Laywers, Guns and Money - Warren Zevon

Guinness for strength!
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Amazon Rainforest 6-14-07

Send lawyers, guns and money to get me out of here.  Yeah, that´s how I felt halfway through my first through my first day in the Peruvian Jungle.  So I wanted to go see the Amazon river in the north of Peru but things like laziness and a planned general strike to paralyze the city up there got in the way.  I went the quick and easy 3 day tourist hop to the southern Amazon rainforest instead.  Good idea?  The jury´s still out.  On one hand one big muddy brown river with surrounding swelthering jungle is pretty much the same as another I guess.  The Amazon if of course monstrous but I hear not that much so in Peru.  The river I saw was the Madre de Dios which is a big tributary and fills the Amazon in Brazil somewhere.  It was huge and all the same stuff as the northern trip would have.  On the other hand of course was it´s NOT the Amazon river.

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Still, I popped for a nicer ´resort´that handled all transport and food and activities and such that was all done well and made my life easier, which is what I´m all about these days if you haven´t noticed.  We went on some nice hikes to see a few birds, a night alligator hunt, and saw a LOT of plant life like walking trees.  I swear, sci-fi writers only need to do a bit of travel to get their ideas.  It was good but too close to town to really be ´virgin´forest.  Oh well.  The real problem however that 30 minutes into the first hike I feel the all encompassing crash of the flu hit me.  A lovely 4 days sickness I´m still fighting off.  It was the worse cold I´ve gotten on the entire trip and it hit hard.  I guess I was dueto catch one after 5 months of pretty much avoiding the little buggers.  I fought my way through a few hikes but was basically miserable the whole time.  At least it cooled off at night enough that I could sleep.

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So yes, I saw some nice birds, a big river and the Amazon rainforest.  Was I absolutely thrilled to get the heck out of there.  You bet.  Maybe taking the quicky touristy route was the right move after all.

Viva Zevon!

Bill