Explorer´s Inn and the Amazon Jungle

We´ve spent the past two weeks in the Tambopata Nature Reserve having an amazing amazing time... We were picked up from the Peurto Maldonado airport and a boat took us along the Tambopata River into the jungle for 1 and a half hours to get to the Explorer´s Inn where we´d arranged to volunteer for 2 weeks. The lodge has lovely simple bungalows (with no hot water or electricity) and a central dining room/ chilling area with a ´discovery centre´that has displays and a library of jungle related info books, it is surrounded by primary rain forest, 2 ox-bowlakes and a river, and 34kms of trails. The lodge is very involved in rain forest research and has a cool program where students with ecology/biology degrees can live there as resident naturalists and help with research, trail maintenance, guide education etc, and there were 4 of them while we were there, and another 2 volunteers.

How to explain the time we had there? The jungle was so impressive; exotic animals (4 cool species of monkeys, capybara´s, coati´s, paca´s, peccary´s), 600 species of birds, cool butterflies and bugs (the mosquito´s that follow you around the trails in clouds of at least 200, sandflies that also carry weird diseases, botflies that lay eggs in your skin, and the tick that took a ride on me all the way to Cusco, are NOT included in that, and the spiders were a leeeeetle frightening) and beautiful jungle sounds all day long. The food was deliscious and we met really cool people there...

The volunteering work was fantastic, we basically were there to help the resident naturalists with some of their usual jobs, and walked trails (and through a LOT of mud, now I know what gum boots were made for...), machetying bush that had grown or fallen in the path (Steven loved that part and was very sad to part with the machete at the end of our stay), fixing steps and handrails on trails, helped the bird researchers with mist-netting to catch, measure and release colourful amazon birds, monitoring parrots at the clay lick, and we slept overnight in hammocks in a bird hide (hmmmm very interesting experience! Getting into a hammock, in a sleeping bag, under a mosquito net... and then trying to sleep in a banana shape with weird and scary jungle sounds all night long) to do a 1 and a half hour caiman search at night by rowing around the beautiful ox bow lake under stars and moon 5kms from the lodge.

Absolutely loved it!! It felt like a case of ´dr livingstone i presume?´when we returned to cell phone reception and internet access yesterday! Sorry everyone! We weren´t expecting to be so completely cut off either! Love to you all!

Halfway, Harry Potter and Hostal el Patio

We´re finally back in the land of electricity, internet, hot water, cell reception and no mosquito bites! And now we have a lot to catch up on...have missed blogging and all our lovely blog readers!

Well day 122 arrived on the 16th of July. As you know, we love any excuse to celebrate, and we decided that halfway was almost as good an excuse as you can get. Celebrations started early with an ultra-luxurious overnight bus ride from Chiclayo to Lima with Tom and Carols three girls, who were also travelling to Lima that night. The 12 hours went by in a flash in huge leather reclining seats with footrests, and a super smooth ride, it felt like flying first class in a plane, we´ve never seen buses that fancy! Ironically, 1st class bus apparently does not mean 1st class tires, because we had a blow out early in the morning just before coming into Lima, the first one we´ve had on a bus trip so far. It was sorted out pretty quickly though and we were on our 1st class way again.

After walking around for an hour at 8 am in Lima looking for accomodation, finding nothing but full hostels suprisingly, we ´settled´ for an amazingly gorgeous place called hostal el patio, (with an equally amazing price, but who cares, its halfway hey?). Explored Lima´s waterfront with a seafull of surfers, took a couple of crazy pics (that´s meant to be a halfway symbol i´m contorting my fingers into...isn´t it obvious?). Celebrations continued that afternoon when we found the closest cinema, and bought tickets to see our 1st movie in 4 months, the latest harry potter film that had just come out! Sadly we were not able to keep the tradition of seeing it with my sister Joni this year (sad sad day) but we bought an extra coke and popcorn for her in remembrance :)

Risked missing our flight to Peurto Maldonado the next morning so we could get our included continental breakfast, just as well, because our flight ended up being delayed by 2 hours.

A fantastic halfway day, although a little scary becuase it already feels like we´ve been away for an age!

Estrella de la Manana

We got to Chiclayo on Sunday afternoon, after a long straight drive through desert and thorn trees, where we met Tom and Carol (the American missionary couple that started the orphanage 3 years ago) who then drove us 20 minutes out of town to Estrella de la Manana (Morning Star) in 'pueblo neuvo', or the new town.

So, a little background info... The orphanage currently has about 15 kids, between the ages of 2 months and 17 years, a 'foster' mom and dad, and a helper, and there is also a pre-school on the property. We're staying above the orphanage with 3 American girls (one of whom speaks Spanish and spends most of her time translating for the rest of us), who are here volunteering for their university summer holidays, and are running english classes in the pre-school. We help them out in the mornings at the pre-school, and in the afternoons we've been doing all sorts of things; visiting a child with cerbral palsy, maintenance tasks, taking the kids for a picnic, helping with homework, (while they help us with our Spanish), helping hold the 2 babies (and what an experience that has been, Steven just wants to know where the 'off' switch is), and just having a good time with them as they're such a bunch of characters...

