July?!? But its January?!? Yeah I know, but this is how it's happening so deal with it. Besides, this is just one of those things that you do whenever. Just like, 'Hey, let's go to a swap meet' or 'I have an idea, lets go to the beach.' No biggie man. HOWEVER, riding the canyon road of Los Angeles is a pretty special thing. Whether its the Malibu Hills, Angeles Crest Highway, or Ortega Highway. All of it is curvy goodness. I have stopped riding these roads several years ago because I started doing track days on the motorcycle. But then I started with 24 Hours of Lemons car racing and stopped doing motorcycle track days. THEN, I stopped doing that and was doing nothing again. Luckily, there are plenty of people who still want to ride these mountain roads; enter Steven.
Steven has asked to go on a motorcycle ride for months and months. Finally we just picked a weekend and scheduled it. Unfortunately I double booked with Holly's visit. But like I always do, I made lemonade out of country time powdered lemonade. Just add water! Holly has never been on the back of a motorcycle, I haven't ridden in over 6 months, I haven't ridden a canyon road in over 3 years; the logical solution? Take Holly "2 up" on a ride through the Malibu canyons with Steven! And that is just what we did.
All these canyon road have some iconic restaurant along or at the midpoint of the ride. Ortega highway has Lookout Roadhouse, Angeles Crest has Newman's, and Malibu has The Rock Store. On any given beautiful weekend, these restaurants have dozens and dozens to over a hundred bikes and cars parked out front. Almost always there is some super sexy bike or something really rare or something really tricked out. The Rock Store is known for having Jay Leno drive some motorcycle or car from his giant collection out there frequently. I haven't run into him yet, but I've been practicing my impersonation just to be ready.
On the way back we rode through a stretch of highway that usually has a couple of photographers in specific corners. This weekend was no different, except for the fact that I dropped Holly off to take some pictures of Steven and I dragging some serious knee through these corners. Unfortunately, Holly is still learning how to use my camera and totally missed all those shots so you'll just have to take my word for it! I'm kidding; we're both wimps and scared. We barely got our butts off the seat. It's funny, when you're riding, you think that you are hanging way off the bike. When you look at the pictures, you can see that this is totally not the case.
We finish the mountain road portion of the ride and take PCH from Malibu through Santa Monica and into Marina Del Rey. Gorgeous views, fancy cars, the Getty Villa, Duke's Malibu; this stretch of road has been used in hundreds of tv shows, movies, and commercials. Here is our little slice of fame; this stretch of road has now been featured in Rob's Photo Blog! That pretty much makes it more famous than Bruno Mars.
No accidents, no tickets, no engine problems. Rubber on the road 100% of the time, a great ride. Next time, Angeles Crest!
Saturday,
December 10, 2016 – Redondo Beach, CA & California Science Center
Okay, I
realize now that the title of this blog may be a little misleading. This is not the official, big time,
super-duper boozy, all the cool kids are at this party, pre-party. It’s the, our plans changed the day before
the party and everyone was being super indecisive so Rob offered to host and
now there are people at his house, pre-party.
But who are we kidding, I love hosting people anyhow so everything was
all good.
So a
little about this event and why it’s a big deal. First of all, I come from big aerospace where
we don’t even get money from the company to have a Christmas party. Instead, the managers have to finagle all the
anniversary milestone party monies to pay for the holiday party. And the holiday party is not at all a party as is it just an extended lunch where they tell you that you shouldn’t go back
to work if you drink. Basically, the
party is a giant wet noodle. (Why is
that a nickname for someone that is lame?
It makes no sense…) On the other hand, I started hearing stories about
the VG holiday party in AUGUST!
