Pisco Sours, Ponchos & Panpipes PART 8

So we had been in Peru for a good few days now and in the rainforest for a couple and guess what we hadn’t even seen a sniff of rain (A very common saying in Peru). So we had been for a lovely swim in the river after getting very hot and sticky on the trek and then we realised that actually big dark clouds were approaching and we didn’t have long before it was going to dark and we still hadn’t set up our tents.

As we were setting up the tents the weather drastically changed and a really big wind started, the sky changed colour and the thunder started with large flashes of sheet and then forked lightening. The thunder and lightning was fantastic and then the rain started, we had a problem as we then discovered our tents were not waterproof so we had to drag them under some shelter to stop us getting soaked as we sleep. We then woke up to yet more rain – I loved this because I was beginning to worry that we had come all this way to the rainforest and would not get any rain. Watch the video below and you can both see and hear the rain as we were having our breakfast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzJVTmr6qm8

We woke up the next morning to Ruth shouting (well not shouting, a raised voice asking can things get into the ten from outside such as spiders? Stephen replied saying he didn’t think so, she then responded saying it looks like there is a big one hanging from the roof of the tent. Now I must explain that in the previous days I had become accustomed to seeing Ruth instantly perform the river dance when even a small fly had come too close to her so I wasn’t really impressed by her tale of a big spider hanging from the roof of their tent because if it really was a big spider she wouldn’t have been sat there in the tent calmly asking about it.) Well I need to take it all back, she was in fact just being super brave! Dil got out of his tent and went to have a look and said oh wow that is a big one and I think its deadly, very quickly myself and Stephen jumped out of tent because we were quite close to the tent with the spider in it. It turned out that the spider was in fact deadly however it wasn’t inside the tent built hanging between the two linings of the tent it had obviously with most of the other living things had took refuge from the downpour with us. The villagers had to kill it in case it bit any of the kids etc so it was quickly disposed after about 3 attempts with a broom handle! I would like to acknowledge the courage and bravery of Ruth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skSPsQVO00k

Mmmm I was just thinking where was Matt while all this was going on well if you can remember we left him behind at the Missionary clinic as he was too ill to travel so that morning we were waiting to hear by radio whether he would be travelling down to join us if he was well enough. More of that later.

So anyway as you can see it was raining quite heavily and we were supposed to be visiting the local school in Tinkerani however no one seemed to be in any hurry due to the rain so we sat round and had a leisurely breakfast. We then had a great excuse to spend some more time with the children in the village which was fantastic – Emily had brought some plasticine which the kids absolutely loved! I also brought them some balloons which really did go down a storm, we saw them playing with these balloons 2 days later still when we left!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2VwjskzsZM

While we were waiting for the rain to stop more importantly we were also waiting for news on the radio of poor old Matthias. We had waited a few hours and we still had no news of Matthias we were all wondering whether we would see him again (today anyway). Then the rain stopped and we packed up and headed over to the local school. The school was a small primary school with a few classrooms, in fact the nearest secondary school to the village was actually the one we had visited in Cuti which was a two hour walk away from where we were. It was fabulous to spend some more time with the children in the village as we watched their performances and saw them learning in the classroom. When we spoke to the teachers they also had a fantastic idea of creating a fish farm at the school on the river so that they could actually use the fish for food as often the kids may not have any food some days and so are hungry. (We will be fundraising for these schools in the future so will be looking for more schools to get involved – watch this space for more information soon)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTnfiTo1mcw

So after a fantastic time at the school when we returned we had a brilliant surprise Matthias had returned and was sat in the camp. The whole team were back together again.  Now it won’t be a surprise to any of you that of course there would be an amusing story about Matthias and what he had been up to for the last 20 hours or so. You may remember that last time we saw him was on our two hour trek to Tinkerani where as he was too ill we left him at a clinic to be looked after by Lazario and also Chambuka from Cuti. Poor Matthias was really ill and slept in one of the clinic beds for most of the day and evening sleeping off the sickness. The clinic was an interesting place as it seemed like no one had been in there for the last 20 years but was full of really good medical stuff. In fact Matthias had been given a lovely cocktail of traditional ashaninkan herbal remedies and also antibiotics and really did make him feel better by the morning. However over night was the night of the storms and unfortunately the clinic was obviously a safe haven for anyone or anything around so in the middle of the night Matthias was joined in the clinic by a large part of giant toads and vampire bats. Don’t worry he wasn’t bitten apart from the bed bugs (you should have seen his back and chest wow they really did have a feast!)

The rest of the afternoon we headed down for a shower – well a bath in the river but wow this was not the same river as yesterday surely? After all the rain it was about a hundred times faster and so much darker in colour. It wasn’t as quite as inviting as the day before however it was nice to get in and get clean. I didn’t hang around at the river though and so returned earlier to camp with Ruth we were really happy about this afterwards as talk about being in the right place at the right time. As we came back to camp we were lucky enough to see a chicken be killed that we were about to eat an hour later! Mmmm nice!