Final day in Iquitos:-)

It feels as though we have been here for ever, in fact it has been 10 days, but escape tomorrow! We had to change hotels again yesterday as the place we were staying was fully booked, it was a shame as it was really nice (apart from the odd lizard). The place we have moved to is not the same standard, it is very hot and small and no proper windows and pretty noisy, still we survived last night.
Everything is more expensive in Iquitos but compared to home it is still very cheap. Our hotel is £22 a night, £7 each. We have been eating in the tourist cafes and a meal costs about £5, but if we ate out of the central area and stuck to the menu we would still only be paying £2.50 for a 2 course meal and a drink.
Yesterday we went into the jungle to a conservation area where there were some animals, obviously lots of plants and a lake with a man made beach, it was good to get away from the hustle and bustle of Iquitos and my favourite thing was seeing the huge spectacular butterflies floating around.
So we fly to Lima tomorrow and are staying in the central area as the girls want to go shopping in the central market and then the girls fly out on Wednesday. I had been feeling nervous about being in Peru alone but now I have got a sort of plan together I feel a lot better about it and am excited. I have bought a plane ticket to fly down to Arequipa, which leaves a few hours after the girls leave. This is in southern Peru and is in the mountains and supposed to be very beautiful, from there I will go and visit a canyon which is far deeper than the grand canyon. I’ll spend a few days in Arequipa and then get a bus to Puno which is on the banks of Lake Titicaca and have a look around there. I am then going to see if I can get a bus to Le Paz in Bolivia and travel to the Bolivian salt flats. I have met two people who travel a lot who say it is the most beautiful trip they have ever taken. I’ll then come back to Peru and go up to Cuzco and see the sacred valley and Macchu Picchu. At least I have a plan in mind now but I can change anything as and when.
It will be a relief to get out of the sticky jungle heat and into cooler temperatures, although no doubt we will say Lima is freezing! (thinks it’s about 20 degrees, so not too bad!)

Slothes and snakes..

More from Iquitos..

Still in Iquitos but luckily it is not so hot, about 30 degrees and overcast and there are a lot of tropical storms. Resigned myself to being here for another few days so the girls can spend the time they want with their dad. However, a couple of evenings ago the true bizarreness of the situation could not escape me... There I was in a Karaoke bar (bad in itself!) in a town surrounded by jungle of which there are no roads to escape, only planes or boat. In the bar with grumpy girls and a very, very drunk Ross and his new wife who are in the middle of the floor dancing and performing various loud and raucous numbers, there is a storm outside so it is impossible to leave the place. I was completely sober and just thinking "how is this happening to me??" Luckily I can also see the humour of the situation!!

We have changed hotels due to an infestation of caterpillars, I woke up one morning with them crawling all over me. We found somewhere else pretty easily and it was all going well in the new place, no air con but a fan that is pretty efficient, WiFi and cable TV and all very clean and central.... until Mili spotted a lizard in the room... thank goodness we are not actually in the proper jungle, she was so freaked out we had to go and ask someone to get a broom and remove it and she then spent hours trying to block any holes near the ceiling with all her clothes... seemed to do the trick for a while until last night she found 3 in the bathroom... Mili does not like Peru!!

Have realised what was wrong with Jo, or at least why she has been so poorly for the last week.. it is the malaria medication.. not sure why we didn't put two and two together, but it suddenly dawned on me and we looked up side effects and she had virtually all of the mild,moderate and severe, we are hoping now she has stopped that she will start to feel better. Iquitos is pretty safe anyway and as we haven't gone right into the jungle as we thought then it really isn't a worry to stop taking it.

Had a bit or respite yesterday and went up the Amazon to an animal sanctuary for rescued animals, we held slothes (which were adorable), turtles, a baby jaguar, parrots, monkeys and I held a very large snake! Today I have managed to make my excuses and the girls have gone out with their dad to a butterfly place (although of course Mili hates butterflies!) I am trying to take the time to work out what I am going to do next week.

Will try and put some pictues of seperately as cannot seem to upload.

Apocalypse Now!!

