The jungle - day dos

After retiring at around 9pm, we woke up bright and early in the morning for our pre-breakfast excursion. This turned out to be a canoe ride for just Johan and myself and our guide, Moises and we had to help with the paddling! The morning is comfortably cool and it was clear that the birds also agreed because they were out in full glory. I wish I could remember the names of all the birds that we saw, I hear that there is a checklist that we can use to record what we've seen so I will try to source one of them. The best part of the trip was seeing the calmness of the river and the refection of the jungle in it.

Breakfast was the usual delicious food and soon afterwards was time for our walk. We took a boat to the place were some of the others were meant to go camping the night before but their guide got ill so they couldn't go so we proceeded to take the walk around the lake. It was a long and hot walk, too hot for many of the animals though we did manage to see some tiny night monkeys up a tree and lots of birds including a tucan - though I didn't see that one...

Pirana fishing
After lunch, several others arrived from Iquitos and another traveller, a nice medical student from California, joined our group. The afternoon excursion was a trip to go fishing for piranas on the river. Very exciting! We travelled for a bit by boat to where the piranas were and Moises showed us how to bait the hook, make a circle in water lilies and drop our hook deep into the water. Within seconds I got the first bite, a tiny little thing that had to be thrown back. We fished in a couple of spots, finally finishing with about 8 acceptable fish including one that Johan caught! They have promised that we will be able to eat them tonight... I hope so :)

After dinner (yes we ate piranas and yes they were delicious) we went out again on to the river by night with the new group that arrived at lunch time today. Again I was amaized by the number and beauty of the stars. With no artificial lights to compete with, we really had the chance to see the stars the way our ancient forefathers would have seen them. The sky was clear and the moon was yet to rise so they were displayed in all their splendor. Wonderful. And then the moon rose - full and low and a yellowish-orange colour... A sight I will remember always.

The next few days were just as amazing as the first two however they were so visual that it's hard to just describe them so we've created a photo album for you to see.

Peru