Trish is pretty cranky.  She doesn’t usually get mosquito bites – they prefer me. But this time they have attacked her relentlessly.  It looks like a disease.

It’s our last day of Corcovado.  Trisha and I have to encourage the girls to do our last hike, a 2 miler through the old growth forest.  Lily and Emma shuffle through the hike and ask ‘Are we there yet’ every 5 minutes.

The Primary forest

Most coastal forest in the Americas (and anywhere else) was logged to feed the needs of  the growing  industrial economies.  Although some of what is now Corcovado was logged, most of it is still primary forest.  In fact it’s the largest coastal primary forest on the American Pacific coastline and one of the largest coastal rainforests in the world.

Most of our hikes have been in the secondary forest along the coast near the Sirena ranger station, which was cow pasture in the 1960′s before it was converted to a National Park.

Animals tend to congregate along the beachfront, so it’s still the best place for seeing them.

But the Primary forest is darker and higher.  The canopy is a hundred feet up and it’s much darker near the ground.  Kenneth points out some magnificent trees.  I’m a big fan of trees.  These are amazing.

One in particular, a strangler fig that killed it’s host and survives as a wooden cage, a hundred feet high.  Strangler figs begin as vines, and grow up existing trees to reach the sunlight at the canopy.  They sometimes kill the host and remain self supporting.

This one is big enough to climb into and through.  Kenneth advises us to check for snakes inside first, which makes us all a little leery of going in too deep.

Dead Monkeys tell no lies

Startled is my reaction at seeing a small child skeleton on the jungle floor.  Of course it’s a monkey skeleton, Kenneth laughs.  It died about three months ago, most likely from a cat.

We haven’t been able to see any Puma, Leopard or Ocelots although Corcovado is one of the last strongholds for those predator cats in North America.  Cats are the prize sighting, but we saw an armadillo, which is actually even rarer.

There are four types of monkeys in Costa Rica, and they are all four here in corcovado.   The only one we didn’t see (or hear) is the capuchin or white-faced monkey.  The howler is easy to hear but a little difficult to spot.  Kenneth finds one way up in the canopy.

Leaving Corcovado

Our gear is stuffed back into the backpacks, and we eat one last meal.  The Creekmores are ready to go.  Corcovado has been challenging.  The mosquitos and heat are the worst, but the hiking is exhausting.  We’ve gone 15 miles in the last 48 hours.  We will remember it as our best rainforest adventure.

After a 60 minute boat ride back to the main town we are ready for a shower and some real food.   Kenneth has a little trouble with our hotel reservation and needs to book us another place.  “Is this one okay” he asks, as we drive up.  “As long as it has a shower” Trish impatiently answers.  She has gone from cranky to seething in the past few hours.  This isn’t going to end well if we don’t get her a shower soon.

It’s a nice room, but they only have one bed for the kids, a public bathroom and a cold shower.  Sigh.  We’ll be in good hands tomorrow when we get to Arenal, but comfort will elude us for one more day.

Even the cold shower helps our mood.  Dinner is decent at the local soda and there is a good ice cream stand that makes the kids happy before they go to bed.

Related posts:

1. Costa Rica Day 4-5: The Corcovado Jungle
2. Costa Rica Trip – Creekmore family travel adventure itinerary
3. Costa Rica Day 6: Mommie and Babies on the Rio Claro

‘Sloth, Daddy, Look.’  She says again.   The other family we are with is looking out over the ridge at the mixed coffee and banana plantations.  The whale tail beach formation of Ballena marine national park can be seen in the hazy distance.

‘Daddy there is a sloth over there’ she says patiently.  I give in and look.  It’s not going to be a sloth.  The chances of Lily finding a sloth on the road are slim.  But I look to appease her.

And whaddya know?  It’s a sloth, lying on the side of the road.

The three toed sloth

Three toed (or more accurately, three fingered) sloths exist from the amazon up to Nicaragua and are the world’s slowest mammal.

