The Amazon

Saturday, May 1. We awoke early to the sounds of nature. Keith was feeling a little better, but still not 100%. After some breakfast, we set out on hike through the jungle. We walked for almost an hour before coming to a small lake. We paddled around the lake for a bit, looking for wildlife. We saw several colorful butterflies, some small bats and some birds. We even feed a school of Paranas. After hiking back to the lodge, we had a little time to rest. After lunch we set out again, this time up to the top of a 90 foot tower. We were above many of the trees and on the search for wildlife again. Unfortunately we only saw a couple of Macaws way off the in distance but fortunately we heard monkeys making a sound like a jet engine. Around dusk we headed back to the lodge. After dinner, we tried to call it a night.

Sunday, May 2. It was another long night/morning for Keith and I. Being “one with nature” is wonderful except for the walls between the room do not go all the way up to the ceiling and your neighbors are snoring, hacking up a lung and their child decides to chatter away, non-stop starting at 6:00 am in the morning. After breakfast we set out on another hour hike to a clay pond. There, we hid up in a tree house sort of thing and watched for wildlife. We saw a bricken (sp?) deer, a harp eagle and some duskytiti monkeys. When we got back to the lodge there were some toucans on the trees outside our room. In the afternoon we took a short boat ride across the river to a large fruit farm and tried several different types of fruit (some good and some bad). Keith and I were both pretty tired, so after dinner we called it a night.

Monday, May 3. Today was travel day, after a 10 minute hike, a 2 hour boat ride, a 40 minute bus ride, a 3 hour wait at the airport, a 35 minute flight to Cuzco, a 15 minute layover, another hour flight to Lima and a 45 minute taxi ride, we finally arrived at our hostel in Lima. We were staying in a charming area of Lima near the ocean called Miraflores. It was 6:00 pm or so by the time we checked in, so we set out to LarcoMar, a huge multilevel shopping and entertainment complex built into the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean. We had a delicious dinner and a bottle of wine outside while looking over the ocean. On the way back to our hostel, we stopped and successfully played a little blackjack.