Our Jungle Cruise...

(written from our teeny tiny room on the bunkbed...)

Hey Everyone, Its adam, We are in PERU! Riding a boat down the Amazon! I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be. It has been awesome! I have got to show and share with jess some of the places I love and grew up in and now we are going down river (7 days down river) from where I lived to start a life of our own! Jess is doing way better than I expected! We have been on this boat now for 6 days and she still likes it!!!! Even though the last couple of nights we have stopped in little small villages and had tons of kids watching our every move and have been fed fish with boiled plantains (a type of banana) and Masato (0ld lady’s spit) and have been getting ate up by mosquitoes every night watching the sunset with me. (that’s when mosquitoes are the worst) (Jess says that they are still bad all the time just worse at sunset) She still loves that we are here!

So we started off Saturday in a four door 4/4 Toyota truck from Lima with all our stuff and our bosses dog. It had been a long time since I had drove in Lima and getting out of there was a little scary and stressful. But we made it to a road that I knew and had been with my dad on several times over the mountains it took us 14 hours to get to a place where it was safe to stay over night!

I was stopped by cops over 10 times for various reasons like not having a fire extinguisher in my car or a flair gun and then the usual was that I was speeding. They must have got a special on 30 KM speed limit signs while I was gone because they are every where! Even on hundreds of miles of straight roads with no other traffic! Do you know how fast 30 KM is? Its 18.6 mph!!! It would have taken us days to get to our first destination if I would have gone that fast!

You know how I said that we had our bosses dog with us. Well at one of the stops I made to pee I let the dog out. We were high in the mountains with a awesome view no one around for miles so I thought I would let the dog run and play a little fetch. We were by a river, a really fast moving river and I was playing with the dog and I through this rock and it kinda hit this other rock and flew into the river. (now you have to know that 2 days before we had left Lima I had already killed another dog but it wasn’t my fault I had taken my bosses dog out on a walk and we walked by this nice house and this little miniature poodle came running out barking its head off at my bosses dog. Well my bosses dog freaked out and somehow slipped out of its collar and ran out into the middle of the road into a ton of traffic the poodle followed. Some how my bosses dog didn’t get hit but the poor poodle got smashed. (So I have been having a little bad luck with dogs) I didn’t know that my bosses dog would jump into a raging river for a rock but he did! I was sure the stupid thing was going to die because it was going down some class 4 rapids and moving down river to some falls fast! Luckfully I was able to run down river and catch him before he got to the really rough stuff! Needless to say I haven’t let him run free since!

We made it to Pucallpa on Sunday and I got to show Jess some of the place I used to go and where I used to live and visit with some missionaries that were there when I was a kid. We picked up another truck an older Toyota 4/4 which is going to be ours!!! However it looked a little rough and had a flat tire because it has just been sitting for a long time. I was able to get the tire changed which was a lot bigger challenge than it should have been because I didn’t have a jack that could lift up the truck high enough to put an inflated tire on it. Anyway we managed and the next morning we met my friend Pepes dad down at the docks and he got us on a boat for Free! It pays to have friends and know people! Getting the trucks on the boat was very interesting and I about peed my pants doing it. I had to drive them through the mud and onto two little boards and balance them across a 20 foot gap over the water and onto a boat the tires were slick with wet clay and trying to get up enough momentum to get them onto the boards while not slipping off and then onto the boat was quite the adrenalin rush! But we got them on and are about to our final destination at least for now!

I about got an ant eater for a pet the other day but jess and I decide against it as we will be going out into the jungle for 3 months soon and wouldn’t really be able to take care of it. I really wanted it though they make great pets jess said I could get one after we get out of the jungle. Well I hope you all are doing well. Take care, Thanks so much for all the prayers! We really need them! Adam (and Jess)



Other things that happened on the trip!! ...ps. we will post pics later, but the internet is too slow right now and we are sweating almost to our deaths...

˜ Every cop that stopped us told us that if we didn’t make it to Huanuco – the town we were headed to – before dark, basically we would be attacked by terrorists and die…. Oh and ps. It will take you 6 hours (that was what they all said – even when we were 14 hours away & 1 hour away)!!
˜ Do dogs die when enclosed overnight in a truck with a camper shell?
˜ How much food & water does one need for 4-7…maybe more -- days in 150 degree heat…on a boat?
˜ So apparently they want me to drive a 2 ton truck onto the boat using two 2by10 boards … not just once, but twice!
˜ (While on the boat, first night) “We need you to turn off your light so the pirates don’t see us – this is where they usually attack.” …. I mean, have YOU ever prayed, “God, please keep us safe from the pirates?” cause I know it was my first time!
˜ (3rd day on boat … which was Wednesday, and “they” had told us we would arrive Friday) Man on boat, in Spanish of course, “Well we should be getting in on Sunday!” Adam, “Sunday?” Man, “Yeah, Sunday.” Adam, “Could you go tell Jess that?”
˜ Adam, “Jess, why are your eyes closed? Are you sleeping, because it is only 6:30pm?” Jess, “No Adam, I am not sleeping – but I am sick of counting mosquitoes and sweat is getting in my eyes...”
˜ I think it’s your turn to clean up the dog poop.
˜ I only brought 12 books to read – what I am going to do when I run out!?
˜ (4th day on boat…after drinking YET another very strange and unfortunate tasting liquid for lunch) Adam, “So I just realized that they are making our drinks out of rain water…it’s a wonder we aren’t sick yet.”
˜ (in regard to other “questionable drinks” this one is white) Jess (after one drink) “Oh man, that one was the worst ever….what was that???” Adam, “That is masato … the drink they make out of spit…” Jess, “Oh, and you didn’t think you needed to tell me that BEFORE I drank it?!” Adam, “I wanted to see your reaction.”
˜ (while eating lunch) Jess, “ Did you see that? What was that in the roof?” Adam, “Oh that’s a rat carrying its (red, crying, nasty) babies to a different nest…guess it got hot in the ceiling of the KITCHEN.”
˜ (while in the shower) Jess, “Adam, something is coming out of the drain.” Adam, “Yup. Those are roaches, lots of um.”
˜ (5th night on boat, which is stopped at some random village …. Stopping = NO BREEZE) At 12:38am: Adam, “Hey Jess, are you awake?” Jess, “Of course Adam, my body feels like its on fire – I haven’t learned how to sleep while sweating to death yet.” Adam, “I have a good idea.” Jess, “Ok, lets hear it…because I have NOTHING else better to do.” Adam, “I think we should get the computer and some cokes and go watch a movie in the truck with the air-conditioning on….Jess?” (I am already out of bed with my shoes on) Lets GO!
˜ After 6 days of being on the boat – I still haven’t gone poop…what does that mean? Who does that happen to in a 3rd world country while drinking rain water?