![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/amazon22.jpg\" "\\"amazon2\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n** We have better photos, these are all from my phone but the camera is in Los Angeles and I am in Dallas so these will have to do.<\/p>\n
Team DeCorso was\u00a0serious\u00a0about an Amazon adventure. \u00a0However, we neglected to seriously organize it employing a more Buddhist approach of living in the present moment, which seems to generally work fine here in Peru.<\/p>\n
We tried to buy our tickets to Tarapoto on StarPeru. \u00a0StarPeru has a website that more or less works but does not let you purchase tickets. \u00a0At least we couldn’t get it to work. \u00a0On Monday night, we decided we needed to find a StarPeru office and buy the tickets in person. \u00a0We headed out for the 2 hour bus trip to downtown (we are only about 20 miles away but the traffic is very bad). \u00a0Two hours later, we couldn’t find the StarPeru office. \u00a0The thing about Lima is that most of the taxi drivers don’t know the way around town. \u00a0Being a taxi driver is a good, easy job when you first arrive in Lima, especially if you have cousins who have a taxi as you can share the taxi and drive it 24\/7. \u00a0Except no one knows where anything is. \u00a0We didn’t find StarPeru that night and they didn’t answer the phone, any phone, at any office anywhere. \u00a0We wanted to leave Tuesday but, because we couldn’t find the office, we had to leave Wednesday.<\/p>\n
We had a plan. \u00a0We were going to fly to Tarapoto, take a collectivo combi to Yuimaguas, take a cargo ship to Iquitos and fly home. \u00a0 Many cargo ships arrive, dock and depart but only ONE has a phone. \u00a0Because one has a phone, it is the preferred boat for all non-Peruvian travelers as you can find out when the boat will arrive and even make a reservation. \u00a0The boats are collectivos, they do not depart until they are full enough so they \u00a0always depart a little later than they are scheduled. \u00a0Our boat, the Eduardo, was scheduled to depart at 5pm on Wednesday. \u00a0You can hang your hammock as soon as you pay the Captain so our plan was to arrive on Tuesday and hang out on board until departure. \u00a0Except now we could not leave until Wednesday at noon. \u00a0We were scheduled to arrive at 2pm which gave us 3 hours to take the 120km collectivo combi ride to Yurimaguas. \u00a0The boat is always late. \u00a0 It should all work out.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday we made the painful journey again to a StarPeru office and bought our tickets (kids fly free!). \u00a0We spent a lovely day hanging around Lima. \u00a0Mark, Jack, Ryan and I went to eat at Astrid y Gaston, the 14th BEST restaurant in the world and, because it is in Peru, less expensive than the Vallata. \u00a0#14 of the S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna 50 Best Restaurants in the World! \u00a0Mark had three traditional cebiches, I had fresh deep sea tuna with artichokes and sausage and creamy rice with green asparagus. Jack had Pink Lomitos yellowfin tuna, coconut foam, huacatay tamarind sauce and quinoa mai kai. Ryan had curry of the Andes, vegetable curry tubers and fruits of Peru with chaufa quinoa. The best part however was dessert – Jacks was “bananas trapped in a\u00a0caramel\u00a0cage with sweet bean paste and goat cheese ice cream”. Ryan had confite of maracuya & raspberry with carrot sponge cake served over top of sauteed bananas and raspberry foam with hand rolled divinity sticks. I had the Sensitive Sphere: raspberry sorbet contained within a chocolate shell with frozen creme brulee drenched in melted chocolate (which they let you pour as much as you need). \u00a0Was it good? Not really. \u00a0It was weird. \u00a0And interesting. \u00a0And so, so, fancy!<\/p>\n