Peublo Neuvo is a scruffy collection of dusty streets along which donkeys, moto's and mangy dogs tread hardened paths, and dusty, hurriedly built houses. The orphanage is on the border between this dusty unfriendly feeling place, and rural farmlands, and it feels like a bit of a never-never land compared to everything else outside.

Lunch and dinner are mixed up here. Lunch is a small meal at dinner time (olive on a roll anyone?), and dinner is a big meal at lunch time (normally involving rice, lentils and chicken, and sometimes an unedibly sour salad containing pepper and the juice of 3 lemons).

So far we've been having an amazing time here, and Wednesday when we leave is sneaking up muy rapido...

One more day on Montanita

Another money difficulty to deal with; this time we had trouble getting the payment for our spanish lessons to go through, and we needed to stay a day longer than planned to get it sorted.

It all turned out for the best though because it meant we were able to host a final of the 'choose your favourite Montanita ice-cream flavour' competition (coffee, and vanilla with strawberry goo, tied), and finally had the chance to do what we'd wanted to all week; hire a surfboard. So we hired the big yellow banana and surfed the smallest foamies we could find, managed to stand up (Steven with more certainty than me!), got a couple of bruises, and loved it!

Whales, sunsets and more spanish

We have just finished our 1 week of spanish lessons here in Montanita. It has been lots of fun waking up and stumbling a few steps outside into the garden for 4 hours of spanish every morning, spending the afternoon on the beach doing spanish homework, and then going shopping in town for veggies from the street stalls for dinner, every day able to use a few more words and a little less crazy charades actions...

On the weekend we went on a boat trip to see whales with a few others from the spanish school. We chugged along next to them in very choppy and nauseating seas for ages, and everyone oooohhhhhed and aaaaaaahhhhed -in spanish accents of course- as the whales dove and jumped and whacked their massive tales, and even ducked right under the boat on one occasion... The whales were beautiful, and their hugeness makes you a little quiet...it was a really amazing experience.

It hasnt been all spanish and surboards for us here as we have had a bit of drama here with not being able to get cash from our credit card, but Dad came to the rescue and western unioned us some mhoola. We celebrated by trying out every flavour of Ginos icecream in the beachside stall we had so torturously unfruitfully had to walk past every day when we were scraping it on $5 a day for food for both of us!!!!

We are feeling understandably reluctant to leave this chilled way of life in this surfers sandpit, but we need to be in Peru by Monday where we are going to volunteer at an orphanage in Chiclayo for a week or so.

Thanks for all your emails! Miss you amigos!

Habla espagnol in Montañita

We arrived in the little surfer town of Montañita on Tuesday night, after 2 long bus rides from Baños, along unpleasantly windy and bumpy mountain passes to get from the central highlands where we were, to the ecuatorial ecuador that we´d imagined.

We spent our first 2 nights here in a bungalow right on the beach, that came with a hammock and a glorious sea view. We´ve now moved into a room in the Marazul Spanish School house, which we share with the school owner, our spanish teacher Ruth, and 2 other students (no pressure to do our spanish homework then!). The house is a cute, slightly ramshackle 3 story creation, which has a lovely garden and is just a few steps down a sandy path to the beach.

One of the best things though is that we have pets again for a little while... a lovely black labrador called Kyle and a little ginger flea-bag of a kitten called Luna are giving us lots of love!

5 Bus rides to Baños

We caught a ride on the back of a truck back to Zumbahua, where the town was transformed, crawling with locals and gringo´s alike, there for the weekly market. We hopped onto another bus (no. 2 for the day), bags got thrown onto the roof, and we were off back down to normal altitude and temperatures again in Latacunga. Found a bus to Ambata (no. 3). Once there we couldn´t find a bus to Baños, and kept getting wonderful spanish answers that we couldn´t make head or tails of. Leaving the bus station to try find some lunch we spied a big yellow Baños express bus, accosted the driver, who gave us a better explanation, and a free ride to the other bus station in town, where the Baños buses leave from (no.4). Half an hour later we were aboard bus no.5, arriving in Banos in pouring rain.

Then came our first lesson in Poncho use: Not suitable for howling gales. A fight with a poncho that was blowing up over our heads and everywhere, followed, and I think the poncho won, as we ended up not one bit protected from the rain.

The next day we explored the scenic town of Baños, having the ´almeurzo´ (or set) lunch from a restuarant on the square, a handy option we´ve discoved in Ecuador, as you get a 2/3 course meal and juice for a reasonable price ($1.50-$2.50). The first course was a watery soup, that after a few spoonfuls had lowered the levels in the bowl, revealed chicken organs in Steven´s bowl, and a chicken foot, and head, in mine. Well, I think I can now proudly say that I am on the way to conquering my no.1 travelling fear: weird food, because I carried on eating my soup for a few more spoonfuls, until the eyeless eyesocket of the chicken´s head was just too much to look at any longer.

Today we had a wonderful 4 hour horse ride into the mountains around Baños, got to finally see the active volcano that presides over the little town (pretty scary really!), and relaxed away those stiff bums of ours in the town´s thermal baths this evening.