Not messing around

Wow, the Amazon is no joke you guys. We were told many months ago not to take our kids into the Amazon, but did we listen? Of course not. Am I glad we went? Yes. Would I go again? Hard pass.

Alright, here we go. We flew from Lima across Peru to Puerto Maldonado. Then we took a wooden motorboat 30km up the Madre de Dios River into the Amazon jungle. Lu was like, "this is super fun!" I was like, "wow we sure are going far up this river away from the town and anything resembling comfort, safety, or security!"

Boy was I right. We stayed at a lodge that owns 6,000 hectares of the rainforest, including a place called "Isla de Monos" (more on that later). I don't mean to sound ignorant here, but the Amazon is really, really wild. The jungle is so dense, noisy, hot, wet, and full of things that just want to kill you. Like there is the "bullet ant" that apparently inflicts the most painful bite of any insect. It can kill a human. And we saw some of them just crawling on a tree that we hiked right past. Oh, and some trees and plants have stingers too. Those cute little frogs? Don't touch those--they're toxic. This lake? Full of piranhas and black caimans. We were so out of our element and were so incredibly grateful for local people who could safely guide us through it all.

Despite all of that, there were moments that just took our breath away. Like, Isla de Monos. This place was bananas (pun 100% intended). The lodge was gifted this island by the Peruvian government for the rehabilitation of injured and rescued monkeys. So all the monkeys there are wild but are comfortable with people...maybe too comfortable. We hopped off the boat with like 200 bananas, and the monkeys were ready for us. First came the troop of brown capuchin monkeys.

Followed closely by the white capuchin monkey troop.

And finally the trio of black spider monkeys.

The kids absolutely loved it, and honestly, I did too. I'm not sure how healthy it was for the monkeys to have us there pumping them full of bananas, but I was happy to just do something simple and fun at that point. The lodge is preparing to take a newly rehabilitated monkey (oddly named "Jennifer"?) out to the island this week, so she was just chilling around the lodge before her transfer. She wanted to get into our little cabin so badly.

We also went out on the river at night to look at the stars without any light pollution and to search for white caimans. We saw shooting stars and Lu laid her head in my lap and just looked at the night sky. I'm holding onto these moments. That's where the good stuff lives.

This afternoon we arrived in Cuzco and drove with our lovely friend Yaneth to the Sacred Valley (pictured behind us). We are staying in a house here in Pisac and are just so happy to be home for a while. We even got groceries AND we have a washing machine! YES!

We are thinking about you all enjoying the beautiful summer in Seattle or wherever you may be!

All my love,

Madeline