“We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”

Hilaire Belloc

In the never-ending saga this trip turned into, on the return boat trip back to Iquitos I realized I’d left my glasses at the research center - the one in the northwest corner of nowhere. But, I always travel with an extra pair just in case something should happen to my regular glasses. Except my spare pair of glasses snapped into a pair of monocles the first time I went to use them.

“All together now, repeat after me… ‘Oh well, shit happens!’”

Walking in the door after being gone for two weeks, a glance at the aquarium left us both quite hopeful. The earlier tragedy was not nearly as bad as I thought based on the pictures my aquarium guy sent me. There is quite a bit of living coral, but just one lonely fish swimming around wondering where all his buddies went.

The pups were, of course, overjoyed to see us - their noses working overtime trying to figure out what the foul odor is we brought home. I’m not sure that gallons of bleach and/or Lysol will be able to kill the funk and bring back the ‘minty freshness’ to our clothes, shoes or suitcases, so I’m just shoving it all into the washing machine and hoping for the best.

Our assumption the camera and lens were ruined was confirmed when we took them to the camera store. So, we’ll be heading back to George’s Camera with credit card in hand and trade in the soggy camera and lens for shiny and new ones. Oh well, better to lose a camera over the side of a boat in the Amazon than to lose it to obsolescence sitting in a closet. Oh, these first-world problems we suffer through.

In case you were worried about either of us being around Zika or malaria-carrying mosquitos – don’t be. The tannic acid in the water changes the pH, so the types of mosquitos that carry those diseases are unable to live or breed around either of the lodges, so we were safe at all times. That’s not to say we weren’t bitten, but nowhere near as often as we thought we might be. It seems the 55-gallon drum of Deet we shipped in advance and then took an hourly sponge-bath in worked.

We don’t have any firm plans for a future trip to the far side of the world, but I’m hoping I can convince Mary of just velcroing ourselves to our deck and hanging out there for two weeks. It sounds far less calamitous than our most recent adventure.

Thanks for hanging out with us these past few days.

Adios!

PS - After several days of reflection on this past trip, I’ve decided I will see a shaman and his body-rubbing guinea pig, after all. I mean, with the trip we just had, what the hell could it hurt?

Yea, you’re right, the damn guinea pig would bite me, and I’d end up with rabies. Oh well,….

“It is not the destination where you end up but the mishaps and memories you create along the way.”

Penelope Riley