We headed home and packed for the trip. \u00a0We are sparse packers anyway so this was not so hard. \u00a0A few pairs of shorts & t-shirts, mosquito spray, comprehensive first aid kit, sunscreen, mosquito nets, Nescafe and an electric tea pot. \u00a0Dogs were boarded at our neighborhood vet. \u00a0We took a taxi to the taxi stand and took another taxi to the airport.<\/p>\n At the airport, we had one of those peculiar Peruvian situations: my passport is the only one in all 8 passports that has an almost\u00a0imperceptible\u00a0space between the De and the Corso. \u00a0So it looks sort of kind of like De Corso instead of DeCorso. \u00a0What does this mean? \u00a0It means a team of StarPeru employees had to have a meeting, several phone calls, and an hour of time to figure out that it was all OK. \u00a011 countries and no one has ever mentioned the almost space. \u00a0As always, it all worked out and we boarded the plane and flew to Tarapoto.<\/p>\n We grabbed our bags and piled into three motos that raced us to the collectivo stand. \u00a0We hoisted our duffle bags on top and climbed into our collectivo and waited for it to fill up. \u00a0When it was packed with 15 people, we took off.<\/p>\n The drive is over a mountain and down the other side, 60 miles of hairpin turns and cliffs and our driver was driving way too fast, the wheels were squealing at every turn.<\/p>\n We arrived at about 6:30 and the Eduardo was still there – two guys with motos were waiting for us\u00a0because, like all things in Peru, your word is as good as a contract and they knew we were coming. \u00a0The two guys said we needed to get water and hammocks so they stopped at a shop and a pretty girl came out and sold us hammocks but she only had 5 so she had to call her sister to bring her more. \u00a0We waited. \u00a0The hammocks arrived. \u00a0We stopped at a tiende and bought water and then we sped to the docks — only to see the Eduardo sailing away.<\/p>\n So now it was just getting dark and the bugs were coming out in huge clouds and giant bats were diving into the bug clouds. \u00a0A group of men surrounded us and it seemed somewhat ominous until we came to understand that they were all trying to get us to come on their boat. \u00a0There were 3 boats in the harbor (but one was all cattle and pigs) and there was fierce competition for Team DeCorso to pick either the Leisel or the Melissa. \u00a0While I used my trusty Grandpa Ted flashlight to fish out the insect spray, Mark & Ryan began investigating the boats. \u00a0It was night and the boats were needing to be cleaned still and they were not very inviting and the bugs and the bats were kind of freaking us out and neither boat was sailing until the next afternoon so we opted for a hospedaje. \u00a0We found a very nice one, the Miagritos, thanks to the moto driver. \u00a0Three clean rooms (two triples and a single) for less than $40 total. \u00a0The only problem was that Yurimaguas, being a jungle town, gets going at 4am so by 8pm everything is shut down and closed. \u00a0No place for dinner. \u00a0Lucky for us that traveling by cargo ship on the Amazon requires that you bring a tupperware container (not rubbermaid – tupperware specifically) and a metal cup so you can eat the three meals the boat’s cook prepares. \u00a0Also lucky for us is that we anticipated that we might not like stew made of medium sized rodents so we brought a long a stash of ramen, crackers, jelly — and most special of all special things, imported peanut butter.<\/p>\n We were up early the next morning, making Nescaf\u00e9 and enjoying the jungle morning.<\/p>\n Jonny, our moto driver from the night before, came and collected us for the trip to the dock to pick a boat. \u00a0The decision was easy because during the night, they decided to put pigs on the Melissa so we were left with the Leisel. \u00a0We found the captain again and negotiated a price – $259 usd for passage for 8, three meals a day, a private cabin with 4 bunks and a lock, and space for 6 hammocks.<\/p>\n The trip takes three or four days and we can stay on the boat while they load and unload and eat and such. \u00a0We needed to be in Iquitos in 6 days, which the Captain assured us was plenty of time. \u00a0Jonny \u00a0helped us hang our hammocks and then Ryan, Jack, Sylvia and I went to the market to buy water, beer, bread and avocados. \u00a0We returned with the supplies and then we left again with Annabelle to get the bags from the hotel. \u00a0While we were gone, Mark cleaned the cabin with a broom, sweeping out hundreds of spiders. \u00a0The pretty hammock selling girl, Noemi, came to the boat and Ryan & Jack hung out with her and her sister Ruth all day.\u00a0 We watched the river dolphins jump and jungle birds fly around.<\/p>\n On our boat were 16 Haitans, 15 men and one woman. \u00a0This was a strange thing as there were no other non-Peruvians anywhere on any boat or in the town at all.