On to the Amazon...

Hola,
I am a little later adding to this as we have had limited internet access.  I will return to the story of the Santa Cruz hike at a later time, Let us just say we will not be recommending Johnny,s tours or Galaxia for that matter with poor communication and a need to organize our own transport back to Huaraz(and pay for it and our cook who hiked with us). Johnny had offered us a hot shower at his place upon our return and we were met with the offer of a cold shower on the rooftop of his guesthouse after 3 days of hiking and imagining a nice warm shower...before our night bus back to Lima. No towels were provided either... and then we had the pure pleasure of going to Cafe Andina for a REALMEAL! WE had had really poor and inadequate food on the trip ...fruitloops and yogurt for breakfast, or bread and jam... nothing else and hiking 10hours per day. More to come I promise.... so after a great meal of curry, tofu and rice, hot chocolate with leche de soya and limonade fresca Matthew and I took a night bus back to Lima. I was so tired after hiking 20kms all downhill on the last day that I slept the best I ever have sitting up right in a bus!! Arriving in Lima at 445am and jumping in a taxi to get ot the airport and a flight to Pucallpa.
This was my first time to Pulcallpa though Matthew has been here many times but never by plane... flying over the Andes to the edge of the jungle...by road it takes more than 20hours!! We had hoped to do a cross country adventure via collectivos but with RObert, Jeff and Joseph meeting us on the 25th we did not want to chance being stuck in a freezing cold high elevation town waiting in the middle of the night for the next connection by bus or collectivo (communal car)...

Pulcallpa is really a frontier town in a way ..the closest town to Lima and transportation for all that has to be sent up the river as cargo to the people who live in the towns and villages along el rio. The rio here is the Ucayali River which is a tributary of the Amazon that meets up with the Maranon river ( which Matthew and I took from Yurimagua to Iquitos by Cargo boat on a previous trip to Peru)
We arrive at the airport and immediately take a motocar (tuktuk) to Maestro Armando`s friends house where previously matthew had stayed in their very simple accomodations. But this time the nusic was blasting and they had turned their front room into a bar with TV yelling loudly into the street at 9am. Their bed was in the kitchen now...which has a dirt floor, bathroom and shower out in the back yard. Armando and his wife Naida were coming from their Amazon town Contamana via the slow boat to meet us. Matthew had lived with them at their house before for a month or so with their 9 children and grandchildren....sleeping on a wood floor with chickens running around:)

It was hot and steamy in Pulcallpa and overcast...as we were just setting off to go look at a hotel or two when Armando and Naida arrived...so after welcome hugs we took Armando to check out some accomodation options for the group in a nearby lakeside town Yarinacocha... and as is obvious by the lapsing of 18months since our last visit...alot can change in this time and one hotel recommended by Lonely Planet has since gone into some decay since Matthew was there last... but it was on the lake and seemed quiet enough but we checked out another place Las Gavilanes ...which was quieter still, cheaper and had a nice swimming pool. We met George (Jorge) our translator and great guy who was really excited to work with Matthew again and his Father ,also George (jorge - a phys-ed teacher)  And we all shared alovely lunch at the hotel set it up for us to stay there the next night but for this night we decided to stay at the one on the water La Maloka...Matthew and I promptly fell into a deep sleep despite the now pumping loud music playing competing restaurants that line the waterfront there...especially it being a Saturday where the locals flock there for the weekend...
Fortunately the music mostly stopped at 7pm...the gates locked us in, they have some very sad small animal cages most of them now empty but there was one monkey (mono) and a rabbit (coheno)
 So after days of sleeping at elevation or on buses we were able to have a night of sleep and a lovely COLD shower  in the morning:)Is a hot shower with agua caliente becoming a vision of the past....? Hasta lluego,
Wendita