9-16 (Tuesday)



I got up at 6 a.m. thinking it was 7:00. It started POURING when we woke up. We had breakfast in the hotel. It was there that we met and talked to a professional photographer from Florence, Italy. He was working on his third book. This one was going to be about global warming. He and his buddy had hired a private plane to fly them over the Amazon and then on to a jungle lodge ($600) While I was waiting to have breakfast I could see Barbara talking to the desk clerk. When she came into the dining room she said she hoped I didn't mind but she got us booked into the Acosta Hotel. Apparently they had had a cancellation since last night. I didn't mind at all even though the location isn't as good as the Safari. We also had not seen the rooms. One good thing was that they take us to the airport. I did tell her I thought it was only fair that we go to the Safari when we get back and tell them we arent' coming.



As we were waiting in the lobby to be picked up we met a girl from Ft. Lauderdale who was telling us that her purse was stolen when she was in a restaurant a couple nights ago. She not only lost her money but her passport. She has to wait until she gets to Lima to go to the embassy and get another one. This is the second robbery we have heard about in two days.



She was in Iquitos with three guys from Florida to participate in the Great Amazon River Race. Two of the men were from Orlando. Ones name was Dave Knoki (something like that) and he lives on Lake Adair in College Park. I didn´t meet the other one because he hadn´t come downstairs.



We went out and got on the bus to take us to the river in the rain. First we stopped by the Acosta to pick up some people and we ran in to check out the rooms. They were about equal to the Safari but much older. We agreed to take it on Thurs and Fri nights. We went to another hotel to pick up someone else. There were 6 of us total.



The men loaded the boat with our luggage while we waited out of the rain. Finally we went to the river's edge and boarded. It was a fairly long ride down river to our jungle lodge, I would guess about an hour and a half. For half of the way it rained and we had the plastic siding down. As soon as it quit up went the siding and we were cold. After 20 minutes of traveling Barbara said it felt like a half a day.



We had a "welcome' drink *o.j. and then checked into our rooms. We looked around the lodge and took pictures. At 1230 we h a lovely lunch> chicken, rice, pork, hearts of palm, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans onions and fruit.



We took the boat down river again where we saw pink dolphins. The guide whistled to get them to surface. From there we went piranha fishing. I caught a silver one and the red one which is the most dangerous. It was a lot of fun.



There were six in our group who started out together and have remained > Salavador from Barcelona *no English, Erwin from Holland *he did a volunteer project for 3 weeks in Brazil watching river otters - he only saw one. Hasheme from Japan a student, and Sunghe a girl from Korea - she is an environmental engineer who volunteered the last two years in Peru. Now she's finished and on her way home in October.



Before dinner tonight we took the boat down river with our flashlights in hand to see if we could spot any interesting night life. That excursion was a wash out except for the river rat we saw swimming and then limb up on shore.



The electric was only on from 6-10 at night. We took showers *the water was hot but would suddenly go cold and back and forth. It was so nice listening to the night sounds instead of the TV. The thing that wasn't that great was crawling into a bed that felt wet. This is how it is in a rainforest.



I kept thinking about the woman from Columbia who was held hostage for 7 years and the 3 Americans for 5.