"W" is for...what else? "Welcome to the Jungle!"

 Ahhhh...finally the boat pulled over to a muddy spot, the engine shut off, and we scrambled out, trying not to fall into the river, and started up the 400 stairs to the lodge. The steps were slippery from the damp and the rise from step to step was so high that I felt like a little girl with legs too short to reach the next stair. I had to do that thing where you step up with one foot and then put your other foot beside that one, you know, like a little kid. The stairway twisted and turned and in some places I couldn't reach the hand rail, which was a bit rickety anyhow. There was even spots where the boards  were loose and partially missing. I would have given my eye teeth for a walking stick...it was a hard climb! At the top, breathless, I turned to look behind and I was quite surprised to see that the 400 stairs had magically turned into 40. Hmmm. Strange.

Since we were so late, the orientation talk and presentation was cancelled, and we headed straight for the dining hall and were given our room keys and assigned roommates. Even though I had paid for a single room for the other places, all rooms here are doubles, I think the only way to have a room to yourself is to actually pay a total double price. My roomie was Kara, who had just done the Inca Trail trek, and was heading to the Galapagos after this, and after that she was backpacking through Peru by herself for a month. We had lots of travel stories to share and she was so laid back and casual, I could easily have roomed with her for the whole trip.

Dinner was buffet style, as were all the meals, and all very similar. A pot of soup was at the beginning of the buffet line, generally it seemed to be a type of chicken soup, then a huge container of rice, (a semi-sticky rice that I just couldn't get enough of) a platter of cucumbers and sliced tomatoes was next, no salads, I assume because washing the lettuce with local water would create stomache issues, then a dish of meat (tonight's was slices of beef...so tender that you didn't need a knife, and a tasty gravy), then yucca fries and/or sweet potato fries, and regular potato as well. I kind of think that was it...I don't recall anything else. On the days that it wasn't beef, it was chicken (nice big pieces, baked) one day was pork and then more beef. There was some sort of oil & vinegar (lime, maybe?) dressing that I sprinkled on my cukes and tomato, and on the rice as well, it was the best condiment I have ever had. I've been trying to replicate it at home, but with no success.

After we ate, there was fresh fruit served and sometimes a mousse or creme brûlée type of dessert. I know this looks sort of slimy and disgusting, but it was a fresh passion fruit mousse...soooo good.

I don't know if it was because there was no junk food available, and we walked and hiked in the heat so much that we were ready for good food. Or if it was because it was all so fresh, both  grown and cooked with no chemicals or preservatives. Or the fact that I didn't have to cook it. Or a combination of all of that  I suppose, I just know that I've never enjoyed food so much.  Lunches were the same set up as dinner, and I was surprised that I'd enjoy a hot meal at noon in that heat, but I did. Breakfasts were breads, jam, fresh fruit and a huge dish of scrambled eggs, with bacon or ham.  The eggs always looked a bit runny to me, so I stayed away from them and usually just had fruit and coffee....it was the thick syrup kind that you added hot water to, and condensed milk instead of cream. Speaking of condensed milk, one of the guides said that a favorite drink of the staff was to mix the condensed milk with the orange juice and it was like a creamsicle milkshake. But I'm here to tell you that it was not. Do not try this at home.

There was a different type of fresh squeezed juice at every meal; passion fruit, papaya, blue corn with little diced apples floating in it, orange with lemon and lime, and wild tomato. The wild tomato was interesting, it wasn't "thick" like tomato juice normally is, it was clear like a red Koolaid, but smelled exactly like fresh tomatoes and was quite sweet. At first I thought it was a raspberry juice, it had that sweet taste. 

The staff hung  a massive bunch of bananas outside the door of the dining hall that you could help yourself to, and just outside was a brazil nut tree, with a contraption like a giant nutcracker so you could crack them open if you chose. This little creature would come a-runnin' if he saw or heard nuts being opened, and he'd sit and wait to be handed one.

But I'm getting off track!

After we ate we took our little map and went to our cabin. Ours was at the very end of the grounds, our backyard was jungle. Very cool! 

