Day 1-2. My Amazon trip started innocently enough, with Patty and I catching a 20-minute ride on the new BART train extension to the San Francisco airport early on Friday morning.  That was to be one of the few legs on this journey that went as planned!  Although the flight from San Francisco to Dallas went smoothly enough and got us into Dallas in time for our two hour layover, we encountered our first delay - 2 1/2 hours - trying to leave Dallas.  At first we couldn't leave until an AWOL passenger was found, and then once we got out to the runway we had to turn around because our plane was overweight.  Once rid of whatever it was they could take off the plane (I didn't want to know), we lifted off and headed south of the equator to our next stop - Lima, Peru.  We arrived in Lima at 2:30 a.m., and because of the delay decided to stay overnight in the airport instead of catching a few winks at a nearby hotel.  Eventually, we checked in for our 7:00 a.m. flight to Iquitos, only to be delayed again, this time for about an hour as we waited for a storm to clear out of Iquitos.  Eventually we were off again, for a stunning early morning fly-over of the Andes mountains and then over the expansive, wild Amazon rainforest to Iquitos - a land-locked city with a population of about 400,000 and the embarkation point for trip on the Peruvian Amazon.   Once in Iquitos we met up with the rest of our tour-mates: Kit and her mom Shirley from Michigan, Dave and his daughter Mary from Florida, and Karl, Ian, Dale and his son Gerald, all also from the SF Bay Area.  Along with them we met our leaders for the tour, Dick and Patti Bartlett, and away we went to the hotel, along the crazy streets of Iquitos, where traffic lanes and traffic laws seem to have very little meaning!  After some much needed rest we all gathered in the lobby, met our trip biologist Devon Graham, and headed out to dinner to get better aquainted.  After dinner it was early to bed - we had a big day tomorrow!

Day 3.  After a long, restful sleep, we left the hotel Sunday morning and walked a few blocks in the rain to the dock, where we boarded a little motorboat that took us out into the river where our travel boat, the Tucanare, was anchored.  We stowed our gear and off we went.  We're on the Amazon river!  For the next 9 hours or so, we headed downriver to our final destination, Madre Selva Biological Station on an Amazon tributary, the Rio Orosa.   During the trip down we had a great opportunity to slowly soak up the sights and sounds of the Amazon river and rainforest, and get to know each other further.  On the way we passed occasional huts on the shore, most built on stilts to accomodate the up to 30' rise in water level throughout the course of a year.  We saw many, many birds and even an occasional Amazon river dolphin.  We also stopped a couple of times and took a smaller boat to shore where we would briefly explore.  Eventually we came to Madre Selva, unpacked our gear into our tents, and then took off for a quick night hike on one of the many trails that go off into the rainforest from the station (we weren't going to waste any time!).  Upon our return it was time for bed, but I didn't sleep much that night because of the excitement I felt at being here, plus the sounds at night are so neat I didn't want to fall asleep and miss any of it!  Besides, there were those pesky mosquitos in our tent that had to be dealt with first......

Day 4 -6.  Our schedule was open during our stay at Madre Selva.  This worked out well considering the varied interests our group had.  The photographers could stay nearby and photograph some of the 115 species of reptiles & amphibians that were found during the two weeks that Margarita Tours was in the Amazon (I went for just one of those weeks), not to mention the countless insects, fish, and other animals we found.  Ian and Gerald were most interested in fishing, which they did a lot of from the boat and from shore.   Patty spent a couple of half-days hiking on her own, recording sounds on a little Sony minidisc recorder.  There were kayaks available for our use, and I wish I had done more of this: kayaking through the flooded forest was an absolutely amazing experience.   Of course, hiking was an ever-present activity and I did as much of that as I could.  There were a few scheduled activities, like a night trip out on the river to search for nocturnal wildlife, a day trip to a local tribal trading village, and a trip to Paucarillo Forest Reserve, also owned by Project Amazonas, the educational, research, and humanitarian organization that oversees the reserves.  Throughout we were fed well, eating local cuisine such as fresh fish - including a pirannah that Ian caught!

One interesting thing about the trip was that we would receive, several times a day, visits from some of the locals who knew we were looking for animals.  They would arrive in their dugout canoes and bags full of lizards, insects, and other critters.  In return, we would trade them shirts, fishing gear, pocket knives and other knick-knacks.  The pygmy anteater, mata-mata turtle, and some of the other more interesting animals came to us this way. 

