La Selva

Another vacation! Work hasn’t quite picked up yet so a friend and fellow Fogarty Scholar, Devora, and I took advantage of the down time, and Peruvian holidays, to take another trip to see more of the country. We booked a quick flight to Iquitos, the Peru entry to the Amazon jungle.

 As soon as we got off of the plane we felt more like tourists in a foreign country than we do in our daily lives in Lima. The typical mode of transportation in Iquitos is a mototaxi (pictured to the right). It's a small two-person cab hooked onto the back of a motorbike. So even before we stepped out of the airport we were surrounded by mototaxi drivers vying for our business to take us into town. I should mention, that I was towering over all them as they questioned us yelled out prices in a mix of English and Spanish. I'm not sure what the uncomfortable part was, the towering or the decision-making or all the attention, but this was a common scene over the week that I never got use to. 

 We spent the first day exploring Iquitos and also a butterfly rehabilitation center in the area. During this trip I was reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, which is about migration of butterflies. Her imagery of the butterflies is so beautiful and mesmerizing, I had to see it for myself. The Mariposaria provides a habitat for the butterflies to mate and for the next generation to grow. Then they release them back into the jungle. The rest of the trip we were stopping to watch butterflies dance around. 

 The second day we were off for our Amazon jungle adventure. An Italian woman joined, Devora and me, to make up our tour group. We first took a four hour boat ride up the Amazon, seeing many fresh water dolphins and birds. We stopped to chat with a group of carachama fisherman. Five or six guys live on raft for about a week, floating down the Amazon from Pucallpa to Iquitos fishing for carachama, a popular and ugly Amazon catfish. They find the catch the fish and keep them in large water cages attached to the raft (see pictures below). They then arrive in Iquitos to sell thousands of fresh fish. The guys strangely happy to show off their loot and explain to us how it is done.

Jungle Downpour 

We arrived to our lodge just in time to miss a thunder and lightening storm, which I enjoyed watching from our room. This was the introduction to our four day jungle experience. Meaning, it rained everyday, I was constantly dripping sweat and fighting off bugs, and it was beautiful and green! 

Blender

Our guide, Alberto, was from a neighboring pueblo. He fit in with us well, joking around, making fun of our Spanish and indulging our constant stream of questions. We spent the next four days exploring the jungle by boat and by foot. We saw lots of animals, pink dolphins, monkeys, an alligator and lots of birds. Alberto taught us about the medical properties and household purposes of many plants (see the picture of the blender he made on the left). 

Las Renas de La Selva (Jungle Queens) and Alberto

We ate delicious food, fresh fish, plantains, sugary fruit juice; even the instant Nescafé was tasty. We fished for piranhas, swam in the Amazon, and watched the sunset. It was a typical tourist experience and I loved it! I think I will just let the pictures tell rest of the story. 










On one hike Alberto made Devora and I crowns. That machete is his lifeline, trail blazer, eating utensil, blender maker, and much much more.

In Alberto's village

Alberto took us to his village. This woman was trying to give her hen some sort of medicine.

Swimming in the Amazon

We went swimming in the Amazon. It was disturbingly warm, like bath water. But there were pink dolphins swimming in the background!

Piranha fishing.  

Unhooking the Piranha 

Fishing for piranhas. We used expensive chicken meat to fish for small barely edible piranhas, and by fish I mean feed them lunch. It was the easiest fishing I have ever done. It took seconds to get a bite, but you had to be quick to get them out of the water. It was surprisingly entertaining, although I was the least successful in our group.








We ended up throwing most of them back. Unhooking them was part of the fun.

Post Jungle Lunch- Street Food

Baby Ocelot in a Iquitos Hotel

Sunset over the Amazon River

 The primary goal of this experience in Peru is to gain global health research experience, but the secondary one is to get to know a new country and culture. AKA my excuse to travel. Peru is such a diverse country and has so much to offer. I’m so glad I get to explore some of it!

