Iquitos

Iquitos is a dump. Felt unease about the city the entire time. Everyone has motorbikes taxi things. The definitely had two distinct periods: The Rubber Boom Years and Post Rubber Boom Years. They have suffered economic death for over 100 years. The rubber boom in Peru didn't last long. Firestone had a rubber plantation in the jungle someplace but abandoned it quickly. A lot of old colonial buildings that are falling over. And a convenience store in an old building built by Eiffel. It was made out of iron. Apparently it gets super-hot in the summer. Whoops. Apparently they built a railroad to Iquitos. which that building is probably falling apart someplace. The river/bay area is super polluted. They flush directly into the river. Yum. There is a monument to the Peru-Chile war. Story has it that the architect misheard the commissioner and made the Chileans Chinese. So they are wearing Chinese military outfits. There are actually a lot of busts of famous admirals all over the city. No idea why.

The Amazon River. It has two types of dolphins: big pink ones and little grey ones. We saw the pink ones (weird color) but getting a picture is difficult. They don't jump into the air, they just surface. Pictures of them are really ugly. They aren't the sleek ocean ones. Another interesting fact the Amazon is brown. The tributaries are black (coffee) because of the organic decomposition. The Amazon is brown (coffee with milk), it is a very clear distinction. I swam in it.

Our lodge was natural in all forms. Mosquito netting. Hot. Humid. Death. I didn't like it because I couldn't sleep. But everyone else could! The rain forest in South America is weird. There are only monkeys, some form of cat, and insect that will cause you to have a debilitating and agonizing death. We learned that quickly in the jungle night walk. This spider... very poisonous. It doesn't build webs. It can jump up to 3 feet. Uh. This spider is also very poisonous, but it builds traps. Let's poke it to see it. Erm. This tree very poisonous. Don't touch it. This tree has a bee nest. Avoid. (Great it is hanging over the path).

We went on a walk through some of the villages to visit a rival shaman of our guide. The villages looked like they salvaged crap from our dumps. Look a bit of wood, let's build a house. But kind of like Indiana: every village has a soccer field. One village had a bunch of kids playing with the One Laptop Per Child XO-1. That was really a surprise because I thought they abandoned the project.

Our guide was weird. Everything in the jungle can kill you but can also save you. Eat a leaf, live forever. Eat the roots, die. Everything can be made into a tea. One of the oddest parts was the fertility tree next to the abortion tree. One eases birth, the other stops it. Why they are next to each other I have no idea. We watched a 14 year old girl crush some sugar cane. That stuff was actually pretty good. Too bad we use some chemical plastic crap from a factory in New Jersey.

We went to an island with monkeys. I hated it.