Apparently drinking and dancing are highly encouraged! That’s my kind of party. Better yet, since we are a bunch of space
nerds, the party is being held at the California Science Center! Not only are all the exhibits open to us, not
only can we go up to the aquarium and the petting pools, not only is there a
tons of free food, not only is it open bar, but we ALSO get to dance and party
UNDER THE SPACE SHUTTLE!!!!! HOLY
FUCKING SHIT BATMAN. I think I just
pooped my pants. I get excited about a
lot of things, I know, but this is special.
Like, I wear a giant bicycle helmet everywhere I go, special. Okay, I’ll stop now.
So the
dress code is, collared shirts and ties are fine, but tuxedos are more than
welcome. And there totally was tuxedos
that night! I heard this party dubbed as
‘Space Prom’ more than once. So when
people get gussied up, I get the camera out!
I do a liquor run and make a pot of clam chowder to make sure people
have some sort of food in their stomach before partaking, and I’m all set! Fortunately, Miles was ready to entertain
also.
Let’s do
some introductions shall we?
You guys
already know Jason and Alexis, their level of dapperness is pushing 11
tonight. Austin is Miles’ first victim
of force friending. He sat on Austin’s
lap for quite some time before working the rest of the room. Austin is my lead at VG, he’s from Ohio, runs
bunch of ridiculous races, is an equally accomplished climber, and knows way
too much about our company than any single person should. That being said… Austin’s the best, Yeay for
Austin! Who says flattery on a blog that
three people read doesn’t work? That
person would be weird, because that an awfully specific thing to be negative
about.
Next up
is Anna.Believe it or not, she’s
prettier in person, no joke.Miles seems
to approve also, as shown in his ever popular puppy dance.Anna works for Bisco as our supplier and has
graciously agreed to be my date for the party, lucky me.She’s got one serious work ethic as she does
her full time job during the day, then comes into her mom's Farmers insurance
office in the evening to beat people over the head for not paying their
bills.I’m sure she’s very sweet about
it though.PAY YOUR BILLS! Blink, blink…
sparkle, sparkle.
Last and
certainly not least, is Whitney and Clayton.
I’m not sure if I’ve introduced them before, and I don’t have internet
right now in this tiny 4 gate airport in Peru, so you can watch me try not to
contradict myself if I’ve already told you stories about them. I used to sit across from Whitney at VG when
I first started, now I sit far enough away that she can pretend like she
doesn’t hear me making lame jokes at her during the day. She’s half pinoy and half white (which
apparently isn’t a taboo term whatsoever), and can go on some of the best
tangents I’ve ever heard. She hails from
wet and cold Portland, Oregon and fits the bill with all her hiking, climbing,
and camping goodness. Whitney, Russell
and I just finished a welding class at Long Beach Community College (we passed!
No kidding, we were worried that we wouldn’t)
Clayton is her boyfriend who also is from Portland, though they met in
LA when they were both interning at SpaceX.
Clayton still hasn’t seen the light and is currently in a new role at
SpaceX, leave the dark side Clayton, you can do it, there are 8 movies all
about it, soon to be 9. Clayton and
Whitney are both into scuba diving, but Clayton is a bit crazy about it. He’s told me sereval stories where he’s worked
or been out till 2 am or so, have gotten up for a 5 am dive then gone into work
right after that. That sounds… like not
fun… but also like something I would do.
Okay,
here are a few shots of the rest of pre-party.
Surprisingly there’s only one of anyone drinking. Seems like a pretty lame pre-party, but I
swear it wasn’t. The night flowed well,
everyone got a bit tipsy to start the party, then continued it with Nick and my
somewhat personal driver who took us downtown.
These
next set of photos are totally not mine, they are the photographer’s at the
party but I had to show some of the venue.
Realize that this guy gets paid okay, so don’t compare his to mine! I really wanted to bring my camera to take
pictures, but that was seriously going to dampen my dancing, and well, we can’t
have any of that now can we.
I don't know this guy or anything, its just a cool shot. Also, he was a halfway decent DJ. Good job Bernie!
I reaaaaally wanted a picture of me like this. Jealous!
