Welcome to the Jungle

I have returned from the jungle, and no, I did not contract malaria or ebola, or any other tropical diseases. At least, I don't think I did. Before leaving, I hung up all the clothes I was bringing with me on the clothes line and sprayed them down with heavy duty bug spray. It must have worked, because I have very few bites.
Anyway, I flew to the town of Puerto Maldanado on Friday morning. The flight took only about 40 minutes, but the scenery changed drastically. We were flying over snow-capped mountains, then went through a huge cloud (and a lot of turbulence) then the mountains were gone and it was nothing but flat land and green trees. From town, we took a boat 90 minutes down river to the lodge. While on the boat (which was covered), it rained twice. It rains in the rainforest, can you imagine? And it doesn't just kind of rain, it really rains. We got lucky for the rest of the weekend, though, it only rained overnight.
I'm used to traveling cheaply, so I didn't know what to do when I was shown to my very own bungalow with a porch and hammocks and a bathroom with a toilet AND a shower! What? You mean I don't have to go down the hall and share a bathroom with 15 other people? I wasn't sure what to do with such luxury.
First on the weekend agenda was a tour of Monkey Island. I pulled on some knee high rubber boots for the mud. Somehow I managed to color coordinate, and it was probably my favorite travel fashion. (That's not saying much, considering I've sported some doosies.) I kind of wanted to bring them back with me. They would come in very handy for the Cusco rain. When we got to Monkey Island, it seemed to take a while for the monkeys to come out, but come out they did. The guide lured them out with bananas, and when he asked if anyone wanted to feed them, I jumped at the opportunity. I held out the banana, and a monkey snatched it right out of my hand. They got so close to us! We even saw a mother carrying her baby on her back. Unfortunately, it's rather dark under the trees, so my pictures didn't really come out. If you want to see the monkeys, you'll just have to go yourself instead of living vicariously through my blog and photos. (You know who you are...)
After dinner, we went for a nighttime boat ride, searching for caimans, which are like small alligators. We did see a few, but I was more concerned about the bats I was hearing coming from the jungle. On Saturday morning, we got a 5am wake-up call for our 7 hour jungle trek. The hike wasn't all that far in distance, but it took awhile to the mud. (Thank goodness for those cute rubber boots!) On several occasions the mud went up over my ankles and I got stuck. Somehow, I managed to stay upright the whole time, although I did have a few close calls. After a kilometer of mud hiking, we came to a swamp that we needed to row across. It was a 45 minute boat ride in the hot, tropical sun, (kind of like the jungle cruise at Disney World, only so much better) but on the way we saw a sloth, among other creatures, making it's way VERY SLOWLY down a tree. According to Elmer, our guide, sloths only come out of their tree once every 8 days "to make a poop." (His words, not mine.) After rowing, it was more mud hiking until we reached the observation tower, a rickety staircase that went 40 m up in the air to the top of the tree. The jungle engineering made a few people nervous, and a few even chickened out before they got to the top. I am afraid of many things, but heights isn't one of them, so I climbed up like a champ. From the top, you could see out over the Amazon, which was just awesome. Going down was a bit more treacherous than going up, but I made it.
The next leg was a very, very long bridge over a swamp. I use the term "bridge" very loosely. It consisted of two planks of wood somehow suspended over the swamp. We took the bridge to the Lost Lagoon, got into another canoe, and paddled around looking for more jungle creatures. We saw more caimans and a baby anaconda, but the thing that freaked me out the most was when our guide stirred up a bunch of bats. I didn't appreciate that. Back over the bridge, back through the mud, and back to the main swamp, where we had to paddle, but it was much harder this time around. While in the jungle, we were protected from the sun by the trees, on the swamp, there was no such protection. And the jungle is hot. Very hot. I'm pretty sure Dante mentioned it as one of the levels of his Inferno. After it was all over I was muddier and sweatier than I've ever been, but it was so worth it. I returned to my bungalow to shower. It was one time I didn't care that there was no hot water available.