Rescue Centers

On the last two days in Iquitos I visited two animal rescue centers. Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm has a tribe of red-faced Uakari monkeys living nearby and when I arrived they were hanging out near the entrance.

Peru has a problem with people illegally capturing and selling animals. Sometimes the animals are rescued from the market or airport. The birds have their wings clipped and then they are not able to fly.

This bird doesn't really look anything like Toucan Sam and yet that's the first thing I thought of. His beak has a large hole on the other side because he wasn't getting the proper food, but it's healing now.

There were a few pygmy marmosets. I got to see this one close up!

These monkeys were really playful.

Keep your eye on this one though! Get too close and she'll steal your things. She was trained by a gang as a pickpocket, and she was pickpocketing the visitors at the rescue center so she had to be put in monkey jail.

There was an ocelot, probably captured for its fur. There was also a jaguar but he was hiding, even when he was offered a snack of meat.

The last stop of the trip was to a Manatee Rescue Center where baby manatees are cared for until they are old enough to be released back into the wild. The baby manatees were hungry, and I got to feed them.

I was also able to pet them. They are very soft.

The last stop before heading to the airport was food. I walked to three highly-rated authentic Peruvian restaurants and they were all closed, so I ended up at The Yellow Rose of Texas.

Last sunset over the not-Amazon River.

More animals

There were some funny little animals in the Amazon. This guy is an insect but he looks like he belongs at the bottom of the ocean.

Since there are lots of insects, there are lots of bats to eat them. This bat is cradling a baby bat.

The bat was hanging in a fallen log in Frog Valley. Also in Frog Valley were lots of little poison dart frogs.

They were so tiny! But our guide was good at spotting them. When he was moving one of the leaves, this little guy hopped up onto his arm.

We went searching for birds with funny hair.

We found them at a lake that recently filled in with vegetation. There are little birds that are so light they can run around on top of the vegetation. They are skittish though, as they have to avoid the caimans, so they jump and scream any time something moves nearby.

This rodent found a nice hole to hide in to sleep for the day. He is hiding from birds of prey...

...like this black-collared hawk. Hopefully the hawk leaves him alone.

We found a river otter on a log. Then he dove into the water and swam downstream to a different log, and then dove back into the water and swam back upstream to the first log... I'm not sure if he was playing or if he does that when the boat is not around also.

Monkeys

There were lots of monkeys. We saw 7 different species even though most of them just looked like bundles of fur swinging through the treetops and making a racket.

This is a woolly monkey. I am worried he will jump onto my head.

Woolly monkey gets closer...

...and climbs into the boat (but not on my head).

Two woolly monkeys!

I'm sorry monkeys, you ate all our fruit and we have none left.

Into The Amazon

I took many excursions through the jungle looking for animals.

Sometimes there were bridges.

BearDog helped search too.

On one of the trips I got mauled by a jaguar with 3 teeth.

Okay, actually it was from a tree. But it was a serious tree that was defending itself. I had to pull 3 of the little spikes out of my shoulder.

Things grow very fast in the Amazon. To get past this area, one of the guides had to cut the trees with his machete. They did not give me a machete.

On the first morning at the lodge I saw pygmy marmosets, which are the smallest monkeys in the world. They like to eat the sap from this breakfast tree (with the holes in it). One of them was carrying two babies on his back as he hopped around the trees, but he was too quick for me to get a photo.

Our guide searches for animals in the treetops. Most of the animals we saw were birds and monkeys, and they liked to be up high.

On that same excursion when I saw the pygmy marmosets, I saw night monkeys. Since it was morning, they were preparing for a long day's sleep.

Later that morning, I did the canopy zipline, like Sean Connery in Medicine Man. I was very nervous. They didn't tell me until I got all the way up there that I had to jump off the platform. (I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.)

Wee!

Iquitos

Iquitos can only be reached by boat or airplane because it is deep in the Amazon Jungle. The city consists of two houses and a boat.

It rains pretty much every day. When driving a mototaxi in the rain, it is more important to stay dry than to be able to see.

The hotel I stayed at stored my steamer trunks in the library.

This is not the Amazon River. 

Iquitos pretends to be on the Amazon River, but it's not. The river shifted a while ago and Iquitos is on a little river next to the Amazon.

This is the Amazon River. It contains a pink dolphin.

This is also not the Amazon River. 50 miles up the Amazon River and then another 40 miles up the Tahuayo tributary is the Tahuayo Lodge.

This was my room.

It looks peaceful but don't be fooled. There are no windows and there are many noise-making animals, possibly more at night than during the day.

Everything is on stilts because the river floods in the rainy season. They play underwater volleyball when that happens.

The trees grow multicolored because of the flooding.

Machu Picchu

The weather had been great for the first three days of the trek, and then sometime in the middle of the third night it started pouring. We woke up at 3am to get in line at the checkpoint, and then at 5:30 we started the wet hike to the Sun Gate.

After 4 days of hiking, the first view of Machu Picchu!

BearDog wonders where Machu Picchu went. By the time he posed for the camera, the clouds had moved in.

As we descended, the views improved.

BearDog decides that the hike was worth it.

Machu Picchu is quite large and has no shortage of stones.

The Incas really liked their terraces.

I stayed overnight in Aguas Calientes and hiked Wayna Picchu the second day. Wayna Picchu is the mountain behind Machu Picchu in the previous photos. It had more stairs but I was a pro at that point.

Elevation only 2693 meters? No problem!

I was glad I stayed because it was much clearer the second day. The zigzags are the road leading from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu. You can take the bus or walk. After walking for 4 days, choosing the bus was the easiest decision I've ever made.

Shhhh... I'm stalking a llama.

I can take a train back!?

BearDog takes a well-deserved rest after a great hike.