Look, its Garcia and Ed!
George Whitesides, our CEO.
So that's George giving the holiday speech under the shuttle. Directly in front of him is the dance floor. Yep, that's where it all went down.
The Space Shuttle Rocket engine, just for show... and space travel...
Woowoo!!!
Party Party!! It was a really fun night
that I wished has lasted twice as long.
Definitely have to make it back out to DTLA for more dancing before
January is over. Who’s with me!?
The
Quiroz family plans our vacations crazy far in advance, this one was no
exception. Just shortly after I started
for VG in late February, my sister was already asking me when I would be
available for our family Christmas trip.
“Uhhhh, I have no idea what this job will be like, so let’s just book it
and I’ll deal with it.” And that’s
exactly how it went down; luckily I completed a significant milestone at work
on Tuesday, two days before I was going to take off for vacation. Success! Better yet, I have no idea how we ended up
doing an Amazon River boat cruise. My
guess that my sister gave me 3 suggestions based on, “I’d like to do more South
America vacations” and I jumped at the chance to do an Amazon trip. I’m happy that my family plans so well
because I basically forgot about the trip until I had to start packing for it;
I didn’t know that we were going to Peru not Argentina until 2 days before, I
didn’t realize that my parents were on the same flight as me until the day
before, and I didn’t remember that I booked a flight on a 787 until I was at
the airport. Yeay surprises! However at that moment, I also remembered
that I booked 2 awful 11 hour layovers on the return flight just so I can fly a
787 back home. For those of you that
didn’t know, I was part of the 787
design team during my time with Boeing so I was super psyched to be on the
newest and most advanced commercial transport airplane in the skies today. I told the little boy next to me on the plane
that I helped design the plane we flying on and even he was super excited! (Or I made that up in my head.)
Friday, December 23, 2016 – Lima,
Peru
3
movies, 9 hours, and no sleep later, we arrive at our connection in Lima
International Airport. The airport is
jam packed, lines are incredibly long, and it’s stupid humid. Luckily, we meet up with my sister and her
family, Alex, Bryson, and Scarlet, and Alex’s mom, Jill. Playing with the kids easily kills our
layover and before we know it, we’re boarding the plane. I instantly pass out as soon as the plane
starts moving. Looks like I should have
slept on the first leg of this trip. I’m
jarred awake sometime later by the stopping motion of the plane. I’m surprised and happy that I slept through
the whole flight but as I sit there and wait for the all anticipated ‘ding’
that signals that everyone can race to unbuckle their seat belts and stand
awkwardly in the aisle looking at each other, it never comes. I look around and no one is getting up and
the people next to me don’t speak English and my spanish is muy malo.
Eventually, a stewardess comes onto the PA and gives a 30 second
announcement which I can’t follow but ends with “Cincuenta minutos” which is
quickly followed by a plane wide groan.
The English announcement is about 10 seconds and mentions nothing about
50 minutes but does say that we were forced to return to the gate due to a
medical emergency. I was so confused; so
much for time travelling via my nap.
Iquitos, Peru
The
pictures are coming people, I promise.
Our naturalist, tour guide, and translator meets us at the airport and
piles us into a van. We tour downtown
Iquitos which has a population of 0.5M.
First stop on the tour is a fairly touristy restaurant, but it did have
large local beers and a Lomo Saltado; I’m happy. Usually I like a walk after a meal,
especially when I’m exploring a new city, but humidity is at 85%, and my jeans
are a poor choice of clothing. I’m
reminded that I never bought the pair of lightweight long pants that I swore I
would by after the Galapagos. I struggle
through the rest of the walking tour until its back on the air conditioned
haven of the tour bus. As we drive
through town towards the port, we can see that all the houses and buildings on
the low land near the river are all built on stilts. Since Iquitos is on the bank of the Nay river
that is fed by the Amazon River, the water lever can raise substantially during
the year. At the port, we pile onto our
skiff and get to see the city from the river before arriving at our
destination, The Cattleya, which the name of an Orchid and the name of our boat.