They spend nearly their entire lives hidden in trees, coming down only to take a dump once a week.   Algae grows on their fur undisturbed in the slow motion world of a sloth.  And it gives them a little extra camoflauge.

Sloths are nearly helpless on land, and this one is in extra trouble because he fell from the canopy overhead.  But there is a four foot wall of dirt to over come.

The girls squeal with delight.  He is pretty darn cute, and of course we can get up fairly close to him.  Lily did a great job spotting the sloth.  We would have missed him otherwise.

A dusty ATV tour

Earlier today we searched for the ATV expedition storefront but couldn’t find it.  There are no street names or major landmarks in Uvita.   Locals give directions based on other stores.

Tou’ll be told “we’re right after Gringo’s Campground” or  “take the first left after the second little bridge” or in our case “The first street after BCR bank”.   Yes, but where is BCR bank?

We arrived a little late but quickly got on our ATV’s and headed up the dusty road to the mountains above Uvita.  The views were amazing and the ATVs were fast and fun (although not particularly green, we know.)  It has been a dry summer here, and the roads are really dusty.

On the road again.

‘Break, mommy, break!!!’  Lily yells.  She had started off the ATV tour a little bit scared of my aggressive driving, and she switched to Trish.   She now regrets that decision as Trish, at a very low speed,  hit a boulder on the side of the road head on.

I’m laughing so hard, I can’t take a good picture.  ‘Why didn’t you break mommy?”  Lily asks exasperatedly.  Our guide stops the group and gets Trish and Lily sorted out.  We move on.

The hidden waterfall canyon

Costa Rica is filled with hidden waterfalls.  Almost every resort and activity features a ‘private falls’.  Most are fine, but the one we visit on our ATV tour is spectacular.

The pools formed in this ravine and the small river are breathtaking.  The layered sedentary rock forms a series of steps, and there are three pools and two waterfalls.  There is a lot of slippery moss.

The other family has been here before – they are building a house here in Costa Rica.   The boy and Dad scamper down below to a 20 foot wall of rock and jump off into the small 10 foot deep pool of fresh cool water below.

Lily’s eyes light up with excitement.  She looks to me to jump first, and I do, but not without some hesitation.  Jumping into a rock pool from 20 feet up is scary!  But I jump, knowing that it’s easier to just do it than to think about it.  It’s exhilarating and scary.

.  Everyone is watching the girls.  It’s one thing for dumb grown men to jump of a cliff, but another thing entirely to see small young girls do it. Emma wants to go next, but backs out and wants Lily to try it first.

How high must that cliff look to a 4 foot munchkin?  Lily looks for a minute and everyone holds their breath….  She jumps!  “That was awesome!” She yells doggie-paddling over to the rocks on the side.  “I’m going again”

And thus began Lily’s epic jumping adventure.  She jumped at least 10 more times, more than anyone else there.   She diddn’t just walk off the edge like the rest of us.  She actually jumped into the air to get more height.  Amazing.

All of us take a few tries jumping off.  It’s incredibly fun.  The bumpy, high-speed, trip back to the ATV place seems like a kiddie ride after the waterfall jumping.

Not surprisingly we’re exhausted already, but it’s only 1pm.  We were told to meet our surf guides at 2:30 at La flore de Bahia, a restaurant “past the fork in the road”.  Luckily we see a road sign offering general directions.  It’s a local ‘soda’ or informal restaurant that Ticos love.  No English menu here – this is just typical local food and it’s delicious and cheap.

Surfing Camp

Our third day of surfing camp is a little rough.  We’re all tired to begin with and two days of cumulative nicks and sores and bruises are catching up with our bodies.  Plus the waves have died down a little, which makes it more important to use skills to get a good ride.

And we’ve forgotten some of our technique.  Lily, at the end of a ride, haphazardly jumps off into the surf and forgets to protect her face.  In the tumble of the surf, the plastic fins from the surfboard slash her face under her left eye.  She stands up stunned, and once she sees blood begins to scream.