Huacachina

 Winter weather in Lima is tougher to handle than rainy winters in the northwest. Everyday is the same, dense fog with thick overcast skies. The temperature is not cold enough for buildings to have heat or good insulation, but enough to leave a chill indoors that can never be abated. So, looking for some change in weather and daily routine a friend and I took a quick two-day trip the desert. A quick four hour bus ride later we were in shorts, warm and happy.

Huacachina and Ica in back right

Huacachina is a tiny resort oasis about 3 miles outside Ica. There is a small lagoon lined with hostels and restaurants all surrounded by miles of sand dunes. The photo to the left is Huacachina with Ica in the back right.

Dune Buggy 

Although for us it was the sunshine and blue skies, the big draw in Huacachina are the dunes. Activities included dune buggy rides and sand boarding (like snowboarding, but on the sand dunes). We ended up with a packaged deal through our hostel and so gave it a try. I only felt a little sick after the jerky buggy ride over the tops of dunes, it was a blast.

Sand Boarding

The ride took us out of Huacachina to some spectacular views and the top of three dunes for sand boarding. Not being a snowboarder myself I went down lying on my stomach dragging my feet for breaks, just fast enough for fun. The dunes got increasingly larger so I had to talk myself into on to that board each time, especially the last one when I couldn’t even see the bottom. Each time was totally worth it, marked by the amount of sand I later poured out of my shoes.  

The rest of the trip we relaxed in the sun, read books and burned our feet on hot sand. It was so enjoyable to get out of Lima, see blue skies, and be warmed by the sun. We hardly wanted to go back.

Week One

I survived my first week in Peru with only a few bumps along the way. I managed to lose both my new cell phone and the debit card for my Peruvian bank account within days of getting them. Don’t get me wrong. They weren’t stolen; I LOST them. Apparently the adjustment was a little too much for my scattered brain to handle. The good thing is it only took another $30 to get a new cell phone and a few difficult conversations in Spanish, including one on the phone, to new debit card. No money was taken out of my account, just a little embarrassment on my part. I am hanging on to everything very tightly from here on out.

On a more positive note last Sunday was my day of Peruvian culture. In the morning I went with a group of people to a Peruvian food festival, Mistrua. It was started by a famous Peruvian chef, Gastón Acurio, and now is one the biggest food festivals in world. Restaurants from all over the country come and sell samples of their food. The booths were organized by the region of the country and type of food. I started with coffee, ate until I couldn’t move and then went and had chocolate. I ate paicha (a kind of fish), corn, potatoes, breads, tamales, and chocolate. I also drank, pisco, coffee, and several juices. It was neat to see the many dishes even if I didn’t try them. ALL of it was delicious, but my favorite was tacu tacu. It's a very dense beans and rice dish formed into a patty that often had seafood on top.  Yum. There was also a large market selling a large variety of potatoes, coffee, honey, pisco and other items made in Peru. The first picture below shows some potatoes and other root vegetables that were for sell. There is a big big foodie culture in Lima, and it was great to get a taste of it all!

I rolled out of Mistrua, sure I wouldn't need to eat again for days, and on to the next activity. We went to a cultural dance show at the big theater in Lima, Gran Teatro Nacional. The theater was very new and modern. Apparently with the new theater they started a cultural show demonstrating traditional dances from all over Peru. The show runs throughout the year, and at the end of every season they change up the dancers and showcases new dances from different regions of the country. The one we saw, Retablo (alterpiece), demonstrated seven different traditional dances. The last picture below is from one of the dances. The whole thing was great. The costumes were amazing, and the dances were really fun to watch. The audience got really into them and clapped along. I wish I could take the music home with me too. A lot of my day is spent with westerners so I really enjoyed a bit of Peruvian culture. Also there is a lot of diversity among the people in different regions of the country I know I won’t get to all of them so at least I got to experience something from them!