Amazon Ramble

Chaos at the fair grounds

The Strike and related traffic

The corn truck

Garcia family

Apaza family

Boat dock

Boat ride

Lucy the peccary

Lucy the peccary

Lucy the peccary

Lucy the peccary

Lucy the peccary, "Oooh baby, feels so good!"

Before really getting muddy...

Leaf cutter  ants

The gang

Lake Sandoval, Tambopata Reserve

Hoatzin/Stinky bird

Spider monkey

giant river otters

Artsy Sandoval Lake

Red howler  monkey

The Harbertsons on the  trail

The trail in low  sun angle

3 toed sloth

Amazon storm

Last week our fair-booth saga continued… On Monday we went to check out the booth location and learned that it is basically nothing like we had been told. The fair begins this Saturday and the archive director told Rich that we had jumped the gun in printing the banners for it… We are leaving for the US at the end of this week, so, he doesn’t think so. Essentially, Rich made them too long and too many based on the original configuration but we can make it work. The Johnsons will handle the booth in our absence together with a group of elders. The fair organizers could not figure out how to make an institutional pass to get  our elders in so we will have to pay for their entry. 

Additionally, it does not seem that the plan to have electricity available had been really considered and a good deal of our plan needs it.  In the various meetings were just studies in frustration. In the end, it seems that it will come together. After something more than s./2000, our original plan to pay nothing has turned into something of a joke.

Additionally the University down the street from our office went on strike. We actually have no idea why, but it is usually either the professors striking for more pay or the students striking for better professors. Little is accomplished other than a lot of milling around in the street and a day off work. Most importantly, it gums up the works all over town. There was gridlock on all fronts.

On Thursday, Elder Uceda held a meeting to help train the local stake and mission leaders and Rich got to go. Elder Uceda is a remarkable man with tremendous insights on how the church should work in Peru and he brings real and remarkable credibility to his training because he is Peruvian. 

On Friday we traveled to Puerto Maldonado for a district conference. We had a great conference with the wonderful folks there. It had been well organized with real effort to improve and grow the district into a stake. We were pleased with the experience and came away feeling pretty positive about it.

On Monday, we had made plans to take a day-trip into the Sandoval Lake in the Tambopata reserve with the mission president and his wife. We had planned this for some time and it came together just a week before we left. They picked us up from our hotel, took us down the river to a lodge we had not been to before. There we met Lucy a collared peccary who is tame as a puppy and quite the adorable little piggy. She walked right up to Rich and nuzzled him until he scrubbed her bristly little jowls and belly. She could actually turn on the faucet with her teeth to get her own drink of water.

Then we went into the lake. It was hotter than before, muggy, and with spectacularly gooey mud. We trudged our way into the lake and out all the while sweating like mad. We did see the giant river otters that we had seen before but this time we saw red howler monkeys, capuchin monkeys and had a wonderful view of a three toed sloth. It was really a great trip. When we got back to the river (The Madre de Dios) it started to rain and the temperature dropped forty degrees. We thought we might freeze just then…

We came back to Cusco on Tuesday, early afternoon.