I SURVIVED!!!
Somehow. It´s been a tough week. Let´s just say I´m so happy to be back in a city with a Starbucks and air conditioning.
I appreciated my time in the jungle for like... a day. But then it got old. And then it got older. Because the more time you spend in the jungle, the more you sweat, and the more you sweat, the more you start to smell like jungle fungus. I´ve never smelled an odor coming off of clothing that has been so terrible. And I´ve gotten dog poop on the hem of my pants before. The laundry place had to wash my clothing THREE TIMES before it stopped smelling/the water ran clear.
The group spent five days in the heart of the jungle working with Camino Verde, an organization dedicated to reforesting and the preservation of the unique rainforest in Peru. Specifically, the group and I were working on clearing a path through the jungle so that the people who protect the area can check for poachers and squatters (a serious issue around the area, because squatters actually have rights to the land if they start planting crops there). Which means some guy hands us all machetes and tells us to hack away at the overgrowth that has sprung up on the old path.
Let´s describe day one for Emily-
I hit my head TWICE on two different trees hanging over the path on the walk out (the Fall Carpe Diem group cleared a lot of it and we had to hike out about an hour every day to where we began working), then I machete my left hand open. It wasn´t a deep cut, but damn it bled a lot, and I felt pretty stupid. Then, on the walk back, I got caught on Poisones Bamboo thorns and couldn´t get un-caught. Robin, our contact in the jungle, had to come and pry the curved thorns out of my arm. A few minutes later, poisones bamboo slices at my leg. Once we get back to the house and I peel my soaking socks off (we had to wade through a swamp every day), I get bit my a nest of fire ants. I don´t know if they give them steroids or what down here, but they are significantly larger than the fire ants in the US.
Fortunately, the subsequent days were MUCH better. Although on Day two Lizzy sliced her foot open... with an ax. Five of our group members had to carry her the hour and a half back to the house and she left on our boat to get stitches at the hospital in Puerto Maldanado. But everyone else remained fairly in tact for the remaining days- only one other superficial machete cut to a hand.
We worked hard, sweat a ton, smelled like nothing I´ve ever experienced, and ended up clearing a mile and a half of the path.
Other than the humidity, sweat, and injuries, I liked the jungle. The birds sounded and looked incredible, the whole place smelled fantastic (except for us), and we got to see capybaras and monkeys on a daily basis!!!
After leaving Camino Verde, we spent a night in Puerto Maldanado, then did a more touristy adventure in the jungle. We visited Lake Sandoval overnight, and got to see more squirrel monkeys, a few spider monkeys (MY FAVORITE), cayman, spiders of all sizes, tucans and macaws, and some otters! I had a minor panic attack when I swatted at something on my neck and it turned out to be the most gigantic cockroach EVER that had crawled up me, but other than that it was fun and totally exhausting.
Being in the jungle definitely pushed me more than any other part of our trip, even those ten days we didn´t have a shower. Luckily, we had showers in the jungle, and I was grateful that they were cold because otherwise I would have never cooled down ever. I was pushed physically with the amount of work we were doing, and my comfort level was pushed when I would wake up in the middle of the night in itching attacks because of my thousands of bug bites. But overall I´m glad I went. (Although I´m a little more glad to be back in a city haha)
This week we head to the Sacred Valley for a yoga retreat, back to Cusco for a night, then on our trek to Machu Pichu, and then we´re all done!
Time has been flying by here, and we only have 13 days left in Peru!
So excited to see what these two weeks hold though.
Ciao!
Emily
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