A floating gas station!
Every room has floor to ceiling windows
Hearts of palm salad. I must find this at home.
Saturday, December 24, 2016 – The
Amazon River, Peru
During
the night, the Cattleya changes locations and my baller ass ceiling to floor
windowed bedroom shows me water and plant-life as far as the eye can see. After a very relaxed breakfast, playing with
the kids, and a brief spray down of mosquito repellent, we board our skiff for
our first animal spotting boat ride.
However, the first thing we notice is that on the main part of the
Amazon River, there are a lot of the local people in various types of boats or
canoes all powered by a lawnmower engine the directly drives a tiny 6 inch
propeller. There are many villages along
the banks of the Amazon River and the river itself is the locals’ main method
of transportation.
One of
the very few ways that the locals make money is to make charcoal. They gather trees that have already fallen
down, bury them under clay and dirt, and somehow burn the trees in a way that
creates charcoal without burning the tree completely away. It must be some
Amazonian Voodoo Magic, or some combination of organic chemistry, thermodynamics,
and material science; I’m going Voodoo Magic.
Alas!
Our first bird sighting! It’s a black headed vulture. Apparently, vultures eat
decaying corpses because their beaks and claws aren’t strong enough to capture
and eat live prey. My cartoons definitely
left that fact out of their depiction of vultures; I figured they just liked
gross things. Want another fun
fact? That tumor on the tree trunk is a
termite nest. Parakeets and other birds
poke a hole in those nests and put their eggs inside the nest. The termite nests reach temperatures of 30
degrees Celsius. 30 times 9/5 plus 32,
add ice, shake, strain into a frosted lowball glass gives you 86 degrees
Fahrenheit. The nest provides the safety
and heat for the eggs in place of the bird parents. These eggs are called lock and key eggs
because both bird parents have to work full time jobs to generate enough income
to send the hatchlings to and Amazonian Ivy League school, which can cost a
lot.
Black headed vulture
Yellow Headed Caracara
Termite Nest
Yellow Headed Vulture
Yellow Headed Caracara
As we
continue down the main part of the Amazon River, I pelt our guide and
naturalist, Chico, with questions.
R: How
long is the Amazon?
C: From
its source in the Andes to its exit in the Atlantic Ocean, it is about 7,000
kilometers
R: Does
the River get wider than this?
C: The
Amazon gets as wide as 4 kilometers
R:
What’s the hardest animal to find in the Amazon?
C:
Panthers and Anacondas; they are scared of humans
R:
What’s the deal with airplane peanuts?
C: I’ve
never heard of this ‘Seinfeld’
R: Why
are there so many dead trees on the banks and trees in the River?
C: When
the water level rises, the trees that aren’t big enough and don’t have a way to
get oxygen so they die and fall into the water; as the water level continues to rise,
all the trees that have died in the low season get washed into the river.
3 out of
4 Chico, that’s a C; gonna have to do better than that to compete with all the
latch and key parakeet hatchlings.
Bryson's Ninjaqu Legos
Lunch
back at the boat is fantastic and I make a note to steal this recipe and
presentation to use at home. After an
hour or two of downtime, we head back out to the skiff for more animal
spotting. Along the way we see another
village and some locals who are selling souvenirs as another source of
income. They tell us that they are
saving up by going to an Amazon Junior College for 2 years before transferring
to a 4 year Amazon College. I refer them
to some online S.A.T. courses that will greatly increase their chances of
getting in to UCLA (University of California in Las Amazonia). Is this still funny?
