Peru,  South America Tour 2013-15

Pilpintuwasi

Wildlife Rescue Center and Butterfly Farm

South America Tour 2013-15 – Part V

Read this first:

The following report is already a few years old. It dates back to 2014 when Seraina and I worked as volunteers at Pilpintuwasi for a few weeks. The information may not all be up to date anymore, and animals at Pilpintuwasi come and go.

If you would like to know the current situation at Pilpintuwasi or consider supporting Gudrun Sperrer and the animals at Pilpintuwasi financially or as a volunteer, visit their official site:

Thank you, and now enjoy reading!

Padre Cocha

Padre Cocha is a village of 3,000 people on the banks of the Nanay River, which flows into the Amazon near Iquitos. To reach it, we take a colectivo boat in Bella Vista, one of about five ports in Iquitos, and chug leisurely up the river.
Half an hour later, we are standing in front of our cabaña, which will be our home for the next five weeks.

We could not imagine living in Iquitos. The noise, the traffic, all the people. The many moto-taxis that roar around here remind us of the tuk-tuk traffic in Thailand. There are only a few cars and trucks here, which is logical considering that everything has to be transported by ship.

In Padre Cocha, the roads are just wide enough for two of the three-wheeled moto-taxis to pass each other. The people live in simple huts in the silence outside the big city. This is how it appears at first glance.
What we don't know when we arrive is that the village has only been connected to the electricity grid for three months. This progressive development is celebrated by the inhabitants like this:

Some lease new speakers, others get old ones from wherever, and so it is estimated that every second household is a proud owner of a deafening sound system.

It often happens that some dear neighbor, after getting up at six o'clock in the morning, first turns up the speakers without a thought that someone in the village might be bothered by it. As we soon discover, people here lack a sense of respect for others. Neither is silence in one's home a basic right here nor is it the wish of the people (at least it is not being expressed).

Even the village spokesman - whoever this lovely person is - does not let the new technology go unused. Over centrally located megaphones that can be heard even in the far corners of the village, he announces the news of the day - sometimes early in the morning - advertises restaurants and stores in the village that everyone already knows, and praises God and Jesus and Mary and himself on top.

When I think about it, most Padre Cochans desire to never have to endure silence or the sounds of nature. There are always televisions on somewhere and music of disastrous quality and dubious taste.
I can imagine that until they find here in the middle of the jungle back to nature, generations will pass.

For now, however, we are both happy to be able to enjoy the privacy of our spacious cabin, and not to have to board a tour bus or the like, at least for the next few weeks. The backpacks are empty, the clothes on the shelf and the sleeping bags hung up.

Working in Pilpintuwasi

Then our first week at Pilpintuwasi begins. We are five volunteers: Tony and Kathy, a Scottish couple, have already been here for a month and can introduce Seraina and me very well. Dan - half New Zealander, half English - started last week.

Arbeit im Pilpintuwasi
Seraina and Dan

I already know that I will enjoy working with animals. But one of our jobs is also to lead the English tours. We are spared that for the first few days; first, we have to memorize all the information we are supposed to communicate. I cannot but be glad about that, this part of our activities is certainly not one of my favorite.

Uakaris im Pilpintuwasi
Tony with Lisa

Leading and educating a few people about what is happening in the Amazon can be fulfilling. However, it becomes stressful when large groups of tourists arrive at Pilpintuwasi. Those are usually the very exhausting moments. When ten, twenty or even more people talk in confusion and just don't want to listen like children, when they are explicitly asked not to touch the monkeys and to take pictures without flash, when they claim to know how to deal with monkeys - this can be very annoying.

Pilpintuwasi
Kathy

If we as guides have additional luck in these moments, Gudrun comes along, which means that there is not only a beating for the visitors but also us volunteers, because we don't have the people under control.

Yes, Gudrun can be quite quick-tempered. At first, we hear this fact from other volunteers who have already had arguments with her; of course also from her Peruvian workers whom she regularly rounds up because of their unreliability.

In the course of our assignment, we become witnesses of this now and then, but I may note that Seraina and I usually get along very well with Gudrun.
However, when it comes to her monkeys or other animals that are mistreated, her maternal instinct wakes up, and woe betides anyone who then stands between her and her little ones!

