Roger and Linda in South America

Roger and Linda on the Road Again…in South America

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Amazon Sunrise

Roger and Linda are back at it, on a three-week tour of the Amazon rain forest, Machu Picchu, and the Galapagos.  We're all packed up with micro-fiber travel clothes, more sophisticated electronic gear than the Mercury space missions, and we're carrying more drugs than a Detroit Middle schooler
This is our first group trip, and there is assembled here in the jungle an intrepid group of  fourteen adventurers.  There is among us a loose association of friends and friends of friends that comprise nine of the fourteen (the Michigan Mafia)—so even if the group turned out to be made up of total social misfits, we figured, they would be US.
The Cast, in order of aqppearance

The Michigan Mafia

Linda and Roger (your humble narrators)
Sandy-Linda's sister and, as it turns out, Roger's sister-in-law

Chris and Gary--life-long friends from Arizona, (formerly of Michigan)

Gail- Linda’s college roommate (with Chris) and fellow traveler

Carrie-Linda’s former colleague at Arno Elementary

Michele-Gail’s friend from Port Huron (and Roger’s former colleague)

Ellen-Michele’s friend from Port Huron

Our Fellow Travelers

Eric and Debbie, delightful couple from Staten Island—he a retired cop, she a retired school counselor.  They immediately bonded with the group and are as determined as the rest of us to suck every bit of fun out this excursion.

Nels and Tess, from Colorado---she retired last month and he a semi-retired engineer.  Nels is a real rocket scientist (No, we mean this literally.  He managed the guiding systems for all of NASA’s Mars missions.

Barb from Oklahoma—recently retired and bravely traveling singly.
One more couple- we'll meet them today.

Lima, Peru –where micro mini skirts continue to thrive

We arrived at our hotel around midnight on Saturday night, and everyone crashed immediately after a LONG day of traveling.  Except Roger, who on some flimsy pretext managed to wander the neighborhood around the hotel alone, attracted by the street bustle and the electric glow of the small casinos.  Like a moth to the flame.  Lima is home to over nine million people, many of them living in crowded, crushing poverty, we have heard.  You cannot prove it by us.  Our neighborhood is called Miraflores, a very upscale and cosmopolitan area of the city.  It is sort of like Detroit, but with clean sidewalks and throngs of well-dressed people on the streets after dark.  In case you were wondering what happened to the micro miniskirt fashion of the sixties and seventies, apparently they all migrated to Miraflores, where they host a convention on Saturday nights. Not exactly the third-world scene we were expecting, but an interesting experience nonetheless. Our city exploration time was short, but we managed to find a city park where 200+ cats are protected and fed by volunteers, a dog convention selling any clothing your shaggy pet might need, and a Zumba experience on the city streets.

The Amazon Rain Forest

On Monday morning we flew from Lima to Iquitos, a city of 700,000 in eastern Peru, deep in the Amazon basin.  Iquitos is accessible only by boat and by air (the largest city in the world with those attributes).  From Iquitos we took a boat upriver-- dodging floating tree trunks the size of, well, tree trunks--about an hour and half to our ecolodge called Exlporama.  The hotel was pretty basic—kerosene lighting in the rooms and cold showers—but the food was good and the thatched construction charming.

Our days have been packed with activities that sounded like fun, and have turned out to exceed all expectations. So far, we have fished for piranha (caught and ate some), Roger was gored by a catfish (flashback to India), we visited Monkey Island (where Carrie fell in love), hiked in the rainforest and walked the longest aerial canopy walkway in the world (119 feet high and astounding), bird~watched, saw a native shaman and got tattoos after our healing ceremony, visited a jungle clinic, went to an authentic village and market, and did a night~time boat trip (way-cool sounds!). We visited an enormous Cieba tree where our guide, Roger (yes…confusing!) promised we can swing like Tarzan, and took a night hike. That turned out to be more exciting than anticipated. We stopped walking to watch Roger (guide Roger) poke a tarantula with a stick (perfectly safe!), and those crafty fire ants saw their opportunity to chomp on North American flesh. We finished the hike, doing an ants-in-the-pants dance the whole way back, and hopping from foot to foot to prevent new one from latching on. If someone would have been filming this, it would have been the most popular viral youtube video yet. Whew…no wonder we’re tired, and that the blog is behind schedule!