Puerto Maldonado

When we landed in Puerto Maldonado, we were ushered to a bus that drove us around the town/city (not sure which is more appropriate). The city was interesting... Very few cars, most people drove around on motor bikes. The rules of traffic were therefore fairly fluid; people would just honk when they wanted to pass you, just so you knew they were there. Because of this, there was a constant ambient noise in the city of "beep beep" or "meep" or "honk" or "kent" or any other varieties of horn. Tons of stray dogs, just wandering the street. It was a bit sad.

We found out that the resort we were going to stay at, Explorer's Inn, had been hit fairly bad by a flood overnight. The stairs leading up the cliff from the boat landing had been completely washed away, and do had the water pump. The only way we would be able to get up to the resort was to climb up the cliff on a rope. Um, yeah, so we stayed in Puerto Maldonado overnight. Steph and Dan (the professors) organized dinner for us with a place down the street. Unfortunately, right around dinner time, it started POURING outside. We're talking heavy Amazon downpours here.... And because we were on the equator, it was dark before 6 anyways. So we're walking down the street, getting soaked from head to toe, in the DARK, trying to find this restaurant. Oh and then we do find it and guess what? There was a power shortage on that block of town. Excellent. Well we got inside and it was all lit by candlelight. It took a while, but eventually we were all prepared dinner - I think their kitchen ran on gas rather than electricity.

What an adventure.

I posted some more photos, this time from Puerto Maldonado. I was still being reserved with my photo-taking because I didn't want to run out of batteries. Once I got to Explorer's Inn, however, I started taking more.

The bird photo is a fledgling Silver-Blue Tanager. It was on the sidewalk we were walking on, and the parents were going nuts. It couldn't fly yet, so it just sort of flapped and ran away. I was scared it was going to get hurt....