early. The next morning we met our guide, Magali, after breakfast and headed to Llanchama, the village in the jungle where we would be staying. After a combi ride and a 40 minute walk we arrived in Llanchama which was so beautiful and right on the river! They even have a discotech in their small town which we thought was hilarious. Then we arrived to our house which was so picturesque...flowers surrounding the gate and an open aired house with a thatched roof. We were so excited! We met the three "house moms" who are all so sweet and they immediately set up hammocks for us to rest from our walk. It was perfect! After a few hours we had a big lunch of fish with peppers and rice which was so flavorful and yummy. After another long rest we took a short walk around the jungle so that Señora María could show us all of the great plants that they use and their gardens. Not even half-way into the walk Emily got pretty sick and started throwing up...we're pretty sure that the heat made it worse, because she was sick the rest of the day :(. But the ladies took such great care of her! Señora María kept giving me the tour while Emily rested and I got to see so many great plants that they use for medicine and food. I even got to pick a pineapple! That night we fell asleep to all of the wonderful jungle sounds and were excited for the next day.
On Wednesday we woke up early in the morning and headed out onto the river in a canoe to go catch some fish with our rods made out of wood! Emily and I are both horrible fishers, so we didn't expect much, but the river is so beautiful in the morning. There was fog everywhere, so you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you, and the stillness/quietness was just awesome. We kept going to random coves because we weren't really catching anything, but I think it's because the fish are a lot smarter than the ones back home...they're sneaky and eat the bait off of the hook without getting caught...it's amazing. Finally we found a cove where we caught some really ugly looking fish that are apparently bait fish. Needless to say, we weren't proud of our first fishing experience. Then we had breakfast with my tasty pineapple from the day before and took long naps in our hammocks. After lunch, we headed back out onto the river to have hopefully more success than our previous attempt. We were out on the river for a while before any fish even started biting, but we got to see a pink dolphin which was awesome! We only caught one fish on our second attempt, but apparently it was the biggest fish in the amazon! Only the one I caught was a baby haha. So we headed back for dinner and planned to take a nightly stroll to find tarantulas! We usually go to bed around 7 or 8, so we stayed up way past our bedtime that night. We were walking for about 45 minutes and hadn't found and tarantulas, so Señora María decided to look for snakes instead. We were both thinking "Oh even better!" But after an hour and a half we hadn't found anything, so headed back to go to bed.
Yesterday we were hoping for a relaxed day because we would only be there until lunch, but our relaxed day quickly turned into one of the longest days ever. After breakfast, Magali asked if we wanted to go for a walk. Thinking it would be around an hour to an hour and a half, we said yes...Señora María had other plans. We started climbing through the jungle about 45 minutes in and the mosquitos didn't make it easy. Then we came to a small lake that was too deep to walk across, so Señora María started fixing a small balsa raft which basically looked like 4 twigs roped together. I was pretty set on not getting wet because I knew we had a flight later and I had no other shoes and I didn't want my camera to get wet, so I said a big no to the sinking raft. So we started walking to find another way which led us to another balsa raft with huge logs that still managed to be submerged in the water when someone was on it. We decided to take that one and hope for the best. Emily went first and quickly found that the center was not really the best place to be...she got soaked on one side up to her thigh but strategically made it across without falling off. I was a little more fortunate, because only my shoes got soaked. After our lake rafting we traipsed through the jungle some more and stumbled upon some squirrel monkies high in the trees. Apparently when they saw us they were planning an attack, so we left pretty quickly. By the time we started going back to the house we were about 2 hours into our hike and exhausted from the heat and no water. We just kept stumbling everywhere and hoped to get back to the house in one piece. I was almost certain that a snake was going to attack my ankles at some point along our journey, but we made it back to the house just in time for lunch, unscathed less a couple of scratches.
We left our sweet house moms after lunch with a sad good-bye and headed to the airport where we were certainly the smelliest people on the plane. We felt really bad for anyone sitting near us. So we REALLY enjoyed our warm showers this morning :). We're back in Lima and sad that our journey is almost over. Today we're going to visit the market in Lima and spend some time with our family here that we love. I guess since this will most likely be the last post of our trip, we'd like to say thank all of you who have been reading along and praying for us. We've had such a wonderful experience here and can't wait to return one day. We love the peruvian people and culture and are so blessed to have had the time and experience that we've had. So our last prayer request is that you would pray for the Peruvian people and nation as a whole, that God would move mightily here and that the nation would rise to glorify Jesus. We love you and we'll see you soon!
P.S. We're trying to change our flight on Sunday from Miami to Atlanta to 9:10 AM so that we'll get home earlier, and if that one is full we'll be getting on the 11:25 AM flight.
love! Lauren
We left our sweet house moms after lunch with a sad good-bye and headed to the airport where we were certainly the smelliest people on the plane. We felt really bad for anyone sitting near us. So we REALLY enjoyed our warm showers this morning :). We're back in Lima and sad that our journey is almost over. Today we're going to visit the market in Lima and spend some time with our family here that we love. I guess since this will most likely be the last post of our trip, we'd like to say thank all of you who have been reading along and praying for us. We've had such a wonderful experience here and can't wait to return one day. We love the peruvian people and culture and are so blessed to have had the time and experience that we've had. So our last prayer request is that you would pray for the Peruvian people and nation as a whole, that God would move mightily here and that the nation would rise to glorify Jesus. We love you and we'll see you soon!
P.S. We're trying to change our flight on Sunday from Miami to Atlanta to 9:10 AM so that we'll get home earlier, and if that one is full we'll be getting on the 11:25 AM flight.
love! Lauren