\u00a0 Like us, they stood out, probably more so because they were very tall and they were beautifully dressed in sparkling clean white shirts and shoes.\u00a0 \u00a0They were very, very tall and immaculately dressed. \u00a0Everyone else on the boat was Peruvian, and like us, short and not so immaculately dressed, actually quite the understatement. \u00a0They were on their way to Brazil to look for work.\u00a0 I think despite of their very clean and new clothes, they were pretty down on their luck.\u00a0 After a few conversations, we realized that the woman washed all their clothes by hand every day and hung them in the sun and that they only had enough money to get to Manaus.<\/p>\n Generally things progressed like we had imagined. \u00a0The cook made breakfast, lunch and dinner and rang a little bell and everyone queued up with their tupperwear. \u00a0It was very hot when the boat did not move. \u00a0We fed chunks of bread to the piranhas, which became a very popular past time with me handing pieces of bread to about 18 kids and the Haitians, who were only a little bit older than kids themselves. \u00a0The piranhas violently ripped the bread apart, it was very entertaining. \u00a0The Haitians made a hook out of a pin and used bread to try to catch one and after a few tries, they did catch one. \u00a0We rocked in hammocks. \u00a0I read State of Wonder<\/em>. \u00a0We napped. \u00a0Breakfast was a very watery porridge ladled into your metal cup that had bananas (like Peruvian Jane Eyre food!) and rice in it with bread spread with margarine and bananas. \u00a0Lunch was chicken feet stir fried with rice or sometimes spaghetti and chicken feet. \u00a0Dinner was estofado de roedor de tama\u00f1o mediano (literally\u00a0medium sized rodent stew). \u00a0The time passed amicably. \u00a0The nun whose hammock was hung near ours gave the kids tiny nun comics and a sample of black lady hair shampoo. \u00a0It was a good time. \u00a0Sylvia was scared of the giant beetles and Mark told her we was keeping one as a pet which made Sylvia pick it up and hold it and make a little bed for it.<\/p>\n The boat had unisex bathrooms at the stern with 8 toilet stalls that also were showers. You could look out at the river and watch the dolphins.\u00a0 The bathroom was busy, the Haitian woman was always washing clothes, everyone showered every day and the men spent a lot of time styling their hair. The stalls were probably worse than you are imagining \u2013 no toilet seat, no light, a floor to ceiling door, all painted white but the paint was chipped and dirty and worn.\u00a0 The floor was always wet (from the shower).\u00a0 The stall was about 3 x 5 with a toilet in the middle.\u00a0 The shower was a pipe in the ceiling.\u00a0 You turned the handle and Amazon river water poured out.\u00a0 It was so hot when the boat was not moving, we all showered, even Sylvia.<\/p>\n The boat was a cargo boat with a level for passengers to hang hammocks and a few cabins. \u00a0The boat fills up with cargo and unloads cargo all up and down the river, which makes for a nice, slow, scenic trip. \u00a0Except on our boat, we all soon came to realize, the unloading and loading was being done mostly by very small children. \u00a0The other boats used men, big, sweaty,\u00a0muscled\u00a0men. \u00a0As can be expected, the loading and unloading of our boat was much, much, much slower. \u00a0These kids were very small, like Sylvia’s age. \u00a0At one particular point, our boat was taking on a load of bottled water and when the container of bottled water was loaded, we were moving on. \u00a0The children unloaded water all day and into the night. \u00a0At about 7pm, the Captain said we would not be leaving until the morning when the tots got the bottled water loaded. \u00a0 Although we were all hot when the boat was not moving, people were in generally good spirits and the mood was tranquillo. \u00a0We ate chicken feet and spaghetti noodles and watched the sun set over the jungle. \u00a0We had some warm beer (after 5 months in South America we had even forgotten that you could drink things cold). By 8pm, most of the boat was asleep.<\/p>\n Early the next morning, we plugged in our electric teapot (never travel without one!) and made Nescafe and sat on the roof of the boat and watched the children load the water. \u00a0Another boat next to us was also loading water and their water loading was just screaming along. \u00a0We had been loading the same shipment for almost 24 hours but the other boat loaded the entire container in just about 3 hours. \u00a0Because they had grown ups loading water.