Hola Chicos!!

 

So much has happened in Peru so far we deceided to do a post Amazon blog, so here goes...... After our adventures with counterfeiting cops and dead people at the Peru/Ecuador border (see Welcome to Peru Blog) we headed south to the city of Chiclayo and spent a couple of days soaking up the colonial architecture and checking out the local archeological sites. The most impressive of these was Tucume Pyramid Complex and we burned a couple of days wandering around the massive pyramids and checking out the museums, awesome! We found some pottery shards near the base of one pyramid that was probably left over from the work of the many profundadores or grave robbers. It´s really an amazing feeling to hold something in your hands that was made by people thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, profundadoring seems to be a primary industry in some of these beautiful old ruins, kinda sad really. While in Chiclayo we heard there was a religious festival in a local village and so we caught a local shared taxi (a El Camino from the 70s) and spent the day as the honorary gringos watching the procession and amusing the locals. We hitched a ride back after the festival with a church group whose average age was around 60 that was from Chiclayo and they made up songs about the 2 gringos the whole way back, laughs for everybody and they drove us in their big bus right back to our hotel, nice!!

From Chiclayo we took a 16 hour nightmare bustrip through the Andes to the village of Chachapoyas to organize a trip up to the ruins of Kuelap. We hooked up with a English couple to increase our barganing power and found a guide to take us up the flooded barely there road. Kuelap was a Pre Inca fortress perched on a sheer cliff face. Absolutely incredible. So few people get out there that there was still bones in the different tombs. What a magical place, and what a magical view as well. When we left Chachapoyas we headed for the Amazon basin and made a little stop in the foothill town of Tarapoto. Near Tarapoto we met a German guy who had a Monkey named ¨Moni¨ (little monkey in spanish) and imported his own favorite German beer. Needless to say that Cheryl quickly became the monkey´s new best friend whilst I investigated Tomas´s stock of fine beer.

To get to the Amazon from the Andes you need to take a river boat at the end of the road and the end of the road from Tarapoto was Yurimaguas. The 6 hour ¨road¨ to Yurimaguas was beautiful but a little scary as well because as soon as we got into the shared taxi everybody started hiding their money and valuables around the cars because it wasn´t safe with ¨rich gringos¨ in the car: very reassuring let me tell you. This prompted us to stuff money down Cheryls bra and I wrapped the cameras memory card up in my bandana. The ride turned out to be very nice and the driver played lots of 70s rock in English just for us to sing along to. In Yurimaguas we organized a passage on a cargo boat sleeping on the top deck in hammocks and after a day it let us off in the village of Lagunas. It was there that we started our first 6 day trip into the jungle with our guides Marciel and Julio. At this time of year the jungle is completely flooded, in places to a depth of 3 metres! That meant that we had to stay at a park warden platform along with everybody else that needed to be in the park. That was fishermen, local (legal) hunters and park wardens, our guides, me and Cheryl on a small platform with a couple of rooms on one side. Very cosy. When Cheryl needed to pee she had to get someone to take her out to a large tree so she could climb on to pee then be picked up and brought back!! There are a few very small patches of relatively dry ground around at this time and that means that the terrestrial animals are very concentrated and we saw lots!! Monkeys (all kinds) sloths, snakes, wild pigs and big rodent things, lizards and our guides even caught us a baby Caiman one night finding it in the water only by the tiny sound it made. They were incredible. The river was full of fish that the guides caught every day and the local hunters provided us with a couple of meals of animals that I havn´t even seen in zoos. Also in the river were fresh water dolphins, black ones and wicked pink ones as well and we saw them a couple of times every day. There were more birds than you could imagine and their colors were great. Macaws and Tucans and all sorts!! There were tonnes of ants (and they all bite), MASSIVE spiders, real tarantulas straight out of the movies, and scorpions as well but the worse things were the mosquitoes, there were billions of them. When we got out we looked like we had contracted the pox. All in all the hardships were more than worth it and the trip was fantastic.

Back in Lagunas, we caught another riverboat for the remaining couple of days to Iquitos, the largest city in the world without a road access. It´s  in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon. There we met up with a French guy named David (Da Veed) and hired a shaman (medicine man)  to take us out into the jungle for a spirit finding/cleansing ceremony called Ayauasca. We fasted for a couple of days, prepared the Ayuasca all day on the 3rd day and did the ceremony late on the 3rd night. The ceremony involved a lot of chanting and blowing of tobacco around and drinking of the Ayauasca potion we had prepared. After we took the Ayauasca, we all had amazing visions, spirits and animals and lights and stuff (Cheryl had more than either David or me) but we all got very sick as well. It took a few days of ¨what the hell did we just do¨ to get over it but wow, what an experience.

Back in Iquitos, we didn´t think that we could top that so we deceided to leave the Amazon for the time being. We took the luxury package out and caught a flight back to Lima.

So that´s the update. On to the Nasca Lines and the lands of the Inca next.......

 

Bye all,

 

Us