Iquitos, La Selva y el Rio Amazonas

I'm a month and a half in but it feels longer--in a good way. With my research underway, I'm starting a few rotations that'll help my project and keep up my clinical skills.  However, a large part of the reason I am starting to feel at home is the community I have. I had a housewarming/Mexican Independence Day celebration on the 15th and realized how lucky I am to have an awesome American and Peruvian support group. Almost everyone I invited came, which my Peruvian friends explain is typical here. Anyhoo, though my apmt space was tight, it was great. I could easily be lonely and homesick given that I'm living alone in a new country, but it hasn't been a problem yet, though I do miss family/friends/crossing the street without almost getting run over ;) 

Last week, a few of the scholars and I traveled to Iquitos. It's "Peruvian Fogarty Scholar" tradition to do this adventure raft race called the Great River Amazon Raft Race. We arrived a few days before to explore the jungle. The only way to access Iquitos is by river or plane, so we flew. I knew it'd be an adventure from the start--when we arrived the sweltering heat turned into a rainstorm and as we rode the mototaxi into the city the billboard sign fell on us...thankfully the roof resisted!

The jungle is it's own world. I'd explored rainforest in Australia, but the culture in Iquitos is completely different. It's geographically isolated, so most transportation is by motorcycle or mototaxi. It's a sight to experience! We visited an awesome lab owned by the Institutes of Health and spent half a day in the city before working our way by car and boat into the jungle, where we spent 4 days hiking, learning about medicinal plants, seeing wildlife (alligators, tarantulas, sloths, birds, monkeys, both pink and gray dolphins or bufeos as the legend here goes...), playing soccer in mud fields, and soaking up all the nature we were exposed to. There are so many things I'd love to write about, but I'll let my photos do the talking.

I loved the jungle.  There are no words to describe our hard core and awesome guide Israel--you have to see him in action and have him scare you with Jaguar stories. Some highlights: getting stuck up to my knees in a mud pit and leaving my boots buried to stand shoeless on a trunk as my friends dug out the boots, bathing in the Amazon as the fishies--maybe the piranhas, though by the afternoon the piranhas are full--tried biting/tickling my legs, to carrying a baby sloth that had "washed up" after a storm to a local village and which they were keeping as a pet, to cutting down a palmito tree (there were two other ones there, so it was "ok" to cut it down. Apparently whenever you eat heart of palm the whole tree has to be taken down). I have to admit that while I loved the visit, there was also a moment I hated being there: I have a haunting memory of waking up on the last night drenched in sweat at three in the morning in what felt like 100+ degree weather while experiencing an uncontrollable itching that no amount of scratching could resolve (mosquito nets don't make up for daytime bites). I hate those darn mosquitoes who punctured my body. They had no respect for even 100% deet nor the 2 layers of clothing I resorted to wear keep them from attacking.

Balsa Building

I'll end with a bit of the Amazon Race. First off, we SURVIVED an intense physical and mental challenge and I'm so proud of us. We started off along with 46 other teams (a total of 4 were teams Fogarty associated) by building our balsa with the help of some locals (by the end less than 40 teams were left). One of the members of our team got sick before the start, so we replaced her with a Nauta local--German--a 14 Y teenager who could outpaddle all of us combined. The competition consisted of 3 day, 112 mile race down the Amazon. Other than German I don't think any of us had ever rowed like this, but over those 3 days we all paddled and paddled and paddled under the beating sun (we didn't put a canopy on our balsa for safety so I wore a long sleeve shift, pants, hat, and socks the whole time--though I jumped into the Amazon every hour or so to cool down) sometimes against countercurrent, other times in nonexistent current that led to us thinking of the Amazon as a big lake instead of a river.

These won't be missed

The outfit I wore for the duration

There was a daily distance to reach our stop point for the night. We rested in local towns that otherwise wouldn't have a bunch of international (though there were some local Peruvian teams too!) crazies staying in their village. The 2nd day was the hardest because the distance was greatest (it took us 10 hours), but the last 2 hours of the last day were the most intense because we were 1 man down (his arms gave up so 3 us took down the last day) and the intensity of the energy you needed to fight the current during that last mile was ridiculous. Oh gosh, I could keep going on about this, but suffice it to say that when we completed mile 112 our fingers were stiffened to the shape of the paddle and the clothes we wore reeked. Def not for the faint of heart, but so glad to have done it

SURVIVORS!

Balsa built, t-5 min to start