Monkey Island, pink dolphin, piranha fishing and the amazon attack of mosquitoes. Why the Amazon is a must!

Welcome to the Amazon - Part 1

So, let's just start of by saying that this was one of the best trip(s), I even went twice - it was that cool. I was lucky enough to experience the 2 seasons they have in the amazon and they can be described as the wet and dry season - extremely different experiences but done with the same local company. The second trip I even got for free, because now I was an amiga.

One of the girls I was living with suggested we do a group trip to the jungle and she had been told that this local guy had a really good reputation and we looked through his deal, which was amazing. Food, transportation (without flights), activities and accommodation were all included for 35 dollars a day. As students this seemed perfect and description of each day really encouraged nearly all 15 of us to go. We went for 4 days and 3 nights and this is how it all went…

Day 1

The destination was the Amazon jungle with flight connection to the city called Iquitos, which is deep into the Amazon, close to the boarder of Colombia and Brazil. We were picked up privately from the company which was appreciated. As you will notice in Peru, is at ever destination there will be a large number of taxi drivers hackling you to take them and offer the ‘best price’. I would describe them as sea gulls and you are their food. Anyways, private pick up took us to our future transport for the next couple of days – a long tree boat.

As you can see below there was no first-class boat, but that was perfect for us anyways. Let the adventure begin! We drove for about 2 hours until we had our first stop, we jumped onto land and quickly applied mosquito repellent, welcome to the land of the mosquitos.

In the photo above, you can see their famous suri – no I wasn’t brave enough to eat.

On the island we were shown piranhas and how crazy they are when being fed, be warned. We were also shown alligators and the largest fish I have ever seen, it was called Pirarucu, which is amazons largest fresh water fish. After this, we quickly went to the toilet and off we went to our camp for the next 4 days!

When we arrived at our camp, we packed our stuff out, picked our bed and had lunch. The meals we got throughout our stay were really good but also basic, but we never left the dinner table hungry. On my second trip into the jungle I travelled with vegetarians and vegans, the family in the jungle that we were staying with were super cool with that and had yummy options for them too. Maybe even better than the meat option!

After lunch we were told if we wanted to, we could go swimming in the amazon river and swim with the pink dolphins. Yes, you read that right. We drove for about 30 min into the river area that was deemed ‘safe’ for swimming and had one of the best mud baths, my first ever mud bath. It also ended in a mud fight. To our surprise we saw the famous pink dolphins, which were btw (by the way) super ugly.

A very cool experience.

After swimming we dried ourselves and headed over to a local village who had something to teach us about making their famous amazon alcohol. We learnt of their ancient ways of making alcoholic drinks, we even tested out their main ones. It was very interesting, we were even allowed to use their Amazonian equipment to test out how to extract liquid from plants.

Fun fact: One process of making a particular drink was to chew the leaves in the mouth and then spit it back into the mix and repeat this process to get the right consistence, and yes, we tested this one too.

Do you know what happens when you swim in the Amazon river? Well, you wash off all the mosquito repellent which has protected you the whole day and then when the sun goes down, you’re in trouble, big trouble. Let’s just say sitting on the boat on the way home from the village, was 10 min being pricked over and over again. We learnt our lesson to always bring repellent from that point on.

You might be wondering if the mosquitos in the amazon are carriers of the disease malaria, well yes they are, but not in the region we were in, according to the locals. Let’s hope that’s true.

After the mosquito adventure, we returned home, showered and re-applied the repellent as fast as possible, we quickly learnt that most of the mosquitos came out at night to ‘feast’. We had dinner, played some cards and went to bed, preparing ourselves for the adventures that were to follow the next day. The humidity was hard to adapt to, and I don’t think a lot of us actually slept very good at all the first night.

Day 2

Bright and early we got up, had breakfast and headed of to our next stop which was the exploring deep into jungle. Our guide Glen who stayed with us for the 4 days had been raised in the jungle and had vast knowledge about the jungle and all it can offer. He showed us ants that they use as mosquito repellent, where you had to rub them between your hands and rub their blood over your skin – yes it sounds weird.

I distinctly remember him telling us all a sad story about how young girls that get pregnant will go into the jungle and take leaves from a certain plant, which they then mix into a tea, resulting with them losing the child. Many of them also risk never having children after experimenting with this plant. If you didn’t know, in Peru it is illegal to abort, and maybe that is the reason why young girls see this as their only option.

Now enough about the sad stuff. We continued then further into the jungle to find the largest tree in the area, and it was huge. We also played Tarzan as you can see in the picture below. It was a lot of fun.

When I was there in the wet season, the exploring deep into the jungle was very different, it was probably 100 times more scarry and exciting. We were told that we were going to be walking through the jungle when it would be dark and there were areas where the water would be up to our chest.

This part was insane.

As he said, is exactly what we did. It was 3 hours of being completely soaked, no idea what was ahead and of course, walking in a line making no noise – hoping to avoid dangerous animals. I felt like my heart was beating out of my chest. I even managed to accidently step wrong and fell into a deep-water hole that reached up too my neck, at least I was already wet for the path ahead.

It may look like we were wearing a lot of clothes but that is only to protect ourselves from the mosquitos!

We all survived and exhausted when the adrenaline left our bodies, I think we all slept very well that night and happy no dangerous animals got us.

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