Peru - Day 3 {The Amazon}

We got a wake up call {knock on our door} at 5am and had to be at breakfast by 5:30 so our boat could leave by 6am. There were 10 of us in our group. A family from San Jose, and two couples from Vegas and SoCal. We also had the same guide, Lizbeth, our whole time at the lodge. When we got to the boat we were all super excited because it was foggy (which is apparently unusual) and more than one of us made the comparison to The Jungle Cruise at Disneyland and someone (surprisingly not me) may have hummed the theme song to Indiana Jones. I loved our group!

Walking through the jungle to the boat. We had to wear rubber boots for our trek.

The boat

Foggy

Danny loving the cool weather

Foggy

Another boat

One of the only pictures of me in the amazon because it was so humid I looked horrible

As we were cruising to the Lake Sandoval and Tambopata Reserve our guide all of a sudden started yelling at our driver to stop. There were some huge rodents of unusual size on the shore. Behold the Capybara. The world's largest rodent.

You can't really tell from the picture but the capybaras are huge.

A family of 4. The parents are protecting the babies.

Lake Sandoval and Tambopata Reserve

Our guide, Lizbeth, giving us our instructions

We spent the next 1-2 hours trekking through the mud in the jungle to a creek where we got in a canoe and paddled for awhile until we got to Lake Sandoval.

"We are here"

The Capybara

The easy part of our trek

Giant tree

Tarzan/snake vine

Danny looking super hardcore

You probably can't tell but there are 4+ Macaws in this tree

Finally, the canoes

The point of this picture was to capture how low we were riding in the water but you can't really tell. Honestly, I'm surprised we didn't end up swimming.:)

 Jungle Cruise

First glimpse of the lake

Lake Sandoval

A turtle

Hard to see but there is a Snake Bird (?) in the tree

Bats. Sick.

Danny had the biggest find of the day - a Black Cayman

Our awesome guide, Lizbeth

The main point of going to Lake Sandoval is to see a family of endangered Giant River Otters that live there. While we didn't see the otters we did have a great time and we saw a ton of Macaws (which were really surprisingly really cool) and a Black Cayman (which is only found in the lake). A total success.

A White Cayman on the way back to the lodge 

After lunch we had time for a quick shower and nap and then we headed down the river to Inkaterra's other lodge, Reserva Amazonica, to explore their canopy walkway.

Canopy tower

The rain forest canopy

All I did was walk up the tower and I was already sweating profusely. It only got worse.

Walking the canopy

Tom Sawyer's Island prepared us well. We were pros.

We read a book last year about Teddy Roosevelt's journey through the Amazon to discover a new tributary of the the Amazon river. The book talks about how every plant had thorns. True story.

The canopy of the rain forest captures most of the sunlight leaving only 5% to reach the rain forest floor. Basically this means that it was crazy hot up on the canopy walkways. Everyone was drenched by the time we left and we couldn't wait to get back and shower.

Resting before our boat ride back to the lodge

White Herons

The Amazon along the Rios Madres de Dios

Enjoying the breeze

Sunset

I loved the tiki torches lighting all the paths around our lodge

The cabanas

We got back to our lodge and showered (3rd shower of the day) before our night walk through the jungle. We didn't really see anything on our night walk (other than spiders and a lizard) mostly because some of our group members wouldn't be quiet. I think our guide was pretty bugged. Dinner that night was delicious and we loved hanging out with our new friends that we bonded with on our excursions. Such a great day!!