Gudrun Sperrer

Gudrun Sperrer has lived in Peru for over thirty years and founded the Butterfly Farm in Padre Cocha - Mariposario, as it is called here - almost twenty years ago. Hence the name: Pilpintuwasi, which translated from Quechua means "butterfly house".

Over time, strangers began dumping animals at her doorstep - especially young animals like Pedro the jaguar - that they either couldn't keep or couldn't sell. Animals confiscated by the eco/tourist police also find shelter at her place. Unfortunately, sometimes tourists, including volunteers, also "rescue" animals they discover on sale at the market. Out of pity, they buy and bring them to the sanctuary.

If you think about it for a moment, you can see the reason why this is the wrong behavior. What does a hunter do who can sell his prey at the market? A good deal. So he goes into the jungle and shoots more monkey mothers to get their babies.

So today Pilpintuwasi is not only a home for butterflies but a shelter for monkeys, wild cats, sloths, and birds of paradise. We want to introduce all of these to people on a walk through the grounds.

Tour at Pilpintuwasi

Uakaris

We begin our tour at Pilpintuwasi with the Red Uakaris if they are hanging out at the hut by the pond. They are one of the highly endangered species here. Like most other animals, they are hunted to be kept as pets or sold to zoos. They are also eaten. People here in the Amazon eat almost everything.

They are easily recognizable by their red faces, which is why they are called English monkeys. The color comes from the capillaries that are close to the surface of the skin.

Very little is known about them. It is only in the last few years that they have been studied and observed more closely.

They didn't seem very appealing to me at first because of their appearance. But now I love them. Sometimes very playful, then again vegetating in the heat, they show quite human behavior. 

And each one of the eight free-living ones here has its character: Felix, still young and playful, Pauli, the oldest, who likes to go after the girls, and then of course little Britta, still a baby, just over a year old. Gudrun is particularly proud of her. Never before have there been offspring of red uakaris in a sanctuary. We have to keep an eye on her all the time to make sure she doesn't drown in the pond or get taken by a vulture. Soon she will be big enough to take care of herself.

Ali

From time to time Ali shows up at our place. He is a magnificent specimen of a red howler monkey. Proud as a lion he climbs through the woods. He also lives here freely on the grounds since he was taken in by Gudrun as a baby. Only on Sundays, he has to be caught by trickery, so that Nico is allowed out of his enclosure on Monday. If Nico, the dominant male Uakari, and Ali were to clash again, Nico might not be as lucky as he was once before, when Ali tore open his scalp and almost killed him.

Butterfly Farm

We are still at the very beginning of our tour. Only now do we start walking, enter the butterfly house, and marvel. A green world of jungle plants interspersed with a romantic path awaits us. Maybe one of the blue morphos flies over our path, which immediately catches everyone's eye. But it could also be a yellow-black glasswinged or another of the seventeen species that Gudrun breeds here.

Sure, we don't see all of them, but a lot of the owl butterflies, as impressive as the morphos, perched on fruits where they feed. The two large eyes on their brown wings hint at their name. I quickly grab one between my index and middle fingers and push the lower wings forward with the same fingers of the other hand.

With open mouths, visitors admire the tricky nature of the buho (Spanish for owl). With its wings open in this way, it looks remarkably similar to a real owl's face, sure to send any enemy fleeing. I open my fingers again, and swiftly the butterfly flies away.

Metamorphosis

Here in the butterfly enclosure and next door in the breeding house, we explain to visitors the metamorphosis that each butterfly goes through in its typically five- to six-month life.
I've never really been into butterflies, but learning so much about them now is great - nature at its best.

The cycle begins with an egg perhaps one millimeter in diameter. Depending on the species, the color changes. We pick these eggs off the respective plant twice a day, if possible, before a parasitic nester can abuse them for his eggs. If you know the plants the butterflies use to lay their eggs - each butterfly species has one or two specific host plants - they are easy to spot. Host plants are what we call the plants that a butterfly uses to lay eggs but also feeds on in the caterpillar stage.

