La Selva de Amazon

Peru is amazing. For such a small country, it has a vast amount of different geography. For example, I’m living in Cusco which is at 12,500 feet. They also have a huge coast to the Pacific Ocean, but what this blog is all about the Amazon rainforest located in Peru. Friday, Brittany and I flew out of Cusco to Puerto Maldonado. It’s one of the cities closest to the rainforest. It’s located in the region of Madre de Dios. The region has tons of rainforest that is protected by the government of Peru. The name of the region, Mother of God, says it all. It was unbelievable. When we first stepped off the plane, I thought I was back in Mississippi; we were hit with the heat and humidity of the jungle. It stays about 85 to 90 degrees with close to 80% humidity. The city of Puerto Maldonado wasn’t that special. One cool aspect was that no one drives cars. They all drive motorcycles and three wheelers, even the taxis! The only other interesting aspect of the town was that it was located on the Madre de Dios River which is a major tributary of the Amazon River. Our guide met us at the airport, we grabbed lunch, and then we headed for the river. We hopped on a ghetto boat, which would eventually break down on us about ten times, and we took an hour and half boat ride down the river.

If anyone remembers the book “Heart of Darkness” that is how I felt. We were headed further and further from civilization without any knowledge of what lay ahead. I started seeing houses of natives along the river. They were usually made with mud or stucco with straw roofs. It was wild; I’ve never felt more like a tourist. Out. Of. My. Element. We finally arrived to our lodge on the Tambopata River. It was nice, but it was far from extravagant. We only had the bare essentials. Basically, it had a few beds, mosquito nets, a toilet, and a table. The mosquito nets came in handy at night when cat sized mosquitoes came after me. The lodge was surrounded with papaya and banana trees, both of which we had every single meal. After arriving, we had about an hour to settle in and rest. After soaking in the atmosphere, we headed to Monkey Island across the river. I was seriously flashing back to King Kong when they arrived on the uncharted island. It looked exactly the same to me. I was half preparing myself to run from a thirty foot tall gorilla. Luckily, King Kong kept to himself and I didn’t see him. We did however see tons of monkeys on this island. We saw spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys and squirrel monkeys. This is the only spot in the jungle where monkeys are used to humans visiting. They let us feed the monkeys bananas and apples. It was pretty cool to see the monkeys just chillin in their natural habitat. It was also amazing because this was our first hike into the jungle. They plants are gigantic; I seriously didn’t know ferns could get so big. We returned right before dark and had some time to prepare for our next tour. We headed out again with our guide Jon at NIGHT! It is amazingly quiet there. It was a great experience; we were able to see a praying mantis and a couple different types of crickets and spiders. Also, we heard a massive tree fall somewhere in forest. I swear it took the tree 40 seconds to fall. I’m not gonna lie; I got pretty freaked out at first. During the first 20 seconds, it was so loud, I was pretty sure a T-Rex was headed my way and all I had was a stupid head lamp. Fortunately, it was only a tree. After about a 30 minute hike, we headed back to camp, ate dinner, and went to bed.

The next day, bright and early, we headed off to a deeper part of the rainforest. I feel like it takes a lot to impress me, but I was blown away by the plants in the jungle. We saw tons of huge trees, ferns, and flowers. Needing a mental picture? Just think Jurassic park. One tree allows ants to live inside its bark. The ants make tunnels inside the tree. Natives used to capture their enemies and tie them to these trees. Yeah, ants covering your body, talk about torture. My favorite tree had to be walking tree. It is able to move over 6 meters in its lifetime, it always moves toward more sunlight. My favorite flower was actually ugly, but it had the most amazing smell. It was possible to smell it from over 50 ft away. It needs to be made a perfume meow. We spent all Saturday on our jungle tour; a total of about 8 hours. We saw tons of birds and animals I had never seen before. We saw soldier ants, leaf cutter ants, termites, falcons, eagles, vultures, long nose bats, tarantulas, hoatzins, weaver birds, Capet herons, tiger herons, white herons, parakeets, green parrots, egrets, kingfishers, fly catchers, trogons, Jays, Otters, butterflies, and many more. During our hike, we walked about 5 km to Lake Sandoval which used to be a part of the Madre de Dios River. We went to a 50 ft tall over look of the lake and could see endangered otters playing in the lake. It was also an amazing view of the entire jungle. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera that day so check out Brittany’s photos for this day. After our all day hike we rested and had some dinner, but our day wasn’t over. We then headed out on the boat to look for Cayman; they’re very similar to crocodiles. That night we saw at least six Cayman and a very interesting animal called a capybara. It is supposedly one of the largest rodents in the world. It was like a super sized rat that could swim. It was easily four feet tall with all its feet on the ground. It was like Stuart Little all grown up. After an hour boat ride we headed back to camp and went to bed.