I am beginning to understand why people go mad in the jungle, and we are not really even in the jungle! It is so very hot and humid and either seems to attract mad people or they just go crazy after being here a while!
Iquitos is a very busy jungle town, full of motor taxies and locals trying to sell anything or everything. It is very loud and pretty claustophobic, surrounded by jungle and the the Amazon. The first night we were in a hostel on a main road and it was incredibly loud, we luckily bumped into people who knew Ross and they sorted us somewhere else to stay which is much quieter and has air con, which is a necessity.
Ross and his new wife have arrived and I do now understand why he wanted us to meet him in Cusco rather than here. We had thought we were going to his place in the tranquility of the jungle for a week but that is now not possible so all there is to do is hang around here and have day trips out. To go on a decent jungle adventure it costs a lot of money and you have to travel for at least 3 days. At the moment we don´t seem to have many options except to go back to Lima earlier and wait for the girls flight... still something new may emerge!
People come to Iquitos either on the way to a further jungle adventure or to go and see
Shamans for Ayerwaska (spelt totally incorrectly) ceremonies... some just drink a lot and go mad and stay here! I may be one of the latter but will not stay here!
Jodie is still unwell which is a real shame.
No Wifi so no pics for now. From a very hot and sticky place bye for now!!

Three days and two nights on the Amazon

This really is one to put down to experience! The boats that go up river to Iquitios are primarily cargo boats and the passengers they carry are a by product. We boarded the boat and we had one of the few cabins, in fact we had the only double room and also a place in a bunk in a tiny room. The double room had the only private toilet and sink on board. Everyone else was in hammocks strung up over two decks. We realised quite soon we had been ripped off by the guy at the hotel and once we’d set sail we’d wished we had have bought a couple of hammocks to laze around in during the day. Also it was a bit embarrassing having access to two cabins whilst virtually everyone else was in a very confined space in the hammock sections, it looked as though we were spoilt, rich tourists (which by Peruvian standards we are!)

We were only a couple of hours late to depart which apparently is really good. In addition to about 300 passengers of which there were ourselves, 4 people from Europe and one from the US, the remainder were locals. There were 50 cows, a lot of chickens and a lot of cargo. It was very sad to see the way the cows were treated, how they survived the journey I really don’t know. There definitely was not a swimming pool on board or anything to do except sit on the floor of the deck and watch the river bank and move from one side of the boat to the other to avoid the sun. People were very friendly and we quickly got to know some of the people. At times we all wished we’d been in hammocks but the reality would not have been great, you have to guard your property all the time if it is not locked away and the girls had so much attention from all the men on board all the time that it would have been very uncomfortable. During the day it was incredibly hot.

What we hadn’t realised was the amount of stops the boat would make collecting more and more cargo. By the second evening I was getting seriously concerned that the boat would sink as it was obviously very overloaded. As the boat travels down the river the villagers on the banks would wave sheets and either send out canoes with cargo to load or the boat would pull over. Each time the whole of the village would be standing there watching and helping. At night lights would flash from the river bank or fires would be lit. The first half a dozen stops were interesting but after that it did get a bit tedious, especially as each time the boat stops the temperature rises because there is no breeze. There must have been some sort of structure in place and someone must have known which bananas belonged to which people!

Food as would be expected was very basic, rice and chicken and gruel for breakfast… we didn’t eat a lot! Jo really was not well on the second day, she had a very high temperature and it was impossible to cool her down, luckily with paracetamols and lots of fanning she seemed to recover by the third day.

We saw lots of river dolphins and budgies and parrots in the trees, fireflys and a lot of mosquitoes and big flying insects!

For me the highlights were watching the sun set each evening, lying on the top deck looking at the stars, getting up by 5am each morning to watch the first light and the sun rise and looking at the villages and imagining what life must be like living on the banks of the Amazon.

