Man Down!!!!!!

Duuuuuuuuude, Chris has Dengue! LAME. He´s feeling better now, but what a week! We left Leticia, Colombia after only two days because Chris developed a pretty high fever and there was not very good access to medical attention in the middle of the jungle...ok we´re still in the middle of the jungle, but in a big city! We caught a jet-boat out of Tabatinga, Brazil on January 2nd and came directly to Iquitos, Peru. It´s pretty crazy here, Iquitos is the biggest jungle metropolis IN THE WORLD that is not connected by any roads! There are very few cars, so the streets are filled with motor-trikes with back benches that you just hop on and off for a few Peruvian ¨Soles¨.

Iquitos has very good medical care (for Peruvian standards) and we went straight to the hospital when we got here to make sure Chris´fever was normal. Well, apparently Dengue IS pretty normal here and everyone and their mother has had it. They suspected it right away considering his flu-like symptoms, and after a blood test they found that his ¨plateletes¨ were pretty low. This means that his blood is thin and having a hard time clotting. We decided it would be best to keep him there a few nights to monitor him and make sure he is getting enough fluids. There is no antibiotic for Dengue Fever, but it does have a very predictable course. It is very much like the flu and it wont leave any permanent damage or stay in his system once he is better. His platelets and white blood cell count aren´t low enough to be too concerned, we just have to make sure they don´t keep going down because the risk of internal bleeding gets worse. We got a private room so that I could stay as well and translate. A simple room with no electronic equipment, just an IV drip and two beds. A nurse came in every few hours to take his temperature in his armpit, I spent hours watching the ant trails on the walls... We were able to return to the hotel last night, and he has been feeling much better and has had no fever in the past 2 days! We are going back in tomorrow to do another blood test to see where he´s at with his numbers... I think we may be here a little while.

Chris will have to rest a lot in the next few days and can´t do any rigorous activities, which I know kills him! He is ready to get on with the trip and hike the Cordillera Blanca in Huaraz, but we´ll postpone that a little. We found a lovely hotel with air conditioning and a TV so Chris can have a peaceful environment to heal in. It is off the main road on a pedestrian walkway so it is quiet and calm, decorated with tribal masks and weaving. We have a balcony that overlooks the Amazon River and vendors are scattered around selling tribal jewelry. Necklaces, earings and bracelets made of fish gils, exotic bird feathers, snake bones, bull horns, crocodile teeth, raw gems, seeds and other things I can´t even identify! I want to buy so much jewelry and ship it home but gees, how many of these animals are on the endangered species lists!? In a few days I am going to go to a floating market on the river in a little town called Belen. It is supposed to be the most ¨exotic¨ market in all of Peru and you cruise around by canoe!

I probably should have started this on a more positive note... we had an amazing New Year! We stayed on a protected reserve in the Amazon Jungle outside of Leticia, Colombia called ¨Tabatinga¨. We stayed high in a tree (about a 10 minute hike through pure JUNGLE) in the most amazing tree-house! There were no nails used as to not damage the trees, and we even had our own little toilet, sink, and shower up there! The sounds of the jungle were insane, I tried to separate them and mimmick the different sounds but it was impossible. So many different noises, it was like a orchestre lulling you to sleep. My favorite were the nocturnal monkeys that we could hear swinging above our tree-house, laughing all night long! It was such a happy noise! We would wake up in the morning and see a rainbow through the canopy, and electric blue butterflies larger than my hand flutter by! An indigenous family lived on the reserve and a 4 year old girl and her puppy were our guides out to the tree-house. The family was nice, none of them could read or write. They had a handfull of kids that would run around the reserve using the young springy trees as their jungle-gyms (of course I got TONS of pictures).

Crossing borders proved to be interesting. I had to swindle emmigration to let me get both mine AND Chris´(he was sick back at the tree-house) exit and entry stamps. Where we were in the jungle is called the tri-border and you can hop between Colombia, Brazil and Peru within a matter of minutes... I did this quite a few times trying to get our arrangements out of there settled. Oh nothing is ever easy in South America, there´s always SOMETHING. The taxi runs out of gas, the road is shut down, it´s a holiday, nobody is in the emmigration office (perhaps a long lunch break?), there was an accident, the restaurant is out of food, no ATM´s work, the internet is broken, etc.... You just have to go with it! I think our week is finally calming down, I feel so much better now that Chris´fever has gone! STRESSFULL, but now we rest, slow-down, and enjoy the magic of the Peruvian Amazon!