Early wake up to break camp and get back on the river. Food here has been great. We have three cooks laboring all day to feed us. Breakfast is usually a porridge of some sort, then an egg thing with vegetable and a semi-hot sauce, very good, and fruit. Lunch and dinner is rice, pasta or potatoes with different vegies. Always fruit for desert and fruit juice to drink. Nice variety, they do a great job.
To break camp and load everything on the boat is quite an ordeal. First, we have a lot of stuff, with suitcases, sleeping bags and tents. Then we have all the food, then the stove and propane bottle, and finally all the bottled water. Water is stored in 5 gallon plastic bottles and we have a ton of them both empty and full. It is not only used to drink but the cooks use it to cook and wash the dishes. That is good, but that means a lot of water.
Hauling everything around 200 yards takes a while, many trips by everyone, then loading everything on the boat, then getting everyone on the boat, by the time we leave we are exhausted. Oh, and the whole time we are fighting the heat, humidity and all the bugs. Exhausting!
We are on the Amazon for an hour or so when we arrive at Monkey Island. Not a lot of monkeys but some really tame, friendly ones. We were also introduced to two huge Anaconda snakes, sloths and a turtle. Finally back to Iquitos to dock and again haul everything up to a big truck. Another huge exhausting process to get everything off the boat and up many, many stairs to the street. There was a little cantina on the street so I bought everyone a coke to cool off a bit.
Our adventure was just beginning! They piled us into a local bus and off we went to the other side of the city to the island where we are to stay the rest of our time here. Fortunately, and I do mean fortunately, it hasn’t rained for two days. The closer we got to the island, the worse the road got. We were told several times that if it had not rained, the road would have been even worse. After the bus rammed his way through potholes and 2 foot deep trenches we got very close to our drop off. However, the final push did rip out his exhaust manifold, now it was not only really bumpy, but noisy and the exhaust billowing through the cab will be a memory as well.
Because the Amazon has been slowing rising, we guess around 3-6 inches per day, the “island” where we are going to stay is hard to get to. Last week you could actually walk to the “island”; not now. The villagers built a walk way for us to travel on. Very thoughtful, but also very precarious. And, we had to haul everything out to our camping area. But, nobody fell off so it was a victory.
Finally, at the end of the day, they take us to “Poppy’s House”. Oh, not in the bus. Not because it was broken and spewing exhaust into the cab, another group volunteering were using the bus, so they put us in the truck they had used for our luggage. So, 18 of us standing up in the truck with 4 wheelbarrows. I felt like a cow being taken to slaughter!
Poppy’s House is a two story dormitory/half way house for girls either orphaned, rejected, or pregnant. They will give the girls room and board until they graduate from University. This is a real incentive to go to University. Anyway, the rising Amazon is threatening to flood the first story of the facility, so our last task of the day was to fill, transport and stack sand bags to help protect the facility. That was a lot of work!
After we finished, a truck ride home in the dark and a walk on the walk-way with only a couple of flashlights. Never a dull moment!
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