Amazonian Adventures

our 3 toed sloth, with baby

belen floating markets

when your back yard becomes a river 3 months of the year... back yard cricket is out of the question!

a massive tree... you can see the water line at chris´ shoulder

my first pirahna! so cute, but potentially so painful!

swimming in the Amazon river

the syrup from the catsclaw vine will even cure cancer

osopelesos the sloth

chris takes on the anaconda, you should have seen the size of the mum he had to wrestle to get to the baby he´s holding.

can you see the bubs?

magnificant macaws

cheeky monkey

careful... this one throws excrement

the ant eater

oh yeah! i took on the Caiman... and i won! (look how scared the dude is)




We spent 3 days on a slow boat cruising down the Amazon river to a small island called Iquitos. The boat trip was fun except for the ferral regaton music the workers played constantly… apparently regaton is the biggest thing in south america… i hope, hope, HOPE it never makes it to OZ. So we read our books, lying in our hammocks floating down the amazon, checking out the wildlife all the way. Within 10 mins we were greeted by pink river dolphins… wildlife abundance! They´re a Light shade of grey on the top, but a pastel pink on the underneath and around the FACE… they´re not as playful as the sea dophins, but still super cute!

Iquitos is a super busy town, Tuktuks everywhere, six across in a 2 lane street, running people over left right and centre. But it´s surrounded by jungle… the amazon jungle!
We visited a butterfly farm, working towards saving the flutterby´s but they also double as a refuge for ill treated animals… apparently the latest money making venture is to kidnap baby animals from the jungle and sell them on the street to tourists… tourists buy the animals thinking that they are ´saving´ them, and then donate them to the orfanage… in reality this industry wouldn´t exist without the tourists. But we got upclose and personal with paiche a 3-4metre long fresh water fish, monkeys, jaguar, an anteater and 100´s of beautiful and HUGE butterflies.

We booked ourselves in for 4 days in an eco lodge, where you live in huts deep in the jungle. The amazon river rises over 3 metres in the peak of the wet season, thus, houses are on stilts. it is currently the beginning of the wet season, so we trecked through a lot of mud and swamp… in a few weeks they´ll be canoeing through this area of the jungle… crazy huh! Imagine if your back yard became a river bed 3 months of the year? We followed monkeys, and cuddled a 3 toed sloth with her baby, found some amazing birdlife: Macaws, tucans, humming birds, woodpeckers, hawks, Heron, falcons and so many more! We also fished for pirahña... their teeth are incredible… though we only caught small ones. I got up close and personal with a massive Caiman… well, it was almost a foot long… but it had real teeth! And chris wrestled an anaconda… i only touched it´s tail… breifly. Chris can now atest to swimming in the Amazon River… i wasn´t 100% comfortable swimming just 100m down stream from where we were fishing pirahña only hours earlier… not to mention the alligators upstream.

We did a night exploration by foot and by canoe. We found massive tarantula´s… neither of us were game to touch them, even though we were assured they were not the posionous type. Fireflies glowing amongst the trees, huge bull frogs and millions of cicadas… the nightlife is so loud that you actually have to raise your voice to have a normal conversation… bizzare.
Our guide, Falcon, grew up in a little village of the amazon and was a fountain of knowledge. He showed us how his family use the bark, sap, leaves, roots and fruit from the native flora to heal pretty much any illness know to man… we are now cured of milaria, digestive problems, love sickness, and even cancer! You name it, they have a cure. The plants and insects are amazing, almost an advanced species in the way they coinhabit and imitate eachother. (once a science geek, always a science geek).