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The night sky lit by the full moon before me; I gazed out my bus window at the outline of the Andes mountains. Soon that picture-like view turned to jungle as far as the eye could see. This is the part of travel that I truly love; getting back into raw nature. Witnessing the beauty of God’s creation; untouched and thriving on its own. We made our way ten hours down a road that changed from mountain to jungle, pavement to dirt, winter temperatures to summer. Rest stops were made few and far between; wherein the men lined one side of the bus and the women the other. Unable to sleep, I simply stared out my window, listened to my favorite tunes, and thought about the unknown which lied ahead.

Into the Unknown

Jeremy Curl
2006-08-28 12:28:09

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surrounding me on all sides. Need I say more? Now, this time spent in my hammock did allow me to get plenty of reading in and do a lot of thinking. Mom had brought me a book ("The Journey" by Billy Graham) that I read and truly enjoyed. I highly recommend this book to you all (it is his final book, so you know its inspired). It is simple and straight forward, and answers a lot of important questions about life. Now besides reading, I simply watched and interacted with the people around me. This is by far the deepest I have been immersed into this culture, and I can't find the words to describe it. All I can do is reiterate how lucky most people are and they don't even realize it. Now on the afternoon of the third day, the Rió Napo opened up and fed into the Amazon River. It was too dark for pictures, so I just stood in awe of the great river. The Amazon is so wide that it is difficult to get a good shot of wildlife or make out particular types of vegetation. So, I recommend to any travelers going to the Amazon to definitely spend the extra money on daily excursions into the jungle; it is well worth it.

Well, I made it to Iquitos (the largest city in the world without road links) in one piece and with only a slight cold. Arranging a flight from Iquitos to Lima and then on to Cuzco was more difficult and expensive than planned. Just so happened, this is one of the busiest weeks of the year because of Inti Raymi (Festival of the Sun). Yeah, I forgot to read ahead about that one. I finally booked me two connecting flights to get me out of the jungle; but the craziest thing happened. The plane (LAN - 6:30am flight) was turned away last minute because of serious fog and the flight was cancelled (imagine that - fog! near a river! in the jungle! Wow!). Because it was a peak week and this is a third world country, they refused to bump everyone to the following flights (which were full) and said we would have to get on a waiting list (a few ...