We got on the plane and traveled to....IQUITOS!!
We had a short layover in Lima and then arrived in Iquitos.
We found our guide Eddie who picked us up at the airport. Along with a young couple from London, we rode a bus to Nauta where we caught a boat to get to...
The Treehouse Lodge!!
It was a two hour boat ride on the Maranon/Amazon River into the jungle to get to our lodgings.
The lodge is located just off the Ucayali River (another tributary to the Amazon River)
I found this lodge on a website and thought it would be so cool to stay there.
It was everything I was hoping for!
This is the entrance off of the dock.
This is the main lodge/restaurant.
This is a picture of our room from the ground. It was fifty two steps up!!
It was the largest of all of the treehouses but by regular room standards it was fairly small.
After all, it is a treehouse!!
Here are some pictures of the inside. Day and night...
The walls had a screen covering which allowed a panoramic view of the outdoors.
Even our shower was open air.
Our bed had mosquito netting which helped from getting too many bites (except on the last day where a spider?? was in my bed and gave me over FIFTY BITES on my hip and backside!!) Unfortunately the itching lasted for a week!🙄
The food at the lodge was plated so beautifully and tasted really good!
That night we got to go out on our first excursion, a jungle walk.
We got to see night frogs...
cool spiders....
a dragonfly close up...
tarantulas....(four)
A fer de lance snake, and another small one, a cluster of caterpillars, and bullet ants.
Sorry, no pictures of them for the blog but they were all SUPER cool to see!
After a good night's rest we got up early for a morning sunrise over the Amazon. It was beautiful!
Eddie was our guide and Gustavo was our driver. They were SUCH good guides. They could spot so many animals for us as we glided through the water. We got to see dolphins. sloths, monkeys, SO MANY cool birds, snakes and so much more because of their spotting skills.
Our next excursion, after breakfast, we took a walk through the jungle on an island right close to the lodge. We saw five different types of monkeys... Wooly Monkey, Titi Monkey, Squirrel Monkey, Tamarin Monkey and a Monk Monkey. They were really cool! Some other wildlife we saw was a colony of leaf footed beetles, a nun bird, a tree rat, and some termites. Eddie taught us how to make bug repellant from a termite colony Cool Stuff!
We walked for a couple of miles that morning and boy was I feeling it by the end.
But wow! What a morning!
After getting back from our excursion we were walking on the walkway to the main lodge when I could hear parrots close by. We scoured the trees next to the lodge and found a couple of them right up in the trees. They were hard to find but with my trusty binoculars we were able to find them. They were exactly the same color as the leaves, bright green!
They were super loud squawking birds and were really fun to watch.
Later in the afternoon we took another boat ride to go for a dip in the Ucayali/Amazon River. I put my feet in. I did NOT want to get into that yucky brown water. Rick submerged completely. Bless his heart!
Also on our boat ride we got to see the infamous pink river dolphins. Yes, they are pink but are very elusive. There were a lot of them. They do not come out of the water like other types of dolphins but we did get to see their interesting looking nose and backs.
We got to see a very nice sunset as we were heading back in for dinner.
After dinner we had the coolest experience.
We went on a night excursion to a lake off the river.
We weaved through the swamp to get to the lake. There were places that Eddie had to pull our boat through the overgrowth on top of the water. It was so crazy! I was thinking, "What if we get stuck out here?" Our guides were amazing and got us where we needed to be. They were not ruffled at all! These rivers are the backyard they grew up in. It truly felt like we were on a National Geographic adventure! I guess in all actuality we WERE on a National Geographic Adventure.
We got to the lake and saw gigantic lily pads over five feet in diameter.
We saw baby caymans, another few de lance swimming in the water, and the sound of the frogs croaking was a sound I'll never forget. Eddie turned off his light and we sat int he dark looking up at the constellations listening to the deafening sounds of all of those frogs. What a night to remember!
I truly believe this was one of the most adventurous things we have ever done!
Eddie and Gustavo got us safely back to the lodge. Whew!
We slept well and then out again the next morning for another excursion. We still hadn't seen a toucan or the famous blue and yellow macaws so went a searching. We saw a lot of cool birds and their nests! And we did find one toucan from a distance, but we DID see him. Then we ran into a flock of macaws! Wow! They were super cool to see and hear! They are some of the loudest birds and I love their squawk!
We also did some piraña fishing.
That was fun! We each caught a couple and brought some back with us for the chefs to cook it up for us.
I got a teeny one.😂
Look at those teeth!
Here is our cooked up piranha.
They made them look kinda pretty on our plate.
here is another picture of our room!
And more wildlife...
It rained the rest of the day so we stayed holed up in our room. I read and Rick took a nap. It was really fun to hear the rain coming down. It rained through dinnertime so we did not go on anymore excursions that day.
Early the next morning it was a little drizzly but we wanted to take the excursion to the village,
Puerto Miguel.
This part was a little disappointing because I was expecting a little bit more of a rustic village.
This village is where our boat driver/guide, Gustavo grew up.
We stopped at a little store where they had a rescued sloth. The owner of the store had found it in the fields without its mother so he brought it home to raise it.
It was fun to be able to hold it.
We walked through a little school to see the rooms. No children because it was a Saturday.
Two kids came in and sold us a little bracelet.
And that ends our time at The amazing Treehouse Lodge.
We packed up our bags with memories to last a lifetime! We took the boat back to Nauta, grabbed our taxi and beelined it back to Iquitos to catch our plane. There was a group with us who thought they were going to miss their flight so our driver drove like a bat out of hell to get us there. So glad we are it in one piece! We caught our flight and headed to our next stop....