Over in the breeding house, we show the clear test tubes where small piles of eggs can be seen. The jars are sealed with absorbent cotton to protect them from ants and other voracious enemies. Tiny larvae grow inside them and after about a week they hatch, eat their eggshells, and are finally transferred to their host plant.

Now the larvae begin to feed. Depending on the species - the owl butterfly, for example - they have up to fifteen weeks to do so. The larva, which is only a few millimeters long, becomes a caterpillar ten to fifteen centimeters long, not unlike a naked snail. It's quite astonishing! And this thing is supposed to turn into such a beautiful butterfly? We see further.

Once the caterpillar has finished feeding, it crawls under a branch or leaf to pupate. It hangs upside down on its silk thread to prepare for the next stage. As it does so, another, thicker skin or shell develops under the caterpillar's skin. Two to three days later, the caterpillar skin detaches; the butterfly is in the third stage of its life: pupa or chrysalis.
In this pupa, the actual butterfly now develops within ten to fifteen days. The pupae hang - perfectly camouflaged by their color and shape - quite still; only occasionally something stirs inside.

When the time comes, the butterfly, still wet from the pupal fluid, hatches to its adult size and attaches itself to the remaining pupal case. The female is already carrying the still unfertilized eggs. Here it defecates to reduce its body weight and waits until its wings are completely dry.
Then finally-after seven days in the egg, fifteen weeks as a caterpillar, three days in the pre-pupal stage, fifteen days as a pupa, and another three hours of wing drying – the butterfly begins to fly.

In the next one or two weeks that remain in its short life, it may - feeding on fruit or flower sugars - enjoy flying and delight our eyes. Above all, however, it is now looking for a partner.
When the female is ready, she sits on a plant and opens her wings. She sends out messengers that attract males from as far away as fifteen kilometers.

Usually, several males now fly up to prove themselves. One after the other now begins the "love dance", which can last up to two hours. The male now flies - demonstrating his art - around the female, sometimes making her "dance" herself.

If he can impress her, she opens her wings even more and thrusts her body at him. She is ready to mate.
However, if she does not accept him, she simply closes her wings again and lets the next contender try his luck - sorry, prove his skill.

When mating, the two butterflies are stuck together for a whole 24 hours - depending on the species, it can even take 48 hours.
When the eggs are finally fertilized, the female looks for a suitable leaf of her host plant and lays and sticks them on it.
In this way, the circle closes, and the butterflies die soon thereafter. Interesting to know that in the wild, just three percent survive the cycle from egg to butterfly. Hungry mouths, curious children's fingers, and dozens of other dangers lurk on their life paths.

Pygmy Marmosets

After the breeding room for butterflies, we now come to the rescued animals. In the first enclosure - oh, how cute! - we see the pygmy marmosets, tiny and nimble like hamsters. They are the smallest monkey species on earth. Their peculiarity is that they almost exclusively give birth to two babies at once: one female, the other male. It is the father's job to take care of them and carry them on his back. Once in a while, an uncle can step in and take over one of the babies.

Here we have seven at the moment, two of them are male, who slowly but surely leave the protection of the father's back to explore their surroundings on their own. The first two that were brought here had been found in a box at the airport of Iquitos. They were to be sold in Lima.

The sad thing is that people don't know that the animals need 25 to 30° Celsius jungle temperature and don't feed on bananas, but almost exclusively on the sap of certain trees. Instead of finding out why their new pets are dying, they often just buy more.

I am often asked if we reintroduce the animals to the wild and am forced to answer no. Theoretically, of course, it would be possible to release certain animals after they have fully recovered. Monkeys, snakes, and birds, for example. The jaguar, on the other hand, would probably be shot quickly because it would come too close to residential areas.

In reality, however, Gudrun is not allowed by Peruvian law to release animals into the wild. Brain-crazy bureaucrats prevent her from doing so. So all the animals stay here for the rest of their lives. "So Pilpintuwasi is more or less a zoo?" is the next question. I reply that unlike the zoo in Iquitos and other fake sanctuaries that have their animals taken out of the jungle for the entertainment of tourists, here animals are simply offered a place where their wounds can heal and people take care of them. Moreover, Pilpintuwasi is a private facility that survives purely on its generous visitors and volunteers.

