Adventures of a Gringacita: Hammocks, mosquitos and sweat

After an 8 hour night bus and a 17 hour night bus, I arrived in Tarapoto. My original plan was to bust to Yurimaguas right away to hop on the first boat possible, but I ended up meeting a fab new crew and stayed in Tarapoto for the night with them. We spent the day searching for hammocks and swimming in waterfalls.

The following day we got on another bus for 2 hrs and ended up in Yurimaguas … hammocks in hand! Upon arriving to Yurimaguas, we were swarmed by mototaxi drivers. They literally hung off the windows before the bus even stopped. We hopped into a mototaxi and took off for the boat.

Our final destination was Iquitos – and taking a three day cargo ship is the cheapest way to do it (biggest city in the world without road access). The bottom floor of the ship was filled with animals, foods and other random supplies. The top two floors were packed with people in their hammocks. The boat was meant to leave at 5 pm. The time came and went and after a few false promises on departure times, we found out we weren´t going to leave until the following day because the cargo floor didn´t fill up.

The next four days were comprised of sleeping in your hammock, reading in your hammock, playing cards and drinking Gato from a box. It was quite relaxing. My fav. part was watching the storms roll across the huge amazon sky.

We arrived in Iquitos with a hankering for anything that wasn´t rice (that´s mostly what we were fed for four days). I had a sore back from too much hammock laying and had quite the experience from the local spa in hopes to relieve my pain. I ended up with bruises on my back and slight burn marks. Another story that I don´t have the energy to write out right now.

The 5 of us booked a jungle tour from Iquitos. We spent 4 days camping in the jungle. We caught piranas, swam in the same area where we caught the piranas, saw huge spiders, monkeys, river dolphins, snakes and way too many mosquitos.

It was an amazing adventure, but I was literally itching to get out of the jungle. Turns out I´m fated to live anywhere that doesn´t get nearly that hot.