Amazon Jungle Continued

We went on another short cruise around after a couple hours in camp before we settled in for the rest of the day.










































Before it got dark Roberta and I heard José making a bit of a commotion doing something. He was in the bush and then ran and grabbed the canoe and starting paddling quickly. I could see that he grabbed something out of the water while I spied through the binoculars and then he headed back. It wasn't until he got back to the hut that we found out he had caught a baby wild pig! Apparently he had scared it in the bush and it tried to swim in the river to get away. He was afraid it wouldn't find its mother again, so he brought it back and we let it go into the bush to hopefully find its mom as it looked like it hadn't been weaned yet. After a couple photos he ran off into the flooded forest again.











That night we stepped out from the cover of our bamboo hut to gaze at the stars. Without any light around for miles and not much of a moon, there were thousands. We really soaked in how lucky we were to be here.

The next morning we ventured off to find a dry place to hike. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. We veered off the river and started macheteing our own path or I should say José did.






The rest of us just paddled a bit and knocked off all the bugs that were falling on us. After about an hour of this I was really wondering is this was worth it. I mean at one point I counted at least 6 different a kinds of spiders on the boat not really knowing if some were poisonous or not.






Bugs!





Bugs!





Bugs!











Roberta kept pointing at them and asking our guide "peligroso?" Aka dangerous in Spanish to which he would reply no, no, no. Until finally he flicked one off quickly and said, "Si, peligroso"to one that was pale in color, very hairy, and about the size of a quarter. Roberta was more controlled than I was, but as she said there was little we could do but continue on.






Roberta also pinpointed a black scorpion on a tree at one point. At least it wasn't on our boat.






After a lot of wacking and hacking and bugs falling from the trees, vines, and plants, we were close to our destination. We had to pull the boat over a small ridge. We found out pretty quickly that our canoe, which was just a hollowed out tree, was not very light. We made it to our destination 20 minutes later. Only to find out the trail was too flooded. Haha. We walked around in rubber boots for about 15 mins and then headed back to the boat. At least we had a trail to follow on the way out.






Crazy-looking tree frog that jumped on the boat.

We got back to camp,had lunch,and headed back towards where we stayed the first night where we would stay again that night.

We were awoken a few times that night by the rain absolutely pelting down. We seemed to be lucky in that we hadn't been rained on very much and were under cover when it was really raining hard. The next day most involved us heading back to where we entered. Like I mentioned earlier, it was upstream so it was a lot more tiring. José just kept paddling and not taking any breaks like a four stroke engine. It was impressive.

The rest of us were taking breaks here and there. We made it back to the park hut at around 1 pm and back to the hostel for a much needed shower. As I laid down for a siesta, the chicken restaurant manager's words rang in my head, "What an adventure!"

Until next time.....

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