A Walk and a Float 2025: My Rainforest Adventure

11/21/10

(written by Christopher, typed by Mom)

At 10:00 we were picked up to go to our hotel. We rested for about an hour. Then, we walked to a mall near the ocean. Almost every store in the mall you could find at a mall in Portland, like the Lloyd Center. After walking for a little bit, we went to lunch. For lunch, we ate at Bembos. Bembos is very similar to McDonalds, but all the locals prefer Bembos. I agree. At Bembos I had a lomo saltado burger. Lomo saltado means jumping beef. On the burger there were fries, onions, beef, and tomato. After eating, we walked around for a little bit more. We started walking back to the hotel. After an hour and a half of homework, we walked to a cash machine to get money for the next two weeks. After that, we met Sally, our guide for the two weeks. She took us to dinner at Pardo’s Chicken. I had chicken, fries, and salad, which was the best I’ve ever had! I was so full that when we got back to the hotel, I fell asleep two minutes later.

11/22/10

(written by Christopher, typed by Mom)

At 6:00 we had breakfast. Fifteen minutes later we started driving to the airport. We flew from Lima, Peru to Puerto Maldonado, Peru. We arrived, got our luggage, and got on the bus to go to “the office”. At “the office,” you drop off the luggage you don’t need. At “the office,” there were lots of monkeys. Five kinds! Brown capuchin, white-fronted capuchin, spider, squirrel, and the red howler. One of the favorite scenes of the monkeys was a spider monkey copying my dad. Monkey see, monkey do! Dad put his hands up and hooted. The spider monkey did the same. This happened lots of times until the brown capuchin and the howler started wrestling. The spider monkey decided to join the fun tugging on tails and biting. The howler monkey finally broke free, but the brown capuchin ran at the howler and tackled it. Another 30 seconds of rolling on the ground. Their fighting or playing ended. [Clark: Monkey video to be added later once we get a faster network connection.] We headed to the dock and got on a 3 hour boat ride to head to our lodge. On the way we saw capybaras. Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world! They can get up to 110-120 lbs. Imagine having an infestation of capybaras! Capybaras are semi aquatic and have webbed feet like a duck to swim. They only go in the water if their predators chase them. Capybara’s predators are jaguars and caimans. When they chase after them, the capybaras run very fast and dive into the water. They can be submerged for 20 minutes without breathing. We kept going to the lodge. We arrived at the lodge and saw our room. It only had three walls! The fourth wall was the jungle! Ten minutes later we got in the boat to search for caimans in the dark. We saw one ten seconds after we started looking. We found a baby. When it noticed us, it ran on land. We haven’t seen that before. We started walking back to the lodge. On the way, my dad spotted a snake. He spotted a non-venomous cat-eye snake. The snake was about five feet long but no wider than a pencil. It’s pattern was brown and white triangles. We got back to the lodge and climbed under the mosquito nets to get in bed. It was hard to get to sleep because you were in the wild. After I got over that fact, I got a good night’s sleep.

Cat eye snake

Capybara

11/23/10

(written by Christopher, typed by Mom)

After breakfast, we were waiting to go on our next adventure. Sally ran over to us, and brought us to an animal that is rare to see. We saw a southern tamandua. This animal was just outside our room! It looks like an anteater and eats termites. When we saw it, it was digging in an old tree trunk. The tree was hollow, so while the tamandua was looking, it fell in. After seeing the southern tamandua, we headed to a local farm.

On the way we saw a plant called the heliconia. In English, the beak of the macaw. This plant is red and yellow on the outside. However, that’s not the flower. The flower is in the middle and looks like a slice of pineapple. On the farm, there are pineapples being grown. On each pineapple plant, there is one fruit. The plant isn’t useful anymore after the fruit is picked. A new pineapple plant will grow right beside the old pineapple plant. This process continues. At the farm we got to try a fruit. It is called araza. It was the sourest thing I ever tasted (not including candy)! We were walking to the main area of farm. On the way there was a giant wall of bees. In a tree next to the bees were dusky titi monkeys. There were four, including a baby. We walked through the farm. The owner of the farm gave us two mangos. It was the best mango I’ve eaten! On the way back to the lodge, we saw saddleback tamarind monkeys. These monkeys were probably the best jumpers of all the monkeys. We saw five or six. We got back to the lodge and started training for our tree climb. We got to the tree and it was about 110 feet tall. Dad climbed the rope to the top of the tree in six minutes and 30 seconds. I did it in eight minutes and 50 seconds. By the end of our climb, both Dad and I just laid down at the top. Mom climbed a third of the way and got heaved the rest of the way. The view was absolutely beautiful. Ten minutes later, there was a torrential downpour with lightning. We were in the tallest tree in the area, so we weren’t in the safest place. Right when we got back to the lodge, we had lunch. A couple hours later we walked for 45 minutes down to a lake. We canoed slowly, and saw a bird that smells and tastes like garbage. The bird was called a hoatzin. We disembarked at the other side of the lake and saw two trees that were at least 200 feet tall. We canoed back. On our walk back to the lodge, we heard the monkeys we haven’t seen yet. The night monkey. They were jumping from branch to branch. We couldn’t see them. We only heard the rustling in the trees. We got back to the lodge and bought some animal guides and a capybara t-shirt. We had dinner and slept.