La selva

So I realized I haven´t posted in a while, but I hadn´t really done anything all that exciting, aside from going to an R.E.M. show (yes, in Peru) and an all night music festival (6 p.m. to 6 a.m.!) a few weeks ago. And I have also been having the great joy of surviving without a debit card to get money with. Its been interesting. However, this past week was APEC, a national holiday which meant that we didn´t have school Thursday or Friday. APEC is basically a big convention in which a whole bunch of presidents and political leaders from around the world come to Lima, including George Bush. From what I understand, he didn´t have a very welcome stay here. People apparently held signs up as he passed by that said things like "¡Bush, lárgate a tu país!" (go back to your country!). So, as fun as all that stuff surely sounds, many Limeños go traveling during this long weekend. Myself included.
Aaron and I went to this area called Chanchamayo which is a region they call the "ceja de la selva" (the eyebrow of the jungle). It is apparently the only place you can go to to experience the jungle without taking a plane, and so therefore cheaper. We left late morning (or, really, early afternoon with all the delays of the very reliable peruvian bus services...) for the city of La Merced. We arrived at about 9 30 p.m. and found a nice guy at the bus terminal who took us for free to the Plaza. We found a cheap hostal that had a private bathroom (that only had cold water), but that was quite noisy in the morning. We woke up in the morning, excited to check out the landscape that we couldn´t see coming into the city in the dark. The city is surrounded by very green mountainside and jungly trees. And it´s HOT, sunny, and very humid during the day. Our first full day there, we hired a 15 year old kid to be our tour guide for the day. We went to this gorgeous area right outside the small city and hiked in toward a waterfall. We passed orange and mandarin trees, yuca plants, and saw several small animals that looked a bit like a raccoon but are apparently more dangerous. We ended up hiking up stream, literally IN a stream. This meant actually climbing over small waterfalls....definitely not the safest thing, but very exciting and fun. I fell off a small one and got a big bruise on my leg, and in the process got drenched from head to foot. From then on, though, I just didn´t care about being soaking wet and really enjoyed myself.
After the hike, our guide, Francesco, took us to a butterfly reserve. There were SO many gorgeous species of butterflies and flowers there. They also take in injured and maltreated animals to take care of them and re-release them into the wild. There were monkeys (that we even got to hold!), turtles, a baby alligator, something similar to an otter, a tigrillo, birds, and a lot of other amazing creatures that I had never seen before. I was really inspired by that place because the people there were really passionate about what they were doing to help these animals, many of which are endangered and trafficked species.
Later that day, we took a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to another city called Oxapampa. I really loved that city because it was very tranquil. What´s really interesting is that there is an Austro-German colony close by and therefore a lot of very European looking people and buildings. We went to a pub called Vatter Otto for a drink and saw the very German owner, Otto. A Peruvian guy came in, calling him "Ottito." Little by little as we were sitting there, about 10 Germans came in to hang out, but they all spoke spanish together. It was really strange to see.
Oxapampa and this area in general is one of the best places to grow coffee and we wanted really badly to buy some to bring home, but we found out quickly that they only sell coffee that´s already toasted and ground, which wouldn´t be very fresh by the time we got home.
However, we did take advantage of the fact that people drink coffee (and REAL coffee, not instant) in the restaurants there. The way that everyone seems to drink coffee in peru though is not the same as back home. They make "esencia" (essence) which is basically strongly brewed coffee that they add to a cup of hot water and keep in glass bottles. I also ate really yummy pancakes for breakfast, a nice change from the usual bread with butter and jam, which were a mix between crepes and our pancakes. They didn´t have maple syrup, obviously, but they had awesome fresh honey.
All we ended up doing in Oxapampa was go on a nice walk, in which we got caught in the rain, but we didn´t care too much. Seeing rain was such a nice change...since it never rains in Lima. It eventually stopped raining and we checked out a cool cave and visited a trout farm, which was a lot more interesting than I imagined it would be. After that, we returned back to our hostal and went out for dinner. Unfortunately, Aaron got sick, again, early in the morning and we ended up just heading back to La Merced that day and staying in a little bit nicer of a hostal Saturday night so that he could be comfortable. We returned home on Sunday. Aside from Aaron getting sick, it was a really cool weekend.

Aaron should be posting new pictures soon! www.aaronrotchadl.shutterfly.com