The Amazon Part One — Annabelle

Living in Lima was pretty fun.  We lived in Lima for three weeks.  We did not have any big grocery stores, just tiny stores on the side of the street that sold candy bars, chips, vegetables, fruit, bread, water and sometimes things like black pepper.  My brother and I bought glass bottles of soda that we could return and refill them for 1.5 soles.  We went to walk around Lima and mom said there was a place called Divercity that was like a children’s museum.  In order to get to downtown, we had to take a bus that took about 2 hours and it was really crowded, the bus went really slow and kept stopping every few minutes.  Once I got to sit up front!  We got to a big shopping mall called Jockey Plaza because it had horse racing there.  We entered the mall into Tottus which is a grocery store.  Me and Sylvia were kind of excited about the children’s museum.  We found it in the mall, it was outside. Sylvia, Max, dad and I went into Divercity while Jack, Jennah, mom and Ryan walked around.  We had a really fun time.  When we first got there the person handed us a $250 check and we had to go over and sign a thing to get an ID.  Divercity is a little city that has little jobs you can do and get money from and then there are things you can spend money on like rock climbing walls and you can drive around in cars but you have to take a driving test which the driving test cost $30 and took half an hour and then you had to pay for a car.  I had to pass a Spanish driving test and I got third place out of 8 kids!

Mom and dad were making plans to go to the Amazon.  Finally mom bought tickets.  She said we were leaving on Wednesday.To get to the airport, we flagged down a taxi and we all got in.  Max, Sylvia and I got into the wayback and we all scrunched in.    We got to the airport to wait for our flight.  The plane left.  It was 2 hours.  We landed and I got out and it was hot, really, really hot.  We got three motos and it was very nice on the moto!  But then it all went downhill when we went on the combi ride.  The combi ride was long and twisty and it made me feel sick.  We got to Yurimaguas and we took motos to buy hammocks for the boat we were going on on the Amazon River.  Once we bought hammocks, they said the boat was going to leave at 8.  When we got down to the dock, which was just a little place of ground, the boat was heading down the river.  We could see the lights.  There were bugs and bats and I was hungry.  A man told us there was another boat that carried passengers so dad and Ryan went to check it out.  After a few minutes, they came back and said it was kind of filled with bugs.  Mom said “Let me go see”.  She took Sylvia (because Sylvia had to go to the bathroom) Max and Ryan.  When they came back, Max told me there were lots of bugs, huge spiders and huge bugs and I started to get creeped out.  Mom said lets get a hotel for tonight and we can think about this tomorrow.  So we did.

I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night.  There were three beds in our room and the middle bed was under a light and bugs would hit the light and fall on the bed.  I was afraid that bugs were on me.  But they weren’t.

Next morning. mom and dad were already awake when I woke up.  I got out of bed and jumped into the shower.  We all got motos and went to the boat.  I finally got to go on the boat and see what it looked like.  I was like this isn’t so bad and then Max came over and said wait until it gets night Annie, wait.  I started to get creeped out again.  I stayed on the boat while mom, Sylvia, Ryan and Jack went to get water.  Jennah fell asleep.  Max was in his hammock sweating.  Dad and I went to the top of the boat.  We sat there watching the people carrying cargo onto the boat next door.  They were loading wheat on one boat and cows on the other boat.  They came back with the water and I went with them to get the bags.

Life on the boat was like this:  it was hot, very, very hot.  There were a lot of bugs but they were not so bad but there were still a lot of bugs.  We slept in hammocks.  We were all together in this one space with our own hammocks with a lot of other people and a chicken and chicks.  We had a cabin which was fancy for the boat but not for us really.  The cabin had thin mattesses and when you closed the door it got really hot.  The bathroom was at the back of the boat and open so you could see the river and we saw river dolphins. The bathroom floor was always wet because people took showers in the bathroom stalls and wash laundry.  It was pretty nice to take a shower even if it was Amazon river water it still felt nice.  The kitchen on the boat had cooks who made food.  It was pretty good if when I think about it. Most people got into a big line.  We didn’t have to because we had a cabin and got special treatment.  What was for breakfast was bread and butter and banana milk porridge.  Lunch was pasta and chicken and some other stuff with potatoes and peas.  Dinner was the same.