The Adventures of Rob & Lauren

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you’re all finding things to fill your time now that the Olympics are over! We are still plugging away at our shots from Peru, and having a great time reminiscing. Rob might be scanning some more film tonight, yay!

Previously we shared some of our shots from a stroll through the secondary jungle. Well, that was just a warm-up! We got to walk through primary jungle and it was a whole different experience! Primary jungle is more in the hundreds-of-years-old area, versus 80-years-old for secondary jungle, so you can just imagine all the amazing stuff that is growing there! This is where you needed your rubber boots. Like, you really really needed them…

We were so enthralled with the shapes, colours, and light that you find in the jungle. 

This is a tangarana tree, home to the tangarana ants that defend it. Our guide told us that local tribes would use these trees as a form of punishment, and are also known as “punishment trees”. If someone had broken the rules they would tie them to the tree for a few hours. The ants would bite them, injecting formic acid that would cause intense pain. They would need to spend a whole week recovering from those few hours. If they repeated the major offence, they would be tied to the tree until they died. You can see a couple of those scary little guys on the tree, just waiting for someone to bite….

The jungle is filled with other interesting little bugs! These are termites crawling all over our guides’ hands. They aren’t dangerous at all, but actually extremely useful! Locals often use them as a form of insect repellent. They simply squish them all up and it keeps the mosquitoes away! Needless to say, we stuck with our Watkins DEET, but try it out and let us know! :)

Crossing the water on a log bridge. Adventure!

See what I mean? Those rubber boots were essential!

Check me out! I’m totally Tarzan! Ok, clearly I sucked at that. But it was neat! Apparently these aren’t vines. If you tried to swing on a vine it would just come loose and you’d hurt yourself. These are actually roots from a plant that grows up at the top of the trees to get the sunlight, and then has super long roots that go all the way to the ground to get the nutrients it needs. 

Gotta say, these were some gross looking bugs. They were all around on the leaves and totally creeped me out. I’d be getting in position for a shot, and one would be right beside my head! 

One of the really enormous trees in the primary jungle. 

This will give you a sense of scale of the trees all around us. That’s Drew!

This was our boat that dropped us off and picked us up from our trek!

Poisonous! I think it’s pretty safe to say that most things that are very brightly coloured in the Amazon are well worth staying away from!

A cicada. These are what are responsible for so much of the noise in the jungle. We really wish we had a great sound recorder! Next time….Look at those incredible wings. Wow. 

A little frog that one of our group members spotted. This little guy did a great job of blending in with the leaves that he was incredibly hard to spot!

These ants were scary. They are incredibly huge, and apparently could kill you after 5 bites due to the large amounts of formic acid they leave behind. Yikes!!

Another of those huuuuuge ants. I definitely wasn’t getting close to take these shots. 

Cheers!

Lauren :)