The Capuchin Monkeys

We continue and come face to face with the capuchin monkeys, one brown and three light. For them, we volunteers have to make monkey toys every morning with PET bottles, string, cardboard, sticks, and other things, which we supply with treats. The point is that they don't get to their food - beans, bananas, peanuts, papaya, etc. - quite so easily, but have to use their little brains a bit. They are considered the most intelligent monkeys in South America and are readily compared to a three-year-old - depending on who you ask - or even an eight-year-old child. In the wild, they know how to make and use tools.

The Capuchins used to roam freely on Gudrun's land until they became aggressive toward visitors because of their sexual maturity. Toni can become especially dangerous to women; out of jealousy of the girlfriends of certain male visitors. Toni's story is fascinating: she was trained to be a pickpocket by a criminal gang. She helped this gang to get countless purses and jewelry. One day she was abandoned and finally discovered half-starved in an alley.

Lion Tamarins

The lion tamarins in the next enclosure are not much bigger than the pygmy marmosets. Francisco, the black one with the white mustache, and Kuko, the golden-brown one, also lived freely on the grounds. However, a wild lion monkey family roamed by from time to time and caused trouble for the two. In the end, Francisco and Kuko had to move in with Alejandro and his family.

Two-toed Sloths

Alejandro and Lucy are two-toed sloths, not of the same species, but the two have fresh offspring.

They live peacefully together with the monkeys. It even happens that they all sleep together in the same box in a pile. The sloths can only be seen with luck. They spend about twenty hours a day sleeping in their box. Only in between do they make the effort to climb down to eat.

They are a cute family, but still not here by choice. Like almost all the animals at Pilpintuwasi, they have a sad past in captivity.
Around their enclosure caw the parrots; red-green, blue-yellow, and scarlet. In the wild, you would never see them together like this because they live strictly with those of the same color. Here, however, they all chatter and scream along with each other. They are popular pets in South America. You can find them in restaurants, hotels, with people in the village. To prevent them from flying away, their wing feathers are clipped. This is what happened to the ten or so specimens in Pilpintuwasi.

Toucans

In the rearmost cage are the toucans, beautiful birds whose unique appearance can be their undoing if they cross paths with humans.

Our two were kept as pets. Their former master, a restaurant owner in Iquitos, fed them dog food instead of fruits and nuts. The ignorance of many people here is sometimes hard to believe.
One of the two birds rotted a hole in its beak due to malnutrition, which never healed completely. Nevertheless, both recovered. It's a shame they can't be released into the wild.
Toucans need to be able to eat constantly, as they have a very high metabolism. Without food, they die within five hours.

Paradise Birds

Next to it in a large cage live various loros, spyx's guans, and a trumpeter. Always in the twilight time, it screams and calls and squawks here, as if one were in a madhouse. The black trumpeter is popularly kept as a pet because it makes trumpet-like sounds whenever it sights a snake. It, like the pheasant-like Spyx's Guans, is very territorial and chases the other birds around the enclosure. The green loros don't seem to care about this hustle and bustle. They shimmy along the bars or sit on their branches and talk to each other - imitating young and old people.

Thomas the three-toed Sloth

Next to the birdcage, Thomas sleeps on his crate. Unlike the two-toed sloths, which have brownish fur, Thomas is gray and has three fingers. It seems to me that he is a bit more active than Alejandro and Lucy. More often he can be found at his feeding station munching on leaves. Nevertheless, he also sleeps most of the day.

In the wild, these sloths usually stay in trees above bodies of water, from where they can easily escape attacks by jaguars or birds of prey by dropping into the river and swimming nimbly away.
They spend their lives almost exclusively hanging upside down in the trees. Good, they only have to do their business every one or two weeks, which they do down on the ground, where they are unprotected against enemies.

Ocelot

We let Thomas sleep on and come to my favorite animal in Pilpintuwasi. Where is she? Ah, up there she lies on her rack. Harry, come down, show yourself!

Sometimes she stays on the lazy side, but usually, she stretches herself yawning and gracefully, as is the way of cats, strolls down the thick branch to her little pond where we are already waiting patiently.

