April and May Part 2 - Amazon Trip

We couldn't leave Peru without visiting the Amazon River.  The Chipmans had taken their youngest daughter and stayed in a treehouse lodge.  How could we pass that up.  We made reservations and then flew to Iquitos, Peru the first week of May for 3 days.  The place we stayed at is in the jungle and has about 8 or so treehouses for guests to stay in.  It is located on a tributary of the Amazon River.  We were warned of mosquitos and humidity.  The "hotel" provides a personal guide for the whole trip.  They pick you up at the airport and get you to the treehouses.  We drove about 1 1/2 hours to the river and got on this boat:

Once we arrived, they brought us to the lodge and showed us to our assigned dining table.  They went over the amenities and then we immediately went out on our first excursion with our guide.  Here is what our treehouse looked like:

This angle shows it in the jungle.  You can see that it was high water season.  We weren't able to do any walking excursions because of the water, but we were able to take our boat into the jungle instead.

We walked across two suspension bridges to get to the treehouse and then entered through a trap door in the floor.

Here are views from inside the treehouse:

And here is the inside of treehouse:

We had mosquito netting over our bed.  To the right is a twin bed.  The bathroom is on the left.

Our first excursion was boating out to the giant water lilies and to see the caimans which you need to look for at night so you can see their red eyes.  Our guide, Johnny, was amazing the way he could spot the wildlife.  A lot of times he would hear them first and could differentiate their sounds.  Our driver was just as impressive.

This was pretty comical.  This was the first thing they pointed out to us.  Tim and I could not see it no matter how hard we tried.  They told us to look for the V in the tree.  But there were many trees and many Vs.  Finally Johnny (our gudie), took this picture with Tim's phone and zoomed in so we could see it.  It is a green tree iguana.  I tell this story because I was afraid this was a sign for the rest of the trip.  I was afraid they would be pointing out the wildlife, and we wouldn't be able to see it.  It turns out we could see the wildlife just fine.

Like this little guy that landed on Tim's leg while boating through the jungle.

We got to the water lilies after dark.  I think we spent too much time looking for that darn iguana.   But they were pretty cool with the light shining on them.

Johnny found two small caimans and was able to catch them.

We returned to the lodge in time for dinner.  All our meals were included and were delicious.

The next morning we ate breakfast and then headed back out on the boat to look for wildlife.  Here is some of what we saw:

Woolly Monkeys

Another iguana.  We had no trouble seeing him.

A sloth

A small toucan

Boating up the river and then into the jungle.  When the water isn't so high, they have walking excursions into the jungle.  We would usually go into the jungle if Johnny heard something, usually monkeys.  Many of the monkeys though were too fast to get a photo of, such as the squirrel monkeys.

This was like boating through a meadow:

Johnny also took us to a couple of fishing spots to fish for piranha.  We just used a stick, a line and a hook with some meat for bait.  Our driver caught quite a few fish.  I caught two piranha and Tim caught some other kind of fish.

They were pretty small - not much of a man eater

There was a group that returned at lunch with a bunch of piranhas that they gave to the kitchen who fried them up for them.  We released our fish.

We also came upon another sloth:

That evening Johnny took us to see the Amazon Pink Dolphins and then he took us to the start of the Amazon River.  We timed it so we would be out on the Amazon at sunset.  Tim and I snapped this picture at the same time before sunset. 

Johnny said he isn't pink because he was a juvenile.  We saw a bunch of dolphins but these are the best photos.

In this photo you can see the pink color of the dolphin.

Here are some photos of the sunset:

After dinner that night we went back to our room to be greeted by this little guy in our bathroom sink:

We radioed the staff and someone removed him for us.

We got up very early the next morning to see the sunrise and go bird watching:

I was very proud of myself when I spotted this guy before anyone else.  We stopped the boat so I could point him out.  After that first day and not seeing the iguana, I felt like I redeemed myself.

We boated into this village which flooded during the high water season

We ended by boating into the jungle to check out these Owl Monkeys.  Our driver had seen them a few days before and knew they were there.  

We headed back to the lodge for breakfast, packed up and they put us on a boat to head back to the airport.  It was a great trip (another bucket list item)!  We were nervous about the mosquitos and humidity, but we came prepared and neither bothered us very much.