Wake up call is around 4 am. My eyes are barely awake with less than 4 hours of sleep under me. I quickly jump into the shower hoping it will wake me up. It is still pitch black and I have to use the flashlight just to find my clothes. I find my boots completely covered in some kind of green dirt but I don’t remember it being that way. I put on my pants and get ready and walk out to the dining area to get some breakfast. We all then gather and head back down again to the boats that are 30+ min away.
We stay on the boats for about 20-30 min and then we get off in the middle of the jungle. No one tells me how long this will be and I am not in the best mood. I start almost running through trying to follow the guide. After about 40+ minutes I get aggravated because it feels like we are walking forever. After a total trek of about 70-80 minutes we finally arrived at another boat that was a flat boat powered simply by a huge oar.
We get on and after about 15 minutes we arrive at our destination. The guide takes out a bag of red meat and says we will be fishing for piranha! I was pretty excited! I have never even seen one let alone catch one. I was one of the first to go and realized these are some of the smartest fish I know! They didn’t eat as one – they ate as a group and so quickly that within 3 seconds all the food was gone and your chance of nabbing them is very small. I finally caught one and a few others in the group caught some as well. The sun began coming up and we began our trek back through the jungle back to the boat and back to the lodge. It was a very exhausting but fun morning.
When we got back a lot of the group members wanted to go hiking to the top of some mountains and I chose to finally relax. That afternoon I got a very awkward full body massage in the middle of the jungle, checked out some monkeys on my way back to my room and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in my hammock watching some movies on the iPad.
As the group got back it was time for us to leave this lodge. We grabbed all of our gear and again went down to the boats, long boat ride and then a long bus ride. At this time we stopped for lunch and played some soccer, as it was one of my last days on the trip. On the ride back on the bus our tour guide explained that it was pretty great that our bus did not get stuck in the roadway – apparently has happened before and some of the drop off are pretty steep. We arrived at a fairly nice hotel where we finally had air conditioning! It was amazing! We had some dinner and then went out for drinks with the guides we met and had a great time! The following morning we spent flying back to Lima and I split from the group as I was flying back to Chicago and they were flying to Rio. Wish I had gone with them but that will be another day!
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