April 25-30: Deep in the Amazon

¨You had to be there!¨

It´s one thing to see the world´s deadliest insect on Animal Planet.  It´s a whole different world when it´a foot away from your face.

Tarantulas.  Tarantula-eating wasps.  Ants the size of small mammals.  The world´s most painful insect stings.  The world´s most poisonous spider (which happens to be the size of a tarantula and is ¨extremely aggresive¨)

It is all there, and it´s not even hard to find.  6 nights in the jungle was a crazy experience.

Welcome to the jungle.

Hello Wandering Spider - the size of your hand and extremely, extremely poisonous.   

The Brazilian wandering spiders appear in Guinness World Records 2010 as the world's most venomous spider.

Going to step away from the Don for a few days.  It´s not conspicuous here.  At all.

Getting ready to hop on a boat for the cruise upriver.

Cruising through the jungle.  It´s like the Venice of rainforests.

Supply boat heading upriver.

View off the bow.

This guy is writing a book on the Tambopata Natural Reserve, our destination.  His camera gear was cooler than mine, by a big margin.

Water and jungle.

The kitchen at a ranger checkpoint.

Ranger checkpoint... 

Accomodations - make sure the mosquito net is tight!  Insects and bats own the place.

Electricity is sporadic (solar panels and a generator provide power from 530 - 9), so kerosene lamps do the rest at night.

Sunrise over the Amazon.

So humid your clothes actually get wetter overnight... and forget about drying anything unless its out in the sunshine.

Ranger life.

Heading further upriver... sediment gives the river that dark orange hue.

The jungle is trying to own this shack.  It will win.

How the locals get around.

More sunrise... its brief this close to the equator.  No more 3 hour sunsets like I had down in Patagonia.

The jungle is just everywhere.  It is kind of spooky, and really easy to get lost.  Very happy to have a guide.

Cruising a small lake in the jungle.

Our leader.

Jungle life

Signs you are really far from home:

The bathroom doesn´t have toilet paper, a toilet seat, or soap, but does have two chickens.

People wash their cars in rivers.

A ¨gas station¨ is a tarp shed where a child pours gasoline out of a plastic can..

There´s no traffic, but there are waterfalls, rock slides and river crossings to worry about.

Air conditioning means fans.  Real AC?  Ha.

You laugh every time you see a sign for high speed internet.   Ha.

When you use the internet cafe, you get this message:
Upgrade to a modern browser such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer 8.
I didn´t realize Internet Explorer 5 wasn´t ¨modern?¨  What is it, pre-industrial or something?

A taxi is the back seat of a motorcycle.

A taxi ride costs less than a can of Coke.

Lunch costs less than a can of Coke.

You want ice with your Coke, but the ice might kill you.

No shirt, no shoes, no service seems like an absurd American invention.

America seems like some fantasy world on TV.  People really live like that?

April 24 - The Amazon

From the world´s coldest continent, to the world´s driest desert, to the biggest salt lake.

And then, across the Andes, to the largest rainforest.

The last 300km of the road from Cuzco drops 13,000 feet into the jungle.

It´s one of the world´s most abrupt climactic transitions.

At the top you can hardly breathe and it snows.

2 hours later it´s so hot and humid you´re practically drinking the air.

How they built a road through those mountains is pretty awesome.  The road must make thousands of turns until it straightens out.

And at the bottom, welcome to a different world.

Two months ago there was nothing green on the horizon...

...but not anymore.

Here we go.  

High up on a ridge, you can see the mountain range that borders the Sacred Valley.  Cuzco is somewhere in the 3rd valley.

Up and up... to the snowline.  Am I in Patagonia again?  God it´s cold.

Highest point, about 4,500 meters.  

Starting towards the Amazon... and over the continental divide.  All this water drains to the Amazon, and the Atlantic.

Starting the descent... cloud forest in front.

Getting green an impossibly twisty.

Beware the waterfall hazards!

More and more lush... and that stream 100km back is already looking pretty serious.

Jungle gas station / horoscope center.

Starting to feel jungly.  Just like TV.

Hello, Amazon Basin.

Stopping for supplies.

The road to Brazil, still under construction.

The last link to Brazil... 

Overlooking Puerto Maldonado and the rainforest.

Welcome to Puerto Maldonado - carved out of the jungle and a frontier town of sorts.  But you can´t help but get the feeling that nature is creeping back just about everywhere.

A good spot to catch up with friends.

And this is home for a few nights.  The dining lodge.  Hungry?

If it looks like it might be hard to find the hut during the day, just imagine what happens when it gets dark.

Arequipa - Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Spicy Food

How do you capture Arequipa?

It´s a city surrounded by not one, not two, but three 20,000 foot volcanoes.  One is active.  Two used to be not too long ago.

Inca´s used to sacrifice children on the volcanoes (really!)  Climbers stumbled across the mummified, frozen bodies a few decades ago.

There are earthquakes every few decades.

The food is spicy and delicious.

The city`s major industries are alpaca products, cement made from volcanic ash, and tourism of canyons and mountains.

We don´t have anything comparable in the States.  Imagine food from New Orleans on top of the Grand Canyon, with Mount McKinley in the background.  Crazy place.

Peru consistently delivers on quality restaurants and good design (in the tourist quarters, at least...)

How about some Japanese / Peruvian fusion?

Cool architecture and design everywhere.

Colonial living.

Even the stray dogs seem less threatening here.

More historical architecture...

...with some vultures thrown in!

Found it!  I took Starbucks for granted... I will never make that mistake again.

AC, high speed internet, caffeine and spotless bathrooms.  Heaven.

These folks would have gone to Starbucks.  An old colonial mansion, then the residence of the British Ambassador.

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Also the private house of a Spanish merchant.  Doing deals the old school way.

A not-so-PC depiction of the natives from some very old maps.

Cusco, back in the day.  

Street life in Arequipa - families come and hang out in the Plaza del Armas.

Hustle and bustle.  

There must be hundreds of pigeons in the main square.

Kids love pigeons.

Massive, massive volcanoes behind the city.

Spain´s contribution to the skyline.

For some reason these taxis cracked me up.

Hectic.  The most unpredictable and fluid traffic I´ve seen so far.  Drive at your own risk!

City streets.