Me gustas tu: sara en la selva!

This weekend I went to the Amazon jungle city of Iquitos..only accessible by plane or boat.So we flew..out of our seats after our history midterm and raced to the airport with less than an hour before we took off. It was like a scene from a movie..we went to security then had to run all the way back to the front desk to get a sticker on our tickets, then run all they way back up to security. But we made it!

So Thursday night we got in and were whisked away by our guide in mototaxis..lets just say I want to be a mototaxista for a day or my life. All they drive in Iquitos are motorcycles, mopeds or moto taxis. Entire families on a motorcycle..including infants, eek! Anyway we met up with my host sister Viole and Emily who had left earlier in the day, got dinner and went to bed. But by went to bed I mean I just layed there waiting until it was time to get up because it was 95 degrees and there were 4 of us in a very small room and one fan.....

meghan and her coco- coconut water!

We tried to see the sunrise and sort of failed. Then we went with our guide to the market in Belen to buy some selva drinks. It was huge..and smelled bad..and I wanted to run out of it. Then we drove a little further because some people wanted to try Suri..worms. Grilled,fat,worms. They looked like what they eat in the Lion King...I was the only one who didn't try it, and I'm so okay with that.Anyway we drove to Nauta and from there got in a boat, it was basically an XL canoe with a paddle that had a propeller on the end...but that's what they use to get around so we did it. As we were cruising down the Amazon it began to thunder, like the loudest cracks of thunder you can imagine. And then it rained for a little bit..it felt so nice because it was mmm about 98 degrees and humid as what! We got to the lodge in the middle of the jungle where we were the only people along with our guides and the 5 or so people who would cook for us. We lounged in some hammocks before taking a walk through the jungle..I got to carry a machete:) We walked for 3 hours, saw monkeys monkeying around way up in the tree, swung from jungle vines, got stuck in mud, drank milk from trees we weren't supposed to, and saw giant bugs! After dinner we took a night walk through the jungle to a lake where we went in a canoe looking for alligators..mind you it was pitch black. We didn't see any sadly but we had a good time doing a 21 point turn in a dense carpet of lily pads. Also there were 3 foot wide lily pads and lightning bugs all around.

The next morning we went on a bird watching boat ride..boring. Then to a puebla of about 40 families...where we met a snake and drank coconut water. Then we ate some breakfast and went out on the boats again. This time we went fishing for piranha's... with a wooden stick for a pole and a piece of string....After that we motored around and saw some of the famous pink dolphins jumping around. Then we jumped around..right off the boat. The water was so warm it was hardly refreshing...so we smeared this rejuvenating mud all over us and ran around. My skin still feels so soft. I want more of that mud! We returned to Iquitos, ella got a little sick off the side of the boat, some people did Ayahuasca with a Shaman, some people got massages, Meghan and I watched Toy Story 3 in the air conditioning and fell asleep.

Sunday we got to sleep in a tad before we met up with our guide and took a boat ride to see the lower part of Belen. It is basically a floating suburb that is extremely impoverished. After that we went to a manatee reserve and I got to feed the little baby manatees. One thing we have noticed here that is very different from the US is that in the US living on the hills or on the river usually means you have money and here the poorest areas are the ones closest to the water or on the hills surrounding Lima. Anddddd that's about it...fotos!