Historia de la Selva

On Friday morning, Nikita and I realized that we had not yet informed our host family that we were leaving for the jungle. I told Carola that we were leaving for the selva and her response was "sauna?" My host mom never thinks I know what I am saying, so Nikita had to clarify. She then went on to say "por viernes, sabado, y domingo?" Carola was very confused. Finally we left for Sandhya's house since she lived closer to where we were going to be picked up. We ate falafel wraps and pastries for lunch. Very delicious. Then we got on the bus, it was the longest bus ride ever, I thought I was going to die. The road was super windy and our driver was going a thousand miles per hour. I could feel my falafel getting ready to have an encore, not the good kind. Instead I just laid my head against the seat in front of me and prayed for death, in its stead sleep hit me. When I woke up we had passed the mountainous region and had hit the jungle. TREES! There are not many trees in Cusco, all the mountains are bare, these were not. Also the temperature had increased tremendously. I was so pleased. Our bus driver could not find the hostel for anything, so he made the copilot, yes there is a bus copilot, get down and take a mototaxi to it. Turns out it was right behind us. Surprisingly, we were staying in a town outside of the jungle, not in it, I was disappointed. The next morning we ate cake and juice at the town market for breakfast, pretty good stuff. Then we lost our guide, it turns out he went to the zoo ahead of us and thought we were meeting there. All of us had to grab mototaxis, like the name entails they are motorcycles converted into taxis. FOUR of us got into one, these things are tiny and there are no doors, I thought we were going to flip over every time we hit a bump. Finally we arrived at the zoo with no injuries. The zoo was a lot more relaxed than what I was used to. I held hands with a monkey and got to hold a boa constrictor. Also some of the "braver" kids got to take a picture with a JAGUAR. YEAH. Mark was first, it ripped off his camera case from around his neck and tore it to pieces. Two other guys went and had the jaguar wrap its arms around their throats, good thing it was declawed. Then Sarah went and the Jaguar grabbed her from behind around the face, like it was playing peek-a-boo but could bit her head off. Finally the lady in charge started to play with the jaguar and got her entire face in its mouth. She kept saying "You are going to kill me with your love." It was just trying to kill her. After the zoo we went on a river tour. We stopped at the home of an indigenous family, they painted our faces, made us dance, make fire, shoot arrows, and play with tops. It was pretty fun and interesting. Then we ventured to monkey island, but sadly did not see any, we could hear them laughing at us though. The boat ride back was nice and relaxing just going down the river with the jungle on either side. Afterwards we ate at a restaurant in town. Nikita and I ordered Chinese noodles. Really good. The exhaustion of trekking in the jungle got to us and we all went home to shower and go to bed. Well I didn't have a towel so I had to air dry which took forever since it was so humid. Finally I put on my pajamas and had girl talk with some of the ladies of the trip. It was really fun. We had to wake up early so we could get back to Cusco to do our projects though. In the morning we got straight on the bus and started our journey back. I felt much better this time. We stopped and got some juice and cake for breakfast again. While driving home the bus driver stopped and bought us BABY BANANAS! They tasted so good, I ate like five of them. There was a whole bunch of them. Then he stopped and the copilot got down ran up a hill and chopped down some sugar cane. When he got to the bus he was like go, go, go. Apparently they stole some sugar cane, but they shared so it was OK. haha There was also a stop to see the snow mountains, it was freezing. I wanted jungle weather back. We finally got home at around 7:30 pm and were starving for dinner. We had jelly and bread, so disappointing, especially since Nikita and I were dreaming of beans and cake. Afterwards we had to go meet up with our groups for our debate, I was dead tired and hungry. I got a piece of cake and did my work though. I passed out and dreamt of jaguars eating my friends. Scary stuff.