By Luke, on April 23, 2011, 12:17 am
After a chat with our guide I retreat from the amazonian sun to the Amazon Cares mobile clinic. I am sitting in the back of a large single roomed house raised on stilts in order to deal with the amazons massive change in water hight of up to 12 meters. The back of the room where I sit is scattered with a couple of kennels and the four tables, all of varying hights which occupy the other half of half of the room serve as surgery, treatment and medication tables.
We are in a small village called Mazan about a 15 minute moto taxi ride from Indian which is 39km down river from Iquitos. Around 10 years ago the population was around 1000, today the population is between 5 and 7 thousand. The main reason for such rapid growth is the construction of a road from the Iquitos to Indiana. People from Mazan, northern Peru’s Amazon jungle
By Luke, on April 21, 2011, 3:23 am
Arriving at Ceiba Tops lodge i cant help but feel conflicted. Is this the jungle experience that I wanted when i planned to come to the amazon jungle? One thing i am sure of is that this is not what i had ever imagined. Its no surprise to me that a place like this exists but i never thought i would have the opportunity to stay here.
For the past 4 nights myself and the rest of the AmazonCares Volunteers have been staying in what i would call more than adequate accommodation. Arriving at Ceiba Tops you immediately realise that it is on another level. Air con, hot running water, concrete path ways, Jacuzzi and pool are a dead give away. As we got off the boat to take a shortcut overland between the river Napo and Amazon one of the other volunteers was obviously looking forward to our Conflicted in the Amazon Jungle
By Luke, on April 19, 2011, 11:39 pm
We have just spent two days working with dogs and cats in Amazonian communities near Iquitos. As a group we are shattered, the continual early mornings, working and wanting to make the most of the time we have in the jungle has begun to take it’s tole.
Based at ExplorNapo lodge we have travelled by boat to Sanpedro and Tamanco which are to small communities along the amazon river, each are around 20 minutes from the lodge.
This afternoon I successfully captured a dog in the village of Tamanco. The dog was in poor condition with severe mange. When I inquired as to how the dog had come to be freely roaming in such a remote village I was told that the original owners had decided they no longer wanted it a kicked it out. When asked if we could sterilise the dog originally they did not want Treating dogs in amazon communities
By Luke, on April 16, 2011, 8:33 pm
Getting to Tarapoto is relatively easy from an towns north of Lima along the Peruvian coast. We went from Chachapoyas which which involved getting a shared taxi to Pedro Ruiz and then jumping on one of the busses that passed through. It took us around 6 hours by bus from Pedro Ruiz.
What you need to to know when getting the boat from Yurimaguas to Iquitos.
Once in Tarapoto you need to locate Gilmer tours, most moto taxi’s should be able to take you there. Alternatively head to the tourist office on the main plaza in Tarapoto and they will supply you with a map and a well placed x. They run hourly busses in the morning to Yurimaguas from Tarapoto for 12 soles. From Gilmer Tours office in Tarapoto you will be able to get departure times for the boats leaving from Yurimaguas to Iquitos. The boats that Catching the boat from Yurimaguas to Iquitos, Peru
By Luke, on April 15, 2011, 8:39 pm
After writing the last couple of posts I realised I should probably tell you a bit about the project we are volunteering for. I am intending to post about the boat trip from Yurimaguas to Iquitos in the near future too as we could find limited information about it, what we did find made it sound like it was difficult, this was not our experience. The reason I did not want to write about the volunteer project initially was that it was a little daunting trying to fit it all into one post, and i was excited about catching street dogs. I don’t find writing that easy and I just really wanted to get something onto the web. For this reason you may also come across hideous grammar and a few typing mistakes, I wish I could put this down to writing my posts on an iPod but in Helping dogs as a Volunteer in Iquitos, Peru
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