Aymi’s Adventures

 Eco Amazonia Jungle Lodge

So we set off from La Paz for Puno on 29th April, stopped at Copacabana, on the edge of Lake Titicaca for lunch, the food was terrible, not what I needed when recovering from the hangover from hell!!

Eventually after crossing the border we arrived at Puno in Peru, a very small town and again very wet!! The only things on interest here were the cathedral and some monument. From here we had limo´s to take us to the harbour (rickshaws to be exact) and took a boat over Lake Titicaca and to two Islands, the first one called Amantani Island and the second called Taquile Island where we stayed with a local Indian family for the night, it was a fab experience although i´m not sure Kate would agree with me on that one! The island has no electricity, you have to flush the toilets with buckets of water (I was suprised they even had proper toilets!) and it was very cold at night. We dressed up in local dress and went to a dance that night with our host Mum´s, it was very weird to say the least, but good fun all the same. I was glad I had brought a bottle of wine with me to drink!!! We stopped at some floating Islands on Lake Titicaca on the way back - what a bizarre idea, if you dont like your view one morning you can just move your island - kinda like that idea. They were pretty amazing people, busying themselves with making their handicrafts to sell and cooking the fish they may catch, potatos and the reed things that they eat, I tried these and they were actually quite nice. This takes up pretty much all of their time and they seem really happy.

We had another night in Puno then off to Cuzco, an amazing place, full of history, old buildings, and an air of mystery. I loved it there, although it was very touristy, it was great just to have nice food again! Most things were centered around Plaza de Armas - the central square including many restaurants, the main cathedral, shops, massage places - offering Inca massages (might have to get one of those after ive done the Inca trail!) and bars.

The next day it was off to the Jungle, Puerto Maldonado. I absolutely loved it, even though I was apprehensive of the mosquitos and other creapy crawlies at first, I managed to not get bitten once and got pretty close to some tarantulas and touched a snake and fed a taipur and monkeys. The Eco Amazonian lodge we stayed in was amazing, really good location and set up, each bungalow being called after one of the many jungle animals, ours was sachavaca (or something like that anyway which is some kind of Taipur) and they all had mosquito netting around them.

Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Taipur!

   

We went Cayman spotting at night along the river but mainly saw eyes! It was an amazing feeling though, floating down the river in the Amazon Jungle in silence, no engines, just the sound of the jungle. I also went fishing - I know amazing for me!!! I only went because I wanted to go out in the boat again because I love them so much. We didnt catch anything but I was quite happy just chilling out on the boat on the river.

Amazon Jungle Rainbow, firing arrows, snake, parrot

   

We got drenched in one of the many downpours so I decided to wash my trousers completely as they were also quite muddy after all the walking and wearing of gum boots (better known as wellies). Once I had washed then with shower gel in the sink I remembered I had only brought this one pair of trousers with me - oops. So I went swimming for an hour before dinner leaving my trousers outside (it was bright sunshine again by this point) to hopefully dry. By lunch time they still werent dry, but borrowed some jeans (thanks Vanessa) to wear to lunch by which point they were near enough dry. The next day it was up early for the boat trip back down the river to the capital of the Amazon and the flight back to Cuzco for a night ready to prepare for the Sacred Valley and the Inca Trail.

Stick insects mating, catching snakes, tarantula, bird

   

Tags: Cuzco, la paz, Lake Titicaca, Puno, Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.