To make matters worse, a large beetle lands on her shoulder and she can’t brush it off.

The combination of blood and insects would have once ended our entire day as Lily recovered from the panic attack.  But she has gotten a lot stronger, gradually, and is able to calm herself down enough to go back into the water for more surfing.

She’s a tough kid and she reminds me of her mom, who suffers from panic attacks, but overcomes the fear with a toughness and resilience that I wish I had.

Emma almost falls asleep in her food at dinner.  This is the kind of day we love, full of aventure.  And Lily was amazing.

Related posts:

1. Costa Rica Trip – Creekmore family travel adventure itinerary
2. Costa Rica Day 10 – Rafting with Roberto Begnini
3. Costa Rica Day 8: Pee-mergency! and Trish is punched by a monkey.

It’s not yet developed like the rest of the Pacific Coast.

The waves aren’t the highest, the jungles aren’t the densest and the beaches aren’t the whitest.  But it’s still amazingly beautiful and it’s not so crowded even on Holy/ Easter Week, which is peak season.

Ballena National Park

Uvita is the home of a large marine park, Ballena or Whale National Marine Park.  This area sees two migrations of humpback whales every year, although sadly we are in between migrations and won’t see any.

Ballena isn’t great for snorkeling because there is a long sandy bottom that gets very churned-up in the waves making visibility poor.

I talked to a dive operator about doing a scuba dive with Emma and Lily, and they would do it except they don’t have gear that small.  We will have to wait to do our first Scuba dive as a family…

Ballena park in Uvita also, coincidentally, has a ‘whale tale’ beach formation.  It makes for a nice semi protected bay for good beginner surfing. And that’s the main reason we are here in Uvita – to surf for four days!

La Cusinga

There are many choices for accommodation in Uvita, but most are small motels and a few adult-only lodges.  La Cusinga is an eco-lodge, which can be meaningless in Costa Rica because everything is called an eco lodge/green hotel.  But this one goes to great lengths to preserve water, grow their own food, separate trash and use solar panels for electricity.

The location is amazing.  The eating area and observation deck overlooks the entire Bellena Marine park and is situated right at the canopy of the forest.  One of the guests said they saw more birds here at lunch than they did on a two hour birding tour of the area.

The birds and howler monkeys bark, crow and chirp non-stop.   The cow from whom they get all their milk moos in the background.  And you can hear the surf crashing on the rocks below.

The food is simple and hearty.  I ask for hot sauce and get a container of pickled vegetables with dozens of floating habaneros in sweet lime juice.  It’s completely addictive.

My only complaint is the beverages.  Coffee is instant and weak  (reminds me of the Woody Allen joke about airplane food “It’s terrible, and the portions are so small.”)  And you can’t buy sodas or beers or anything.

The magic beach and mystery cave

La Cusinga has several hiking trails up and down the steep coastal point it is situated.  After a dip in the swimming hole which we had to ourselves again, we head down to the private beach.

It’s a short walk, which would be treacherous in rain because of the mud, tree roots and steep grade, but we are in the dry season and it’s relatively simple.

You can’t swim at the beach because of the strong rip tides, but it’s a magnificent beach that reminds me of every ‘washed-ashore’ movie I’ve ever seen.

The sands are covered in hermit crabs that the kids chase like pigeons scattering them every which way.  Lily finds a intact sand dollar and declares this to be a ‘Magic Beach’

Further on, there is a sandy-bottom cave which is dripping wet and crawling with little blue crabs.  It fills at high-tide, and we had to time our visit to see it.  The cave narrows to a few feet high and wide, and takes a sharp turn in the middle so you can’t see the entrance from the exit.  On the other side of the cave is a small protected cove that’s even more beautiful.  Wow!

