A couple of pics of Lima at night.

Travel day

Today is a travel day, so it is a catch up day. Right now we are sitting in the airport at Puerto Maldonado. We had some major lightning, thunder and pouring rain yesterday afternoon that lasted through the night. It gave us a nice long rest and time for Cheryl to get over her bout of food poisoning. She was the first one in the group to succumb. She's feeling much better this morning.

So we say goodbye to our Eco camp in the rainforest, Corto Maltes. No more mosquitoes buzzing in our ears, frogs on the toilet, monster spiders under the bed, or giant grasshoppers in our clothes.

And we take the boat back to Puerto Maltes.

Then a bus to the airport,

Then a plane to Lima with a quick stop over in Cusco. Our hotel in Lima has hot showers and the water here is drinkable.YAY! Plus it is really really nice.

We are going to get a bag of muddy clothes to the laundry and go out to find something to eat for dinner.

Buenos noches from Lima!

Last day in the rainforest

... And boy are we glad! The Mosquitos are terrible! Right now it is 6am and we just hiked out to a camouflaged hut. Now we are waiting for parrots to arrive. They come to eat mud from the cliff.

They're here! There are hundreds of them! Very spectacular!

After that we had breakfast, and I took a power nap in the hammock before we took the boat out to a farm. They have a lot of the same fruits as Hawaii. What I found interesting was the yuca; which is a potato like plant. We had it fried for dinner last night. They were great. The other interesting thing was the cocoa. This is what cocoa looks like,

It's soft and slimy until it is dried and roasted. After we got back we had time for a 45 minute nap before lunch. That's nap #2 for me.

After lunch we took a trip to a local family where we saw demos on hunting, spinning, weaving, music and fire starting.

Now we are relaxing and Cheryl is getting in her nap #2 until dinner. It is pouring rain right now so there isn't much else going on. I'll have to wait to post this until the electricity comes back on.

Adios rainforest!

The Amazon rain forest

We saw three caimen last night... The biggest one being 2 meters long. It's amazing how the guides can find them from a moving boat in the dark. After a successful caiman spotting trip, we had to get everything together for our 5am start into the rain forest. There would be no electricity in the morning.

I don't have any pics to share of the rainforest since I didn't bring the iPhone...  it rained and it was muddy. We walked 6K through shin deep mud to Sandoval lake. Once there we saw lots of different types of birds and howler monkeys. We heard the capuchin monkeys, but they were too far away to see. 

There are 7 people in our group: two Canadian couples, a lady from Australia, and Us. One of the Canadian ladies had a real bad time and I carried out her backpack for her (Cheryl was carrying ours at the time). She has a lot of trust since I fell in the mud only a dozen steps after we got off the boat. Haha!

So as I said there are no pics of the rainforest. But here are some pics from around the hotel.

You must stay on the stepping stones

This guy likes to hang out around the kitchen for handouts

Cheryl making up for the early morning departure

A tarantula 

Tomorrow morning at 540, we leave on a 20 minute walk to see a colony of parrots. It's a good thing we took a nice nap today! 😋

Hasta luego 

Amazon bound

We got up early and had a nice breakfast at the hotel. We packed some of our stuff    into smaller bags to take to the Amazon. We boarded a short flight to Cusco and  then on to Puerto Maldonado. 

When we reached Puerto Maldonado, we were met by a local guide and taken by boat to our hotel; where we had lunch and went on a walking tour through the Amazon rainforest in the late afternoon/evening. 

Cheryl got three mosquito bites through her pants. I don't know why Mosquitos like to bite her on the bottom. We just got back to the room and will head out in a little bit for caiman  hunting.

we might not see any because the water is so high. Goodnight from the Amazon! 

PS - trying to understand an announcement in Spanish over the airport PA is impossible.

Lima, Peru

We never did get lunch. We both fell asleep for a couple of hours. I guess we didn't get as much sleep on the airplane as we thought. Our sleep was interrupted by an evacuation alert. Our hotel is connected to the Airport, so since the airport was evacuated, we also had to evacuate the hotel. We did some shopping at a nearby outlet center, had some dinner and drinks.

The view from our hotel room

Sampling the pisco sour.

YUM

Tonight we pack for the Amazon. We'll be out of cell range for three days.

Adios!

On our way

Fun at LAX. An hour and a half to wait.

We're here

Welcome to Lima! The flight was good and they fed us twice. We both got a little sleep. We taxied for over 45 minutes  in Los Angeles. I wondered if we were going to drive to Peru. So Almost nine hours later we landed. A representative met us at the airport and now we are relaxing in our room.

There is a two hour time difference. We will be heading out to find some lunch. Wish us luck!

Another camera post. This time with collage.

Test phone post

Jena says hi 

While the cat's away...

Jim was gone for a week to the overland expo in Arizona, so Cheryl and I decided to do a girls long run in Palm Springs.

Overlooking the Palm Canyon Oasis:



Down in the Oasis:



It didn't take us long to come out the other side...



And head out into the desert.



It is really beautiful!



But the trails aren't marked very well... Where are we?



13.1 miles later, we made our way back out. We were bushed so we booked a hotel for a night.

The next morning, we took a short 2 mile run out to Tahquitz Falls. This part of the desert is completely different than yesterday.





It was a fun fun weekend!
But back to work for everyone tomorrow.