Welcome to the Jungle!

I hope you all read the title of this post in Axl Roses shreil!

Anyway, we thought we'd better update you on what's been going on here in Peru! We started our long journey inland towards Iquitos, with our first stop in a small mountain town called Chachapoyas.

We arrived in Chachapoyas to find an amazing little city nestled in the mountains! It is clearly our favourite city so far! It is heavily influenced by the Spanish, with amazing colonial architecture and a nice central plaza. However our stay here was brief, as we needed to keep moving in order to reach Cusco by the time Jacqui's sister, Alanah, arrives! On our first day we visited the ruins of a pre inca city called Kuélap. Our tour had an "English" guide (or so they said as we booked) but when we met him, he told us he was just learning! As we went around the ruins his 10 minute descriptions he told people in Spanish, equated to a 2 minute broken English description. Luckily for us, a French guy started translating the Spanish later in the tour as the guide got over trying to speak English!

After another near miss with a bus, we continued our journey inland towards the amazon basin! Our final destination by road was a town called Yurimaguas situated on the river! From there we organised to do a four day juggle tour in the amazon basin! After getting ripped off by the guy who sold us the tour, we boarded a boat heading to a town called Lagunas, from where we would leave for our jungle tour. This boat was a cargo boat that took 12 hours to get to this town. Basically all roads end in Yurimaguas so if you want to get to the Peruvian Amazon, you have to fly to Iquitos or take one of these cargo boats. On the boat you need to bring a hammock to tie up in order to have somewhere to sit or sleep. As you can see from the photos, there is not much room to breathe! Our 12 hour trip was made somewhat entertaining by listening to a group of Americans panicking over the security of their stuff, when they would get lunch, and complaining every time this CARGO boat stopped at small villages to drop of supplies! What made it funnier was that one was living in Peru for 8 years, yet he was the loudest of them all! And to top it off, within an hour of the trip, his food bag was "stolen"! For at least 30 minutes he would not shut up about it, meanwhile me and jac were trying our hardest to keep it together and not burst out laughing! At the end of the boat ride, it turned out that his friend had accidentally mistaken the bag for his own food, and was eating his food all day! Brilliant!

The day after we got to Lagunas we met with our guides and jumped on a canoe for our tour! The tour took us through the Pacaya-Samiria national reserve which is only accessible by canoe. As we paddled, we saw lots of different wild animals, from colourful parrots and other exotic birds, to many different types of monkeys. And one place we witnessed about 40 odd monkeys jumping from tree to tree! We also saw a couple sloths from a distance. At one point, our guide Cesar stopped the canoe to point out something in the water. It was a 4 metre anaconda! We also went croc hunting at night and saw a few crocs, as well as another anaconda! One morning we went for a 3 hour walk into the jungle and came across some very large Jaguar footprints! Cesar said that the Jaguar would have heard us coming and ran off! Our tour was really cool, however after 4 days in a canoe and getting molested by mozzies we happy to return to Lagunas.

A few people have asked us how our spanish is coming along so I'll give a small example of how it's going. As we arrived in Lagunas, a guy from the tour agency was talking to us in our hostel. He then asked us (well we thought he asked us) what we had for lunch on the boat. I then said in spanish that we had chicken and rice for lunch, to which his co worker started leave at other guys order. We then realised he was asking if wanted some dinner (or so we thought). We made sure he knew we didn't need any dinner and then went to bed. The next morning he picks us up and takes us to get breakfast. As we arrived two massive plates of chicken and rice are put out in front of us! Whoops!Anyway back to the blog

The guy who organised our tour told us that on the Wednesday we returned from the jungle we could get a boat to Iquitos. This boat did not exist! We went to the dock to work out when the next bus would arrive, and they told us it would be at midnight the next day! We passed on this news to three French blokes we met in the jungle who were also wanting to head to Iquitos. They were livid and one of them went on a mission to find us a boat, as they had booked flights from Iquitos to Lima that they would miss if they couldn't get an earlier boat. His Spanish was very fluent so we were happy to follow him as he hassled numerous small boat owners, to even trying to hire the mayors boat. We found a small boat that could get us to Iquitos however the price was about triple that of a cargo boat, however it could get us there in a third of the time. We left the boat owner while we discussed our options, and then me and jac grabbed some tea. The French guys found us to tell us that a cargo boat was coming that night after all, and that the people at the dock gave us dodgy info! The boat was due to arrive at 4am that night! The boat ended up coming at around 9am, much to relief of our French compatriots!

The boat trip last for 2 full days this time. The length could have been shorter if it wasn't for the wing nut of a captain who kept getting us grounded in obviously shallow parts of the river. At one time we spent 4 hours trying to get free while another cargo boat tried to pull as free or ram into us! The captain of this other boat wasn't too bright either it seemed! He kept trying to pull us out at right angles to our boat! He tried that tactic for 3 hours, even though it was only getting us swivel on the ground! He finally went directly in front of our boat and pulled. We immediate got free! We decided to get off at a town called Nauta which is situated where the marañon river and the river ucayali meet to form the amazon river! From Nauta it was a 2 hour bus ride to Iquitos!

It was so good to get to Iquitos! We were truly looking forward to chilling out in Iquitos for a few days after the marathon journey to get here! I'll talk about Iquitos in our next post, as we have only just left and this post is looking intimidating already! Check out our web photo album for more pics too!

Hope you're all well back home and look forward to hearing how Lifewell conference went!

¡Hasta Luego!

Bye Bye Ecuador!

¡Hola!

Just a quick update on whats going on here in Ecuador! I'm writing this from the beach side town of montañita sitting in a hammock getting some cloud! let me make a correction, I started writing it here. I am finishing it Trujillo in Peru

Our week in Baños was a lot less action packed than our first few weeks. For starters Baños is a very small town nestled in the mountains. Right next to the town is a big volcano that caused the town to be fully evacuated a few years back.

