A little preface to this trip. My older brother Bennett is in his third year of medical school and is in the middle of his two years of month-long rotations. He served his mission in Peru and has been to Iquitos before for a tropical diseases course. The school that he attends lets the students sign up for elective rotations and my brother worked his magic with some of the doctors he met in Iquitos and set up a rotation down there in a few hospitals. Three other students in his class speak enough spanish and signed up to go with him. When he originally set up the rotation he was going to take his wife, but after he got the details ironed out they found out that they were expecting their second child and she could not get the required immunizations. He then tried to get my younger brother Erik to go with him because he speaks spanish and is thinking about medical school and this would be a great big check on his application. The only problem was that my brother had a serious girlfriend that we were all sure were going to get married, but he was so vague until the last minute, when he backed out of going to Peru so he could get a job to pay some "bills", so I was the next option. I talked to Crystal and got the OK and bought my plane ticket. The reason that Crystal didn't go with us is because she had already taken time off in June to go on a humanitarian thing with her dad to Mexico, and she didn't want to take any more time off. So here you go............
I had to fly down to Peru by myself because Bennett was already down there. My flight from the US arrived at the Lima airport at 12:30 at night and my flight to Iquitos didn't leave until 5:30 the next morning, so I had to spend the night in the airport. I don't speak spanish so I was a little nervous about getting my other ticket, spending the night at the airport and arriving at Iquitos without getting robbed of everything but my underwear. In reality it all went very smoothly, except trying to sleep, and I got to Iquitos with all my stuff. My brother promised to be waiting right outside the airport to pick me up, but he wasn't, so I had to fight off all of the taxi drivers by myself. They were very aggressive and kept trying to grab my stuff and when I told them NO, they would swear at me in spanish. After about 20 mins of waiting I finally see these two goofy looking Americans riding up on motos.
After I piled on the back we headed back to the Balcon. When my brother first got there they had stayed at a hotel, but quickly found a cheaper place to stay. It was a little one room place that didn't have AC but it did have a sweet balcony with hammocks. Here is a picture of the sleeping arraignments and the view out the back door.
As soon as we arrived I put down my stuff and we went to the lady that rents out the motos and each rented one. We then headed out of town towards the Iquitos zoo. Driving around town felt a lot like I was in a real life game of Super Mario Kart. Nobody really followed any sort of driving rules, they were just really aware of their surroundings. At the red lights all of the little moto's and mototaxis would cram up onto the line and when the light changed they would all gun it and try to get off the line first. My brother told me that one day he saw a guy on a moto slip on a banana peel and he went down and almost cracked his head on a truck.
Here is a picture of our sweet moto gang. They were having a bike race so we pulled over to watch them go by.
The Iquitos zoo is a special zoo. It has all of the jungle animals in it from the area, and very little security. If you wanted you could stick you fingers in through the leopard cage and try to pet it. it really isn't a gringo attraction, it is mostly a little resort zoo for locals.Here are some pictures from the zoo.
This is the giant amazon fish (it's about 6 feet long)
The monkeys playing in the water
The gray amazon dolphin
The Jaguar
A kid feeding a monkey through the cage
The alligators sitting in the sun
The giant jungle rat (we ate one at the jungle lodge)
A guy kissing an anaconda
A favorite of mine the leafcutter ants
An ant eater at work
After we left the zoo we went for a little ride through the "country side" on the motos. In every little jungle town that we went through all of the people stared at us, 5 white guys on motos wearing helmets (no one wears helmets down there).Here I am taking in a little soccer
The farther we went down the road the more it turned into a muddy path
When we took the motos back, the lady asked us how they got so dirty and we just shrugged our shoulders
A nice jungle town
It doesn't look like it but that little path eventually took us back to the main paved road. On the way back to the city two of the guys we were with got pulled over by the local police and the officer said "it sure would be nice to have a cold drink on this hot day". Regardless of the hint they talked themselves out of it without having to bribe the guy. After we returned the motos we had a progressive dinner to hit all of their favorite restaurants since we were only going to be in the city for two nights.This is at the steak house. They had these little yellow peppers no bigger than a pea. I ate one and it made my face numb for about 20 min.
After we finished eating we went down to the walkway by the river. They have a lot of street performers and these little girls would dance with these anacondas and at the end they would put the snakes head in their mouths. I'm sure that their dad made them do it.
On our way back to the Balcon we stopped at Chez Maggie for a couple of liters of their slushy jungle fruit juice, which we enjoyed in the hammocks.
The next morning we embarked on our jungle adventure. My brother had found a jungle lodge that wasn't to expensive so we signed up for it. We ended up staying at the lodge for 3 days and 2 nights. To get to the lodge we had to drive up the river for an hour or so to another little town. We then got on these boats and headed down the river to the lodge.
Here we are about to head up the little river through the trees to the lodge
After you go through the trees the guides had to push the boat through a bunch of spider infested floating reeds to get to the little lagoon the the jungle lodge was built on.
