Into the Jungle...

After spending the better part of a day going through various tour offices, Rebecca and I got the best feeling from Antonio, the owner and operator of Amazon Jungle Trips. We may have gotten the best vibe from him because he was the only person we found that spoke english. He offered us two different possible packages. The first was to go into Peru to a jungle lodge. There would be rooms with beds and a regular restaurant. It was $60 per day. The second option was the jungle camp, which was much more rustic, but only $35 per day. We chose the second. Antonio warned us that it would be hard. At the time we had no idea how serious his warning was...

We spent the night repacking all of our gear so that we only had to take the essentials with us out into the jungle. We managed to get everything that we would need into one bag. We had been told that we would be wearing long pants and long sleeves for pretty much all of the trip. All of the repacking of course led us to try on our big rubber boots that Antonio had provided us with.

The next morning Rebecca and I headed down to the local docks with Antonio to meet our guide who would be taking us out into the jungle. His name was Wilson and he did not speak any English. Antonio had told us that this was going to be the case the night before, and while Wilson certainly seemed friendly, I was still a little nervous.

In short order The three of us, our bags, and all of the food and water that was going to sustain us was loaded onto what is best described as a water version of the mini-bus. It was an 18-foot v-bottom speed boat with a Mercury 150 outboard on the back. There were about 17 people packed into the boat. These boats serve as the local taxis for people getting to and from the smaller villages around Leticia. And believe it or not, but life jackets are mandatory! You won't find a seat belt in any taxi in the entire town, but every boat has enough life jackets for everyone on board.

We were soon roaring up the northern bank of the Amazon River with small villages and homesteads whizzing by. After a week on a slow boat it was actually a little terrifying to be going as fast as we were. Before long we pulled over at what appeared to be a single house at the side of the river. While we didn't know it at the time, we would come to know the yard around this house very well in about 60 hours time.


With our long sleeves, long pants, and rubber boots of we headed out through what turned out to be a fairly good sized community of 20 or so houses. We proceeded on a 45 minute hike through the jungle to the camp that was going to be our home base for the next two nights. The jungle camp consisted of a main "cabin" where the kitchen and dining area was and two "cabanas" in a small clearing along the banks of a stream. We slept in two hammocks that were strung up in one of the cabanas. As you can tell they were open to the jungle and the bugs were very much a part of our experience. The camp had only recently been established and there were several construction projects in the works. Another cabana was being built and a variety of plants were being collected from the jungle and replanted in the area.

We had hosts for our time out in the camp. There was a young couple and their four children, which ranged in age from 3 to 10. While we did not ask, we guessed that the mother was probably younger than either Bec or myself. The kids were of course super cute. Especially the littlest girl. As usual they were very shy around us, but they soon warmed up and chatted away to us in spanish. Little kids can be the best for practicing a foreign language. You can play games with them to learn words by pointing at things like your node, eyes, a color, an insect, or your boots. They are also interested to learn english words.



After a lunch of fried fish and a banana/rice mash, which we would learn to love, we headed out for a short hike and visit to a village to see some of the wild animals of the jungle up close.