the salvation of salvacion

So I jumped on a bus to salvacion on Friday afternoon with the crew, it takes about 4 hours to get there from Atalaya



So we arrived and Fidel (the only guy who works there) had NO IDEA we were coming (standard Peru). So the boys took care of dinner and we managed to cook... bowls of white rice YUM. Professionals.

Mario and I had pretty nice digs here, with our own separate room baby:



The schedule here was similar, where we would work in the morning and then have afternoons free. So I spent the week taking hikes, looking at animals, cutting the grass with a machete (kill me), making gardens, planting trees, and gambling with Lluc, Didac, and Mario at cards. Sick LIFE



Ans (lady from canada) eventually took over the cooking duties since white rice wasn't cutting it, here is mario and lluc chowing down (how much does lluc look like matt cato? Gator shirt and all... even though he had no idea who the gators were)



Heres Danny and Ans and I on the other side of the table. It was so funny have Ans, a 60 year old woman from canada, and then 5-6 young guys in the jungle. She was our jungle mom and loved cooking and taking care of us:



We had a lot of free time in the afternoons, and we all were always hungry, so we would just head into town and buy a bunch of snacks and sit on the curb like it was 1950 or something:



Then we would head to the river to wash up since we all were usually super dirty from the morning work. Pretty sick to be out there in the middle of nowhere in virgin jungle without a building in sight:



One night the 5 of us decided we wanted to go find crocodiles in this nearby lagoon. So we headed out about 11 p.m. and hiked through the jungle towards this lake. There were some home made boats so we loaded up and went on the search (people later told us this was very dangerous, but we were five young men with machetes = invincible). Didac and Mario on the hunt:



We ended up seeing some crocs (or caymans or alligators or whatever they call them down here) 10-15 yards out but had no exciting boat attacks or anything. But I took a picture with my camera on night setting and realized we could draw things with our headlights, which led to basically an hour of this:



We decided to make a little present for Fidel (above), and then just messed around. Turns out a camera can entertain a couple idiots for a loooooooooooooooooong time:




Anyway, as I'm sure you can see, we all were very similar and became pretty good friends. I am gonna go see Mario in Lima in a few weeks, and then try to go to the running of the bulls in spain with lluc and didac later this year (they live like 4 hours away). Danny lives in remote remote remote northern canada, so I'm not quite sure how I will make it up there yet.



So we had a sick week there and then Mario, Danny, and I headed back to Atalaya. Turns out the day before a bus had gotten flipped trying to cross the river (no bridges to salvacion, you just drive across the shallowest parts of the river bed) because of the strong currents from the rain. Therefore the new bus wouldn't come to get us, so we ended up hitch hiking in the back of a pickup truck to get home. It was a great ride... until it started pouring. So we rode in the rain for like 3 hours and finally made it back, just a little wet:




Then I kicked in atalaya for 2 days with some of my friends from Cuzco until I returned to civilization. And thats the end of the jungleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, great experience!