December 1, 2010

Last day in the jungle. We had to get up at 5:30 to prepare leaving for the main lodge.

Yesterday night the staff had made a cake for us to thank us for staying here.

We inversed roles and served the staff cake in the kitchen:

An Australian couple arrived at the lodge yesterday, you can see them on the next picture. They were also travelling around the word, only in the other direction. They had just spent 3 months in New Zealand and would use 12 months in total to go around the globe:

At 6:30 we said good bye to the research center and headed for breakfast at the main lodge. Bottle cap games became increasingly elaborate. I believe Inca Cola represents soldiers, Coca Cola are archers, Sprite are horses and the golden beer caps are generals:

My finger was by now pretty much healed, but my finger print is probably ruined forever:

As usual birds were all around us:

At the main lodge there are a couple of trees where beautiful black and yellow birds have nests, They make a lot of noise and move all the time. I had not managed to take good photos of them before. This time I had 20 minutes before breakfast and used that time as a bird paparazzi, finally managing to get some decent shots:

Look at the cool nests they creep into:

Notice the giant wasp nest. These smart birds prefer to build their nests in trees with wasp nests to keep potential egg snatchers away:

After breakfast we headed back to the local village. This time to visit their school. Through Amazonia Expeditions we had bought some school books for the school library. Amazonia recommends this as a way of giving something to the local community without creating unwanted side effects on the local culture.

As a side note, and another sign of the Peruvians preoccupation with the Incas, the box the books came in was an Inca box:

This preoccupation is not too different from the Norwegian people´s preoccupation with the vikings.

Here is the classroom and the pupils:

Here are some of the books, and the teacher.

The children sang for us and in return we sang the Norwegian children´s song “Mikkel Rev”

Afterwards Viktor said good bye to a parrot we had also seen last time we were in the village:

Our Amazon trip was getting close to the end now. We headed back to the main lodge for lunch.  My last photograph of a scary insect (sorry, Gwen) was this little guy who was sitting on a rail at the lodge:

We zipped back to Iquitos on the fast boat and docked close to the offices of Amazonia Expediitons. We picked up our remaining luggage, including the unused metal fishing leaders and headed to the airport. It started to rain while we were in the taxi. Bye bye Iquitos and Amazonia

Our plane to Lima was another Airbus A319:

In Lima we checked in at the airport hotel and looked out of our window:

Viktor commented that just like in Manhatten, and contrary to the jungle, everything we saw out there was man made.

We had had a great time in Amazonia and in Peru. The weather gods were with us again and our guide turned out to be stellar and genuine.

Tomorrow we head for Argentina.

Eirik

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