Somewhere in the Amazon...

This weekend I returned to the Amazon Rainforest - exactly 2 years after I went there when I was studying abroad in Ecuador. It was truly amazing. I forgot how spectacular the rainforest is in itself, along with the river, the calmness, the animals, birds, plants, and even the insects. I ended up taking over 500 pictures so it's very hard to choose which ones to put on here, but I will try to do my best. I'm going to do it in parts because loading pictures takes forever!

David, Keeley, and I flew to the city of Iquitos early on Thursday morning. Iquitos is said to be one of the largest cities in the world you can't reach by road - with some 400,000 people living there, everything/everyone must come by plane. It was so exciting to look out the window and see billions of trees cut by the huge brown Amazon River and it's many tributaries. We had a taxi driver take us from the airport to a travel agency, where we negotiated a price down from 180 soles per day all the way to 100 soles a day - quite a deal! The guy at the agency called a guide and he arrived to pick us up pronto. We really lucked out with our guide. His name is Leon (like Lion but in Spanish) and he was so great! Very knowledgeable and fun, we're recommending him to our other friends who are going to Iquitos in the coming weeks. 

The four of us loaded onto a motorized canoe with our backpacks and big black rubber boots that we borrowed from the agency - the same ones I had used to hike all over Ecuador! About 5 minutes into the trip Keeley saw pink river dolphins. The first animals of many we were about to encounter. 

Riding along the Amazon :)

Our first stop was at a place unofficially named Monkey Island - it's a sort of reservation for rainforest animals with injuries who are recuperating. It's the opposite of a zoo. The animals still get to roam around freely as they please, but they are watched over and fed by locals living in a house on the reservation. This means the animals are INCREDIBLY friendly! Never before have I had a monkey crawl all over me and try to eat my earrings and take off my bracelet. It was so fun!

This monkey "Pepe" hopped on our canoe to greet us at Monkey Island

Great to be able to get so up close!

Pepe

Getting some monkey love

He's trying to take my water bottle/earrings

A three-toed sloth! SOO CUTE

Baby monkey

...that didn't want to let go. 

Monkeys apparently love nose rings.

:)

We got to hold the sloth. It was so slow. 

Toucan that can't fly because somebody plucked its feathers to sell :(

Parrot

Huge snake

Spider monkey

Turtle

After some time at Monkey Island we went on a short walk through the rainforest along the coast of the river. It was really muddy so it was good that we had our boots on! We would stop periodically along the way so Leon could point something out to us... or just for a snack on the go.

Banana tree

Citrus fruit we found on the ground and had to try!

Flowers

Adorable kids in a village we passed through

After walking a bit more we got to another boat that had our stuff in it and set off along the Yanayaku River (a tributary of the Amazon) for the lodge...

David, me, and Keeley on the boat

Me and Keeley happy to be in the AMAZON!

A pair of birds we spotted along the river

We were really happy with the Yanayaku lodge - it was very nice and only one other person was staying there! After taking a dip in the river (yes I swam with the piranas and alligators) we had a late lunch - rice, beans, fried plantain, and fish. It got dark around 6 pm and we went back on the canoe for a night float to try to look for caiman (sort of like small alligators) and other nocturnal creatures. We didn't see much besides these cool glow in the dark bugs, but it was still fun!

Main lodge where we ate all of our meals (no electricity in the whole lodge)

A look into our triple room

Night float

Almost a full moon!

The next day was also full of activities which I'll have to share on my next post :)