\u00a0 There began to be some grumbling. \u00a0To make matters worse, it seems that using children to do your manual labor instead of men is not cool anywhere and the Captain was not well liked. \u00a0We could only speculate the reasons that our boat used children to load cargo – Did the grown men all hate the Captain and refuse? \u00a0Was our Captain so cheap he preferred to use children? \u00a0These scenarios generated a lot of talk on the boat as we sat around in the stifling jungle heat feeding piranhas and picking the roedor out of our\u00a0estofado (but really medium sized rodent tastes like chicken). \u00a0At some point, the fact that it took so long to sail the river and the Captain had to pay to feed a 100 people three times a day and keep the engine on 24\/7 (not sure why about that either) would negate what profit was gained by using little children. \u00a0Between the Haitains and the DeCorso’s, there was talk of pitching in and helping the kids.<\/p>\n The Captain said we would leave at 11am but 11am came and passed and still the children loaded water one San Luis 6-pack at a time over the obstacle course of the cargo boat (jumping down from the high container, walking down a muddy bank, crossing a gang plank to the boat, up a ramp and around the bananas, over a pile of net and around some cement poles into the hold…). \u00a0Now it had become somewhat of a spectacle with the entire boat sitting on the roof and the balcony watching and the men who load the other boats watching and tension began to mount.<\/p>\n At lunch time, the cook ran out of chicken feet and there was not enough food to go around. \u00a0The Captain said we were leaving at 3pm or as soon as the water was loaded. \u00a0A crowd was gathering, passengers and interested folks with not much else to do. \u00a0We have not been anywhere in South America where people didn\u2019t love drama.\u00a0 At 5pm, the Captain decided to go to town and buy food. \u00a0The nun exploded. \u00a0She walked over to the Captain and gave him a righteous scolding like only a nun could give you. \u00a0The Captain left anyway.<\/p>\n We had a special reason we wanted to leave – \u00a0we needed to be in \u00a0Iquitos no later than Monday and out three or 4 day trip was stretching into a 7 day trip. \u00a0We found the First Mate (everyone in Peru wears a uniform whenever they have the opportunity). \u00a0He assured us the boat would sail that evening and we would be in Iquitos late Sunday night. \u00a0Maybe 2am, but we would get there Sunday night or early Monday morning. \u00a0Now this was starting to be a little close for us as we had the tickets back to the US on Tuesday night. \u00a0Never before in the length of this trip or the last one have we ever had a deadline and we were not used to it.<\/p>\n The sun set. \u00a0There was no food. \u00a0No roedor, no chicken feet, no bread. \u00a0Everyone was clustered together on the front of the boat waiting for the water to be unloaded and the Captain to return. \u00a0Also more and more people were boarding the boat, telling the First Mate the Captain had said they could and space was starting to get really tight (which is something in SA where people generally have no personal space issues at all).\u00a0 The cook made a huge (and I mean huge) pot of watery banana and plantain rice porridge and everyone lined up with metal cups.<\/p>\n At 6pm, we decided we needed to get off the boat. There was no way we could be sure we would EVER arrive.\u00a0 We had a family meeting and decided we needed to gather our stuff.\u00a0 We found the First Mate and told him we couldn\u2019t stay because we had to be in Iquitos and he agreed we should leave.\u00a0 We needed to see the Captain to get a refund.\u00a0 We sat on the cargo deck on a stack of pallets watching the kids haul water and waiting for the Captain.\u00a0 I went up and packed up everything except the hammocks which took only a few minutes as we travel very lightly and I returned to the pallets to wait for the Captain.\u00a0 The general idea was that once the water was loaded and the Captain returned, the boat would be on its way.<\/p>\n The children were at the back of the container.