The Jungle

So I flew from Cusco to Lima... because I'm lazy... and the bus takes 20 hours on bad roads also. I spent a few days in Lima and had a really good time. Alot of people don't like Lima but I didn't understand why. I didn't take one picture however. so to summarize what I did; went to the beach, ate good food, went surfing (I actually managed to ride some waves), partied a little bit, went to a really good museum. I then caught a flight to Iquitos which is in the jungle. It's a crazy town where everyone rides motorbikes as there are no actual roads to the place. Amazonas from the aeroplane


I got to Iquitos and arranged a three day tour on the river with a couple of other guys from the hostel. Giant lilypads

First evening

Caiman hunting went reasonably well although we didn't catch one big enough to eat for breakfast. I didn't catch this

The next day we went for a jungle walk for a couple of hours through a mist of mosquitos. Nice. We found a snake and of course had to have photos with it

Big tree, the reason I look a little uncomfortable is that this tree was in a little swamp that was covered in swimming giant spiders. I don't like spiders. Really don't like them...


They were about the size of my hand. They were also to be found in the jungle lodge we were staying in. By the end of the three day tour every time I entered a room I would scan every corner before I would sit down


So we spent a few hours hunting for tarrantulas and couldn't find any only to come back to the lodge and find one sitting directly above the toilet. Good luck hey

Our jungle guide was a bit strange and wanted it on his face. Every few seconds it would jump off, like really jump


Ok, so on the second night the greek guy who was on the tour arranged to have a jungle drink called ayahuasca. Me and the other English guy, always up for trying some of the local brew, also signed up for this not really knowing much about it. The drink is supposed to cleanse the body and mind. That is all I will say about it as my mother will tell me off otherwise. If you want to know more about it read about it on wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca). It was an interesting evening anyway. This was where we stayed in the jungle


Back in Iquitos we went to an animal rescue center. They had loads of cool jungle animals including sloths which are now without doubt my favourite animal. Look below, they are soo slow and so funny looking. Note the monkey about to slap me in the face!

Giant Boa Constrictor anyone? It actually wanted to eat me, I have another photo with this snake but I look so afraid I haven't put it up


Kids in the jungle have to work for there food (unlike the cheeky little ones in Bolivia). This kid was spearing for fish. Looked like hard work to me

I then took a 12 hour Speed boat to Leticia which is in Colombia. There was a slow boat that took three days but as with the buses, if there is a quicker way then I'm more than likely to take it... In Leticia me and Harry, the other English guy on the Jungle tour, decided we wanted to do some more fishing as on the tour we went fishing for pirhana but only for an hour or so. We went to the river hoping to find somwehere to rent roads etc but found nothing so decided we would DIY it. We hired a boat, bought line, rods, hooks, meat and a local fisherman to take us down the river to fish. It was quite a fun day as we really could do what we wanted. I still couldn't catch any fish although everyone else did on the boat. A frog that jumped on the boat


Something was wrong with this rod I'm sure


Rainbow

Storms brewing


The jungle was awesome but I was ready to leave when I did as the spiders, humidity and mosquitos are a pain. I flew (again) from Leticia to Bogota which is the capital of Colombia. I didn't like Bogota really, the weather was crappy and it was a bit dangerous there. The area where the travellers stay is safe until about 8, after this time the shady homeless people agressively ask you for money and for some lucky people they demand money with sharp objects. There were even tourist police that would tour the hostels in the daytime just to check if anything had happened to people. It wasn't so bad but I don't really like curfews in a city so moved on...

That's it for now. Where am I now? Southern part of Colombia on my way to Ecuador in a few days. Still got lots of pics to put up