This was our room
There was a few parrots that hung around the lodge, this one would sit on top of the bathroom and watch you as you did you business
As soon as we got there we ate lunch which included some of that previously mentioned jungle rat. After we ate we headed out on the boat to go to a nearby village. My brother and his friends had collected a bunch of money to buy medicine to donate to some villages, so they bought a bunch of de-worming pills and gave some to the villages we went to.The first village had this giant tower built into it. Our guide said that the government built it for tourism.
Here is a nice picture off of the top of the tower
Some areal shots of the village
On the way back up the river we saw a guy making some boards out of a log using his chainsaw
It was dark on the way through the spider infested reeds, and the propeller got stuck.....
....and this spider the size of my hand jumped in with us
After another interesting dinner of unknown meat, we went out and caught some small alligators
The next day we went out on a little jungle hike with our guide, who got stung and bit by every insect that will sting or bite you. Notice the long sleeves and pants tucked into the boots
Drinking a little water out of a jungle vine
This is a leafcutter anthill, notice how there is no green leaves around
Our guide stomped on the hill and all of the soldier ants came out, and after about 5 mins I noticed this one trying to get me (it's about 1 inch long)
Here is one of the giant trees that are in the jungle
The next day we went to another village to handout worm pills. Here is me with a banana tree
Walking down the main drag of the village
When we were leaving the village kids helped us get our boat back in the water
After we left the village we went to find the amazon dolphins. This is the smaller gray dophin
This is a crappy picture of the famous pink amazon dolphin
We decided to go swimming in the amazon with the dolphins
After swimming we stayed on the river while the dolphins swam around us and watched the clouds until it got dark (look at all that sweet peludo)
After another meal of unknown meat, we went out for a night jungle walk, here our guide is holding a giant toad
More spiders the size of my hand
On our way back we found this snake hiding in the trees right about eye level next to the trail
Going to bed with some friends, this cockroach is about 2 inches long
The next morning we went out piranha fishing
We then went and found the giant lily pads
After we got back we dumped our stuff at the Balcon and headed to Belen. Belen is really the ghetto of Iquitos. The houses behind me are all floating on the water.
They were cleaning up all of the garbage that was left when the water level went down
Here is a good picture of the quality of water that the people were living in. The bathrooms of the floating houses are just off the back of the houses and they just empty right into the water. We saw a guy who was brushing his teeth, using the water from the river, right next to his toilet.
On our way back we stopped to eat at this bar owned by an American guy who had played baseball at the University of Texas, so he made all of his waitress' dress up as UT cheerleaders
That afternoon we flew back to Lima to pick up some of the other guys wives. Just like I did 5 days before I had to spend the night in the Lima airport. the next morning we flew to Cuzco. As soon as we got there we bartered with a taxi driver to take us up the Sacred Valley to Ollantaytambo. Here are the ruins.
These are the cool "baths" built by the Incas
This is a picture of the ruins from the other side of the valley
These are the grainaries on the other side of the mountain. They put these in the most inconvenient place on the cliff so no one would steal their food.
These were the original gates to the Incan city
We stayed the night in Ollantaytambo and caught the train to Machu Picchu in the morning
As soon as we got there we took this quick picture and then headed over to the trail to go to the top of Wanu Picchu (the peak behind me). They only let 400 people hike the trail a day.
This is the trail. It clings to the side of the mountain
This is from the top of Wanu Picchu. That is Machu Picchu behind me.
This is Bennett worshiping at the mountain stone. If you do this you supposedly get power from the mountain.
After exploring all day we hiked up for this good picture on our way to the Inca Bridge.
This is the Inca Bridge. It is about 300 feet up the cliff, and then goes up along the trees, and then cuts across a cliff about 600 feet up.
This is the Incan trail that leads right to the main gate of Machu Picchu.
After Machu Picchu, we spent the night in Aguas Calientes and got on the train the next morning. We got off at Ollaytantambo and got another taxi back to Pisac. Here is a good picture of some farm made cheese full of bartonella.
Our car had to stop to let the sheep go by.
This was at a little "diner" type thing. These are guinuea pigs....
...and so are these after they have been cooked.
This is a sweet public toilet
This is above Pisac at the top of the ruins
A nice example of Incan plumbing
The room we stayed in at Pisac, aka Hobbittown
These are the ruins of Saqsawaman
Me next to the giant stones
We sat in the plaza after hiking down from Saqsawaman and got a nice picture of the oldest church in Cuzco.
The 12 sided stone.
Some sweet Incan trepanation
The Incans would bind their kids heads to deform them, it was a sign that they were chosen
St. Francis
Underneath the church named after him in Lima
I wonder how many molesters have sat in this seat
A picture off the swanky mall in the nice part of Lima
The sex park
After hitting the mall we went to the temple and then back to the airport. One of the doctors with my brother gave me a valium, so I took it and didn't wake up until I was home. It was great.