WAKE UP! I know this blog is long but don’t fall asleep on me yet. The next morning we woke up at 5:30 and headed out to Macaw Island. It was another cool jungle experience. The only time I’ve seen a macaw before this was locked up in pet store. However, I’m not sure it was worth the 5 am wake up call. We got some good pictures but they were still quite a long way off. Eventually, we returned for breakfast. After a big breakfast I fell asleep in the hammock for two hours. I wasn’t mad it. Probably gonna invest in hammock when I return. Jon woke me up at 10 and said it was time for zip lining. Zip lining was quite the adventure. Let me set the scene, this was the homemade version of a zip line. We climbed the stairs to the top of a 60 ft tall tree. The top platform had no railing or security harness and I wasn’t 100% sure that it could hold all three people. The danger definitely added to the excitement of zip lining through the Amazon. Brittany decided to go first on the zip line. We didn’t realize that we wouldn’t make it the other side. They expected us to pull ourselves the remaining 20 meters to the other platform. Not cool. Brittany was stuck in the middle of the zip line for at least 15 minutes. Finally, they got a rope and pulled her to the other platform. I felt like we were the guinea pigs, “cuy”, for this zip line. We also had no normal way down from the finish platform. So, we were expected to repel down the tree. All in a day’s work in the Amazon. After the zip line we finished our Amazonian experience by kayaking around Monkey Island in the Madre de Dios River. It took us about two hours to kayak and afterwards we were hot so we went for a SWIM in the river! Let’s not forget we were swimming with anacondas, 5 ft catfish, Cayman, piranhas, and electric eels. NBD. The next morning we headed back for civilization and gladly returned to the cooler Cusco climate.

Well I tried to keep this blog short but the Amazon has way too much to talk about. Peruvian fun fact number 4820: Freshly grown Amazon bananas are the best thing ever. Fun fact 4821: Guinea pig is called “Cuy” here in Peru. It is a typical Peruvian dish. Get this, it’s a delicacy. After much convincing, I’m trying it tomorrow night. Stay tuned for the exciting result.

Until next time,

Bryant

Typical Cusco

Hola! Welcome to another fun filled Peruvian blog. I want to give you curious folk a look into my volunteering in the Cusco health clinics. First, I want to describe what to expect in the typical health clinic. There is tons of dust in the city; I guess the climate isn’t that great for growing grass. Nonetheless, the dust easily finds its way into the clinic. It’s very dirty and the doors are always open. It’s not uncommon to see dogs roaming around the waiting areas of the clinic. In the mornings, it is extremely crowded. The typical patients are older women and younger women with babies.

This week I was stationed with a very young doctor. Her name was Pamela. She is 23 and just finished med school. Here they are able to start medical school directly after high school, although, it lasts for six years. My doctor was extremely nice and is at this underfunded health center for only one year. I believe it was a part of her scholarship for medical school. After this year she wants to specialize in Pediatrics. She has a boyfriend of six years whom she met in medical school. He is currently applying for a specialty in plastic surgery in Brazil. She hopes to follow him there. Obviously, the doc and I are tight meow. We saw lots of normal cold and flu symptoms in our patients this week. Typically, red, swollen throats and raspy coughs occupied our day. My job was to check their throats with a tongue depressor for any swelling. I also checked for any constriction in the patients lungs with a stethoscope. I would listen for any raspy constriction when they breathed. It was pretty interesting to me since I’ve never actually done the tests. We got to see quite a few children. I think she usually sees all the children in the clinic because really enjoys working with them. FYI, Peruvian babies are the cutest. I really enjoyed working with Pamela but it’s on to the next one! Hopefully, I’ll get to hang around the director of the clinic this week.

