Postscript: The Mad Dash To Iquitos! "Whatever you do, don't touch the sides of the boat," Bincy yelled to me over the roar of the boat engine. I can barely hear her. "What?" I yell back. "I don't understand." We're in a wind tunnel of sorts, in a motorboat transport from the Tahuayo Lodge in the Amazon Jungle back to Iquitos, where we will catch our plane back to Lima. "In case we are struck by lightning, you don't want to be touching anything on the boat," ...

It's A Jungle Out There... Or JUGS In The Amazon "One, two, three - jump!" Ready? Again: one, two, three ... Jump!" I'm sitting on a wooden ledge 200 feet above the canopy of the Amazon Jungle and my 24-year-old guide Nellie is urging me to jump and zip across the tree line. Nellie doesn't know that I'm afraid of heights or that my ass is suddenly frozen on the ledge. "Do you want a push," Nellie asks. "No," I say. "Just give me a moment." "You can do i...

By Mary Mancera Mind Over Matter: Our Adventure On The Inca Trail "OMFG! I can't catch my breath." Twenty minutes into our hike on the Inca Trail, Nancy - our JUGS (Just Us Girls) mate and travel companion - was gasping for air and pleading with our guide Ernesto for a hit of oxygen. Not a good sign for the first quarter mile of a 10-mile hike. "Take a deep breath and exhale slowly ...three times," Ernesto told Nancy. In all his years as a Andean guide, Ern...

WOW!! Adrenalin rush flying over the Lines of Nazca. Up at 5 am, our driver Erneso drove us 2 hous down the coast of Peru. Very dry, sand everywhere lik the Sahara Desert. Extreme poverty - no sanitation, living in straw shacks. One of the side effects of Diamox (for altitude for Cusco) is you have to pee alot. So poor Ernesto was constantly looking for bathrrooms on our 4 hour drive to Ica. After 2 hours of driving along the coast,we headed inland and it got ...