Amazon Rain Forest and River Cruise

We’re off on another adventure with our friends from Overseas Adventure Travel, this time on board a riverboat to experience the Amazon Rain Forest up close and in living color. The trip included a few days in Lima, the capitol of Peru, and then took us to Iquitos, in the heart of the rainforest, to board our ship, La Arapaima.

From Iquitos, we sailed southwest on the Amazon River, to the juncture of the Ucayali and Marañon Rivers - the official beginning of the Amazon proper, as decreed by none other than Jacques Cousteau. From there we explored these tributaries, as well as several smaller rivers and creeks that feed them. It's a mystical, magical place - complete with rare pink and grey river dolphins, colorful birds, noisy monkeys, and the friendly, peaceful ribereños - the indigenous people who have lived and made their living in this wilderness for centuries, still clinging to their ways in the face of encroaching 'civilization.'

We had a great trip, and we hope you enjoy these words and pictures that attempt to capture a little of what we saw and experienced. Don't forget that you can enlarge the pictures by double-clicking on the image.