Surfing academy

We meet Hebron and Adienne at Bellena National park for our second day of surfing.  Today everyone is supposed to catc their own waves, and they give us a little theory on how to spot the best waves.   The waves are plentiful, but you need to be choosy because it’s a sand break, which makes them uneven.  And there are also waves from multiple directions that cross one another.

Lily and Emma again ride like they are masters.  Lily in particular is so light, and has such great balance from gymnastics training that she gets up and rides every wave in to shore.  Emma is at the adult level, riding her board out a ways, and picking her own waves to ride.

Everyone is a little banged up afterward.  Knees and ankles are scraped, eyes are red with salt irritation.  Trish can barely move her arms from doing so many push-ups off the board.  But it’s fantastic fun.  Lily doesn’t want to leave and has to be pulled from the water after two hours.

All that exercise translates into deep sleep at an early hour.  Not even the waves, birds, monkeys and cows can keep us awake after 9pm.

Related posts:

1. Costa Rica Trip – Creekmore family travel adventure itinerary
2. Costa Rica Day 3: Lily’s bad-ass adventure day
3. Costa Rica Day 1: Crocodiles and Surfing

“The Rich Coast,”

as Christopher Columbus supposedly called it, is a unique place that is often overlooked in the news and history books because so much went right. Tico’s did what very few nations have ever done.

They avoided the bloodshed, repression and discatorships of the 18th and 19th centuries and were the first democracy in Latin and South america. Costa Rica was one of the first to recognize the economic value of environmentally sustainable tourism and they built a middle class without heavy industrialization and it’s negative consequences.

Yes, there are still poor in Costa Rica (one in five) and there are places in the world that are now surpassing Costa Rican environmental preservation. But this place deserves credit for being one of most well managed countries in the history of the Earth.

A history of eco-travel

Costa Rica practically invented modern adventure travel.   The earth can (sustainably) be a tourist amusement park.  Costa Rica is packed with stuff; ziplines, canyoneering, canopy tours, volcano trekking, hotsprings, world-class surfing, and Corcovado National Park – the ‘most biologically intense place on earth’ according to National Geographic. And of course, Cocos Islands for scuba diving, one of the greatest pelagic and large animal dive spots in the world.

If there is anything bad about Costa Rica adventure travel, it’s that the secret is out. Prices are high and it can get very packed. It also, according to some, lacks the mystery of exotic destinations because it’s so well developed for tourists.

Planning the Adventure

We’re going off the beaten path, in part to capture some of that exotic mystery, but also to skip the crowds that will swarm costa rica during Easter Week. (Or Holy week, or what ever. See this post for clarification from an expert.)

I found it surprisingly hard to plan for Costa Rica. It has about 8-10 good major destinations, and none are obviously better than the rest. It took quite a bit of research to figure out exactly what would fit our style and expectations.  Here are the main areas we considered:

• Arenal:  Central North Costa Rica, this is the biggest tourist area in CR, with tons of hotels of every type, hot springs, ziplines, caves, rafting and just about everything you might want to do (except the beach)
• Monteverde:  This quaker area is famous for it’s cloud forest, cheese and a growing number of activities.
• Manuel Antonio:  The prime beach spot, with nearby jungle and great tourist facilities.
• Tortuguero:Sea turtles and black sand beaches and miles of mangroves in an untouched national park.
  

  Arenal Volano

• Puerto Viejo: Challenging waves, good scuba diving and a likable low-key beach town on the Atlantic coast.
• Osa Penninsula:  The most remote area with Corcovado (jungle), Pavones (surfing), and Drake’s Bay (undeveloped beach) – it’s a must see for adventure travel.
• Nicoya Penninsula: A long coastline of big and small surf towns that offer just about anything you might want out of a beach vacation.
• Central Costa Rica:  Coffee plantations, rafting and peaks from which you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on a clear day.
• North Central:  Guanacaste mountain range is relatively unexplored with lots of new eco-restorts, the untouched bird sanctuary Cano Negro, great river rafting and remoteness are attractive characteristics.
• Cocos Island:  One of the top scuba destinations in the world.

