Yes, it's true...I came home alive and just fine. I wish I could attribute my blog-slacking to some exotic reason like being holed up in a 3rd-World Country hospital while they re-attached my hand after the caymen took it off...oh wait, no I don't wish that at all! I've seen their hospitals! Okay...let me just tell you about the jungle. I am going to cheat and back-date these posts so the timing makes more sense in the future...
We headed to the Jungle on Sunday the 6th of April. I hadn't looked online at the resort we were going to, and I kind of had an idea that they might not have internet access, but imagine my shock and horror to find out that they didn't even have a phone line!!!!!!! I honestly didn't know how I was going to stay sane for 3 nights/4 days there! We flew into Puerto Maldonado, where we took a tour bus through town, then we took a boat (yep...a boat) to get to the resort about 30 minutes down the river. The jungle was all around us, and I couldn't escape to connect with any kind of civilization until we left on the 9th to come home! There were 2 saving graces there... one was the sparkling (and chlorinated) swimming pool just in front of the bungalow...that's where I started taking my daily bath/shower...I'd only use the one in our room for the soap part, which wasn't necessary every single day. The second was the food. I'm usually not a person who is driven by food at all, but the chef at this resort was AWESOME!!! They had a French Chef that made 3-course meals 3 times a day for us...no choices, but I never had anything I didn't eat (except the passion fruit because while the taste was good, the texture was that of chunky snot).
It was beautiful there, though the terrain was quite different. This time it was flat, hot and humid...just what I needed to recover from this last winter in Salt Lake City. By the way, I learned that SLC had 3 major snow-storms while I was in Peru!
We arrived the first day, got settled into our bungalows. None had windows, just screens. They turned the power on every morning for a few hours and every night from 5-10 pm. All the rest of the time we had no power. I had hot water in my shower once during the week, and it only lasted for about 15 seconds. Otherwise it was cold! There was a resident Toucan at the resort that was very tame, and who drank out of running faucets whenever he could find them. There were also a few parrots who would whistle and say phrases like, "Hola Pepe! Hello Pepe!" They were all fun!
We did a tour of the Jungle the first night and saw enough things to scare us into not wandering in there at night...or even during the day without people with us. I got out there and realized I'd had little sleep for several days, was still processing all of the experiences we'd had over the week before, and looked at the schedule of our tours in the jungle only to realize that there wasn't a lot of down-time. I was getting grumpy from it all, so I decided that I was on vacation now, and I didn't have to go on the tours if I didn't want to. So on Monday while the rest of our group went on a tour to Monkey Island, I stayed home and napped and laid pool-side. It was fantastic and was the best decision I made all week! I went for the morning walk with everyone to see the parakeets in the wild. Then I came home, showered, lathered with bug-lotion for the day and changed into my swim-suit with a pair of shorts and a t-shirt over the top. I took my first nap after breakfast. Then everyone met up and left, and I waited until I was really hot in my bungalow before I went down to the pool. I swam and laid out in the nice hot Peruvian sun. The temps were in the 90's with the humidity in the 90's as well. I wasn't sure how anyone lives down there without the option of being in the water at any given time.
I met one of the guys that worked around the resort (Daniel), and learned he was an artist who had gone to school in Argentina. We talked for quite a while. Then he served me drinks pool-side just before lunch (no one got drinks pool-side at this place!). During lunch, I was eating alone in the dining room and he came and sat by me, shared some of his artwork with me, and proceeded to paint me a beautiful water-color of the jungle at night. It wasn't completely dry (how does anything dry in the jungle?!!!) so he finished it later and had me pick it up that night when he was working at the bar, which I did.
After lunch, I went back up to my bungalow and took my afternoon nap in the hammock outside. I woke up to the sound of one of the parrots talking to me. He wanted my hot-yellow flip-flops and actually came down and played with / attacked them for a while. It was so funny! Then Tuki, the toucan came over and chased him off so he could get a better look at them. I took them inside (the flip-flops, not the birds) and rested there for a while and about that time, everyone got back from their tour that day. I'd had a fabulous day, and wasn't terrifically disappointed that I'd missed the tour even though they did see hundreds of monkeys and other jungle animals. I'd had a great day too!
The first two nights we were there, we went caymen hunting on the river at night. Caymen are a kind of alligator. The first night we saw a few of them but the tour guide wasn't ever able to catch one. The second night, we only saw one but we also saw owls and bats, and their large rodents that are a little bigger than a border collie...and we saw tarantulas.
Tuesday, I did go on the tours again, which were interesting, but I realized that I would have enjoyed just staying pool-side for another day.
Wednesday morning, we started our 30-hour marathon trip home. The smile on my face that day was genuine finally, because I was READY to be going home! I'd had a good time, but I just needed to be home. I was done dealing with the psych-social dynamics and drama in our group. We kind of compared it to "Survivor" off and on during the week and I heard that at one point, someone said that if it was "Survivor" that Chad and I would be the only two left on the island...everyone else would have been voted off. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing...
Overall, I'd have to say that this is an experience that I would recommend doing at least once!
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