On Friday I got up at 3:30 in the morning to take a taxi with two of the eight other girls I had planned this trip with in order to make it on our early morning flight. Of course, I was not pleased to be awake that early, and in the haze of my brain running solely on coffee and oranges I continued to wonder why people even bothered to be awake this early. Though the streets were far from the congested chaos normally found in Lima, There were plenty of taxi's lining the streets, waiting for a late nighter to hail them, and as we got closer to the airport, regular cars began to mix with the taxis on the roads. I assumed they had to be going somewhere, most likely work. It's at times like this where I find irony in how people call New York City "the city that never sleeps" because if you look at any large city there is always a significant number of people awake somewhere for some reason. No city ever really "sleeps".
(Photo by: Megan)
Back on topic, we met the rest of the group in the airport early enough to down some much needed caffeine and go through security. When we landed in Iquitos (the largest isolated town in the Amazon) the contrast between Lima was obvious. It was so green! For the first time in my life, I disembarked from the plane from a staircase directly onto the tarmac, and felt the beautiful clarity of the air and the rain on the hood of my jacket as the humidity hit my face. "Ahh," I said. "Ugh," said Kaylie, a companion of mine on this trip and a native of California. But Iquitos was only the half of it. Once we got to the actual jungle where there was no air conditioning and no break from the elements it was equivalent to living in a live butterfly exhibit. Though, I didn't seem to mind as much as my friends. I always was the last one in my family to leave the butterfly exhibit.
(Photo by: Megan)
(Photo by: Megan)
All of us had decided previously to visit the Amazon Rescue Center while we were in Iquitos. The center is best known for their rehabilitation and release of the fresh water manatees native to the Amazon river system. However, they also house and rehabilitate a wide variety of other animals native to the jungle including otters, turtles, and several species of monkeys. Though, the most magical part of the visit was easily the manatees. It is clear why the center is famous for them. They are considered noble creatures by those who have experienced their majesty.
(Photo by: Megan)
That evening, after ordering pizza and watching the dubbed version of Billy Elliot, all nine of us turned in early since we had all been up since before 4 in the morning.
The next morning, we rose early once again in order to take the drive to Nauta, a town south of Iquitos and much closer to the lodge we would be staying in that night. After the hour and a half long drive, we loaded our bags onto a long wooden boat with a trolling motor (or peke-peke as everyone else calls them). It was difficult to gauge how long the ride actually was down the river because we all kept dozing off, but just past midday, we were greeted at our new dwellings by the sight of the Amazon's famous pink dolphins playing in the distance.
(Photo by: Kinzie)
(Photo by: Kinzie)
After a lazy lunch, we geared up in our long sleeves and rubber boots to go on a quick walk through the jungle to the nearby town, Puerto Miguel. The way there and back, our guides explained to us the medicinal factors of the local flora. There are a surprising amount of things that are edible in the jungle, and a great deal of those are supposedly good for the stomach. We also met a sloth that we sort of woke up from it's midday snooze.
A few hours before sunset, we set out again by boat to a sand bar just at the mouth of a split in the river that we traveled through just before arriving at the lodge. Because it is currently the dry season in the jungle, the river was shallow, allowing for the large sand bar to be visible. There we played in the sand and the wonderfully cool mud at the water's edge and discovered many things: the sun bleached bones of long dead fish, the nests of waterfowl that had flocked to the sand bar to raise their babies, and where our two guides (Toni and Hilter) were from. As the sun dipped lower in the sky, we submerged ourselves in the river in hopes of swimming with the dolphins that often come to that shore. We had no luck with the dolphins, but we did cover ourselves in mud and pretend to be monsters. I had to wash my swimsuit out that night under the shower. I use shower in the sense that it was water that fell from above head height over a drain in the bathroom connected to the room I shared with Sami and Jenny. Hose would have seemed the more appropriate term for some people.
By that time in the evening, we all agreed we were too tired to visit Puerto Miguel at night, and it was already getting dark. However, we also agreed that stepping away from the generator powered lights of the lodge to see the stars was the perfect way to end our first day in the Amazon. Once we had walked a decent distance, we all turned off our flashlights and looked up. Some of the girls gasped. Above us was more stars than I had ever seen in my life. Even from my lawn on a cool evening, even up north, even in Guatemala in the middle of nowhere, I had never seen as many stars than I had in this middle of nowhere. I pointed out how clearly I could see the Milky Way. Some of the girls hadn't even realized it was the Milky Way, they had just assumed it was a long cloud. I wish I could take pictures of the night sky to share with everyone, but all I have are the memories in my mind of our entire galaxy and many more shining in the beautiful vastness of space.
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