our-grand-americas-adventure

Just when we thought it’s the end of mosquitoes (see Tamryn's eye!), there we go again, back to Manu, the other drop in the bucket of Amazonian river, this time armed with 2 brand new friends, Matt and Roanne (she was a little bit smaller than Tamryn) 1st stop the rainforest, in the clouds. We had the opportunity to cycle the last 2 hours to the lodge. It was downhill and hard work, the worst gravel road in Africa looked like a picnic! That afternoon we went to see the National bird of Peru, The bright red Cock of the Rock.
Next morning we headed down river (3 hours) to Manu lodge (no, not a 5 star, think gin - no tonic, think beer,- no fridge, think ice, byeeeeee!!!)
Our early afternoon time on the ‘pontoon’ turned out to be really hard concentration for the brats, or were they in competition with the spidermonkey?
We were lucky, every-one had 2 buckets in their room, (only outside toilets) not some where you want to go in the middle of the night, why were we lucky? OURS WEREN”T SEE THROUGH (haha)
Our walk in the forest was once again amazing and from the smallest mushrooms, to the most beautiful butterflies, birds and insects. The white featherlike insect on the leaf is just that, it’s 2 insects facing each other, and we marveled at the beauty of it. The trip up to the canopy of the forest was an experience in itself,; 300ft high, we were roped up, it all looked easy until these guys had gladiator Pople on the end of their rope. I think they are still in ICU, but we had a great view! We were also lucky enough to share Roanne’s birthday with her, a fact she kept very quiet (until a giant cake appeared) she summed the Poples up real quick!
The next day was a full-on travel day and early on we had some “stretched outs” on the boat, our trip took us down river for nearly 7 hours, and then transported past the local taxi station, down river, where everything happened!
Then we were told how fortunate we were to be driving on the newly-trying-to finish-road that was on full building force!! The highway to Brazil! Quite a scary experience as there are noooooo traffic rules! 4 hours later and we arrived in a very impressive thunderstorm, just in time and in one piece, to the hotel in Puerto Maldonado. Our taxi to the local restaurant was safer and more comfortable.