Tricked

The worst thing happened to me in the Amazon. In order to get to our jungle lodge we had to fly into Puerto Maldenado, which is this tiny, barely even an airport, barn type building with birds in it. And then take an hour long bus ride to this little town called Inferno (seriously, the town is called hell.) And the bus ride was along a crazy dirt road and at one point we all had to get off the bus and walk across this wooden bridge that had broken boards in it because if we rode across in the bus we would have probably would have fallen through. Anyway, then we got on this boat and rode 2.5 hours up stream to our jungle lodge. And along the way they'd slow down and go "look at that bird. look at that monkey." And then they went, "look at that family of capybaras."






(It was way humid and steamy and my camera wouldn't focus so these pics suck, but you get the idea, CAPYBARAS!!)
I was excited to see those crazy animals in real life. They were munching on grass with their big buck teeth and didn't care that we were getting closer and closer to them. And then they scampered off. We hadn't even gotten to the jungle lodge and I had already decided this part of the trip had been a success.
So we finally get there and get set up in our bungalow, which is like a hut thing with no real walls, just screen walls to keep out the bugs, a thatched roof and all that. We watch some slide show about the jungle and then it's time for dinner. It's dark by the time it's time for dinner and they do have a couple lights and electricity for a couple hours at night in the dinning area (no electricity in our bungalows). By the time dinner comes I'm hungry because I've been mildly sick for days and hadn't eaten much, just a couple bites here and there. So dinner is a buffet, but you can't really see the food. There's white rice and some kind of meat and peppers dish and like these weird French fry things that they serve at every meal. I try to put just a little but if everything on my plate but I accidentally get too much of the meat. We sit down to eat and I start nibbling at things. I assume I'm eating beef. That's what it looks like. But that's not what it tastes like. I don't know what it tastes like, but suddenly I realize that I'm eating mystery meat so I stop. I eat the rice. I convince my dad to take the rest of the meat off my plate and eat my portion because I feel bad for taking too much and wasting food and I know I can't/won't eat it. Then when we are almost done with dinner someone says that the meat was capybara meat. Ugh, can you believe that??! The biggest rodent in the world. My cute little friends. Ugh. I am almost sick at the table. I guess I made the worst face ever. My mom laughs about this later but at the time everyone knows better than to tease me about it because they can tell I am on the brink of a meltdown. I'm so grossed out. I don't eat any more dinners at the jungle lodge and I don't eat any more of their mystery meat. The amazon experience is pretty much ruined for me. Now it's all just bugs and rain and mud and horror. Ugh. I can't even believe I'm telling you guys this. I should really become a vegetarian.
I only took a few pics in the amazon, one out the window of our bungalow in the pouring rain, a couple if the sketchy-ass boats I had to ride in. (For the record, I am not a fan of small boats and was hating life in that row boat being swarmed by bugs.)
I don't know why I went to the amazon. Well, I do. Someone asked, "Hey, should we go to the amazon?" And in my head I was like, "Yeah, I've never done anything like that, so yeah, we should totally go to the amazon!" Wrong. The amazon is not for me. Now I know.










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