We were awake at 2:00 am for our 5:00 am pick up; how silly was that.

Our route today was by bus over the Andes. An 11 hour drive with a number of breaks for food, to explore some of the villages, and to look for wild life. The morning was spent climbing along another steep, twisting, mountain road up to the high point of the road. During the climb the scenery was typical of the Peruvian antiplano, dry, open with scattered villages and wide spread small scale agriculture. In one of the villages Nina was entranced by the local market and took a few hundred photos of the people and their merchandise. From our lunch stop however the scenery changed dramatically as we descended the eastern slopes of the Andes into the cloud forests, the upper reaches of the jungle at an altitude from 1600 m to 2500 m. The lower we got the thicker the vegetation and the more primitive the road.

After a session looking for wildlife we arrived at our lodge about 5:00 pm. It was almost dark down under the canopy of all those trees. The lodge had a central dining hut, and a series of cabins. All the structures had palm leaf roofs. Electricity was available from the generator until 8:30 pm, and the showers had hot water - a luxury that we apparently will not see for a few days now.