What a long

The Jungle Party Bus before we left it in Pt Maltonado.

So here is the deal, I left the house at about 10 on the 28 of July and got back here around 2:30 on the 20th which puts the total trip time at about 23.5 days. Only about 7.5 of those days (instead of 2 weeks) were actually spent up river on the research station meaning 16 ended up travel/tourist days. Most of the travel days included some sort of touristy activity and all of the touristy days included travel. See the problem was that our tickets from Lima to Pt. Maltonado were sold to the highest bidder or something very much like that so instead of being shipped air freight to the river we had to take a bus. . . more like 3 with some van time. I drove down to CCSU and got a ride to the airport, met up with everyone and flew to Newark to meet a few straglers, then we flew on an overnight flight to lima and got in early. we had to blow a day in lima waiting for the bus that went to Cuzco to leave at 6pm which turned out to bemore like 7 or 8. Lets just say more than one person got drunk on the bus and more than one person got sick enough to puke into the puke receptacles that we did not have. That bus ride was about 22 hours. We crashed in Cuzco for the night to try to 'patch our bones' and got up at 3 to get on a bus to take us to another bus that was all our bus. This happens to be the magical "Jungle Party Bus" There was a little less drinking, a bit more peeing on the side of the road, and way more rain coming in leaky or wont-shut windows. There was also a dance party. The JPB housed us for 29 wonderful hours and had this amazing aroma by the time we finally left in on the outskirts of Pt Maltonado. We took various and sundry forms of transportation to the Madre de Dios river and met up with the research station crew plus boats. The trip up river was about 15 hours with a 12 hour break in the middle known as darkness.


The 'canoes' that hauled us up and down the river.

We left the reasearch station on the 15th in the morning with several bleary eyed passengers and made really good time going down the river. That night we satiated most of our cravings like pizza, french fries, 'good' beer, icecream, and a bit of dancing but a few things like coffee and hot showers had to wait. The next day we flew to Lima. Remember that jungle bus ride that took 29 hours? Well by plane it takes about 45 minutes. Damn. In Lima we picked up the Peruvian Nazi Tour guide and drove to Nazca. At this point we stopped caring how long rides were and only bothered with how much sleep we could get in between her pointless microphone ramblings about land reform. The next day we found a plane or two and did the Nazca lines fly over and got back on the damn bus to drive to Pisco/Paracas/Ica. A night in Paracas (I think, close enough anyways) and then a boat ride in the national park there to see the critters. Then back to the bus and back to Lima for an overnight flight, then to houston and Newark and Hartford. At this point everyone was pretty much home but me who was to exhausted to drive the 3 hours to my house. Instead I crashed at a couple of houses for different length 'naps' and I ferried myself home this afternoon. That is pretty much all the travel so you have some Idea of what days I was where. You should check out a map to see all of the area we covered in our travels. We saw a lot of crap. Sorry there is not much juice to this post but dont worry, more will come later. -Jn


A train of multicars bringing tripmates to the Madre de Dios river.