There is no electricty in the rooms, so we wore our headlamps until we found the candles and lighters that are supplied. In the picture below you can see the screens behind the bed? They went all around the room, no glass...just screen...no glass or windows or shutters...just screen between us and the wildlife. Screen, and a mosquito net.

We were given a key to a safe, which was actually just a drawer in a dresser, to lock up all food. If anything food related was left out, jungle creatures of the mice and rat variety would make every attempt to get in and party. I had some cough drops, but then I wondered about toothpaste and I also had some cough syrup (remember the cough I had? I was packing around cough drops and cough syrup as a preventative measure) All that stuff is sweet-ish...would a rat with a sweet tooth know the difference between a chocolate bar and toothpaste? So we locked everything up, including passports and money, just to be safe. I didn't want to wake up and find my passport nibbled. Or, worse yet, gone. But then, I thought, what if I start to cough during the night and I need to get up and get a cough drop? I'd have to untuck my net, and being dark, I'd not be able to spot any spiders that might be on my net, or on the floor, or anywhere in the drawer where I'd have to reach for a cough drop...but what if had one cough drop by my pillow...would I awake to find myself eyeball to eyeball with a maurading rat? It didn't take me long at all to decide that a face to face confrontation with a rat would be 100% preferable to any sort of sighting, even a distant one, of a spider. So I slept with a bottle of water, a cough drop, and my headlamp by my pillow, and nary a creature was spotted.

Two cabins did have nighttime visitors that chewed their packs quite badly. They were some of the group who had done the Inca Trail trek so I would bet that they had trail mix or candies in their pack during that part of the trip, and maybe some crumbs remained. I couldn't care less about four footed (or pawed or clawed or cloven hoofed) visitors, or even no-legged slithery ones, I was concerned about the 8 legged variety, but all I ever found in my room was a stick creature, and it was sort of cute.

The cabins are built a few feet off of the ground, I guess to keep "things" from having easy access, but we were still warned to shake out clothes and shoes thoroughly and carefully before putting them on. One of the staff had just had a spider bite a few days prior, and you could see its little fang marks on his chest. That made me more than careful, I was on a "shaking out frenzy" everytime I set something down for even a moment. 

Daytime, mosquito nets all tucked away..but notice the huge straw roof, doesn't that seem like a place that spiders would just love to live? And to watch below, and drop down on unsuspecting  victims? And hide in their packs? I liked the sound of little feet running over the roof at night, and I tried to put the idea out of my head that it could be spiders. I'm sure they're silent. I wasn't sure what thought was worse....hearing spiders running, or not hearing them. In any case, once I fell asleep, I slept like the dead. Except when the howler monkeys started up, but even that was pretty cool. Howler monkeys waking me up....that's ok.

The cabins each had a bathroom with flush toilets and showers as well. Each room had a small solar powered hot water tank and there was plenty of hot water for Kara and I to each shower, more than once a day. It was hard to remember to use bottled water to brush your teeth with, so I eventually just gave up and was careful to not actually swallow the tap water. There was a big jug of water we could drink in the dining hall, and we were told to use it to refill our water bottles. It was a faint brown colour, a bit disconcerting at first, but the water there is just that colour. You could buy new bottled water in the little bar for next to nothing, I think 2 soles each, which is a bit less than a dollar, but I drank so much water that buying it just seemed foolish.

You can't really tell the difference here, the one on the left is "jungle water" and the other is a bottle I bought.

The dining hall.

I wasn't sure how I'd sleep tonight...was it going to be hot and muggy all night? Would the noises keep me awake and nervous? Would I have to get up and pee and then not be able to get my net tucked in again? The tucked in net was my nemesis when I was in Africa, I could never get it  tucked in again after I got up to go the the bathroom. In Africa, my fear was malaria carrying mosquitos, here it was spiders. But, the worry was unnecessary because it cooled down wonderfully, and I quickly fell  asleep and didnt budge until I heard both a knock on the door and voice hollering "knock-knock". It was our wakeup call, (no phones, no electricity, some poor soul has the job of running from cabin to cabin to wake us up) Breakfast and an  adventure beckoned!