Other items of note: Despite a constant supply of clean water to drink, I think most of us got sick at one point or another.  However it never really seemed to slow anyone down too much.  As far as weather goes, it did rain one or two times a day for the first half of the trip, but rarely for the second half.  Being only three degrees south of the equator, the temperature was obviously hot, but in the shade it was a comfortable 80 degrees or so.  In the direct sunlight it felt much hotter, and of course the high humidity made it seem hotter as well.   If you were wondering about the bugs, they were particularly bad from dusk to dawn (and much more so on the water than on land), but long sleeve shirts and bug spray kept the bites to a managable level.  There were so many bugs over the water during this time that the many bats who feasted on them would get filled up quickly and go back to roost: leading some researchers to wonder if the bat population was declining because they couldn't find as many as usual.  In fact they were all home sleeping off their big meals!

Day 7.  In the afternoon we left Madre Selva for a long trip back upstream to Iquitos.  The trip was made a little longer when the boat's fuel filter decided it was time to quit.  We had to wait for a repair boat to come down from Iqutios with a mechanic and extra parts.  We spent the night moored along the shore, and in the morning continued on upstream, problem free, until arriving in Iquitos in the early afternoon.  After a nice, clean shower it was time to meet the group for one last get-together, a dinner at a nearby restaurant.   During this great feast we sampled a lot of the local cuisine, including caiman and paca, which is basically a big rat.  The caiman was great, the paca not so much!  We also discovered the local alcholic drink: pico sour.   Patty REALLY liked that!  After dinner we said our goodbyes.  Everyone except Patty and I would be leaving in the morning: she and I having to spend an extra day in Iquitos because of our flight schedule.

Day 8.  After a leisurely morning, Patty and I decided to explore a little.  We hired a driver in front of the hotel to take us to the artisan's market across town for some shopping.  Our mode of transportation was a three-wheeled motorcart, which is the main form of transportation in Iquitos, and more common than New York City taxis!.  Upon our return a few hours later I was reminded that we are seen as potential targets by the locals, as our driver all of a sudden insisted we owed him twice as much as we originally agreed on.  My Spanish was good enough to make it clear to him what our deal was, and he eventually backed down.  Word of advice when you travel: know ahead of time what everything should cost in case you encounter the same problem: it saved us some trouble in this case.  We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening close by, our digestive systems still rebelling somewhat.  That didn't stop us from eating at Ari's Burgers however, which we had heard much about as being the "gringo" hangout in Iquitos.   Devon walked by while we were eating and joined us for a while as we peppered him with questions about how he got to be doing what he does.

Day 9-10.   Our plane was scheduled to leave at 2:00, so we had a few hours in the  morning  until our 12:00 ride came to take us to the airport.  It was a very interesting morning however.  At breakfast we noticed a large crowd gathering outside our hotel, which fronts the Plaza de Armas.   Everyone was dressed very formally, and I assumed they were all gathering for church services, a big church being nearby.  Then we saw the guns!  As it turns out, this was a weekly event where members from all of the armed services gather at the plaza for a parade and flag-raising ceremony.  It went on until 11:30, and was fun to watch.  It was hard to believe this huge event occurred every week!   At 12:30 our transportation arrived and off we went to the airport.  We took off on time and landed in Lima around 3:30, where we now had 7 1/2 hours to pass until our flight to the states.  Between the 5 hours on arriving and this wait, I can now say I've spent much more time than I ever imagined I would at the Lima airport.  Our flight took off at 11:00 p.m., and our next stop was Miami, and our next adventure.

We landed at Miami around 5:30 a.m., and had to go through customs before heading to our next gate for the 7:30 a.m. flight to San Francisco.  I must say, the most confusing and frustrating times during our travels happened at American airports.  After getting lost due to some very confusing signs leaving customs, we arrived at our gate to find that the flight had been moved to the opposite side of the airport, with none of the monitors saying so.  We then had to find our way through the maze of the airport trying to avoid having to go back through the security checkpoint and x-rays, which we've already had to do a couple of times because of the confusing and inefficient design of the airport.  Somehow we made it in time, and got on board along with a host of angry passengers, all of whom probably had to go through the same experience as us.  Six hours later we landed at SFO, and the journey was over.  Though this was a tough trip for me physically (fatigue, illness, bad knees, etc.), I already missed the beauty and adventure of the Amazon rainforest.  Now it's time to plan my next trip........

Thanks for taking the time to read my diary.  I hope you find the rest of the photos at this site interesting and that they spark an interest in visiting this truly special place.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me @ smallan @ comcast.net.

A special thanks to Dick & Patti Bartlett, Devon Graham, and Margarita Tours for making this a spectacular trip.

A note about the pictures on this site: due to space limitations, these pictures are of much lesser quality that the originals.  If you'd like copies of any of these pictures in their original resolution, please let me know.  Pictures were taken either with a Canon AE-1 Program or a Nikon Coolpix 995 digital camera.  The Nikon is responsible for almost all of the extreme closeups.

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Last updated 11/08/06

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