See the problem?  Which one are you going to pick?

As usual, my primary sources of information were Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet. The Costa Rica Trip Advisor forums are saturated with a few posters that are trying to promote their own places and services.  I found it less helpful compared to other countries.  For instance, on three seperate occasions I posted about family accommodation in Uvita.  Each time the same bot-poster would recommend an adult-only place nearby.

This trip took over 250 emails to Tico proprietors, 40 posts on Trip Advisor, and a thorough reading of Lonely Planet Costa Rica. I did not need a spreadsheet for 11 days.

The Creekmore invasion

After considering many, many different itineraries, I chose to focus on 3 main areas:  

1. Arenal for it’s great activities, resorts, lodges and hot springs.
2. Uvita for the uninhabited beaches, beginner surfing and snorkeling and
3. Corcovado National Park for the densest biological diversity in the western hemisphere.

We’re taking this one a lot slower than our other trips. We only have 5 hotels in 11 days. (In Peru we had 9.) But that doesn’t mean we will be taking it easy. Every day is packed with activities.

Rappelling in Uvita

As always, we will be live blogging – sending daily updates to everyone on facebook and this blog. We are going completely off the grid in Corcovado though, so we’ll catch up afterward.

Hasta luego!

Day One – Five Surfing and adventuring in Uvita

We spend our first night in San Jose. Costa Rican roads are bad, and driving at night – even with a driver- is discouraged. So we’ll stay overnight at http://www.adventure-inn.com/, and inexpensive and helpful hotel that is accustomed to handling travelers in and out of Costa Rica.

The whale Tail beach of Uvita and Domincal, Pacific Coast

Uvita is one of the last places in Costa Rica that has undeveloped shoreline, although with the new highway that will not remain pristine for long. Nearby Dominical is famous for hardcore surfing, but we will spend time in the little sibling city down the road where the waves are better for beginners.

Our nights will be spent at La Cusinga Lodge, an ecotourist hotel with food grown on the premises and families of monkeys on the grounds.

Afternoons will be spent surfing at Bodhi Surf School where they will give two hours of daily lessons in 85F sea water and gentle waves.

In the mornings we’ll be doing a variety of adventure sports:

• ATV tour:
• ZipLines at Osa Canopy Tours
• Boat snorkeling at the whale tail (above)  Ballena National Park.

Day Six -Eight Corcovado, Osa Penninsula

The heart of our trip is a two night camping trip in one of the densest and untouched rain forests on earth. Corcovado National Park is one of the largest remaining lowland rainforests on earth, most of the others have been logged reducing the biodiversity. Corcovado is a chance to see the Latin America looked like hundreds of years ago.

Here is a paragraph from wikipedia on the animal diversiry.

Corcovado is home to a sizable population of the endangered Baird’s Tapir and even a small population of the very rare Harpy Eagle. The park’s rivers and lagoons are home to large populations of both the American crocodile and Spectacled Caiman, along with Bull sharks. Corcovado is also one of the final strongholds of the Jaguar within Central America and several other felines are also present, including Ocelot, Margay, Jaguarundi, and Puma. All four Costa Rican monkey species can be seen within the park, including the endangered Central American Squirrel Monkey, White-faced Capuchin, Mantled Howler, and Geoffroy’s Spider Monkey. Other mammals present include Two-toed andThree-toed Sloth, Collared Peccary, Northern Tamandua and Silky Anteater. Poison dart frogs and several species of snake (including the venomous Fer-de-Lance and Bushmaster) are also common within the park.

Awesome right? Ecological preservation has a cost though – it’s really tough to get here. There aren’t any roads to speak of – you have to hike or boat in. You must have a guide, and there are only limited admissions. We are going with a guide Ken, from http://www.corcovadoinfocenter.com/.