By day 3 the girls were desperate to get off of the boat, they both were describing it as the worst experience of their lives! There was the opportunity of getting off the boat 10 hours earlier (as we were running late due to all the stops) at a town and then getting a bus for an hour and a half. We decided to do this…. It was hell!! With a lot of other people we had to stand down with all the livestock and cargo, once we got to shore there were about 50 men waiting to jump on board, I presume to claim their cargo which had been transported down the river, they were waiting for noone! As we attempted to jump onto the muddy banks they were pushing us out of the way, it was everyone for themselves!! Somehow we managed to leap to the shore and get up the bank where a couple of motor taxi guys grabbed our bags, I was shouting to Mili ‘Just follow my bag!’ Jo was loaded into another one. We somehow got to the bus where I was ripped off by giving someone a 20 sole note and never getting my 16 sole change. Our belongings and us were loaded on to a local bus, the temperature was scorching and it was another ‘one of those experiences’!

We have now made it to Iquitios and it is ridiculously hot. I have enjoyed the whole journey across the Andes and travelling up the Amazon. I keep telling the girls that it is something that not many people do and they will look back at it and realise what a great life experience it was!! They do not quite believe me at the moment! I am now going out to have a nice cold beer!

Made it to the Amazon baisin!

The journey today wasn’t too bad as in the last 6 months they have made a proper road and it only took 3 hours. I imagine if we had have come a year ago we would not have been able to have got here as there was torrential rain and there were minor land slides most of the way, with a dirt track it would have been impassable.

When we arrived as usual we were seized by a hoard of taxi drivers (well tuk tuk drivers) our luggage was thrown into two before we could make up our mind what we were doing and we were driven to a posh hotel where a man who spoke good English invited us inside to discuss our options! This was obviously all a set up but we heard what he had to say, we knew the best boats to get to Iquitios were the Eduardo boats and that was who he worked for and who owned the hotel. After much discussion we decided to get a cabin as opposed to hammocks on the deck, it would have been fun to have been sleeping outside on hammocks but we would have had to have slept with all our gear and there is only a couple of toilets for a couple of hundred people, we’d also have to have bought a hammock each and blankets and a mosquito net, so we opted for a cabin. We also negotiated to stay in the hotel for tonight and go on a boat trip for the afternoon, all together for a posh hotel and breakfast, a 4 hour trip on a canoe boat and 3 days and 2 nights with food was £75 each, which is OK. (obviously by our standards it is really cheap but we are getting more used to Peruvian prices now!)

Our trip up the river this afternoon was great. It felt so exciting to be on the river (it isn’t actually the Amazon but a tributary which runs into the Amazon). We saw lots of bright beautiful birds, river fish jumping all the time, a couple of river dolphins and a sloth up a tree! The sun was setting as we came back and the sky was beautiful. We are very lucky to be experiencing this!

Our boat supposedly leaves tomorrow afternoon, although times can and do regularly change, as it is a cargo boat it leaves when it has enough cargo (we were told today that the cargo and the people are only a rouse as the main cargo is coca leaves which are being smuggled in hidden compartments at the bottom of the boats… not sure how much of that I believe!). The trip should take 3 days and 2 nights. I will give a full report when we arrive in Iquitios!

And into the jungle...

Tried to get a taxi first thing to the nearest town on the route toward the jungle but noone wanted to take us. Luckily a guy who spoke English who worked at a tour agency bumped into us just at the right time and took us to the collective taxi rank and spoke to the people there and told them to get us to Tarapota. The taxis wait until they are full and then take you onto the next big town, each taxi driver carried the message of where we were headed and we were in and out of taxi's all day, well for at least 8 hours, but the system worked and we have made it to the foothills of the Amazon and the jungle!

As could be expected with the driving in Peru at times it was touch and go whether we would make it in one piece, especially in the midst of such a bad storm on top of a mountain that it was impossible to see anything out of the windscreen, but still the taxi driver managed to overtake on blind bends! We did come to a sudden halt when there was a landslide and we were stuck there for half an hour while people got out of their cars in the torrential rain to clean rocks and big stones, it was raining so hard that the mud and rocks were still sliding down the mountain, but one impatient driver suddenly decided to risk it and our taxi driver followed suit... amazingly we made it!

The vast awe inspiring mountains slowly started to turn into big hills and lush green jungle. There was so much to see, it was fascinating... so many animals and plants and people. I do have to wonder if Bernard Matthews has been over to Peru because for some reason there are an awful lot of turkeys just wandering around!

Tomorrow our final stretch to the port, it is a journey of about 6 hours on rough roads. We have all just started taking our malaria tablets!