Iquitos

Up early again this morning, between the extremely hard beds and the excitement of getting on with the adventure we are ready to get going. Started off this morning with realizing we couldn't get into our room safe. “One” of us locked it last night in the dark, you get to pick your own combination, and this morning the number we have used all week-end did not work. I got the blame because I asked that it be locked when we were going to bed, can you guess which “one” of us locked it? Andre? Anyway all is resolved, front desk just came up with this little USB cord attached to a unit that over rides and opens the safe, good to know it takes so long for the safe to be cracked!

We had breakfast this morning with a nice man travelling single, the person he is matched up with was supposed to arrive last night and did not show up, he may luck out and get a room on the boat to himself! We're off shortly to go for a walk, look for a few souvenirs from Lima, and try to find bug spray with more than 30% deet factor. We've started taking our malaria pills, and the yellow fever shots were done at home so we are be good to go. Next stop Iquitos which is where everyone seems to start their amazon adventures from, about 1.5 hour flight from Lima.

The taxi got hit so hard it turned it 180

Flight to Iquitos was uneventful, except for the fact that Andre broke the tray on the seat beside him and needed to be moved. We were not sitting together, and when he broke the tray he need to be moved. The emergency exit was open so he got to move there, so I asked to be moved too to be with him. So, for all of you that want emergency row on a plane, try breaking something it may work for you! The maintenance crew was on board quickly with their roll of duct tape and we were off.

Everyone actually made it to the plane except for 1 man, so we are 29 altogether. On arrival in Iquitos we were spit up into 2 small buses for the ride to Nauto where we were to meet our ship. What a ride, it was dark when we arrived in Iquitos so we couldn't see much, but what we did see was quite amazing. The ride took about 1.5 hours, and much of it was in the pitch black, but we did go through some small villages. Many of the huts in the villages did not have electricity, and of course there were no sidewalks anywhere and it was amazing all the people out walking along the side of the road. The scariest were the children that were literally sitting on the road, I have no idea what they were up to, but it was awful coming around the corner and seeing all these kids sitting there.

On arrival in Nauta we were met by a few children asking for dollars at the wharf, very sad and hard to walk by, but if we were to give are we just encouraging more begging? Arrived at the ship around 8PM, were given our cabin assignments and then dinner and a little talk about what to expect in the days to come. The cabins are a bit larger than the ship we were on in the Galapagos, it is a nice wooden ship and best of all there is very little motion. We were met by many mosquitoes and bugs. I'm not looking too hard for spiders. There are 3 decks for the passengers, a total of 15 cabins. We all have air conditioning which is a blessing as it is extremely HOT and humid as one would imagine.