CHATO!!

me with snakes. cool.
one of the many houses on the river. when the rains come in the winter the house rises with the river.

yeah. so meant to add my photos from the jungle a little sooner, but really haven't had time to sit down and upload photos.

this past weekend was nuts. we left lima around 5am friday morning and arrived in iquitos around 6ish. the weather in iquitos is the complete opposite of lima. it was hot and extremely humid. soon after arriving in the airport we took a bus tour around the city for a few hours. we then took a boat tours on one of the many tributaries of the amazon river. this tour took us to a pretty rundown neighborhood where half of the houses were on the river, somehow anchored down to the ground. and the sanitary conditions were definitely not up there. the bathrooms were out over the river and people were bathing/swimming/washing clothes right next to the outhouses. we then went to a zoo and saw a bunch of crazy animals and i was able to hold two snakes. awesome. after that we took a two hour boat ride up river to our lodge. i ended up sitting up front with our guides and talked to them for most of the time (in spanish). and i also slept on the prow of the boat for awhile. way cool. my nickname here in peru is chato, or short, and everyone i meet gets a kick out of it. especially the workers and guides at our lodge thingy we stayed at. everywhere i went i was bound to hear a "chato" yelled my way, it was cool since i was so easily recognized, everyone knew me, and it gave me opportunities to chill with the peruvian dudes and talk and stuff. if i can remember right we just chilled the rest of friday night. and i ended up being kinda sick the whole weekend (sore throat, achiness, etc), so i slept alot.

saturday we went for 3 hour hike in the jungle, and i when i say hike i mean really slow walk due to two factors. one our group was close to 30 people, so we come in all shapes and sizes and athletic abilities, and two, twenty minutes into the hike it started to pour and didn't stop. the ground turned to mud really quick. after the hike if i can remember right we visited a "native village" aka native people wearing their native dress selling us their native trinkets at a low price. tourist trap. but since it was so much fun we went to another village the next day. anyways, we did and cruised around rivers and all sorts of fun jungle things. sunday we went to some random place were we where able to hold an anaconda and a sloth and monkeys and stuff.

so yeah. that was in short my crazy weekend. i have a test tomorrow in spanish. haha. i can hardly believe it myself. a test?? no way. but i've been studying all day so thats good.

oh yeah. i randomly met up with my junior high/high school youth pastor last night. him and about 10 other people were on their way to iquitos on a missions trip and yesterday morning i got an email from my mom that had his intinerary and he just so happened to be staying in a hotel that night about 25 minutes from my house. i chilled in the hotel lounge for awhile but eventually we met up and went to get something to eat. was pretty cool to meet up with him in lima when i had no idea he was coming the day before. awesome.

well, i've written alot. and i'm tired and still alittle sick. so i'm off and going to macchu piccu on thursday morning. life is good.