Yellow Billed Ternce
Three Toe Sloth
Smooth Billed Ani
White Winged Parakeets
Sand Colored Night Hawks
On the
next picture, the tall white tree shows where the water level is during the
high season. That’s a good 15 feet from
the current waterline! On our way home,
we see a waterfront lodge which is one of several that we encounter. I wonder who decides to stay at these types
of places because all of them seemed to be completely unoccupied by any guests. At any
rate, the boat ride back gives us a first row seats to one of the many insanely
gorgeous sunsets that Peru has to offer.
Back at
the boat, its Christmas eve and we’ve decided to do presents tonight so that
Bryson can use his super cool binoculars which is a present from my mom. This year, the family is trying out a Secret
Santa gift format. The requirements are
a gift under $20, a homemade card, and a ‘presentation’ about the
recipient. My sister goes first to set
the example, since she organized the gift exchange, and goes over and beyond
with 3 gifts and a 5 minute presentation.
Ummm, I was unaware that this was a Rockstar Secret Santa gift
exchange. All I have are some stupid
jokes. Anyhow, Ate gets mom, who gets
Jill, who gets me, who gets Alex, who gets dad, who gets Ate; then everyone
gets presents for Bryson and Scarlet.
All in all, it took under an hour and was pretty engaging, which is great
compared to the awkward gift giving of all previous years. Plus, there’s no way I’m fitting 7 gifts on
my carry-on bag along with the 2 binoculars, scope, and tri-pod, oh and
clothes. So great job Ate! I say we do it again next year!
Christmas
Eve dinner is this super awesome tiger catfish with a curry sauce, tomatoes and
onions, served with a side of yucca and rice.
I’d made a habit of asking our host and bartender, Pedro, what
everything was that we were being served.
Most of it was all local foods.
When he told me that it was tiger catfish, I immediately replied with
the unique “No Way!!” For some reason I
had been looking at tiger catfish the previous week. I, and most Filipinos, are big fans of
broiled catfish. Of course the south has
cornmeal crusted and deep fried catfish, which is tremendous. If you’ve never had either, stop reading,
text me, schedule a dinner, and I will make you both. I’m not kidding. It my mom’s favorite fish, and my third
favorite behind yellowfin tuna, and Alaskan black cod. What makes this tiger fish unique to normal
catfish is that its skin is a brilliant silver and has black tiger stripes down
its body and are giant! They can grow up
to 5 feet long! As I try to explain why
it’s so cool that we have Tiger Catfish for dinner, Pedro goes, “Do you want to
see the head?” “You have the
head??” “Yes, it’s in the kitchen, I’ll
bring it out.” Check the photo. That thing ain’t small. In fact, this one fish fed the meat eating
portion of our family for the rest of the week.
Tiger Catfish as food
Tiger Catfish as just a head
Pear boiled with red wine, sugar and cinnamon sticks
Sunday, December 25, 2016,
Christmas Day – Nauta, Peru
I wake
up to some knocking on my door followed with, “Rob, there are dolphins right
next to the boat!” Chico had told us
that there were two species of dolphins in the Amazon River, Grey and
Pink. “Wait, there are pink
dolphins? Isn’t this freshwater? There are freshwater dolphins?” Yes, yes, and yes. The grey dolphins are much smaller than the
bottlenose dolphis we are used to seeing and their dorsal fin is very
small. The pink dolphin is crazy looking
with a dorsal fin that is short and very long.
The pink skin kinda makes it look like one of those hairless dogs; a bit
unnerving. I didn’t get a picture of the
pink one unfortunately. But check this link for a pic.
After a
morning of breakfast and dolphins, we take a short skiff ride to a village that
has giant water lilies. They are exactly
what you’d expect but when you see them in person, they are pretty
impressive. Not like giant tortoise
impressive, more like, “Hey this documentary didn’t suck, I actually really
liked it.”
Lunch
was Lomo Saltado, as requested by me, since I love having the local’s food, and
Peruvian food is pretty much the shiznit.
Here’s a little known secret, at the 710 and the 91 is El Pollo Imperial; hands down the best Peruvian food in SoCal. It’s totally my style of restaurant, so don’t
drive your nice car, expect an 'A' health rating, or hope to hear a lot of
English, but the food is unbeatable.
