The Amazon

Since I don't feel that I was able to fully depict an accurate picture of what Lake Titicaca was like, I decided that instead of doing a play by play of each day in the Amazon, I would just pick one or two things and focus on those. That would be the animals and the various Reserves we went to.
We went to two private reserves where one had a variety of animals that we held: sloths, a monkey, a bird, a boa, an anaconda and an alligator. The other private reserve had Paiche (a type of fish) and alligators. In addition to these two, we went to Monkey Island, which as you can guess has monkeys. While most of these animals are wild, they still have some domestic characteristics since they are being taken care of by humans.
I bring up the animals not only because they can be cute and cuddly (except for the alligator that didn't like me very much) but also because in the Amazon, animals are an extremely important issue. Unfortunately, as I have discovered on this particular computer I am using, I cannot rotate photos, so I cannot display some of my best ones.

Poaching is illegal in Peru but unfortunately, there is not much done to enforce this. Hunters will kill the various animals for their skin or meat, yet if they are caught by the police, nothing is done to them. Instead, those enforcing the laws, take the animals for themselves. The government is not much help because the jungle and the animals are not a top priority. I am not exactly sure what a top priority would be for the government here, other than maybe making their pockets deeper and deeper, which seems to be working well for them. Because of this, there are lots of reserves.
Alligators, I believe the White Alligators, are nearly extinct if not already. Even boas and anacondas are at risk, though they are not the most dangerous in the Amazon. We actually had the luxury of seeing a Fuerdeland, not sure if that's the correct spelling, just 10 minutes after it had been killed.
It is very common to see people walking around the paths in the jungle with machetes to chop off the heads of the snakes. Sloths are a hot item for their claws, I believe.
Some of the snakes will drop from the trees or will be under leaves so it's good to be aware of where you're walking.

Alas, I digress. Foreigners are at the top of the list for hunting, as is common in many places. For instance, in South Africa, they have opened a hunting ground where lions are raised just for foreigners to hunt in order to keep the natural wild population thriving. I think we are blessed in the United States in that our laws concerning hunting and poaching are enforced far better than anywhere else I've been or heard about. In a country where tourism is 60% of the economy, I would think that there might be more initiatives to preserve their natural attractions.
Then again, while the strikes were going on Peru over the last 2 months, concerns were only raised when nearly 15,000 tourists cancelled their trips to Peru for safety issues...not because their children were not being educated.



There are many people who are opening more reserves in hopes to preserve some of the Jungle in it's natural state. The state of the Amazon River, itself, is a whole other issue due to the pollution
but that can be for another time. With all the negativity from the government, it is touching to see how smaller communities are coming together and taking their own initiative. Maybe at some point, if enough people come together the government might wake up, but I certainly won't be holding my breath for that one.