Rio Amazonas

Welcome to the Jungle; We've got fun and games. Also really large insects, angry street dogs, a popular importation site of Mototaxis, loose immigration laws, and really really nice juice. After Lima, I flew to Iquitos. Iquitos is located on an island with rivers on each side. These rivers merge into one at the further eastern point in the city creating the Amazon River. Iquitos is well into the jungle though. It hold the world record for the largest city unreachable by road, giving two options: to fly or to take the long and hot boat ride down the Amazon.

From Iquitos, it is a easy to access the jungle. The rivers act as a highway penetrating into the almost humanless expanses. Small pueblos dot the river side, but close to the reserves, the jungle become too dense to even see in.

The Amazon is full of animals... none of which are easy to catch on film. I did get to see monkeys, slothes, river dolphins, pink dolphins, bugs, fish, and tons of birds though. I took a long and slow ride down the Amazon after Iquitos to the point where Brazil, Peru, and Colombia meet. The Colombian side is called Leticia. I stayed far too long as Colombia stops functioning during their national holidays.

Chilling with Los Limeños

Like Santiago, travelers seem to hate Lima. Its big, crowded, loud, polluted, crime-ridden, and shockingly a nice place. Like Santiago, I could see myself liking living there much more then visiting for a short time. The center has little to offer, Miraflores is too price, and Barranco is too far. They all have charm though that would easily grown on a person after a few months. In particular, the people (Limeños) are friendly. To me, somewhat more than the conservative Santiaguinos or the oddly cold Arequipeños. Plus the former South American capital of the Spanish Empire and the Viceroy of Peru has a little bit of history to it.

La Cordillera Blanca

The Andes are the worlds longest mountain range. It reach from Columbia in the north to the tip of Argentina/Chile in the south. The Andes is made up of many smaller ranges; each rising higher and higher to make extreme heights that are famous for giving tourist altitude sickness. In the middle of Peru, a tall mountain range rises up called "La Cordillera Blanca." The main city of Huarez gives a reference point to explore the peaks, valleys, and lakes from anywhere from a day trek to a whopping dozen. I went on the most common 4 day trek called "La Santa Cruz."

The mountains are high... really really high. The starting altitude of the trek is 3300 meters and the top point is a whopping 4750 meters. No worries though, after one rougher 2.5 hour climb, the my knees got to take the brunt of climbing down 1750 meters to a bug-bitten semi-tropical climate.

The name of the mountain range comes from two seperate things. One, the mountains are made of a white granate thats makes then look grey or white in the sun. More importantly, the granate and the neighboring Cordillera Negra foster the growth of Glaciers on the mountains that make all the peaks have a snowcap.

The trails in the region date back to the Pre-Incan periods in Peruvian history. Even though the whole area is a national park, the local altiplanos use the area for raising sheep and cows like they have for centuries.