Ecuador

Perú

Well, we are now one more country closer to being home, the problem is that we are only entering Ecuador, and we still have all of Central America and Mexico to travel before arriving home. We have found out that we are sort of running out of time, we have to be in Texas by about the 23^rd of May and from there I have to be home (Jacksonville, Florida) by the first of June. Because the second I will fly down to Argentina with my church on a missions trip. That’s right I will be going back to PDV! It should be a great time.

Any way allow me to explain a little of how Peru has treated us. We were able to see Lake Titicaca on the Bolivian side from a city called Copacabana. From there we crossed over into Peru, and stopped in our first city called Puno, which also lies on Lake Titicaca. We stayed here one night and then were off to Cusco. Once in Cusco we had already made arrangements for a hostel so we arrived safely, and were here for about a day and a half. Then we were off on the Inca Trail, which would take us on a hike through some beautiful scenery for the next four days. The night before we left for the trail our guide came by to explain to us what we would be doing each day and some of the things to prepair for. He told us that the next morning we needed to be up and ready to leave the Hostel at approx. 4a.m. In order to avoid a strike that would be going on where we would start the trail. Welcome to Peru! So we were ready and off by 4 the next day and walked for three days on a gorgeous trial and had a lot of fun. The fourth and final day of the trail we had to get up at 4a.m. once again so that we could walk for about 2 hours in order to arrive to the sun gate. The sun gate is where you have the vista of the Machu Picchu archaeological site. We arrived and it was awesome, the three days of walking were worth it to get to the site. Overall it was a great experience, and even humbling for me. Their were these little scrawny Peruvians called Porteadores, who carried all our food, tents, gas tanks to cook with, table and chairs to eat on. And anything else you can think of, these guys just tied it to their backs and literally rain the whole day through the trail until arriving at the campsite, then they would cook for us, and wash the dishes, set up camp and tear it all down. Handworkers!

After Cusco we headed to Lima only with enough time to catch another bus that was headed for our next destination, Tatapoto. Tarapoto is a city on the Amazon Basin, Leighton’s parents have Missionary friends there and we were able to meet them and go to the churches in the area, it was a blessing. After this we left for a little port town called Yurimaguas, this is basically the last city you can travel to by road before hitting the deep jungle. We got on a boat here called Eduardo III. It is a three level cargo boat, with the last two levels utilized for passengers who desire to bring their hammocks to sleep on for the 3-4 day journey up the Amazon River. We bought our tickets and they said we were leaving that night, so we went into town to buy some stuff for the trip, by the time we got back at night they had changed the story for departure the next day. Again welcome to Peru! So we departed the next day for a city that is only reached by boat or plane, called Iquitos. Well to say the least this was an interesting experience. The boat is very plain, there is nothing on the deck but three poles along the roof to hang up your hammock. When we got ours hung up we had quite a bit of room to stretch out. Well the next day was a different story, that’s when all the people got on, and we had our hammocks sort of high in the air to make it more flat, which was kind of a mistake. Because when they all started loading on the boat they surrounded us with hammocks, so there ended up being about three people sleeping under us. It was fun trying to get into bed at night. We arrive to Iquitos only after about a two days journey and find a cheap hotel, and try to get the next boat to return to Yurimaguas. We find out that we will be stuck here for the next three days due to the Presidential Elections that were happening here and there were no boat departures. So we looked around the city a little bit and were trying to figure out what to do. We stumbled upon a Jungle Tour for two days and decided to go with it and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We were able to do all kinds of things that I am not used to. Like traveling every where in Canoe and getting bit by a ton of mosquitoes. We did some walks at night in pursuit of insects and especially a tarantula, which we found. Also we went to an island full of monkeys, and got to hold a boa constrictor, baby alligator, baby tiger, and turtles. We also say the daddy snake, the anaconda. He was around 24 feet long and 400 pounds. After the jungle experience we went back to Iquitos with just enough time to get back on the Eduardo III returning to Yurimaguas. This is currently where I am typing this, chilling in my hammock, listening to Third Day on Leighton’s laptop. We will head back to Tarapoto, but only in order to catch a bus leaving for Ecuador. Then it is on to Colombia to catch a sailboat going to Panama. Then were bussing it straight though Central America and Mexico until we will hopefully make it alive to the good old US of A. It should prove to be loads of fun. As usual asking for prayers and leaving you with the words of the Apostle Paul:

Rom 15:30 I urge you, friends, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love that the Spirit gives: join me in praying fervently to God for me.

Good News Bible