\u00a0 The last water was loaded onboard!\u00a0 A cheer went up from the passengers.\u00a0 The boat could leave!!<\/p>\n But then something horrible happened.\u00a0 The children, who had been hauling water all day in the Amazon sun, began unloading water from ANOTHER container.\u00a0 The passengers began to talk, the men stopped unloading the other boats to watch the drama.\u00a0 We would be there another 24 hours if these small overworked children had to unload another container van of water.<\/p>\n We were all hungry as watery banana porridge is not very filling so I sent Jack and Max to the cabin to bring down one duffle bag that had\u00a0 cookies and snacks in it and THAT tipped the scale.\u00a0 Suddenly we were surrounded by passengers \u2013 were we leaving?\u00a0 We were LEAVING?\u00a0 The Captain is a bad man, no?\u00a0 He makes the little children work instead of paying men.\u00a0 The Captain is not to be trusted.\u00a0 The Captain is a greedy man, selling space on the boat when he knows there is no food.\u00a0 What can we do?<\/p>\n Then the nun began to talk about the Captain and how she told him he should not leave the boat.\u00a0 The nun\u2019s story seemed to inspire one woman who marched up to the First Mate (who was looking warily over at us the whole time –\u00a0 the Haitain men were easily twice the size of the Peruvian men.\u00a0 I was taller than the Peruvian men) and began to bitch him out in that way only Latin American women can \u2013 sassy and in your face, making a total scene.\u00a0 She was joined by the Haitian woman and she was also quite dramatic.\u00a0 She turned around to all the Haitian men and began shouting something in French Creole and every single Haitian man jumped up and began to shoo the children away and started to unload the water from the second container.\u00a0 Every single able-bodied male on the boat followed.\u00a0 And all the women and children sat and clapped and the nun smiled benevolently and one man opened a pack of water and gave the children each a bottle and everyone applauded and we, Team DeCorso, having just watched a pirated copy of Les Miserables, imagined them all singing\u00a0 \u201cDo You Hear the People Sing?\u201d and began to hum along.\u00a0 It was beautiful and spontaneous \u2013 but in the end, the Captain did not return to the boat at all that night and the men continued to voluntarily unload the container of water but as time went on, they did become more and more angry and began chucking the 6 packs of water into a huge pile where the 6 packs broke apart and water bottles busted and the children watched with horror and the boat began to list dramatically to one side and the boats crew sat on the pallets with me and the girls and drank beer.<\/p>\n Do you hear the people sing?<\/em> We decided to leave and find a hospedaje.\u00a0 The First Mate, now somewhat drunk and bitter at the Captain told us the Captain was not returning to the boat.\u00a0 He said the Captain said the boat would now depart at 9am.\u00a0 And then he laughed derisively and threw his Pilsen bottle into the river.<\/p>\n We hailed three motos and stayed in a hospedaje.<\/p>\n The jungle towns get so unbearably hot that everything closes down for a long siesta, 11 -4.\u00a0 Instead, the entire town gets really moving at 4am.\u00a0 At 5am, Mark went to the boat where he sat with the sullen passengers and waited for the Captain.\u00a0 The crew was taping the 6 packs back together and that was taking a long time.\u00a0 The boat was also listing badly to onside, no doubt because a container van of water was heaped into a pyramid.\u00a0 They did not look like they were leaving anytime soon.\u00a0 People were streaming off the boat as another boat had pulled up and was being loaded and unloaded by grown-ups and had room for passengers.\u00a0 The Captain arrived and it was understood that Mark got to talk to him first because we were the ones who decided enough was enough and we had children.\u00a0 All 16 Haitians, the nun, the sassy Latin American lady and several passengers followed Mark to the Captain who handed over our money and apologized.\u00a0 When Mark left, he was facing the wrath of the nun, the giant Haitians towering over and surrounding her.<\/p>\n So now what should we do?<\/p>\n We decided to take a dug out canoe to the next town.\u00a0 The next town was on a smaller tributary.