2014 - Peru Day 9 (Amazon Day 2)

Today we head down to the amazon basin and begin our trek into the reserved zone.

Washroom/shower situation at San Pedro Lodge

Breakfast today was omelette with bread and drinks.

Breakfast!

Our first stop was at an animal sanctuary where they rescue injured animals and try to help them. It was a very neat place, they have macaws (red and blue ones), a tapir, a caiman, monkeys, turtles. Very neat stop.

My banana!

Tapir!

Pretending to be a macaw

Capybara!

Macaws!

Afterwards we made it down to the boat and headed out for our second lodge where we stay for one night. This is a long boat ride. About 30 minutes in, we dropped off Sharon who will be going on her own for the rest of the trip and we picked up 2 other people from Holland who were a bit old (looked to be in their 50s/60s). The boat ride was probably a good 5 hours long and all you see are birds. Endless amounts of birds. It isn't bad if you like birds, but in my mind, I always assumed there would be a greater variety of animals (not just birds) and that birds weren't as small as they seem (toucans are surprisingly small).

View from our hike

Lunch was packed again and consisted of yuka potato and chicken salad (with beans and carrots). It was a very nice meal. This is our first meal that we are having on the boat. I'm beginning to enjoy the possibility of just lounging on a boat and having lunch under the shade with the nice breeze.

Chicken salad with yuka

The lodge itself seemed pretty nice if they kept up with the repairs. Story goes, the company had an agreement with the natives where they would build the lodge and bring them business, after 20 years they would give the natives the lodge, but the natives were impatient and wanted it sooner so the company did not want to invest in it since they wouldn't use it much.

Hand, meet plant that looks like a hand

Prior to dinner we went on a night hike. This will be our last. The amount of insects that you see is absolutely astounding but also very creepy. Right away we saw how many spiders are around and creeped us out. We saw spiders, tarantulas, walking sticks which looked about 15cm in size, frogs, toads and many more. While it is a cool experience, seeing the number of insects outside did a mental number on us. I kept wondering if spiders would drop from the ceiling or I'd step on one accidentally since they seemed so abundant. While doing the night walk, it was clear the the people from Holland and Germany were deeply fascinated by the spiders/tarantulas because they just kept looking for them and taking tons of pictures of them. I wonder if this is how it will be when we see wildlife (many pictures of the same thing and us just waiting so that we can continue).

Walking stick porn! If you look closely, there are two of them

Dinner was soup, beef with fried rice, plantain chips and a cucumber/tomato salad.

Soup!

Beef with fried rice, plantain chips and a cucumber/tomato salad

My favorite thing of the day was finally seeing fireflies with my own eyes. TV gave me this idea that they would be big glowing lights. The ones that I saw were tiny and had very small, faint, brief glows of light.

Double rainbow!

 Tomorrow we head into the reserved zone with a 4:30am wake up call in hopes of seeing some animals.