Over the last couple of months Jorge, the Guide so many of us are looking forward to meeting in May, has been sending greetings with Pictures from Peru…
Jorge shared some great shots whilst out on the river catching his food…
“Having Piranha for breakfast paddlers“, he informed us.
Is this one of the many local culinary delights we have to look forward to? Many of us are honestly not sure, but we suspect so and the imagination starts to run wild… what do they taste like? Are they as dangerous as they looked in the Tarzan movies some of us going watched as youngsters 😉
Piranhas have a bad reputation though many believe it’s mainly “Hollywoodised”. One website piranhaguide.com explains the reputation stems from the claims of President Roosevelt who witnessed a school of starved piranha fish eating a cow in a feeding frenzy within minutes!
The 1978 film Piranha, and many James Bond Villains have done nothing but enhance this reputation… though the experts would have us believe they are in fact Omnivores, eating anything from seeds,plant parts and seaweeds and yet they will eat meat from dead animals.
Jorge informed us that the rainy season had started early this year…
“the Rainforest is already starting to flood“, he told us.
The pictures he sent whilst out sharing hot chocolate and panettone with his brothers and sisters showed the state of the river at this time in the changing season.
Generally the weather is warm and humid throughout the year in the area we’re travelling to with more rain beginning in December which tends to mark the start of the rainy or wet season.
Iquito’s, where we’ll travel to, tends to see highs around 88 degrees fahrenheit (31c) and lows around 72f (22c).
The flora and fauna is abundant and you can see from these picture just how prolific the vegetation is.
Our final update from Jorge in December was around the current position with COVID. Clearly given the events of the last 18months or so many of us are worried about the impact of the global pandemic.
Jorge tells us “right here in the rain forest there are very few cases though it’s far more common in the city where vaccination became compulsory”
We clearly all have our fingers crossed, this Omicron variant that is sweeping the globe does not seem to be as severe as the previous strains (the scientists suggest).
In early January, Jorge is heading to the Yanayacu, which is the main part of the river we’ll be paddling on from the Derado lake, more updates and pictures will follow…
Thanks for the updates and pictures Jorge 🙂
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