\u00a0 It took about an hour.\u00a0 The canoe had an outboard motor.\u00a0 The river was massive\u00a0 – the size of the Mississippi \u2013 and we were up at the headwaters.\u00a0 We were at the confluence of the Huallaga and Paranapura rivers, upstream from where the Huallaga flowed into the Ucayali,\u00a0forming the Amazon.\u00a0 The dugout canoe was about 20 feet long and had a little roof of fabric to give a little shade.\u00a0 I insisted the kids wear pfd\u2019s, a completely white person thing to insist but this was a MASSIVE river and the canoe was literally a hollowed out log and the banks were swampy and it would be hard to get to dry land if the boat tipped.\u00a0 And of course, there were things living in the river such as piranhas, poisonous snakes and alligators.\u00a0 The pfds we found (can you believe we FOUND pfds??) were for giant men, all adult XXXL, which is strange as Peruvians are xxxsmall.\u00a0 I basically wrapped Sylvia in one like a burrito and tied her all up.\u00a0 Annabelle, too.\u00a0 When we got too the smaller tributaries, they were able to take them off.<\/p>\n I should mention that we had a guide for this part of the trip \u2013 a very nice man named Gabriel who suggested the route and then came along with us.\u00a0 Even Team DeCorso would not float the tributaries of the Amazon without a guide.\u00a0 Everything looks the same and the smaller rivers get clogged with living jungle, branches, vines, water plants and birds.<\/p>\n Once we turned onto the smaller river, the jungle closed in over the water.\u00a0 The water was not very deep and covered with water plants which were like water lilies, floating on the surface.\u00a0 Birds would hop over the top and run across the river that way.\u00a0 We saw thousands of butterflies \u2013 white, yellow, red, blue, turqouoise, pink.\u00a0 We drove on the smaller river for awhile until we came to a small village.<\/p>\n The village was interesting because the Amazon river system is not much different than the Yukon or Kuskokwim rivers with villages dotted along the tributaries \u2013 except of course it had trees and plants. This village had electricity, which made it special.\u00a0 We parked the canoe.\u00a0 Little boys were diving off the small mud cliff into the river.\u00a0 We climbed ashore and Gabriel found us a way to continue on to the lake we were heading to.<\/p>\n We had 20 miles to go on land to make the crossing.\u00a0 The road was a path, overgrown with plants.\u00a0 It was rock-strewn, puddle-filled and twisty.\u00a0 Our expedition vehicle was a three wheeler with a custom rack that had two boards across it.\u00a0 Our driver was 12 years old.\u00a0 We all climbed on, 8 DeCorso\u2019s with their 6 XXXL pfd\u2019s and two bags and Gabriel \u2013 10 people on a three-wheeler.<\/p>\n The drive through the jungle was one of the best parts of the entire trip to South America.\u00a0 It felt like we would tip over the entire time.\u00a0 We had to hang onto Max as he was sitting on the edge.\u00a0 We would come upon a pile of leaves on the path and they would become a little butterfly explosion, 20 or 3o or 40 butterflies.<\/p>\n The Amazon has primary, secondary and tertiary jungle.\u00a0 Primary jungle is the jungle you imagine, with the tall canopy trees.\u00a0 Secondary and tertiary jungle has been cut or burned or flooded and regrown.\u00a0 Most of the Amazon is secondary jungle these days if you stay on the main river.\u00a0 This is why we were headed the lake.<\/p>\n We arrived at the lake and Gabriel went to make arrangements for dinner.\u00a0 The village on the lake was very small, maybe 10 houses.\u00a0 It did have some kind of paved sidewalk walkway, which we all found interesting.\u00a0 The y explained to us it was a government project \u2013 not so different from Alaska.\u00a0 Gabriel went searching for a man named Pepe.\u00a0 Pepe loaned us another canoe for a day of floating around the jungle lake.\u00a0 He offered to come along because, as he put it, \u201cel selva es mi casa\u201d.\u00a0 Pepe had kids and horses and was a very nice man.\u00a0 He had carved the canoe we were floating around in.<\/p>\n We spent all day on the lake floating around, up and down little tributaries and under trees and through floating jungle water plants.\u00a0 We saw snakes and birds and parrots and butterflies and giant spiders and huge insects and heard monkeys and almost saw a sloth.