We also said farewell to of my some of my favorite people this week. Hillary was headed back to Michigan and Laura was headed to a tour of Europe before returning home to Australia. We, of course, sent them off the right way. We went to trivia at the Real McCoy. It was tons of fun with it being mostly and English speaking crowd. We had dinner and a few drinks at happy hour. Then, it was off to the roof for drinking games and good times. Many pictures tend to be taken on the roof top. Brittany and I had a little too much fun that night. Our flight to the jungle, the next day, was miserable.

It’s time for your random Peru fact of the week! Every taxi ride is a different adventure. I literally feared for my life on my first taxi ride. I was thrown from window to window in the back seat. All the cars are extremely small and they don’t believe in staying in one lane. Usually we are riding four deep on a three lane road. It’s also quite nerve racking when we don’t stop at any four way stops. They just lay on the horn in belief that it is sufficient to have the right of way. Speaking of right of way, pedestrians do NOT have it. Taxis yield to NO man, child, or animal. For me? No seatbelt. I like to keep things interesting.

Experience Cusco

Happy Fourth of July from PERU! I left off last week with our safe return from Lake Titicaca. The excitement didn’t end there. The very next day we went on a tour of Cusco. We went with our new best friends from the “San Pedro” house. I figured it was time for a tour of the city that I had been living in for over a week. The first stop was at the Qorikancha. It’s actually located right across the street from Maximo Nivel’s office. The Qorikancha was a very cool place. It was originally an Incan temple, which seems to be the case for most of the ruins we see. When the Spanish overtook the Incans they built over the destroyed Incan buildings. So the bottom half of the building was built from the perfectly fit, Incan stones. The top part of the building looked similar to the Spanish cathedrals I visited in Europe. Architecture fascinates me. I’m weird, I know. I believe it was used as church. The next stop on the tour was at Saqsaywaman. It’s on mountain that overlooks Cusco. It was my favorite stop of the day merely because you pronounce it “Sexy Woman.” It was first believed that the Incas had used the structure for military defense. False. It was actually the temple of thunder and lightning. The walls were built in the shape of jagged lines, aka lightning. From Saqsaywaman we had an amazing view of Cusco. Very close to “sexy woman” was our next stop Q’endo. It was very unique. It had two massive rocks that had been carved through. It was the temple of fertility. The actual altar had been preserved; this where animals were sacrificed for the fertility gods. Our last stop of the tour was Tambomachay. We got there around sunset so the view was, again, amazing. Tambomachay is also known as the “the Bath of the Princess.” It has two aqueducts that provide flowing water year round. The waters were rumored to be the fountain of youth. I doubt that’s the case since I don’t see any Inca’s running around.

The very next day we set up a full day tour of the Sacred Valley. I didn’t realize it would be a full day trip but I wasn’t mad at it. It’s a HUGE valley between the Andes and is actually very close to Machu Picchu. The Urubamba River flows right through the middle of the valley. We stopped at Tipon first. It was unbelievable complex of hillside farming terraces with water channels built into bare stone. It was mainly used for farming, but it also several houses built on the top of the mountain. They were the houses of the wealthy Incas. Tipon also housed several burial grounds of the Incas. They were built into the top mountain side. Unfortunately, most of the graves had been robbed for their treasures. We stopped after Tipon for lunch at Urubamba and ate the Inca Café, original huh? After lunch, we headed to Ollantaytambo. In my opinion, it might be the most intact ruin around Cusco. It’s set on a mountain. At the very top was the temple of sun, complete with sacrifice altars. The most interesting part was the 25 to 30 terraces built all the way to the top of the mountain. It was built solely to protect the temple at the top. I still don’t see how they hauled massive stones all the way to the top of a mountain with any animals or machinery. Our last sacred valley tour stop was at Chinchero. The main point of the stop was to view another church that Spanish had built on top of the Incans. It was nice and all but the best part of the stop was the amazing sunset. We could see snow capped mountains in the distance and the sky literally looked like it was on fire. Check out the photos on facebook, you know I got picture happy.

