Happy birthday to Rochelle!!!!!

Iquitos Sat 13th-Tue16th Nov

Sat night back in Iquitos, after our Amazon adventure, we stayed in relatively cheap backpackers for the night and met up with a couple of American girls for dinner that we had met on the taxi ride back into town. They were studying anthropology in Lima and we talked about politics, education and the overly sexual Peruvian boys and ate burgers and pizza, not chicken or rice!!!

Sunday was my birthday!!!!! Yay for me!! Pete had to be nice to me all day, and he did a very good job. I decided that I wanted my present to be somewhere nice to stay, so we checked out of where we were and headed to a hotel that had a bar fridge in the room and a swimming pool, and decided to stay for two nights. Just having a fridge is a present in itself- it was the first time for us on our trip and we were able to keep things cold! Things like beer. May sound trivial, but cold beer or, to a lesser value, water, is a vital companion for survival in these parts. We had lunch at the restaurant at the hotel, which was the first and last time due to the the menu was small, the beer limited to only locally brewed and that came presented without any labeling. On a positive note, we cannot say another rotten word about the service in Hervey Bay as it took well over half an hour for our food landed on our table when there was only us two there! It was made well by the chocolately fact we had a huge, delicious piece of chocolate cake to snack on-my birthday cake. This thing was damn good, it had little layers of frosting through it and even a line of caramel that we weren’t expecting! We couldn't even eat it all in one sitting!

After our lunch we headed back to the Yellow Rose of Texas for some beers. We went upstairs where they had a sports bar, where we played some darts and pool. We sung bad American songs and drank local beer and had a laugh. Pete won 2 out of 3 at the darts, which was fair enough as I really suck at it. When it came to pool Pete won the first won, I sunk the white with the black on the second game but he let me win (it was my birthday) but when I decided to pot the white again on in the third game, Pete took the win. I would have to if I were him. All in all, it was a great afternoon.

We bought some beers and chips and went back to the hotel and played cards in the room. When it started to rain outside we went for a swim in the pool. When it was time for dinner we went to an Italian place we had spotted earlier and got pizza and listened to these two old guys who were singing and playing guitar and a drum that was a big wooden box one of them was sitting on. They were great!!! They spoke no english but Pete still tried to request songs, and it took them a while, but they did understand when he told them it was my birthday. So they sung me Happy birthday!! I think it was a fairly well composed birthday considering it was without family and friends, after all I ate cake got 'Happy Birthday' sang to me by two primo musicos, and had a nice queen size bed to relax into, I was spoilt by my man.

Monday we intented to go to to a butterfly farm we had heard about that was a little bit up river. We had befriended a touk-touk driver the day before who spoke english, so he came and picked us up to take us to the would be harbour (it was pretty small). Once we got there we found out that it wasn’t even open on Mondays! But he told us of a zoo on the other side of town that was open, so we took the hour ride there. We were a bit concerned we weren’t going to make it, his motorbike was spluttering and everything was overtaking us on hills. The zoo was pretty cool. We had seen a few of the animals already in the Amazon, but there were jaguars and pumas and leopards there magestic creatures that are a sight to behold, shame about the cages though. Come to think of it...probably for the best.

We got to hold an anaconda! Our favourite new animal was the Pigmy Marmoset, the smallest little monkey type thing eva. It looked like Gizmo from the gremlins movie. There were few of these hings, but all very shy. Only one was a bit inquisitive and would come out in front of us and let us see him. He had the tiniest hands and puffed up fur and this little face- oh how we want one!!!

The zoo as really big and even had a beach in the middle of that you could swim in and had a volleyball net on the sand. There were restaurants too. It was a pretty spot but we wouldn’t of gone in the water- it was a bit brown. On the far end of the zoo it went off into what looked like a bit of a nature walk through some bush. We didn’t venture off into it, thought it safer not to.

We ended our day in our hotel room with takeaway pizza from the restaurant the night before, and another piece of chocolate cake!

Tuesday we were up early to get on another flight back to Lima. Looking at all the photos now, we should’ve taken more of Iquitos itself, but to be honest, it didn’t really excite us too much, especially after the necklace incident. We will always think of the Amazon and animals when we think of this part of the journey and really fucking good cake. xxx

Happy birthday to Rochelle!!!!!

Iquitos, Peru