Eventually we managed to get everything sorted for Daniel at the embassy, a new passport, flights, even some washing!! So me and Sean could fly up to Iquitos, in the Peruvian amazon.

It felt so luxury (and a little wrong for us!) to be flying up to Iquitos, but you cannot access it by road. It was such an incredible experience, flying into the amazon, looking out the window and only seeing a mass of green for as far as the eye could see. It felt like the amazon went on forever. We could see the huge Rio Amazonia itself snaking its way through with tons of other rivers coming off it...such an incredible sight, after everything you learn at school, all the geeky documentaries, to finally be arriving there. The excitement was the antidote i needed after a teary goodbye to my brother (I was glad he was going...eventually, as he needed to get home after eveything that had happened, but it was so nice to have him out with us for two whole weeks travelling!).

That excitement was all about being in the amazon...although if youre expecting unadulterated, uninterrupted rainforest/jungle, you couldnt be further from the truth, Iquitos is no small jungle shacks, its a huge city...be it a city that you either have to fly into, or get a boat out of, like we had planned for our trip into Brasil. It makes sense when you realise that Iquitos is the largest city in the world that you cannot access by land!

What shocked us the most, was how much we instantly flew back into ´Travelling Mode! The humidity just hit us like a massive slap in the face...Lima got quite warm when the sun was out, and it was our first real introduction to low altitude (we had been in the mountains for months) but Iquitos and the Amazon was like another planet, almost like being back in Asia again. Instantly we felt like someone had wet our clothes, and were reminded of what its like to get out of the shower and immediately start sweating! Oh the joys...but that, the millions of mosquitos, and huge importation costs, are well worth the experience of being up in this part of the world!

We spent a lot of time just wandering around getting our bearings - during the rubber boom Iquitos used to be quite prosperous (only lasted a few years) so theres some pretty colonial looking architecture...and weirdly, a pretty ugly building on the main Plaza de Armas, that is made out of iron? It was designed by the same architect that designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and then shipped over to Iquitos...very bizarre, and actually pretty unimpressive! Ate some good local food (and even better Amazonian juices) before sorting out our boat trip to the tri-border with Brazil, Columbia and Peru (from where we had to get another boat, for 5-7 days down to Manaus on the Rio Amazonia, in Brasil). Of course, you need a hammock to sleep on these boats, so we went to Belem, the shanty area of town, which had a fantastic market.

Belem itself is a district where the houses are built on stilts on the water, and the market was really local, cheap and fantastic. Two hammocks down, we wandered down the herbal medicine alley. I swear, in the amazon they have a plant, or piece of wood for every ailment, anything you could need you can get from nature. Not to mention, pure tobacco, lots of coca products (and lots of hallucanegenic looking substances!) The amazon really has everything...more fruits than there are names for in the english language (some really odd looking) so we sampled a few flavours in ice cream to attempt to cool down a touch!

We spent some more time in Belem market, checking out the houses on stilts, bobbing up and down on the banks of the amazon. The market itself is so full of life, it reminds me of the shanty towns in Brazil, people walking around in colourful tiny clothes, shouting and laughing. The flowers, herbs, plants, powders, bark...anything natural from the amazon that could literally cure you (or at least put you on a ´high´so you think you're cured!!) from anything! They even had coca cigarettes and ´coca powder´, some with the words ´San Pedro´ scribbled on it - so im guessing the infamous product from San Pedro prison in Bolivia does reach far and wide!!

We then went out on the Amazon river, and upto the River Nanay, a tributary. It was nice to get out on a small canoe boat, onto the river, and get further into the Amazon. We walked through the bush a bit, to a great little animal sanctuary. It started off as a butterfly sanctuary, as they are hunted in the amazon for quite a lot of money, and it was beautiful to see massive bright blue and irridescent red butterflies, in all stages of life, from the eggs, to the cocoons (they farm butterflies there), and the caterpillars. Really crazy. The government has also dumped confiscated or injured animals on the place, even though they were never meant to look after them...but a few caring owners couldn´t turn them away.

They have lots of cheeky monkeys, some red-faced, others black and great pickpockets! They have anacondas (man they are scary beasts, they can constrict you from upto 2m away!), anteaters, tapirs (cool animals, they are prehistoric...and look like small rhinos), cayman (no idea if thats how you spell it, but weird crocodile type things) and even mannattees, not to mention loads of tropicalbirds. Most impressive, they had a jaguar..such a beautiful and impressive creature. The monkeys were really good fun, i even had one of them spend a good half hour grooming me, trying to find things to pick out of my hair! Luckily i am surprisingly clean for a traveller and he couldnt find anything, so he decided to attack my knots with his teeth to loosen them! It was like having a personal hairdressing treatment! Of course i then had to return the favour...! It was really lovely being in the place, learning more about the animals, and seeing them run wild, as they dont cage them (minus the jaguar of course!!). We then spent a bit more time wandering through the amazon, so vast, and we werent even in the primary forest yet! A beautiful place to be, and very hot!! We got led around a few places by a sweet old woman who was determined to show us around the local village, determined to earn a soles...and we couldnt say no.

It was a really lovely day and amazing to get out on the Amazon. The river has changed the landscape a lot, a beach we were trying to find no longer exists, and a whole tributary has cut into the amazon, changing the colour of the water in parts. There is loads of felling going on and lots of pollution which is pretty sad to see, but equally there are lots of people determined to preserve what they can, so its quite a political place.

We´re now just preparing for our first boat trip tomorrow, to the tri border with Brazil and Columbia, and then hopefully we can set off straight away or the next day on our week long trip down the Amazon to Manaus in Brazil. Should be an experience!