Day 1 in the Amazon

The bus ride was a tad crazy. It was 6 hours in total. We stopped in the middle to pee, so three hours in, we stopped. It was very very bumpy and stop and go. It reminded me a lot of driving in the mountains where the roads are curvy. We made the mistake of sitting in the back though. The driver had actually told us that you feel every bump when you ride in the back, but being stubborn headed, we thought we would be okay. It was nice to go down in altitude though. However, my ears kept popping. A lot! Like being in a plane where the cabin is not pressurized correctly a lot. We made it to the D'Mario hotel at 5:45am, where our next bus would pick us up at 9:00am. We were not quite sure when it would show up but they said around 8:00am or 9:00am. I should have remembered that this is South American time and everything runs a tad late. They arrived at 9:40ish, and we headed out by 10:00. That bus ride was good. It was another two hours, after we stopped at the airport to pick up two more passengers. We did not arrive to the docks until 1:30pm. We had lunch there and then took a boat down the river Cuyabeno, there was four of us tourists and four natives in the canoe. It had a motor, and took us an hour to get to the lagoon. It rained for 75% of the way. I think it was perfect though. It was like welcoming us to the Amazon and cleaning us from all of our artificial habits and problems. We settled in and went out for a boat ride to see different types of animals and things, and then we went swimming in the middle of the lagoon. The water was so perfect! We didn't swim for long though, we were all pretty tired from the journey here, so we headed back to the lodge and had dinner. About thirty minutes after dinner we went on a night hike in the jungle. We were able to look at spiders and different insects. We saw some giant cockroaches. I think it scared Lauren a bit. We hiked for about an hour and then came back to the lodges and went to bed. This morning we woke up around 7:30am and had breakfast at 8:00am. By 9:30am we left for another hike. We hiked through the jungle for three hours. We were able to see some more monkeys, insects, frogs, different trees used for different types of medicines, and some wild pigs. I wasn't able to get any pictures of the monkeys or pigs though. We were back to the lodge at 12:45pm and had lunch at 1:00pm. Now we are relaxing for a couple of hours, and we will head out to see some different lagoons around 3:00pm and then to swim again!! So exciting!