In the jungle, the mighty jungle....

Returning to Cerro Azul was not an easy mission and staying there seemed even harder. After two months of patiently waiting Andres and I finally broke out on our first full throttle adventure and it was quite uncertain in which direction our energies would flow. From Cerro Azul we headed to Lima so we could buy supplies and renew Andres`passport before paying for a direct bus ticket to La Merced. I suppose from previous blogs one might remember that I had already spent a week or so in La Merced but this time it was gorgeous and without a drop of rain. The sun beamed gloriously over our formerly frigid bodies for the coastline and sierra. La Merced is fairly big for Chanchamayo and the streets seem to rise and fall. Walking from our hostel at the very bottom was I suppose what woke us up in the morning. I ran into, Joseph, or aka el Iquitos, who I previously had met back in Montañitas. He was trying to make his way up to Iquitos though no all too enthusiasticly.We spent around two weeks in La merced and left with a nice fat wallet along with a comparable belly and ganas to continue our amazonian experience. Andres, el Iquitos and I pulled roots and leaving La Merced, the jungle began to turn into sierra as we arrived to Oxapampa which was previously an Austrian/German colony and had several traces of its past history. The houses were quite akin to that of ours with peaked roofs and wooden walls. It was beautiful and I suppose quite agreeable for such familiarities. The people were a few shades whiter and their mixed heritage seemed to show in their foods and customs. The people were a bit closed or maybe they were too consumed in their daily routines to really open up by themselves but once one was able to crack open a door, the light came shining through. We stayed for the festival Selvanos but seeing that after a week we had seen all we wanted to see. Without much money we began heading ever so slowly north until we reached Pozuzo, the head colony of all the austro/greman colonies. Arriving it seemed as though we stepped into a twilight zone. Whites with blues eyes seemed to be on every corner and they were even more padlocked then in Oxapampa. Selling was essensially impossible. We tried everything even a bit of fireworks to call attention to our displays but the people were only intrested in watching but at a 15 meter distance or more, never actually breaching the border. We left as quickly as our little wings could carry us and ended up in el Codo del Pozuzo after several hours on a highway that looked a lot like crunchy peanut butter as we bounced around like little jelly beans in the back. In el Codo were were able to set up our tents and I sold a bit of jewlery which helped us finally leave after waiting two days for any transportation to arrive. It was quite beatiful and much more rustic then Pozuzo. There was a river a few kilometers away and we all bathed in the shallow waters trying to remove the dirt ground into our faces and extremities. When the truck finally arrived we slowly forged down the highway as it turned from peanut butter to a glutinous muck and what could be an hour`s journey turned into 4 hours and left us with burning heat rashes. We arrived at what they called Sungaro, which was a around 4 hours from Pulcallpa, our following destination. An enormous river streamed through the center of this dusty town. The locals took turns bathing and washing clothes while we rested 60 meters above taking advantage of the short rest before trying our luck at some of the trucks passing through. One of the numerous trucks stopped just after the collossal red beams supporting the bridge. We wandered over and with very little presuasion they told us to hop in the back of the truck and they brought us to el metro 86. From there the highway returned to asfalt and we were able to arrive in Pucalpa in under two hours. Andres, Iquitos and I arrived with the final caminero fairly late at what seemed to be a odd hostel called 5-mentorios but the rooms seemed nice and most importantly there was a fan which disapated the sweltering heat that lingered through the night. The hostel wasnt the most appealing considering its name implied ¨without comments.¨ We decided that another would be more suitable and economical. Our trio took off towards the central parts and asking around we finally found a proper hostal with a private bathroom for only 7 soles which is roughly $2.50 per day. Iquitos found sales too arduous of a task for his taste sending an email to his mom, in few hours he had his passage set for Iquitos. Andres and I on the other hand stayed in total around 4 weeks trying to make enough money for the 7-day boat ride to the jungle/island of Iquitos. At one point we finally left Pucalpa to make some money in Tingo Maria while staying with one of Andres' aunts, Helda. I felt a bit strange on the trip and by the time we arrived at the house I was running a fever and had some sort of accompanied cold. Helda was a tiny lady maybe around 45 earth cycles with a husky voice from the 201 cigarettes smoked daily. She was fairly antogonistic at times presuming that my illness was an exageration. Though she offered us food daily it seemed there was always strings attached. It wasn't by any means an inviting situation and I finally convinced Andres to leave heading anywhere but there. Sadly the option choosen was to return to Pucalpa for a proposed job on one of the boats which in the end never happened. We returned for another two miserable weeks and my fever lasted the first week then shifted its fury onto Andres though this time it lasted only a few days. Finally I had persuaded Andres that our best option was to head to Tarapoto and see if we could embark from there. Leaving Pucalpa was like leaving Dante's inferno. Tarapoto was nothing like Pucalpa.. The first night we met up with a couchsurfer (from couchsurfing.com) named Jorge at a bar called Stonewasi. As we cheersed our first beer along came an acquaintaince of Jorge's named Hugo. It seemed as though we were old friends telling tales of a traveler´s past and in a brief moment suddenly we were set up in his restaurant which was in its last touches before the grand opening. Fortunately the resaurant included a shower and a washing area. Slowly we began encountering other members of the padilla and every night seemed to be an new adventure. The boys took us to the river where we could bath and relieve ourselves of the intense heat that the jungle emits. Along with so many we happened upon Jenna and Conney, two fellow travelers, Jenna from France and Conney from Germany. Conney stayed only two nights before taking off to Ecuador. They too took part in the hospitality of Hugo and his partner and we soon began our very own hostal.... gratis. We met Luciano, an argentinian who played a sort of hand piano flute, Daniel our friendly borracho who convinced us almost daily to take in a few beers before retiring, Daisy and her brother who provided us with breakfast, lunch and dinner daily and oh so many more that pasted through these Tarapotent days. Jenna and Hugo took off to Chiclayo so Jenna could get to know a bit more of Peru before heading north. Andres and I stayed roughly a week more because our dear drunkard had continued to push his depature date back and therefore we obliged and pushed ours. Finally realizing that he was never leaving we packed our bags and headed for the coast realizing that Iquitos was never going to happen and we had been in the jungle for roughly 4 1/2 months. I was ready to get back on track and start heading north to Colombia. We decided the best bet was to pay for a direct bus ticket to Piura then on to Mancora. Jenna and I had stayed in contact and she told me that they too were in Mancora. Dropping our packs off at the hostal we headed over to reunite with our pandilla yet once again. It just so happened that we arrive in time to feast on some homemade hamburgers made by an Uruguayan couple, Diego and Maria. Alongside our dear Uruguyan enamorados was another extremely dynamic couple from Argentina, Joaquin and Clara who were traveling in their ¨hippy van¨from the southern tip of Argentina, Ushuaia, to Alaska. Jenna, Joaquin and Clara had met first in the Carretera Austral which is in the southern part of Argentina then again in Cusco and once more in Mancora. Such moments one realizes how small the world really is. We passed Mancora elegantly taking in the sun, waves and beach as much as possible. Sales were extremely slow for me and even more so for Andres. There had been several problems along the way and in the end Andres and I decided that it was time to take seperate routes. He seemed to disappear and then suddenly reappear in Mancora and I had really not seen him the majority of the time in Mancora. He took off first, then Joaquin and Clara along with Diego and Maria which left Jenna and I to break into our journey north which was in the commune. It took us half a day to arrive in Cuenca, Ecuador passing by the hippy van at the border. After 6 months in Peru I finally was making progress toward Colombia....