A Dream Vacation in Amazonas

I am feeling incredibly blessed right now!  Last week I had the opportunity to take a vacation that I've dreamed of since I was a little girl but never thought would actually happen until I moved here to Colombia.  I was able to spend a week in the Amazon!

I'm not sure life gets much more beautiful!

The list of things I got to see and do is long.  Writing it all down and looking back through the pictures I sort of can't believe this was my vacation!

We stayed in Leticia which is in the very southern, remote part of Colombia on the boarder with Brazil and Peru.  There are no roads into the city.  The only way to get there is by taking a boat down the river from Peru or to fly in.  We flew from Bogota (in the Northern Hemisphere) into Leticia (in the Southern Hemisphere) and on our first day visited Brazil and Peru.  So within 24 hours we had been in both hemispheres and visited three countries!

After a lot of hassle trying to find information about tours, we finally booked a three day tour of the flooded jungle.  This time of year the rivers are high and a good chunk of the jungle around the rivers is flooded.  It was picturesque, like something out of National Geographic, with all the houses on stilts and little kids, half the time naked, peeking out the doors.  As badly as I wanted to take pictures of all the houses and beautiful children, out of respect for the people who lived there I didn't take any except at the places where we stayed.

The house we stayed in the first night.  If you like open air the amazon is your place!  Doors and windows are merely holes in the walls.

We saw quite a bit of wildlife despite the fact that the jungle is relatively quiet during the day.  We were lucky to see both pink and grey river dolphins, although they're stealthy and I wasn't able to get any photos or video.  We also saw several different types of monkeys, a few sloths, a prehistoric looking turtle, parrots, a peacock, caiman, giant beautiful blue butterflies, frogs, a snake, tarantulas, and an anaconda.

We went caiman hunting one night and caught a couple little 1-2 foot ones that we got to hold.

Tarantula in our boat.  Mine and Lucy's roommate on the second night, carrying her eggs with her.  You can bet that shoe checks happened the next morning!

We also got to go pirana fishing.  Let it be known that Lucy and I were the only ones to catch any, while the three men on the trip left empty handed.  We got to take them home and eat them.

We visited a community in Peru that is in the process of building a lodge for tourists and also has a sort of Amazonian zoo of animals they've caught.  We didn't get to see any wild anacondas, but we did get to see this one at the "zoo".  We could have put it on our shoulders for pictures, but as it was rather angry about being taken out of its cage, I decided not to.  Oh, it also happened to have eaten the zoo's second anaconda a week earlier.  Yup, probably best to pass on that one.  They also had a super friendly monkey named Sheeko.  "Sheeko amigo de todos," the owner keep telling us.  (Sheeko is everyone's friend.)  He certainly was!  He's being feed fresh acai juice in the photo, which we also got to try.

We also got to try Brazil nuts.  Lucy and Patrick were brave enough to try cutting them open with a knife.  I didn't want to cut any fingers off.  Patrick eventually gave up on the knife and took to the hammer.  Lucy found out her teeth aren't as strong as a parrot's beak, but was quite successful with her swiss army knife.









The only mishap of the trip was with the tour agency we used.  They weren't exactly up front with information.  When we got back from our tour of the flooded forest I wanted to do a hike in the primary forest to try and find some frogs.  When I was little we used to get Ranger Rick magazine and one issue had an article with tons of pictures of brightly colored tropical frogs.  I've loved them ever since! I was assured, despite my skepticism, that I would be able to find and see colorful frogs on a day hike.  So the next day, we set out for a hike in primary forest.  What we thought was going to be a day long hike turned out to be a two hour chat by a Ticuna shaman about the group's religious beliefs and customs and an hour and a half long hike looking at medicinal plants.  When I asked about finding frogs he said the forest was full of them but they only come out at night.  Our chances of finding them during the day was about zero.

1.  Jungle beetle     2.  Starting our hike       3.  Patrick and I using our massive strength to pull down vines   
4.  a tiny butterfly    (down the right side):  5.  a bright, pretty plant     6.  a plant used as shampoo     7. We didn't quite understand what this was.  I think a home for some sort of insect.  But if you kick it over, superstition is that it will bring a lot of rain.  

 

Despite the tour company's misinformation, it ended up being a pretty good deal.  While a spiritual lecture and medicinal plant tour wasn't something I would have booked on my own it was interesting.  Especially because the two communities we stayed in during our flooded jungle tour had been communities of indigenous Ticuna.  The shaman also felt bad that the tour company had lied to us and didn't want me to leave without seeing frogs.  He was so incredibly kind as to offer to give us a second tour at night.  So we went back later that evening to go frog hunting.  We still didn't get to see any of the brightly colored frogs I was hoping for.  But we did get to see this cute little guy and a giant toad that is hard to find but eaten when it is found.

And last but not least I honed a few skills I've been practicing here in Colombia.  I think I can now be considered an expert at sleeping in hammocks and squat peeing.  After another night sleeping in a hammock, plus a couple naps in them (this after four nights in hammocks while hiking Ciudad Perdida and a night in Parque Tayrona) I think I've got it down.  The key is to lie at a diagonal.  You end up lying relatively flat that way rather than in a super uncomfortable V shape.  As for the second skill, the squat and pee method is something that's gotten a lot of practice here with the majority of toilets mysteriously missing their seats - something that even Colombians can't explain.  This skill was definitely perfected on this trip.  Our bathroom the first night was a little floating shack with chest height walls and a square cut out of the floor.  Squat and pee through the hole into the river.  This takes remarkable amounts of skill for girls!

Which is probably more than you cared to know about my trip to the Amazon! :)