Another day, another airport. We are at Puerto Maldonado airport waiting for a flight that might leave sometime between 1100 and 1145. Since it is already 1130 and the plane is not here, I don’t think it will leave on time.
Coming back from the Lodge we were going against the flow of the river and it took 2 hours. We had seen enough river and jungle by then.

Being as we were spending two nights in the one place we thought we might get the chance to sleep in. It was not to be. We had been allocated to go on the “Lost Lake” (Cocha Perdida) tour which had a 0600 departure. (0500 wake up call and 0530 breakfast).
We took a boat down the river, were dropped off and walked 5km through varying grades of mud. Along the way we saw a tarantula, (seriously big spiders), possum monkeys, evidence of pigs and a snail the size of both my fists.

At the end of the 5km was a 700m boardwalk out to the Lost Lake. We had a paddle around the lake and saw turtles and another caiman. On the way back along the boardwalk, Sue slipped and fell into the water getting completely soaked and filthy at the same time.
Amongst the trees that Livio (our tour guide), pointed out was the Justice Tree.

This tree had a symbiotic relationship with a species of ants. The tree provides the ants with food and a home and the ants protect the tree from attack by other insects. Livio said in the old days men were tied to the tree(and thus bitten by ants) as punishment if they were caught shitting on their wives. Read the rest of this entry »