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

Hello Jungle

Much of the next few posts were written out in the jungle where we had no electricity or internet access to upload them

So much can happen in just 24 hours that we find ourselves needing to record this as we are already beginning to forget some of the amaizing things that we have already seen.

To Muyuna
As expected in the morning we headed down towards the river (not the Amazon we discovered but one of its tributaries), and boarded our boat which would take us the 3 hours to our lodge deep in the middle of the Amazon jungle. After about 15 minutes the water changed colour from the dark brown to the light brown of the Amazon. Wow. We kept saying to each other "I can't believe that we're on the Amazon!". Pretty cool. Pretty soon however, the noise of the boat engine and the unrelenting jungle on both sides lulled us both into sleep, broken for a few minutes by a stop at the last big village (7000 people) before we reached to our Lodge.

Muyuna lodge was more than we expected though I have to admit that I'm not sure exactly what I expected. We met our guide, Moises, and after a delicious lunch where we met some of the others staying here, we went to our private bungalow. We expected not to have any electricity or hot water, but we didn't expect a beautiful thatched covered room set high on stilts overlooking the river with a generous balcony complete with a relaxing hammock. The entire room was surrounded with mosquito netting and our ensuite bathroom with separate shower was more than we imagined. We will definately enjoy our time here.

The first activity of the day was a walk through the jungle starting at 3pm in the afternoon. We donned our longed sleaved shirts, long trousers and the wellington boots that we hired in town and headed off into the jungle following our trusty guide, Moises. It wasn't long before we were attacked by mossies and for the second time on this trip I was thankful for the fly net that I bought back in the Outback of Australia. Seems that it works just as well on mossies as on flies. Moises was soon pointing out different plants and birds to us. THere was a plant whose leaf juice is good for burns, another mushroom that needs to be dried for several days before it is good to eat. We saw some parrots, hawks and a toad which was undistinguishible from a leaf, until it jumped. We saw a group of tiny marmaset monkeys playing in the bush, beautiful kingfisher and loads of termite and ants nests. Plus we had a great walk through the jungle. A great start.

Now a word about the mosquitos
We could dedicate an entire post to the unique Amazonian mozzies or wax lyrical in several posts about them until you are board stiff however we will try not to. Suffice to say, they are hugh, plentiful and have more persistance than your average mozzie. I will be hard pressed to find their equal anywhere in the world. They are the one thing that we could definately do without on this trip however I suppose that if we didn't have them to constantly consider, we would find time to worry about some of the many other nasties that live in this jungle.

After another scrummy dinner, we headed out onto the river on a little motorised boat in the darkness with Moises at the helm with a spotlight darting through the trees and bush. Not spotting any animals in the bush, we came to a little lake covered with water lily plants and came to a stop. Moises bent over the side of the boat and seconds later came up with a baby Caiman! He started to talk about its size and weight but none of us were listening to what he was saying, we were fully focused on the creature in front of us that he was holding. What a sight! Perfectly formed with strong hind legs and smaller front legs I touched his tail which was scaly and covered with some kind of moss that grows there. Wow! Moises put it back into the water and we were on our way back to the lodge.

What an incredible day, and we have 4 and a half days left. Each day can't be this good...