Sunday, October 3, 2010

Welcome to the jungle

Hello everybody, I know it's been a while. Almost two weeks!! Well, in this time I have came and gone to the Amazon jungle and celebrated my 20th birthday. We visited the indigenous towns of Huacaria and Los Queros. It was quite the experience, and I would love to go back to the jungle under one condition- no more yuca. You see, the Amazon is beautiful, green, and the air is warm, which is a welcome change from Cusco. However, the food is limited and I ended up eating yuca for 3 meals a day for 5 days. These kinds of setbacks have to be tolerated when there is a river as beautiful as this to swim in-
It was the best thing to do before starting my day after a hot night's sleep in my tent. We also didn't really have showering opportunities, so the cleanliness the river provided was more than necessary.
The last day in the first village we all went through ceremonial hair washing to restore balance in our system. It was great, but I had leaves in my hair for the next two days. Check it out-

Besides this I was able to do so many interesting things like going night fishing with the town president. It was so much fun casting the net in the river and then pulling the tiny fish out of it. We ate them for breakfast the next day. I also worked on a banana farm and used a machete. I even have a blister to prove it, I swear.
Some of the most exciting time of our jungle trip came in the form of transportation. We all had to stand or sit in the bed of this truck to go anywhere. The novelty of this wears off after an hour and whenever the rain comes. It's not surprising, but in the rainforest there is a lot of rain.

Look at this truck and imagine crossing a three foot high river in it. It was like the modern day version of the Oregon trail. Well I must be off, after all I still have homework to do!

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