Day Nine – Twelve Arenal and La Fortuna area

Ariel view of the Arenal Volcano, currently dormant

We end our Costa Rica trip in the Arenal area, which is a busy tourist destination with a semi-active volcano, canopy tours, hot springs and lots of hotels.

We’ll stay at the top-rated Leaves and Lizards rainforest lodge in our own cabin. In Arenal we’ll be doing lots of activities during the day:

• Rafting on the Rio Balsa river:
• Hiking up the Rio Celeste
• A hot air balloon ride over the Costa Rica canopy
• Rapelling and Ziplining
• Horsebacking and waterfall tour

And in the evenings we’ll visit one of the local hot springs resorts each night Tabacon, The springs, and Ecotermales for a meal and swimming, relaxing in pools and natural hot springs.

On our final day we drive back to San Jose, and head back home with great memories.

Related posts:

1. Costa Rica Day 7 – Leaving the Osa Penninsula
2. Costa Rica Day 3: Lily’s bad-ass adventure day
3. Costa Rica Day 4-5: The Corcovado Jungle

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Off we go! The next 14 days will be spent in Peru, home of the most ancient civilizations in North America (Norte-Chico) as well as one of the most ruthless (the Inca).  There are six recognized ‘birthplaces’ of civilization in the world, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus valley, China, Mesoamerica and The Andean region of Peru.  This place is OLD.

It’s also a biodiverse place.  We will be on the tallest sand dunes in the world, a mountainous river valley, one of the highest cities on earth, an ocean island with penguins and seals and deep in the heart of the Amazon basin, the worlds largest rainforest.

By far this is the most complex and difficult adventures we’ve been on, with tight turn-arounds, budget accommodations and few breaks.  Internet is spotty, but we are lugging the tech gear in our backpacks and plan on posting daily as usual.

Day 1: Travel from Washington D.C. to Lima, Peru:

• We depart on a 3-leg journey on American Airlines via Raleigh-Durham, Miami and then finally Lima in the evening.  It’s a lousy itinerary, but we can’t complain because these tickets were FREE, well not really free.  We got them with frequent flyer miles.
• The evening will be spent at Mami Panchita hotel nearby. http://www.mamipanchita.com It’s a cheap hotel, fairly close to the airport, and they do inexpensive pick-ups and drop offs.

Day 2:  The Sacred Valley and Ollantaytambo

• The next few days are spent in the Sacred Valley, home of Machu Picchu, other Inca ruins and tremendous beauty.  We leave early from Lima on a flight to Cusco, the ancient capital of Peru on Peruvian Airlines (who are very inexpensive and were incredibly helpful to this gringo when he messed up the tickets.)  Travel tip:  try to get seats on the left side of the plane for this trip for a great view coming into Cusco.
• Cusco is very high (12k feet) and causes altitude sickness in most folks.  So we are heading lower to the sacred valley to the main hub Ollantaytambo where we are staying at KB Tambo hostel. They have arranged to pick us up in Cusco and drive us down the mountain.
• On the way we will stop at Moray and Salinas.  Moray is a famous Incan agricultural site, where they dug concentric circles down into the earth for agricultural purposes.  Salinas is an ancient salt terrace.
• In Ollantytambo we will scout the Inca ruins on which the small town was built and have dinner at Tres Kerros, one of the emerging andean cuisine hotspots.

Day 3: Sacred Valley horseback riding and travel to Machu Picchu

• Because the altitude is still likely to be a problem, we are doing half day horseback rides up and down the mountainous valley near Machu Picchu.
• At 15:37 we take a train from Ollanta to Aguas Callientes, the staging town for our assault on Machu Picchu.  There are no roads to Machu Picchu, only trails and a train.
• The evening, at the base of the mountain on which Macchi

Day 4 – Machu Picchu and Huyana Picchu

• One of our most challenging days, we get up at 4am to wait in line for one of the few hundred tickets to hike up Huyana Piccu, the mountain that overlooks macchu picchu and and incredible hike, climb and view of Machu Picchu
• In the late morning we’ll descend and tour macchu pichu, the summer getaway for an incan emporer.
• After lunch, we’ll go back to town and do the machu picchu museum to leran more of what we saw and then take a train back to Ollantaytambo where we will stay the night at Kbperu again.

