Tambogrande and Mancora

After getting back from Iquitos, we spent two nights in Lima before heading up north. One of the nights was a Friday and me, Rebecca, and Celina went out clubbing in Barranco. Rebecca made me all pretty (that's her gray shirt and her makeup job I'm wearing), but nevertheless I was snubbed by a Clark Kent lookalike (think Smallville) who started dancing with me in order to invite the three of us to go to the other disco next door, and once there started dancing with Rebecca and did not look my way for the rest of the night. However, dancing is dancing, one can't be too particular.

The day after the dancing, Rebecca headed to the airport to go see Cusco and Machu Picchu, and Celina and I ran out the door at 5 pm in a miserable Lima drizzle--me dodging the Confirmation catechists who were ringing the doorbell wanting things from me, as is their custom on Saturdays at that hour--and as it were, shaking myself free of their clinging grasp and oh-so-Peruvian "pity me" whine, and running down to the corner to get a taxi to the bus station in the center of Lima. Once we were there, breathing free at last like the backpackers we were, Celina realized she'd forgotten her toothbrush. So with 20 minutes before the bus was supposed to leave, we ran three blocks down the street in the dark and the drizzle to the nearest pharmacy. We got there, the lady showed Celina the toothbrushes she had, and Celi goes, "Do you have blue?" I almost died. This was the overnight bus trip I'd reserved a week in advance, with ID'd ticketing, seat numbers, dinner and breakfast served on board, kind of like an airplane... NOT the kind of bus where you miss this one, you can get the next one. I wasn't about to miss it and give up my 95 soles for a blue toothbrush. Luckily, we made it back in time, toothbrush and all, and got to watch Legally Blonde on the way up to Piura.

I was proud of myself for being able to get us to Tambogrande without guidance (thanks to Katie, my fellow NDMV working up north, for the advice on getting the Tambogrande bus from Piura.) My friends Maria and Carlos were still there, of course, and we hung out as if it'd been a month instead of ten months since I'd been there. They even took us dancing in Tambogrande's one discoteca (being able to look out through the gap between the wall and the roof and see the stars while dancing: priceless.) Celina really enjoyed seeing the rural North, so different from Lima. My favorite moment was going around the countryside with Sister Meg in the truck, visiting catechesis groups and seeing the little caseríos, tiny groups of houses where farmers live out in the middle of nowhere. And riding in the back of the truck of course. In Lima, they only let men do that.

Our second day in the north, Celina and I took a colectivo from Tambogrande to nearby Sullana to visit Rubén and Elena, the family that stayed with us earlier this year! It was great to see them again and to see them in their own home, although you can still feel the gaping hole in the family; they're still trying to regain their feet from the blow of losing their mom. I didn't talk to Rubén much because he kind of went off and did his own thing while the adults talked. We had great ceviche and chicha de jora, and then Celina gave us a ride in the family's mototaxi, and Elena and Mili and little Iara took us around Sullana all afternoon. I'd thought we were coming back that same day, but it got late, and before we knew it we were staying the night. I bought some snacks in a grocery store while we walked around town, because apparently this family's not used to eating dinner--lunch at 2 pm is it for the day! I also randomly found an awesome jacket and had to borrow Celina's 50 soles to buy it, and we were counting cents for the colectivo ride back to Tambogrande the next day.

the river behind Sullana at sunset; me and Elena with the river

(The colectivo rides, by the way, are awesome. Colectivos are station wagons, in which at least two people are expected to sit in the front (besides the driver), at least four in the backseat, and up to three or four guys who pay half price to ride in the trunk. They have a whole language of honks and hand signals by which the drivers communicate with people standing on the side of the road asking to be picked up. Our driver passed by someone signalling and pointing at a trussed-up (dead?) goat on the ground beside him... for all I know, he might have picked up the passenger and the goat if the colectivo weren't full already...)

After another day in Tambogrande, we said goodbye to Sister Meg and headed back to Piura to get Rebecca at the airport. She came off the plane giddy from her awesome Machu Picchu adventures and with lots of pictures. Although she'd gone by herself, Cusco is so full of tourists that she found a group of cool Irish guys to hang out with, and thus has pictures of herself at Machu Picchu. So then we were down to just 2 more days of vacation, and after a 3-hour bus ride, we got to Mancora very tired and ready to lie on the beach for 2 days.

