The Great Amazon River Raft Race and more!

Badass badge right here please, probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done but I’m still young so hopefully not the coolest thing I’ll ever do. On the first day of the race we were herded in buses to the town of Nauta (the oldest town in the department of Loreto) for a reception and then took a boat to where all our materials (saws, machetes, rope, 8 balsa wood logs) were laying on the bank of the river; there were 28 teams in total: 5 Peruvian teams, a few international teams (Canada, England, non PC American teams) and several PCV teams. Most of the international teams including all PCV teams hired locals to build our rafts. I think ours turned out pretty great, wish we could have picked out our logs though, we had very wide logs and I think it hindered us a bit. That night we slept in a tent with a broken zipper on the door so about a million mosquitos sucked out our blood all night, in the morning you could see the blood marks all over the tent from us smacking the hellish fiends to death. Thankfully the following two nights we had a different tent with functioning zippers.  I won’t go through every detail of the race but I’ll just point out some highlights of each day.

Day 1-  56 km (about 7 hours on the river)

I was a little afraid of river monsters so I was hesitant to get into the water to pee so since we were lagging behind I decided to pee off the side of the boat, crouched down, unfortunately due to my lack of balance I fell back into the water (pants down) and decided to just go ahead and risk the river monsters and I still have all my legs.

Our boat probably had the best snacks, we even had a “snack box” nailed onto our raft, we enjoyed our breaks.

Day 2- 62 km  (9ish hours on the river)

We got through 2 ½ rounds of 99 bottles of beer on the wall, honestly it really helped, we had a good rhythm going when we did, at first I said it as joke and the rest of the team started singing, but then we got down to about 80 bottles of beer on the wall and in my head I was like, ok we’re probably going to stop soon but I won’t be the first one to do it and then we got to about 50 bottles of beer and I was like, oh we’re actually doing this.

This was the longest day, two teams had to abandon their rafts due to sickness, it was little disheartening to see the empty rafts floating down the river.

Day 3-62 km (8 hours on the river)

Today we lost Brittany; one of the girls from a team who had to abandon raft on Day 2 wanted to race and Brittany wasn’t feeling up for it so Michelle replaced her; since none of us knew Michelle very well we filled the silences with get to know you questions.

The Peruvian teams were amazing, all the international teams started 1 hour earlier and we got passed by the Peruvian teams just a little over an hour; in our defense we did get stuck for about 20 minutes on a branch when we got too close to a beach, thankfully some locals on a small motor boat and children who were nearby swimming around the beach came and helped us off the branch and we were off again!

We were about to finish strong trying to get through one more round of 99 bottles of beer on the wall when we got stuck in a counter current and had to be towed in-a little anti-climactic but I was happy it was over-it had been a long 3 days!

Shout out to my amazing team mates Brittany, Emily, Nanda, and Michelle!!!!

I went to Iquitos and all I got was this lousy certificate! Hah-pretty awesome to have participated in something in the Guinness World Records!

Got to hold a monkey. Seriously happiest moment of my life, I nearly cried. I just wanted to hug him forever. We went to go look at other animals and when I came back to get more monkey love but then got peed on, oh well I still would have stayed there forever.

I have more animal pictures but I'll be posting them to the Face because it takes about a million times longer to upload them on here!

Flight to Lima from Iquitos.Through no fault but my own, I missed my morning flight from Iquitos, I let out a sigh of “Gracias a Dios” when the airport clerk told me I could get on the afternoon flight for no extra charge but was rightfully punished later on the plane when I literally thought I was about to plummet to my death. I, as many others, have been in planes with turbulence, but never had I been on a plane with so much turbulence that 3 women were screaming, the person sitting next to the only other PCV on the flight was praying , the couple next to me was holding each other and I felt like my stomach had fallen out of my ass (all of this in the span of 10 seconds). For those 10 seconds I thought in my head, “no one is going to know that I am dead, because I was supposed to be on the morning flight.” Thankfully after the small drop in the air, we lifted back up, I popped in my headphones and my heart went back to a normal beating pace and so the rest of my flight was a delight.

So I have been home in Pimentel for about two weeks and it has been a whirlwind getting ready for my trip with Honor (2 days!!!!) and for my vocational fair, what is a vocational fair you ask? As part of the commission of the town anniversary I am putting together a fair in which I am inviting universities, higher education institutes, and tech schools to have a display for high school students to take interest in furthering their education; so basically I have been going around from school to school dropping off invitations which takes longer than you think, then following up with phone calls/emails to confirm and unfortunately getting a confirmation of attendance from a school doesn’t guarantee that they will be there, (The Peruvian “Yes, of course I’ll be there” but With No Real Intention of Going mentality) I have to constantly call them up to and including the day of the event which is scheduled for October 21^st which means my beautiful friend will have to sit next to me patiently while I make ridiculous reminder calls to these schools, sorry in advance love.

I want to make a shout out to my Aunt Kae, mom, Uncle Joe, and Uncle John for helping me out with my trip to Cusco, scheduling two trips in one month on a Peace Corps budget is not financially savvy but Machu Pichu is expensive any time you plan a trip so I’m very grateful for their help-if anyone would like to help out  (early Christmas gift or small loan) send me a message and we can figure out logistics!

Thank you to all who have kept in touch with me, it means so much and I can’t wait to hug the hell out of you  Iowans in about 2 months!!!!! Besos y Abrazos