On our first day here we did the one thing I really wanted to do again! That's right, another horse ride! This time up one of the mountains to get a good look at the volcano. These horses were not that great. We didn't actually ride them, rather the guide directed them by his voice and whip. Yay, heaps fun! However, he did show us some water from a spring that naturally carbonated the water. We tasted it and it tasted like sparkling water. A bit of ball crushing later, and we stopped by a cool cafe hidden in a valley across the river. We had to use a dodgy flying fox type cart to get to the other sides (without horses) that was a fair way above the river! (Jac reckons it was 30m high but I reckon it was half that)

Our week mainly consisted of Spanish school, however we managed to fit in a few more activities.

On the Saturday arvo, we went to the local thermal springs! We were really looking forward to this, since the weather had been rubbish and raining everyday. However our view of this place was changed very quickly. May I ask you all one question? Have you ever filled your backyard swimming pool with half water, and half urine and then heated it to a high enough temperature to create urine steam? No? Well ur missing out! The pool was choc full of kids and the water was actually yellow! But we had already paid our entry fee, so we hopped straight in! Although we only lasted about 10 minutes before the urine condensation began to fill our nostrils! A few days later our Spanish teacher told us that you shouldn't go on Saturday's, and that there is an adults only bath, however it was shut when we were there.

We also did some whitewater rafting in a nearby river! It was really cool and heaps of fun! I was put up the front with another guy (who turned out to be a collingwood supporter), and copped the brunt of all the waves, but we loved every minute!

Our spanish teacher was really good! Jacqui loved her soooooo much!!! After every lesson, Jacqui would ramble on about how lovely she was on the walk back to the hostel! We also got the unexpected experience of her telling us her testimony in Spanish! And little bits in English! She told us how she had an unbelievable encounter with God when she was 40 which saw her whole life transform so much that all her friends couldn't believe she was the same person! It was a very special moment that we hope to remember for a long time! It was so good to hear first hand how God is working all over the world! It was seriously amazing! Jacqui started crying, and then another teacher walked in and was wondering what was going on!

On the Friday night we took a night bus to montañita. This was our first "big" bus trip, it took us 10 hours to get to the coast! Oh the excitement of getting the a hot sunny beach! Surely a beach this close to the equator will be scorching hot and humid! Nope! Hello cloud and rain city! It was the biggest let down of our trip! The town was real small and had maybe 3 streets, which were filled by expat hippies trying flog cheap jewelry! But we were stuck here for the week because we had Spanish lessons booked in! We finally learned how to talk in the past tense, which is cool! After 2 days, we were so sick of walking past the same streets and the same dirty hippies every time we had to eat! At least our hostel was nice, it was on the beach and out of town a little bit. There, we met a really interesting American businessman. He would have been in his 40s, married no kids, and was in Ecuador for 6 month on business. We had a long convo about his work and how he travels 125,000km a year and then a hole lot more other boring stuff. Then the convo took a random turn! Somehow, somehow he started talking about weed! (ps. Due to jac's dreads, we have been offered weed numerous times!) the dude started telling us that it's legal in his home state for medical use. It's apparently so loose, that all HE did was go to the doctor and complain about not sleeping! He then proceeded to show me a website of the store that sells him the stuff! The store sold all different kinds of weed and cookies and other stuff on the "menu". Crazy!

Needless to say that as soon as our Spanish lessons finished we jumped on the first bus out of town!

We then started a horror bus trip! Montañita - Guayaquil (4 hours), Guayaquil - Piura (13 hours), Piura - Chiclayo (4 hours)

In the middle of the 13 hour leg was the border crossing into Peru. As my passport was about to be scanned the computer system went down, and our bus was stranded on the border for almost 2 hours!

As we entered Peru, it was amazing! It is so hard to believe how different everything is here compared to Ecuador! The streets look different, the driving feels more like a crazy Asian streets, taxis everywhere and all of them trying to rip you off! Our first taxi in Peru, had an agreed price of 4. As we arrived we handed him 4 soles, but he then said "4 dollars" What?! Your currency is soles here mate!!! Even as I was fumbling for cash he started saying 5 dollars! After 21 hours on buses I couldn't be bothered, so I handed him 4 US dollars and left!

We are also noticing that there isn't as many tourists in the north of Peru. I feel SO white! In Latin America, the word "gringo" is used for white tourists. The other day as we were walking down a street in Chiclayo, a random guy in a car just yelled out, "GRINGO" and then kept going! And then the next day a guy just yelled it out again as he walked past us! May I ask you all another question? Have you ever yelled out "ASIAN TOURIST" as you saw Japanese tourists get out of tour bus in some part of Australia? If not, give it a go, as it seems to be all the rage over here!

We saw some ruins of an old pre-colonial civilisation just out of chiclayo, of which we will post photos later. It hasn't be preserved too well, and most of the "pyramids" looked like piles of sand! We did see a museum that showcased the finding of an old tomb of a king! It was very Egyptian-like in the way they buried their kings, only they weren't mummified. The tomb was full of gold and lots of pottery and sacrificial offerings. We only spent 2 nights in chiclayo, and are now in Trujillo. There is some ruins of another city called "chan chan" that we will see tomorrow morning!

Tomorrow night we start heading inland towards the amazon river and jungle! We don't know if we'll have power let alone internet at some of those places, so we may not be contactable for a week or two. Our end goal is to get to Iquitos, which is a town that you can only get to by boat or air! We will be taking a 3 day boat ride to get there! Should be a cool experience, yet hell at the same time! Sorry I haven't put any photos up, they take ages to upload at this place! Will try to eventually post them to our picasa album!

¡Hasta luego!