Day 5 – ziplining and climbing in the sacred valley

• Today’s adventure includes a 500 meter zip line across the sacred valley and the Urubamba river and a climbing ‘via ferrata’. www.naturavive.com
• Afternoon is open!  I think we’ll all take naps.

Day 6 – The market and ruins of Pisco

• We leave the sacred valley today for our next segment, but first stop at Pisco, the second best inca ruin in the sacred valley (some like it more than Machu Picchu.)  It also has the largest craft and souvenier market in Peru.
• We will have rented a driver for the day and he will take us to Cusco, where we will not have much time to explore unfortuately, even though it’s a beautiful city.  At 6pm we get on a luxury overnight bus to Nasca.

Day 7 Nasca off-roading and sandboarding.

• Fresh off the red-eye bus through the mountains (they play music an movies all night long and blast the air conditioning), we arrive in Nasca, where we will drop our stuff off at the hotel that we stay tonight at casa-andina.com.
• The day’s adventure includes a wild off -road with Nasca 4×4 to some ancient burial grounds, and then sandboarding till sunset on the tallest sand dunes in the world.

Day 8 Nasca lines and on to Paracas

• The highlight of Nasca are the ancient geoglyph ‘lines’ visable only from the air that have been the source of much speculation.  We’ll take a twisting and turning flight in a small airplane for about an hour.
• After lunch in town, we’ll head north to Paracas on one of the many busses that go up and down the Pacific coast to posada del emancipador www.posadadelemancipador.com and get some fresh ceviche from Juan Pablo restaurant with a view of the Pacific.

Day 9 Isla Balletas in Paracas:  Penguins and Sea lions and Guano oh my!

• Hyperbolically dubbed the ‘little galapagos’, Isla Balletas still provides an amazing habitat for humboldt penguins, sea lions, dolphins and thousands of birds viewable by small boats we will board early in the morning.
• By late morning we will be on the road back to Lima in a taxi to catch our flight to Iquitos in the amazon.

Days 10-13  Our Amazonian adventure

• Picked up early from our hotel, the folks at Otorongo lodge will speedboat us 2 hours down the amazon for our 4 days of rainforest adventure including, Pink dolphins, howler monkeys, indiginous trib visits, blow gun contests, pirannah fishing, spider hunting and all sorts of hikes and expiditions.
• The lodge has only a small generator, an emergency sattelite phone, mosquito netted hammocks and a small camp kitchen.  We’ll sleep out at least one night under the canopy of the rainforest.
• On day 13 they will bring us back to Iquitos for our flight back to Lima.  We’ll again stay at Mami Panchitas

Day 14  Lima

• With only a day in Lima, we’ll be skipping the museums and churches that typify the tourist itinerary and go straight for the hang gliding overy the city in the morning.
• After a lunch somewhere, we’ll head to El Circuito Magico Del Agua, an ‘must-be-seen-to-be believed’ water fountain sculpture garden with 12 of the largest water exhibits in the world set to a variety of music.
• Orr flight leaves for the US at 10pm, so we’ll collect our bags from the hotel and head to the airport for the 7-hour red-eye back to Miami.

And that’s our Peru adventure in short.  I planned this with two travel guides (rough guides and Lonely Planet), a lot of reserach and Q&A on tripadvisor, and many many emails with hotels and providers.

I can guarantee that something will go disasterously wrong, but as always we will adapt and find a way to handle it.
Adios!

Related posts:

1. Peru Family Vacation Travel Itinerary (with bonus Tarantula video!)
2. Peru Day 3 – Sacred Horseback Riding
3. Peru Day 4 – No Whining on Wayna Picchu!