With
lunch complete, we are back on the hunt for more animals. When we went to see the polar bears, our
guide had a spotting scope that gave really great views of the polar
bears. So I did my research and chose a
scope do the same thing. I even got the adapters
to connect a camera phone to it to make it easy for everyone to see what was in
the lens and the adapter to connect my camera to the scope. I’m all set!
One problem, it’s really hard to aim a scope even on a tri-pod, and
pretty much impossible on a moving skiff!!!
Scope fail.
Yellow Headed Caracara (Juvenile)
Common Snowy Egrits
Common Snowy Egrit
An Amazonian Riverfront Village
On an earlier skiff ride, we had explored a small offshoot of the main river. We hadn’t got far when we ran out of water and everything was covered water plants. With only a moment’s hesitation, the driver goes over and through the water plants like an airboat would. Whaaaaaaaat is going on? The whole boat cheers as we get back into open water. However, a minute later we turn around because the plant-life is too thick. Totally understandable. This ride is a different story though. The creek that we explore is covered with these water plants. That beautiful field of plants in between the trees is actually the creek. We boated through all of that. CRAZY! I would never do that in my boat.
Like this field? There's a river under all those water plants. We went through it.
Oropendula and their nests
Cucouy Heron
Yellow Headed Vulture
Squirrel Monkey
Cayman Lizzard
Waddle Jacana
Black Necked Hawk
Glass Tree Frog
Preying Mantis, This thing almost ate me.
Monday, December 26, 2016,
Christmas Day – Nauta, Peru
We don’t
travel very far overnight so that we can visit the main part of Nauta,
population 40K. We head to some sort of
wildlife preserve/zoo/feeding station where we can feed bread to turtle and Paiche. I’m really excited because wild Paiche are
humongous, up to 10 feet and can break a man’s ribs just by
thrashing. (I saw them on the discovery channel show River Monsters.) However, feeding wild animals
is never a good idea, especially protected marvels like this one. Either way, we go and have a fun time trying
to entice the fish and turtles with balls of bread. On the way out of the preserve, I do my best
to try and translate the stories about the local myths which are painted as
murals. How good is your Espanol? Please translate for me, k, thanks.
Paiche
Our last
stop in Nauta is the local market. Fresh
vegetables, rices, market restaurants, questionable medications, and giant
Peruvian corn which makes Peruvian cornnuts!
I’m sure most of you know about these already, but in case you don’t,
these put normal cornuts to shame. Go to
your local Trader Joes and look for a yellow plastic bag labled Peruvian Inka
Cornuts. Likely they will be sold out,
because they always are, but if they aren’t, buy one for you, and buy one for
me too.
Aguaje, basically a Peruvian Potato
Sweet Peppers and Tomatoes
Premade veggies for a common Peruvian soup
Peruvian Hot Peppers, DAMN HOT.
Local Market Restuarants
Giant Peruvian Corn
Back to
the boat for Tiger Catfish wrapped in leaves and Cama Cama berry chiffon. Chino informs us that we will be out till
past sunset for the afternoon skiff ride and to wear long pants and long
sleeves to keep away the mosquitoes. I am
quick to jump on this as my shorts and sandals outfit has left me with several
dozen mosquito bites. If I die from
malaria, someone make sure that my car and motorcycles are willed to
Miles.
This
skiff ride is in a proper nature reserve, complete with a registration in a not
so waterproof log book. This creek is
filled with what is called black water.
The creek is mostly stagnant water where the trees, leaves, and
plant-life die and decompose in the water giving the water a black color and a
mirror like quality. It gives off
awesome reflections of sky, the trees, and my face. Of course, no skiff ride adventure wouldn’t be complete without sections of the creek being completely covered in water plants and hidden logs that we kept hitting. Tiger Catfish steamed in leaves
Cama Cama Dessert
Preserve Ranger Station
Cucouy Heron
Ficus Tree that the Amazonians call the Bob Marley Tree, or Chino was just messing with us.