Well after all this travel this week I finally had some time to settle down and volunteer at my health clinic. I was assigned to the laboratory this week. The first day I helped identify blood types, test for syphilis, and check for AIDS. I mainly worked with the blood part of the lab but they also check for TB and parasites. I spoke to an actual doctor from the states who had been volunteering all week at the same clinic. He knew VERY little Spanish and he couldn’t do anything to help the clinic. So needless to say, I wasn’t expecting to do anything much more than that because of the language barrier between the nurses and me. I tried to make conversation the first day. The nurses were extremely patient and taught me as much as they could. Surprisingly, the very next day I was ask to draw blood from the patients. I had watched them the day before but I have NEVER drawn blood from anyone. It was a cool experience. I ended up taking the blood from all six patients that came in that day. I’m a pro now. So if you need any blood work done, holla at cha boy. The lab was fun for a couple days, but it was a very repetitive and became boring very quickly. I’ll be headed to a different part of the clinic next week.

This weekend we stayed around Cusco. We went horseback riding, salsa dancing, and went to a professional soccer game. Horseback riding was awesome. I’m not sure I’ve ever touched a horse before this weekend. My horses name was Cabro; Spanish for goat. He was pretty stubborn. We went for about three hour ride through the mountains of Cusco. Our housemate Hillary had a crazy horse that bucked her off. It was quite entertaining. We even met a Belgium couple; they enjoyed making fun of our southern draws. Directly after horseback riding we went to Salsa lessons. I’m not gonna lie I thought I was going to master the salsa in no time. Ha false. It was actually really complicated. We had lessons for about two hours and I finally started to get the hang of it at the end. I’ll continue to practice so I can teach America to Salsa. Today, it was July fourth! I found it extremely weird being in a foreign country for the fourth. I guess I just felt unpatriotic. We went to the cathedral this morning for church. It was a cool experience to hear mass in Spanish, but I basically got nothing out of it. It was very difficult to understand. The cathedral looks extremely similar to the Spanish cathedrals expect slightly less glamorous. We capped off our weekend by attending a local soccer match. Cusco played Lima in a great professional soccer match. Soccer is comparable to SEC football here. The only exception is that the fans do NOT stop jumping and chanting during the game. It was really intense and fun to be a part of. Lima scored right before half and had the 1-0 lead until the last minute of the game when Cusco tied it up with a header. The stands went absolutely nuts! After that I understood why there was an 8 foot fence around the field with barb wire at the top. The game ended in a tie.

Reviewing my last two weeks I’ve noticed how much more comfortable I am here. It’s an extremely cool revelation. I now have the confidence with my Spanish to be able to travel the city alone and bargain with local merchants. It’s comparable to the step you take from high school to college. I feel more independent.

Well I’m done torturing you readers. I’ll leave with you another fun Peru fact. If you want to start a store here all you need to do is end the name in –eria. For instance, if you want to start a hair salon it would be called peluqueria or a chicken place, polleria. My favorite so far is Ferreteria. I’ll let you use your imagination.

TITICACA!

Welcome to another fun filled edition of my Peruvian life. This weekend was jammed packed of good times, good people, and amazing views. We left on Thursday night at 10. We had a six hour bus ride to Puno, which is located directly on Lake Titicaca. We had a group of nine awesome people; two from Australia, one from Texas, one from Pittsburg, another from California. You get the picture, we had a very diverse group. We arrived at four in the morning and decided to grab a hostel for a few hours before our 8 o’clock tour. One of the guys in our group is 28 and is an Iraqi war veteran. He made the comment that the city looked just like Baghdad. Exactly what I wanted to hear at 4:30 in the morning in a foreign country. We found a cheap sketch hostel and didn’t get settled in till about 5:30. I was ready for my one hour nap until some Peruvians had the great idea to start shooting fireworks. Awesome. Immediately, I remember the Baghdad comment and feel like I’m in a war zone. Sweet way to start the trip. Well I did survive the night, only to find that my room in the hostel didn’t have running water. So I’m was loving life on that great Friday morning.

