Everything is bigger in the jungle (Amazon Part 2)

Everything is bigger in the jungle, originally uploaded by cbern18.

After a terrifying first day, we rested in the first beautiful lodge, which was set in the cloud forest. We were surrounded by tons of plants and birds. We woke up at the crack of dawn to go see the Cock-of the Rock, which is these red male birds dancing and chirping away trying to attract one of the few females. I never thought I´d say this but I actually enjoyed waking up early to see birds. There were also tons of butterflies, in every color. We headed off on a hike to reach our rafts for white water rafting. It was more relaxing than scary. We had an awesome guide that took us to this little enclave to see lots of parrots. It was like he had fed them because as soon as we got close three just took off flying right in front of us. We continued the rest of our journey by boat. Luckily we had two motor men, because one morning we went to pick up the main motor man and he was so drunk he could barely stand up to make it to the boat. The people on shore were shouting, "Go to sleep and stop bothering us!" The assitant motor man started to drive but a few hours late we took a sharp turn to the right. We all look back and the drunk guy is driving. He got the boat stuck! First all the men had to get out and push. The boat didn´t budge so all the women then had to get out and push too. We finally got the boat off the rocks and were on our way again.

It was wonderful being in the Amazon. We saw 7 different kinds of monkeys (tamarinds, wooly, spider, squirrel, white chested cupichins, brown chested cupichens and one other) and heard howler monkeys. In the ox-bow lake we went to, we saw caimans and river otters. They were so cute. They would catch a fish and eat it with their little paws. The otters were also very curious and followed our catamaran around. And after searching a few days, the assistant motorman spotted a jaguar! I have no idea how he saw it because it was so camaflouged. But it was gorgeous. It was much bigger than I expected. It was laying on the bank of the river in the bushes relaxing. It gave a big yawn for us to see it´s huge teeth and then just put it´s head down. We also a capybara, the largest rodent in the world.

The jungle itself was completely amazing. On one tree there might be 20 different things living (ants, fungus, other plants, other trees, monkeys, sloths, etc.). We saw all kinds of tropical flowers including orchids and giant insects: a moth the size of my hand, a spider the size of my hand and ants over an inch long. And there were plenty of mosquitos. I wore long pants in the hot and humid weather to keep them off of me, but they bit me through my pants and other biting insects were crawling up my legs. On the forth night, I nearly lost it. I wasn´t sure I was going to make it four more days. But I pulled it together and enjoyed every minute of the Amazon adventure!