Red Legged Cricket
Waddle Jacana, Check out its feet!!!! It has giant feet so that it can walk on the water plants without sinking into the water.
I don't know how we made it through all these water plants
Water Hisen
Yellow Ram Casiquis build their next next to wasp nests for protection and feed the wasps in return
Paper Wasp Nest
As the
sunset, Chino explained that we would start looking for nocturnal animals,
specifically the White Belly Cayman Alligator.
What better way to look for scary animals than in the complete dark, in
a boat, in the Amazon River. No
problem. Also, it’s really hard to avoid
hidden logs when its pitch black out.
Chino did have a pretty hardcore light that did double duty as a log
search light and to search out the red eyes of hiding animals. We did have enough luck to find an owl, a
couple Cayman Alligators, and didn’t lose our propeller on our way home. Call us Indiana Jones of the Amazon!
Jungle Owl
White Belly Cayman
Tuesday, December 27, 2016 – Pacaya
Samira National Reserve, Peru
I am
again awakened to the knock on my door and the announcement of pink dolphins
outside of my window. I gratefully do my
morning meditation while watching the pink dolphins play on the rivers’ surface. I’ll get a picture of them later… that plan
didn’t quite pan out. I did however get
to watch some locals fish right outside of the boat and got a super close up
view of the frog that was hanging out right outside my window.
Chino
gave us the news that today we would be kayaking in one of the creeks! My mom is a notoriously bad kayaker, and
given that we will be kayaking in the Antarctic Ocean this time next year, I
suggest that she get some practice with me in the kayak. The result?
A kayak that couldn’t go straight, but didn’t tip over. I’ll count that as a success. At the halfway mark, half the group went back
on the skiff while my sister and Alex kayaked back along with my dad and
me. I think my dad almost threw out his
back while trying to kayak laying down.
We were all pretty happy to get some kind of exercise in and to be able
to tour the Amazon in almost complete silence.
Watching grey and pink dolphins from a kayak… not a bad way to spend a
morning. We were supposed to swim with the
dolphins after kayaking, but a previous tour boat had radioed in that their
guests were being bitten by tiger catfish.
We tried for the rest of the trip but didn’t have the opportunity. Damn wildlife ruining my first world
vacations; how rude.
Hilya Puntata
These local boys were helping us with our anchor line
It was
pretty much a monsoon for about an hour during our lunch break but luckily it
cleared up for an afternoon skiff ride.
On the plus side, we did get to see another sloth which have proven
difficult to find and another passenger boat which apparently costs about $3 to
ride.
Male 3-toed sloth (Yellow coloring)
Roadside Hawk
An Amazonian River Water Taxi
Wednesday, December 28, 2016 – Somewhere
in the Amazon River, Peru
Guess
what we get to do today?! Go
fishing!! Guess what we get to fish
for? Piranha! I’m totally not kidding either! I remember watching an episode of Anthony
Bourdain where he goes to the Amazon and fishes for piranha. We got to do the same thing! The best part is that the fishing setup is
totally novel. Our rods were pretty much
thin tree branches, there was about 8 feet of line on the 8 foot rod, a ¼ ounce
sinker, then about 2 inches of wound steel wire that terminated at the
hook. The wire is there so that the
piranha can’t bite through the line. And
what is the most appropriate bait for this carnivorous fish? Beef Tenderloin! How great is that?! The fishing grounds were pretty mushy and we
were all ill prepared for the muddy environment, including myself in my very
typical white leather shoes. Why do I
keep doing this to myself? Because white
shoes are the best! That’s why! Anyhow, I settle on fishing out of a canoe
that is still somewhat wedged onto solid ground. After a successfully catching a few piranha,
I switch spots with my sister so she can have a go in the canoe while I bait
her hook for her. At some point I decide
that I’ll go ahead and fish right next to her.