Good news, we did make it to our Lake tour on time at 8. We were put in small boats and shipped out to the Los Uros Islands. The view that morning was worth the long night of travel. Puno turned out to be a cool city sitting on mountain side that runs along the coast of Lake Titicaca. The Uros are a famous tribe of pre Incan Indians who live on floating, man-made islands. They initially made the islands on the lake to escape from the other Indians tribes who they were constantly at war with. I guess it worked; they are still living in perfect harmony on the lake and you know how it turned out for the other Indians. They use a grass found in the lake to make the islands, boats, and houses. Each island has its own president. We visited one island and met the president and all the families. They were extremely nice people. We went for a boat ride on one of their handmade grass boats. They even have solar power now on some of the islands. I guess tourism business isn’t too bad. After spending about four hours on the Uros islands we headed out for a three hour boat ride to Amantani Island.

We arrived at Amantani and met the family we would be staying the night with. They were precious. I can say that since I was a foot taller than anyone else on the island. They took us up to their house which overlooked the lake. An awesome view to wake up to. After getting settled, we headed up to the Incan ruins. The Incas had built two temples on the island. One for the sun god and one for the moon god, both were located at the very highest point of the island. Oh by the way the islands on Lake Titicaca are basically mountains. So we had about an hour hike up to the sun god temple to watch the sunset. I’ve never seen anything more amazing in my life. The sun set over the Andes mountains and from the top we could see the snow capped Bolivian mountains as well. I got picture happy, so check out the pics on facebook. Afterwards, we headed back down to our family houses. They fed us their typical food; which consisted of a quinoa soup with some warm potatoes and vegetables. Then we were dressed in their typical outfits to go do some local dancing. I felt like Don Quixote in my attire. Although, the dancing was kind of a letdown. We basically held hands and went in a circle to some native music. I was having flashbacks to the 1^st grade playground playing red rover. After the long day we finally got some much needed sleep.

At 8 the next morning we got back on our tour boat and headed to our next island Taquile. After another two hour boat ride we arrived and proceeded to climb another mountain. We didn’t do much on this island we just got some really good pictures. We visited the town plaza. The people of Taquile are known for their textile production. We spent about two hours looking around then we were fed a local lunch. I choose fresh trout straight from the Lake. Yeah, it was as good as it sounds. Lunch was also cool because we ate outside overlooking the lake. These islands just don’t allow for a bad view. We returned to Puno that afternoon. We found a DIFFERENT hostel and grabbed a bight to eat at one the local pizzerias that night. The hostel was 180 degree turn around from our first night. It was run by mom and daughter. They were the nicest people I’ve ever met. They treated us like we were a part of their family. We had hot showers. They gave us directions to their five favorite restaurants. That night they brought up warming pads for our beds. It was basically the equivalent of an electric blanket in Peru. The next morning they cooked our choice of breakfast. AND the mom chased down a taxi for us to the bus station. When I say chased, I mean she literally ran down the street and stopped a taxi. I legitimately want to write them a Spanish thank you letter.

After arriving at the bus station at 8 we took a bus across the Bolivian border to Copacabana. It was hassle crossing the border for us Americans. They don’t really like us in Bolivia so they charge us $135 for a visa to visit the country. The good thing about it though is I didn’t come close to spending the much while in Bolivia. It’s extremely cheap. 7 Boliviano make 1 American dollar. We found bus rides for $2 and ate four course dinners for close to $5 dollars. A four hour bus ride later we arrived in Copacabana. We then got a hostel to put our gear in. We booked a tour for La isla del sol at 2. We had just enough time to grab some lunch and head to the docks. It was about a two hour boat ride to the island. We got to see the last two hours of sunlight on the Sun Island. It was another unbelievable sight to see with more snow capped Bolivian mountains in the background of Lake Titicaca. My group decided to stay close to the boat and not climb this mountain of an island. I wanted to see the view from the top. So I took off for the climb and got some amazing pictures. I must have gotten a little picture crazy again when I realized the boat would be leaving at 3:50. So at the top of the island I asked what time it was and of course it was 3:50. So I basically sprinted back down to the dock and got there at about 4. I looked to where our boat had docked and of it and my friends were gone. I was like great guess I’m spending the night on the island tonight. I’m probably gonna get eaten by some Puma or some unknown island creature. Luckily, about that time I saw my friends on top of a boat at a different dock waving for me. I, luckily, made it back on the right boat. We headed back to Copacabana for the night. That night we walked around Copacabana plaza and ate at another local restaurant. We went to bed early because we had another 8 o’clock bus ride in the morning.