"Wow, how beautiful she is!" say many. "But she's not full grown yet, is she?"
But Harry the ocelot, at five years old, is an adult and about twice the size of a normal house cat. And that's precisely why visitors must always be warned. Although she looks cuddly, she has razor-sharp claws and teeth that we don't want to feel.

"Harry is a she?" someone wants to know.
Harry came to Pilpintuwasi about four years ago. She was supposed to be a little kitten sold to tourists on the boulevard in Iquitos. The eco police picked her up, and a little street boy named Harry helped care for the half-starved female ocelot before she got here. To the street boy's credit, they gave the kitten his name without paying attention to her gender.

"She must be lonely all alone in that enclosure." Like many feline species, ocelots are solitary animals. Certainly, her enclosure is far too small for her natural needs. She especially misses hunting, I guess. To provide some compensation, we fish small fish in the pond down by the entrance and throw them into her pool alive in the evening. So at least she has something to hunt. However, when you watch, she acts pretty clumsy and hardly dares to get her paws wet. Pretty funny! But in the morning all the fish are gone, which indicates that she is active during the day as well as at night.

Whenever there is time - unfortunately not very often - we volunteers are allowed to go for a walk in pairs with Harry on the leash - at our own risk!
I knew even before we started at Pilpintuwasi that I wanted to try this. Twice I get the pleasure to roam through the bushes with Harry. What you have to pay special attention to: You must not get too close to her, that means you have to keep the leash taut. If you can put this advice into practice, you have Harry under control. Since she is small, according to Gudrun, she likes to gnaw on kneecaps. That's why Gudrun calls Dan and me "fools!" when we disappear with Harry in shorts in the forest.

Ocelot Pilpintuwasi

At first, I was a bit queasy to walk around in the jungle with a wild cat on a leash. When I learned how to use the leash to keep her at a distance - in between she wants to playfully jump at you - my self-confidence grew quickly. Except for a few tiny scratches on my elbow, she never managed to leave any bloody marks. She is usually busy following her nose. Her sense of smell is very strong, she constantly holds her nose high and enjoys the freedom as much as we can give her.

At the market in Iquitos, you can see with your own eyes what can be made out of ocelot. There are offered skins, paws as necklaces... We try to advise our visitors not to buy these products. Ocelots have offspring only every two years, and since they are easy to hunt - among other things because they use man-made trails - their survival is threatened.

It is very important to me to get this point across clearly, even though, or perhaps because, I repeatedly guide visitors who wear snake bracelets and similar animal products. Unfortunately, I find that few of them - more often foreigners than Peruvians, who often have a sad attitude towards animals - show understanding.

Pedro Bello

Sometimes a distant roar can be heard, which some visitors - judging by their facial expressions - would describe as terrifying. "That's Pedro," I then say mysteriously, "just be patient, we'll get to know him."

Most of the time, Pedro is in the back in his private corner, where he is left alone by tourists. To be able to show him to visitors, we lure him to us with a morsel of meat. When he finally strides forward, people gasp in awe.

Pedro is a magnificent male jaguar. His nose leads him straight to the red piece of meat stuck in the chicken wire. Standing on his hind legs, he reaches up and pulls it out with his fangs.

The cameras click. People are delighted.
"Here we have Pedro Bello," I begin Pedro's story. "He is one of the first animals that came to Gudrun. One morning twelve years ago, she found him on her doorstep in a wooden crate where anonymous people had dumped him as a six-month-old kitten, half-starved.

To save his life, she took maternal care of him. As a twelve-year-old big cat, he eats four to five kilos of raw meat, which costs the equivalent of about US$400 per week. Fortunately, a generous donor covers his maintenance costs. Otherwise, Gudrun could hardly keep him.

Instead of allocating government support to her, not long ago another young jaguar was brought to her by the eco police which would have far exceeded her budget if she had accepted it. He died.

Although she would have had the opportunity to give Pedro to a wildlife reserve in Arizona, USA, where Pedro could have lived with other jaguars, the Peruvian government forbade her to do so because they wanted to subject Pedro to tests and secure his genes. Something like that. Since then ten years passed without anything ever happening. So Pedro still lives in Pilpintuwasi in his more or less generous enclosure of maybe twenty by ten meters. Mandatory in Peru to keep a jaguar is seven by seven."