Now since there’s a little too much weight in the canoe, it starting to
take on some water, not a ton, but at least a couple inches. It’s really hard to hook these piranhas
because of their hard mouths so you end up just kinda getting the hook barely
hanging on to the fish while you try to fling it onto shore. However the fish that I was pulling up fell
off the hook early and into that canoe that my sister was sitting in and since
the canoe had some water in it, the freshly caught piranha could frantically
swim up and down the canoe right underneath the seat my sister was sitting
on. My sister freaked out and was screaming
to get rid of the fish. Since the canoe
was super unstable, she couldn’t move, and since I was super awkwardly
positioned, I couldn’t move either. She
had to wait for Chino to bring over the bait cup to scoop out the piranha. It was absolutely hilarious! My sister got the last laugh tho, posing with
it in some pictures with Bryson. Bryson
did not like being that close to it at all but tried his best to smile for the
picture. All in all, 22 piranhas, 3 of
which were deep fried for dinner that night. How to fish for Piranhna, use wire!
Piranha Bait, Beef Tenderloin
Red Belly Piranha
Bryson is so not happy
22 Piranhas!
Deep fried Piranha, kinda tough.
There
was one more expedition that evening that I decided to bow out of since I was
ill prepared for any kind of hiking let alone hiking in wet ass white leather
sneakers with wet ass jeans on a wet ass trail.
All of that screamed 2 hours of being uncomfortable and grumpy. Seems like I missed out though; the rest of
the gang saw some awesome stuff. The
joke is on them though, cause instead of opting out of the hike to nap, I
stayed up and blogged for the entire time!
Wait, that’s not exactly a day at Disneyland… dammit, I gotta buy some
better travel gear.
Tree Frog
An Anaconda!
Poisonous Jungle Frog, Red = Bad
This is a bird eating tarantula, about the size of the palm of your hand!
Thursday, December 29, 2016 – Nauto,
Peru
The day
of departure is here! It is time to start my ridiculous series of
layovers. I get dropped off at the
Iquitos airport at noon and hang out until my flight at 11pm, my flight arrives
in Lima at 1 am and departs for LA at noon.
Fortunately, I booked a 5-star hotel in Lima for the night and plan to
scope out the town for some late night revelers to help pass the time. Hopefully this 5-star hotel is not a sham
like the one in Panama City. C’mon South
America, step it up!
The trip
back home starts with a 2 hour drive from Nauto to Iquitos where we weave
through the countryside. Iquitos has
only one road in and out of the city, and it only goes to teeny tiny Nauto. All other transportation to other parts of
the country is conducted by air or by water.
This would be a good setup for a fort, or the next season of Game of
Thrones. Iquitos also means ‘The Happy Red People’ after the natives that
started the city who painted their bodies red.
Thank you Mr. Tour Guide!
We have
one more stop in store for us before I get to the airport. There’s a manatee rescue center just at the
entrance to Iquitos. I didn’t know what
to expect, but I surely didn’t expect to find this! Basically, the locals would try to bring in
illegal animals to sell in the city, and the police would confiscate them and
send them to this sanctuary. It sucks to
see these wild animals caged up, but at least here, the university takes care
of them. The manatees are protected by
law, but the government has no money to take care of them, so they end up
here. The first thing we see when we
enter the manatee portion of the sanctuary is a baby manatee being bottle fed
by an animal keeper. I’m so amazed, I
forgot to take a picture of it before it was over. I’ve seen manatees before, but never like
this. Good stuff man.
Giant River Otter
Manatees!
Another
great trip to South America, and a successful family vacation. NO DRAMA!
OMG. This is amazing. The next
time I come down to South America, I’m gonna do a tour of all the Amazonian
Colleges there to see how the parakeets are doing!
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