The owner of this hostel didn’t chase down any taxis for us but it was still much better than my first hostel experience. We left Copacabana at 8 for La Paz, Bolivia. The bus ride was quite interesting. Thirty minutes into the bus ride along extremely curvy mountain roads we pulled into a small town on Lake Titicaca. The bus driver then made us get off the bus? As a tourist I just assume the worst. So I was thinking awesome they’re about to rob us and leave us in this little town. Well apparently I was just unaware that the bus can’t complete the journey to La Paz without crossing the lake. So all the passengers were sent to a small boat and shipped to the other side of the lake while our bus was loaded onto a tiny wooden boat and shipped across too. I was half expecting to our bus sink on the little dinky boat they sailed it across on. We also sailed across on an extremely small boat. About thirty people crammed into this wooden single engine boat. It happened to be a rough day on the lake. I was lucky enough to sit next to a Peruvian man that was carrying across a sack of potatoes. I’m guessing that he didn’t travel over the water very often cause he seemed terrified. I’m just minding my own business when this guy apparently sees a big wave coming and flips out. He grabs my upper thigh with a white knuckle grip for support against the wave and doesn’t let go for a good 30 seconds. Felt more like 10 minutes to me. So I’ve now been violated by a Peruvian, awesome. Anyways, we finally got back on the bus and continued our three hour trip to La Paz. We didn’t get to spend much time in La Paz but it seemed to be a pretty cool city. It’s set in between this mountain range. It looks like the city started in the valley and slowly spread all the way the mountains. It was a huge. My friends got some great pictures from the witches market.

We left La Paz for a 12 hour trip back to Cusco. It was quite an interesting ride back. Transportation has provided me with way too many stories thus far. We get to the Bolivian/Peru border at about 7 pm which is about closing time for them. Well Laura, one of our Australian friends had some complications coming across the border. Ends up she never technically left Peru and is in Bolivia Illegally. She didn’t do anything wrong it was just a mess up with how long her visa was meant to be for. BUT what this meant for us is we had to sneak her across the border back to Peru. It was highly stressful because the last thing we wanted was someone in a South American jail. So the plan was I would quickly get my passport stamped and comeback as she was just getting off the bus. I returned to the bus before she even got off. I waited on her and walked her across the border. I had her wait in a shop while I got my passport stamped on the Peru side. By then our bus had crossed the border, I got her and we quickly boarded. As we were boarding a cop ask me if I had got my stamp. Luckily, I was tall enough to block her from view but I showed it to him real quick on got on board. It was actually pretty intense. After the bus safely pulled away I basically felt like a secret agent.

Well that’s it for this blog, sorry for writing so much this blog but a lot happens in a South American weekend. This was actually the condensed version. Well , I’ll leave you with some things I’ve learned over the first week in Peru/Bolivia.

Fun facts about Peru: 1. You cannot flush toilet paper down the toilet. The sewers here can’t process it. It must be put in the trash beside the toilet. To answer your question, yes the bathroom usually smells wonderful. 2. They don’t have heaters anywhere (I wear a sweatshirt and pants to bed) 3. Showers create “hot” (more like just above freezing) water with an electric shower head. This brings me to my next fun fact, 4. Peru doesn’t have that great of wiring. If the cold shower doesn’t wake me up in the morning, then the loose wires to the shower head will provide an unexpected electric shock that is sure to jump start my day.