723. Peru Trip | Playing with Monkeys at Monkey Island!

Monkey Island, aka La Isla de los Monos, is a new world monkeys sanctuary a few hours' boat journey from Iquitos. They rescue, rehabilitate and release monkeys that were victims of the pet trade. The monkeys live freely on the island and are super friendly with visitors, climbing on people and playing around. They are all babies. Once they get old enough, they must be released back into the wild (otherwise their natural instincts take over and they could start becoming aggressive and territorial). We were so excited for this part of the trip. I've never interacted with monkeys before. It was a really fun afternoon and I highly recommend it if you are ever in Iquitos.

Getting to the Island was quite an unconventional journey though. There are no boats that take you directly there and the Island itself doesn't arrange your transportation. There are also no scheduled boat departures..and also, the port of Iquitos is not very tourist-friendly (there's no signs or anything, and people don't speak English). You kind of have to figure everything out on your own. Everyone there were locals and walking down to the port on wooden planks was quite scary for me lol. Luckily we had a guide in Iquitos who took us to the boat. The rest of the journey we had to figure out ourselves. Fortunately my boyfriend speaks/is Spanish so that helped a lot. I would not have survived there on my own.

Here are the scenes from Iquitos port. I really loved it (even though I hated walking on the planks) - it felt like a really authentic experience and we were the only foreigners around.







Then we went in a boat headed to "Varadero" port. One of these boats:


This was Varadero port. We got out and was kind of confused what to do next.


Oh & this was what we had to walk on lol. I was sooooo nervous.

We waited at Varadero port for quite a long time. We saw a lot of locals arriving and departing again on those boats, carrying all sorts of things with them. We were told that a boat from Monkey Island would come by to pick us up and bring us there. At first we didn't know that we were supposed to call the Island to ask for a pick up. Luckily another visitor knew and called them for us.


Finally it came and we were off!


We arrived!






I really loved this Howler monkey. When we visited the Amazon, we heard their "howls" at times. I think it's the coolest sound in the Amazon but also very frightening.


This was my favourite one!


Most of them were these - Woolly monkeys


This Scarlet Macaw kept attacking my boyfriend's shoes. I think he sees other colourful things as competition and wants to fight them lol.


Heading back..we had to do the same route. Take a boat from the Island to Varadero, then from there head back to Iquitos.



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709. Peru Trip | Wildlife (& Wildfire) in The Amazon

Drone shot of us with our guides in The Amazon!! I'm still in the middle of my Amazon posts and now the fires in the Amazon are all over the news and social media..so I'm feeling obligated to at least mention it lol. I don't have all the facts about this current fire in specific, but I do know that forest fires happen often/every year and are a necessary process of the environment. In fact, if there are not enough fires starting naturally..they are started intentionally as a way to "reset" the forest floor. When we were there we saw some very small fires started by people. I also heard that this fire was started intentionally by the Brazilian government in order to clear more land for cattle and agriculture and will not be used for reforestation. I personally do not agree with this and hope they do not get too extreme about it. In either case, there is nothing that people posting about it on social media can do ("thoughts and prayers" will not help). The Amazon is vast. Although it is sad for the animals there and different species dying away, I think people should be more worried about the Arctic disappearing.



Squirrel Monkey!




There were a lot of egrets in our area. I love them. They look very elegant.







The trees there are so cool! We came during the dry season so there was no water here but during the wet season, the water can get to a few metres high. It would be so cool to navigate around in a canoe.




This tree contains perfectly safe and drinkable water.


We found a caiman nest with eggs! Caiman can lay up to 50 eggs per pregnancy.




We visited this village, called San Juan de Yanayacu. There were a lot of kids. It was very small (I think population was about 90-something). All the houses were built around a rectangular field. Our lodge was one of the three in the area which supports this village. They showed us this anaconda snake they found:




The school in the village.


We bought some of the crafts they made.


What we do when the Internet is down/slow!

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