La Selva Dia Uno

Back in the van, Katy and I were just about ready to ralph out the window when we finally arrived in Merced two hours later. When you see how awesomely sleep deprived we look in our pictures don't judge, we had been in a constantly lurching vehicle for about 16 of the last 20 hours
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Merced is actually a pretty big city for being in what seems like the middle of nowhere.  We bought marshmallows, a box of Peruvian “chocolate” and what we thought were graham crackers for a bonfire where we were staying that night. 8 soles (about $2.50) for 10 chocolate bars…we should have known! And the graham crackers weren’t very graham-y so we just stuck with the marshmallows and decided we should probably learn some Spanish soon…we didn't take any pictures of Merced womp womp

After sleeping like freaking rockstars we woke up the next morning and took “showers” (read dripping water) and headed off to breakfast and then the animal rescue. Everyone (including serpentineaphobic Katy) held an anaconda and admired all the crazy plants and butterflies (see pictures).

Meeting Spiderman
After the animal rescue we met our not-difficult-to-look-at guide, Yordin...

and crossed a crazy bridge to go on a tour of the JUNGLE!

 Yordin only spoke Spanish and despite our intention of learning Spanish in our sleep, we understood only about every third word he said (is anyone noticing a pattern here). Through hand motions and lots of smiling and nodding we learned about lots of indigenous plants, ate a tangerine-orange combo strait from the tree and oh yeah climbed about 8 waterfalls. 

Nate on a Peruvian "water slide"

Guess which one we took?

 That night despite being more than slightly exhausted, we went to a discotecha where Nate got his groove on with some sexy peruvians...I think somebody took pictures and I will add them when I find them. We also sampled the local bebida called pisco sours which has egg whites in it to make it frothy. que deliciouso!

More soon!