\u00a0 Sloths, it turns out, like to eat some plant that makes them drunk and then they fall out of trees and stagger around.<\/p>\n We had a fishing net with us and we fished a bit.\u00a0 It was a lovely day.<\/p>\n We had to return with enough time to get to the river by dark so we could make it to the next stage of our trip and get back to Lima to catch that plane to Dallas.<\/p>\n We went to dinner with Gabriel.\u00a0 A woman in the village had made us all dinner \u2013 fresh\u00a0 Amazon fish baked in leaves,\u00a0 yucca and plantain.\u00a0 The fish was served a la South America, with the head and all.\u00a0 5 months ago this would have resulted in some sort of squeamishness from Team DeCorso but not anymore.\u00a0 The kids devoured the fish. Annie and Max ate 4 between them (one was Ryan\u2019s).\u00a0 When we were all full, we headed over to Pepe\u2019s for some horseback riding.\u00a0 They had two horses so Annie rode the entire time and sometimes Max or Sylvia rode a little on the other horse.\u00a0 Annie rode around the lake and through the selva and she had a great time.\u00a0 Pepe\u2019s kids brought us all kinds of weird Amazon things to eat and we tried different fruits and vegetables and such.\u00a0 It was a great evening.<\/p>\n But it was starting to get dark and it seemed to me like we had a long way to go.\u00a0 No one else seemed too concerned.\u00a0 We said goodbye to Pepe and his family and Gabriel began the search for another three-wheeler thing to take us to the next river where we would canoe to a bigger river and then to a bigger town with a hospedaje.\u00a0 He found the local village policeman who had one of the three wheeler things and we headed off down a dirt path into the jungle as the sun was setting, another beautiful and unforgettable trip.\u00a0 At dusk, the bugs all come out.\u00a0 On the boat, we would watch the spiders come out at dusk and respin webs and then retire to their hiding spot.\u00a0 Riding on three wheeler means we go splattered with bugs.<\/p>\n We arrived at the river and secured another log canoe.\u00a0 This one we shared with another family heading to the same village.\u00a0 The sun set before we made it to the canoe.\u00a0 We navigated the entire tributary and the big river using Grandpa Ted\u2019s little LED flashlights he gave the kids.\u00a0 There all kinds of things in the river to watch for such as logs giant enough to make a huge canoe and alligators.<\/p>\n Mark, Ryan and Gabriel sat at the stern and looked for logs and such.\u00a0 We used an outboard motor on the bigger river and we hit logs so many times and each time the motor would stop and we would have to check the propeller.\u00a0 It was very exciting.\u00a0 We had to stop at a few homesteads and none had electricity, just candles burning in the window. \u00a0We had visited a few jungle homes and they did not have walls which was unsettling to us considering all the bugs.<\/p>\n We arrived late (by jungle standards, nearly 10pm) and found a hospedaje for the evening. In the morning, we had a private car (sounds so fancy) pick us up and drive us the 4 hours to the town where we could catch a plane back to Lima.<\/p>\n ** We have better photos, these are all from my phone but the camera is in Los Angeles and I am in Dallas so these will have to do. Team DeCorso was\u00a0serious\u00a0about an Amazon adventure. \u00a0However, we neglected to seriously organize it employing a more Buddhist approach of living in the present moment, which seems… Continue reading Amazon Adventure!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329,217,298],"tags":[297,315,317,316,318],"class_list":["post-2237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaska-to-patagonia","category-peru","category-amazon-2","tag-amazon","tag-haitians","tag-mutiny","tag-nuns","tag-piranhas","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2237"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2449,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237\/revisions\/2449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
\nSinging a song of angry men?
\nIt is the music of a people
\nWho will not be slaves again!
\nWhen the beating of your heart
\nEchoes the beating of the drums
\nThere is a life about to start
\nWhen tomorrow comes!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"