And that's almost what we did... Mancora was quiet, the weather coolish at night and not too hot in the day, and the water clear and warm. The sun came and went. Celina and I had our own personal trainer for beach-exercise mornings (and jump, and squat! Walk it out! ;) love ya, Rebecca!) and there was plenty of time to lie around on the beach later in the day, eat ceviche for lunch right on the beach, and shop (a lot) for jewelry in the little artisan stands up and down the main street. I got a henna tattoo, FOUND a shell with a natural necklace-hole in it on the beach, and got it made into a necklace. (I also got a ton of mosquito bites, mostly on my FACE, because our room had no screens to keep the little buggers from coming through the wooden lattice around the door! I've never been so grateful to concealer in my life.)

That's us drinking the juice out of a coconut and then eating it! Sunburned? Who's sunburned? Not me. That charming pinkness you see faded into something resembling a "tan" (insofar as I can ever be said to tan). Rebecca, meanwhile, learned painfully that the tropical sun is stronger than the sun in the US... but didn't look burned at all. On the right you can see my gorgeous all-natural shell necklace! aka, free jewelry present from GOD. hehe. I was really, really thankful for the opportunity to rest and just escape from Lima. When we got back I crashed into bed before Rebecca even left for the airport, and mostly stayed there for the next 18 hours.

The Selva

So, we left Iquitos by car, drove an hour and a half down to a little river-port town, got into a motor boat, and two to three hours later (I had no idea of the exact time during any of our time in the jungle) we were in canoes being paddled by our guides to the campsite. It was a few little houses on the riverside, one for guests with two mosquito-netted beds on the floor of each room, another for the guides who basically live there, and a dining room.

I never expected to go to the Amazon Rainforest and feel at home. But to my surprise, I got there... and felt totally comfortable, like I'd lived there for years! More than comfortable, I felt I belonged there. I guess it was just like going back to my childhood of tramping around the backyard woods in boots... except that this isn't just woods, it's SUPER MEGA AWESOME WOODS!! There were those giant trees you always see pictures of, and monkeys, and tarantulas, and river dolphins jumping, and tons of beautiful brilliant butterflies, and bright-colored birds. No jaguars or anacondas though. Just around eight million very determined mosquitoes. We lived slathered in DEET for two days.

Our activities included: seeing the river dolphins and swimming near their island (Rebecca tried to start personal-training me on this island, which meant I ran around and did jumping jacks and jump-squats (aka "torture") in my bathing suit on a stretch of sand in the middle of the Yarapa River.); going out by canoe at night to see animals and discovering a very very large river rat; walking around behind the guide, Lucho, who cut through the plants with a machete when necessary, to find the monkeys on "monkey island" and play with them (they're so used to tourists they will come down from the trees and climb you or, I got the feeling, fight you if necessary for the bits of banana and oranges you have in your hand); and going actually camping camping the second night.

YES THAT IS A REAL MONKEY I'M HOLDING! Ok, so he didn't like me, he liked the banana...

That second night was definitely interesting. The guides whacked vines off the trees with their machetes to string up each person's hammock, then strung mosquito netting around the hammocks and put a plastic tarp up over each one. Then it started pouring so hard that each person had to get in their little house, the dinner fire went out, and that was that until morning! Rebecca and I passed the time singing Disney songs from our neighboring mosquito nets until the rain got too loud to hear. And then there was nothing to do but sleep in our little coccoons, and wait for breakfast in the morning. I was a little concerned about being bitten on the butt by mosquitos when I went out to pee in the middle of the night... but luckily I wasn't. And apart from that I knew there was nothing to be afraid of in the woods.

The first night, in a way, was more incredible, because of the stars that seemed to be FIGHTING FOR SPACE in a sky crowded like a football stadium! Huge, brilliant stars that looked like they'd invaded the territory from another sky only that day... because clearly there were never that many of them every other time I've looked!...

I also got to take a shower in the river, on a bright sunny blue-sky day, and feel like a mermaid. :) And talk to the camp shaman, who told us about plant-medicinal cures for everything including cancer, who on the first night could be heard singing a low chant as part of an ayahuasca ceremony for one of the tourists who was feeling brave enough to try it. (Ayahuasca is a plant that makes you see visions... I was put off even considering it by the fact that it also makes you throw up.) And I got to talk to--ahem, I mean, I got to see--trees like this one.The food was plain but good: rice and fried sliced bananas at almost every meal, plus maybe some chicken, eggs, or else an ENTIRE FISH (gutted, but still, there was the head and tail so it counts as entire!!) battered, fried and put on your plate. Everything was fried and if not for all the walking, I'd have gained weight. As it was the backs of my legs got really sore from all the clambering around in boots, and my arms from rowing in the canoes.

I was sad to leave. But as I couldn't really have afforded another day, it was just as well that our plane back out of Iquitos was on Thursday night...