The middle of the Amazon jungle. (Part 1)

It´s been a while.

Luckily you have had Megan to entertain you while we have been away. Hopefully we can squeeze one last post out of her with the end of our fantastic week in Cuzco. We had a great time enjoying Cuzco, the Sacred Valley and of course Machu Picchu with our dear friend Megan, and like she said we have a million pictures to post. We haven´t had time to post them because immediately after saying goodbye to Megan at the Cuzco airport we got on the plane to Lima, got in a cab to go to the bus station and took our last overnight bus ride to Guayaquil. Bittersweet certainly, but we are glad to no longer be sleeping in moving vehicles for awhile.

We arrived in Guayaquil late Sunday night and pretty much had time to have dinner, take a shower and fall asleep. On Monday morning we woke up and went to the bus station to catch a bus to Puyo, Ecuador where we planned to do some volunteer work at the Santa Martha Oriente Rescue Center. After a death-defying nine hour journey complete with getting pawned off onto a different bus in the middle of the road we made it to Puyo. Once in Puyo we called Holgen the cab-driver (as recommened to us by the coordinator at the volunteer center) to take us about an hour away from Puyo, into the Amazon rainforest, down a vomit-inducing unpaved road.

We arrived at the center, literally in the middle of the jungle and met the coordinator and some other girls who were volunteering there. We did not come prepared with wellies, a mosquito net or a sleeping bag so the night started off fairly bleak. There was no running water, electricity, and we basically had to share a wooden slab under one borrowed mosquito net to sleep. We had a borrowed sheet and blanket and no pillow to speak of. After dinner and talk of the tarantulas and snakes (the snakes venom will kill you in 20 minutes, so you´ve got no chance seeing as how Puyo is an hour away) we huddled under the mosquito net for a horrible nights sleep. Apparently, one of the kinkajou´s got out of its cage and now the dogs bark incessently at it all night long. We both woke up with sore backs and necks, no water to brush our teeth and the beginnings of what would certainly be a long week.

More to come later. We are alive and heading back to the center for one more day of work before we go to Quito, where hopefully there will be internet and electricity and running water.