Pucallpa: Ceviche & The Nature Park

Location: Pucallpa,Peru

business as usual in pucallpa

I may have given the impresion that all of the houses were wooden here, there also houses like this in pucallpa.

Ceviche Mixto de Corvina

Mixed Ceviche of Sea Bass

Pucallpa Nature Park

Parque Natural de Pucallpa

this is a fairly large park showing some animals from this zone

Such as Tigers, Snakes, Wild Boares, monkeys and beautifully coloured birds.

though its difficult to take decent fotos through cages, with the animals moving around.

Musmuquies

Monkey escapes

Pucallpa: Boat trip on lakeYarinacocha

Location: Puerto Callao,Peru

todays activity was to go to Puerto callao which is a small town, on the banks of Lake Yarinacocha, a bow shaped lake, just a few minutes up the road from pucallpa, and take a boat over to "la Jungla" which is a small zoo.

"la jungla" a small zoo lies ahead

huacamayo

man passes by with Anaconda over his shoulder

"Tigrillo"

young croc waiting to pounce on anything foodlike

"Musmuqui"

This is the little monkey i keep seing on peoples heads around town

the buildings here are elevated on stilts to allow for the increase in water levels every august.

...other buildings float

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Some Amazonian fruits & foods

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top row, left to right:

banana, coco (coconut)

Middle row, left to right:

juane, arroz con pollo en hoja de bijao (rice & chicken wrapped in palm leaf) , cocona, mani (monkey nut), pifayo

bottom row left to right:

naranja (green oranges), mango, dale dale, pan del arbol (tree-bread), aguaje

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discovering a new fruit is strange, some of the fruits seem so right you feel like you have known them all your life. as though your vision had been missing a primary color and now you have found it.in ecuador, it was the the naranjilla that had this effect on me. it is a small orange colored fruit with a smooth surface, tastes sort of like an orange or a peach or a banana but neither.. unique but equally normal in its flavour.i cannot find words to describe the aguaje only to say that its currently my favourite here in peru, but its early days yet. there is much to try.

the town roads are lined with these drains to deal with the heavy rains.

huequito shopping centre, pucallpa

Pucallpa: Sunday mass in the tropics

Last night was so hot i couldnt sleep for most of it.. i eventually fell asleep with the electric fan right beside me in the bed.
during breakfast vanessas dad said that you can tell by the heat that it would rain and sure enough about an hour or 2 later it started pouring all of a sudden, and continued without relenting for about 4 hours.
the temperature dipped to a refreshing 27 degress during the rainfall and is still at 27 now (11.38pm) so i guess this means it might not rain tomorro.

well between, eating and drinking things that i have never heard of seeing things such as a frog randomly jumping on the footpath of the town or strange large bugs that make me wonder what size the spiders must be, pucallpa has been non stop surprises for me. and this evening took me to a place i definitly hadnt expected to be. mass!

vanessa informed me that they are going to church this evening (being sunday) and i responded with some excuses only to be met with .. "you have to come!"
but it turned out to be different to what i was expecting.
we pulled up on a street and proceeded to enter a regular sort of building with lively music coming from it. this turned out to be the church.


church pucallpa style.... like group kareoke with loads of dancing and clapping.


and during the slow songs there was some holding out of the arms like you do when a soccer referee makes a bad desicion. unfortunatly i didnt get any fotos, i was too busy holding out my arms hehehe.
i later found out that it was an evangelistic church and that the people who said the mass. were pastors rather than priests.

Pucallpa: Welcome to the Jungle

Peru is a land of three regions. the desert coast, the highlands and the jungle.
so far in my travels i have only seen coast, and highlands (ecuador), so i decided it was time for a trip to the "selva" jungle. or perhaps more correctly, a city in the jungle.


..Pucallpa. (eng.fon. poo.kalpa)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pucallpa

i took a 1 hour flight from Lima to Pucallpa, enabling me to avoid something like a 27 hour bus ride through dangerous mountain roads. though as the usual south american punctuality still applied, the 12.30 flight took off at 14.20.. 40 minutes after is was supposed to arrive, but its all good.


its a drastic change from lima, ..as limas cool overcast climate of 20 degrees during the day, 12 at night had actually given me a sniffly nose.. i got off the plane into 35 degrees dead heat and very high humidity. the nights are a steady 30 degress also.


almost all of the vehicles are those "moto carros" ( i dont know the english name for this...maybe rickshaw?)

Moto-Truck hybrid

the houses are fairly basic mostly woooden structures, giving the impression that you are in a small village, but actually its quite a big town with a population of 204,000 people. most foreigners pass through here on their way to the jungle but i get the feeling not many of them hang around long in the town as every place i go i seem to be able to spot someone staring at me as though i am from outer space. though the people so far have been as warm and welcoming as the climate ,and also they have a cute sing-song accent.



The Ucayali river is a major transport channel for this zone. you can even take a boat the whole way to ecuador.



Aguaje, is one of the many fruits which are unique to the jungle region
The drink made here is Aguajina.. and is beautiful to drink with a couple of ice cubes in this heat.


The night i arrived was The Pucallpa version of Oktoberfest, for the Cuzquena beer.


saturday morning, already 29 degrees inside the house at 9.30 am


Here is my friend Vanessa who kindly invited me to stay at her house with her parents. her nephew spent the morning staring at the stranger hehe

vanessa had told me we were going to take a "moto" down to the "coliseo"
i assumed we would be taking a small trip to see some interesting sight or so...


but as the day unfolded i realised there was going to be a huge parade on, and we were in it!

the parade was for the anniversary of the university. around 1000 students take to the street in a huge convoy of "moto carros" and motorbikes. each faculty wears differnt colours, ie. the accountants wore blue, the technology students wore red and so on.. for about an hour and a half, we drove through the town where onlookers stood outside the shops and houses. there were also a few buses whith loud music , a few floats with people dressed up, drums and horns here or there and people handing out little bags of water to pour over your head or squirt at your neighbours in the swealtering midday heat that must have been more than 35 degreees. somehow i didnt get sunburned.

even the police have these "moto" things

i have seen some big household music systems in south amierca but this one takes it.





then when we arived at the coliseo (which is an indoor sports arena)each group took their place around the seating of the arena. and for the duration of the afternoon, a group of representatives of each faculty went out into the middle of the arena to perform a south american dance routine cheered on by the whole arena and accompanied of course by the bellowing rythmns of cumbia, samba, reggaton,salsa and all the rest. what happy people! im speechless.

"Festejo"

"the accountants" won!

Girl with little pet monkey, i think its a type of Lemur


later that night all went out to an outdoor disco in the college grounds and on to a nightclub.. now thats what i call a saturday!

todays song
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Explosion : ya me olvide de ti