Arequipa

The city of Arequipa was our next stop, and was an overnight bus ride away.  The city is quite pretty but we really came here to visit Colca Canyon, some 5 hours away.  The canyon is over twice as deep than Grand Canyon.  We booked an overnight tour there, which included horseriding.  On the way there we saw lovely scenery, including volcanoes which are still active.  We spotted many vicunas, a bit like small brown llamas, which are protected animals now, because they were hunted for their super soft and expensive wool. 

When we arrived, we were taken to our accomodation, Eco Lodge, which was probably the nicest place we have stayed in so far, so scenic and quiet. We then set off on our horses with a local guide.  The horses were lovely Peruvian Pasos, Dom had Hercules I had Mille Amoures (a thousand loves).  It was our first time riding but the horses were very gentle so we soon got the hang of it.  Even though they were cheeky horses when their owner wasn't looking, turning right when we wanted to go left etc.   We spent a great 3 hours riding through amazing scenery.   Its actually quite reassuring when your transport has a mind of its own like knight rider.

The next day we got up early to visit a place called Cruz del Condor and were very lucky to see so many condors gliding gracefully above us.  Im not really into birds, but this was pretty fascinating.

Lima

The capital, Lima, was our next stop.  A few travellers had mentioned Lima wasnt an attractive city so we werent  expecting much.  When we arrived it was wet and foggy and everything looked miserable. ( Lima gets a depressing grey fog from June to December.)  But in the next few days here we were pleasantly surprised with what we saw.  Miraflores,  the suburb we we were staying in, felt clean and safe and has a nice coastal walk. We also did a tour of the historical quarter of Lima and there are tons of attractive old buildings.  

The Amazon Rainforest tour

Next stop was Iquitos,  in the north of Peru. Its credited with being the largest city in the world that you cant get to by road.  We flew here, there was no way I was going by boat for days on end to get here. It was raining heavily when we got here but that soon cleared;  basically it was hot and humid.   First time in South America I have had a cold shower, and not minded.  Progress.

Iquitos has a lot of traffic, a large portion of which are motor bike taxis speeding in every direction; reminded us of India. We booked an Amazon jungle tour for 2 nights here.  I had a feeling the jungle wouldn't be my cup of tea, but we cant be this close to the Amazon rainforest and not explore it.

It took us five hours via car then a motorised wooden boat called peque peque , to arrive at our extremely basic and quite run down lodge in the jungle.   During the boat trip we spotted several pink and grey dolphins in the river.

After eating lunch at the lodge, armed with masses of mosquito repellant and covered up with trousers, long sleeves and welli boots, we set about a 4 hour jungle walk.  We saw colourful butterflies, various birds, tarantulas, insects, termite nests and various trees and medicinal plants.  We were sweating, the humidity was very uncomfortable.   We later did a night walk, which was more comfortable, and we got to see a scorpian, a snake, and several large colourful frogs and more insects.  The jungle sounds at night are really really really loud!

The mosquitos were unbearable.  We spent 3 days slapping ourselves constantly. They were literally eating us alive.  They managed to bite through our clothes, and repellant didnt seem to do anything.  Ive never had that many bites.   Apparently there is little or no malaria here, but the mosquitos are so bad, we are taking our malaria tablets religiously every night.  This is what I was dreading the most about this trip.  At night they get even worse.  We had a good mosquito net over our bed thankfully, though the odd one still got in just to be annoying.

The next day was a river tour on a canoe boat, where we soptted iguanas, monkeys and tucans on the shore.  No anacondas though.  They are around somewhere, but they are hard to find, which is surprising when some grow to 10 metres in length!!!

Our guide, Augusto aka "Comando" is in his 60s but hes very active and a bit imature, he will do anything you dare him to do (or dont dare him to do actually ) - pick up tarantulas and put them on his face, climb up trees, disturb bee hives.   Im glad we didn't see a 10 metre anaconda, Augusto would have tried to wrestle it. 

We also visited a local village and met some locals and some pet sloth bears.    They werent chained up or anything, they are free to roam around, not that they can be bothered, as they are so so slow!  Very cute though.  At night it was piranha fishing which was later served up for dinner.   They have seriously sharp teeth.

Our crazy guide got bitten that night trying to catch a small caiman (part of the alligator family).   Good! Because much to our dissapointment,  2 days earlier another of the tour guides had caught a caiman, which he bought back to the lodge.  He came into the dining room to "show off" his catch, which was alive, but bleeding from where the guide had speared it.  It was about 1.5 metres long and its snout was tied up.   The caiman was on the floor and the guide was prodding it with a paddle, to aggravate it. They then placed it in a sort of tank (no water) at the back of the lodge.   A few of us complained and the guy tried telling us they were protecting it from fishermen and would return it in a couple of days.  Yeah right.  I have no idea what happened to the caiman, it was still there when we left.  Caiman is a popular thing to eat in the area so they will always be caught and killed for food but, there is no need to wound it, tease it and imprison it.   Dom and I kept the chicken from our lunch and threw it in the caimans tank, I hope he ate it and liked it.  And I hope he was freed or escaped; if I wasnt scared it would eat me I would have freed it myself!

Its such a shame as the rest of the trip was pretty good and the guides seemed respectful of the nature and wildlife.