The Amazon

We left Cusco after a night at the fabulous Monasterio hotel and an early walk around the main town square - and a night of Toby nosebleeds and others with little sleep due to the altitude.

We flew further east in Peru into the Amazon jungle to a place called Puerto Maldonedo (PM). We flew over miles and miles of jungle with a huge winding river running through it. We landed in a tiny airport and was met by the Inka Terra Amazon hotel guys and by Wilson, our guide whilst in the Amazon.

We were driven through PM with its scooter bikes everywhere (a bit like Vietnam) in an old open air bus with wooden white seats!! for 30 mins to meet the boat. We then jumped on a (very rocky) boat that needed to be balanced by weight on each side !! This took us an hour into the Amazon river tributary we were on and to our lodge on the banks of the Amazon with jungle all around.

We had been very nervous about going to the Amazon with the kids  re Malaria and safety but pretty quickly we realised it was much safer than we thought !!??!! Wilson, our fabulous guide, took us on 2 or 3 tours a day to see animals, birds in both day and nighttime.

On the first afternoon we went on a trail walk and saw Fire Ants in a fire ant tree; huge armies of Ants and termites; wild boar. And on the first night time boat trip we saw a load of Caymans (Aligators); Capebara's (the Worlds largest rodent - looks like a mix between a giant guinea pig and a giant rat and can swim with webbed feet); Toads and frogs.

On the second day we went on the canopy walk 100ft above ground at the top of the jungle tree level. It was pretty scary with wobbly wooden bridges with side nettings and only one person to cross at a time! Still everyone coped including Meggie and we saw Monkeys and all sorts of birds and a different view of the jungle from that height. On the way to the canopy walk we found a tarzan rope to swing through the trees on and also a field to catch a whole host of butterflies and grasshoppers in the butterfly nets we had. Toby caught the biggest and rarest blue butterfly in his net but did not catch much else all day - it was skill not luck!!

In the afternoon we went to a lake which was 45 mins by boat and then a 2 hour hike in torrential rain to get to - Megan did brilliantly although Ian fell over twice whilst carrying her on his shoulders through the thick mud. We were then deep in the jungle and from behind the trees Wilson pulled out a wooden canoe and we jumped in and paddled down a tine Amazon river to the bigger Oxbow lake - where we saw numerous wildlife including the Peru Turkey, Vultures and a black Cayman - about 4m long - all from a small wooden canoe - whilst fishing for Piranhas!!! After a long canoe we had another hike back to the boat - in the dark and wet this time! We found Tarantula spiders and huge bullfrogs along the way as well as fireflies and beetles that light up like an electric light as we went. Luckily we had a few torches to guide us in the pitch black as we walked through the Amazon jungle at night!! The loud noise of the jungle at night was quite deafening. Still no snakes .... so far anyway! We made it home by about 7pm and thus had been walking and out on activities for 10 hours that day - got wet and muddy - but we had seen and experienced alot re life in the Amazon!

The next day we decided to leave early to go to Gamitana creek so we had breakfast at 6.30am and left on the rocky boat to go further downriver to a farm on the corner of the big river and the Gamitana tributary. This was an Inka Terra sponsored farm and produced bananas, avacados, mangos, papaya & pineapples etc.... for the lodge to eat. We met Negro and Walter who ran the farm. The boys cut down a banana tree with Wilsons machete - we ate bananas just picked and avacado in the their new kitchen/breakfast room extension overlooking the river (A bit cheaper than our new kitchen extension possibly!!) All very impressive but very, very basic farming.

We then jumped onto a boat with a long motor - propeller on the end of a long metal pole to avoid the logs in the creek. We towed 2 canoes and went for an hour up a tiny river into the jungle. On the way we saw a number of Macaws - Blue and gold; Red and blue - beautiful birds that we had only ever seen in bird books and here they were in numbers in real life! We stopped to fish for Piranhas and catfish. Negro and Walter, the local Amazon people, seemed to be pretty good at this - they caught 5 or 6 - Sam was the only one in our party who caught one catfish - the largest fish in the Amazon not introduced from outside. We donated the catfish to Negro as it was his supper that night. We then had a canoe race - 3 per canoe down to the swimming area. On the way we saw a "3 minute" snake - the second most poisonous snake in the Amazon - called a Fer de Lance. It was swimming right next to our canoe with a fish in its mouth - so it was quite safe as I had Megan sitting next to me!! I was happy to pass on by but Wilson and Negro turned our canoe around and headed back towards the snake - much against my advice!!! We started to chase the snake in our canoes but, unluckily, the snake got away as Negro started trying to attack the snake with his paddle!! So on we went another few hundred yards to the swimming area of the creek. Ian was not keen to swim as we had just seen a deadly snake, but Wilson told us it was pretty safe and highly unusual to see such a dangerous snake a few hundred yards away. So Negro, Wilson, Sam, Toby & Megan all swam from the mudbank swinging from a rope tied to a branch in the tree on the edge of the water. Luckily it was great fun and no more snakes turned up whilst we were swimming. Shortly after the swimming on the way back to the farm we passed over an Anaconda - so all pretty safe for the kids to swim!!!

We got back for a late lunch at the lodge and then we got back on the rocky boat and went upriver for half an hour to dock on a muddy bank to visit an Amazonian Indian family living on their small farm growing potatoes and bananas. They welcomed us in their communal area in their traditional dress and painted us with red paint - 3 stripes on each cheek for the men painted by a man and 2 stripes on each cheek and one across the nose for the women painted by a woman. Wilson translated their Quechua and Spanish mix language and they welcomed us and did a song and dance - which we then had to join in with!! We danced in a circle playing drums with our painted faces - very badly but Megan really enjoyed it. After that we played a game of spinning tops - made with a nut and stick - they won - it was bit like a Beyblades game the boys used to play. Then they started a fire rubbing 2 sticks together - in about 1 minute. Then we had a bow and arrow competition shooting a dummy Macaw high up in a tree - Ian hit the target for the Wests - their 5 year old son - Linder - hit it twice!! We then had a tour of their tiny farm - and a tour of their cemetry where they laid their dead and let them be eaten by Vultures as that helped them be taken up to the right place in heaven - a bit spooky for the boys that one. We then purchased a few crafts and were given a prize for our best bow and arrow shooter and some potatoes from their farm. Armed with all of this we were waved off whilst they played their flutes as we rode off in our boat waving goodbye. It was a very interesting visit - they had 6 people living there - including the 5-yr old boy. Meggie and he made a very good couple!! The leader told us that Amazonian Indians could get married from 13 onwards - if Meggie is a difficult teenager we may send her to be married to Linder!!

We really enjoyed the Indian visit - it was very intriguing and good for us to see how the Amazonian Indians live.

We had one last nightwalk and found Tarantulas and chopped into a huge termite nest - we even had to return a Tarantula to its nest as it had got too far away from it and it had got lost!! LUCKILY THE MACHETE COME IN HANDY FOR THAT!

We left the next morning - back up the river for an hour and a half to the town near the airport. We had all really enjoyed the Amazon but quite relieved we had survived it in tact with all the kids in one piece. But we were still taking malaria tablets and reeking of Mosquito spray!! We said goodbye to our fabulous guide, Wilson, who had made our Amazon experience unforgettable and had really made sure the kids got the most out of it they could. It was sad to leave Wilson behind. We also had fabulous rooms at the lodge with hammocks and our own watering hole at the back of the cabin. So not that basic a campsite really!! And pleased not to have been eaten by a Cayman (aligator) or bitten by a snake or a tarantula. We had survived and were heading back to civilisation and Lima city for a night before flying off to the South pacific islands.