What are Coatis?

Gradually, we are approaching the end of the tour. On the way to the exit, we pass Juanita and Maxi, our two Coatis. The two omnivores from the raccoon family like to lie - when they are not eating - in their hammock on the lazy skin.

The two former pets used to be allowed to run around freely on the grounds before Juanita broke into the butterfly nursery one night to fill her belly with caterpillars. Six months of work was destroyed that night, resulting in the coatis having to be caged from then on.

Pilpintuwasi Coati

Now and then one of them is allowed to join us for a walk on a leash, which she visibly enjoys, her long nose constantly poking in somewhere. They also get a few fish from the pond every day. These are always gone after a brief moment and a few bites from the sight of the earth. The Coatis are omnivores and sometimes travel in packs. To see the many bushy tails all stretched up in the air is a funny sight!

Boa

Finally, we show visitors the boa constrictor, which usually lies quietly at the bottom of its cage. Every two to three weeks the snake gets a live chicken. The poor victim cannot escape from the cage and ends up in the firm grip of the strangler snake, which finally eats it with skin and feathers. Fascinating to watch.

Anaconda

Those who are interested, usually the male visitors, can visit the young anaconda, which, like the boa, does not move often. One difference between the two: The boa grows up to three meters long, the anaconda up to ten.

Manatee

We each tell about the manatee that lives in our pond, although there is never much of it to be seen. The manatee grows up to 500 kg but lives mainly underwater. Its snout only emerges to breathe and eat its aquatic plants. "Look, the water hyacinths are moving!" Proof that she's still alive.

Isabela, the Anteater

Some visitors are lucky and meet Isabela the Great Anteater. About eight hours a day, Daniel, one of the young Peruvian workers, is hunting ants and termites with her. That means: she rummages through the bush, he sits nearby and watches.

Once, on my first walk with Harry, we encountered the two of them, with the curious ocelot venturing a little too close to Isabela. Although she is still young, Isabela can easily kill the cat with her now already long, sharp claws. We quickly said goodbye again to Daniel and his anteater.
She is about nine months old and already quite a hunk. Until she is fully grown to her full size of over two meters and a weight of 50 kg, it will take some time.

In Pilpintuwasi there are other animals, which are withheld from the visitors, for the protection of the animals: squirrel monkeys, a kinkajoo and others.

Neytiri

Whom also not all visitors get to see is little Neytiri. She is a baby spider monkey, a few months old, and needs constant attention, like a human infant. She is lucky enough to be transferred in a few days to another refuge where she will be released with other spider monkeys. Especially Secundo, Gudrun's faithful co-worker, does not let this go unnoticed. He has grown so fond of Neytiri with her big, dark eyes that he has to shed a few tears when he learns that she will not be his baby for much longer.

Rage and Joy at Pilpintuwasi

The more tours I lead, the smoother they run. But we have other tasks as well: We have to collect butterfly eggs, move the larvae to their food plant, collect the pupae and hang them in one place, collect and plant food plants in the jungle, feed monkeys, take care of Britta, and Neytiri, prepare the uakaris' sleeping rooms with food, fish, clean the pond from the manatee's plant remains, and so on.

Recently, we have an additional rather unpleasant job to do, which requires a brief background to explain:
Gudrun built the mariposario with the help of her ex-partner Roble. He, a local, noticed how much money was flowing into the Pilpintuwasi without realizing that it was barely enough to maintain Pilpintuwasi. He wanted more for himself, which led to continued arguments and separation of the two.

Without further ado, he built and recently opened a new butterfly house in the few weeks that Seraina and I volunteered here. In front of the entrance door to Pilpintuwasi. Without any legal permission. But that's not all.

To secure visitors, he pays tourist guides to lead people to him instead of Pilpintuwasi. In doing so, he unscrupulously lies to the unwary visitors that this is the Mariposario, yes, the only one, no, there are no animals to look at here.
Roble also pays the local police not to intervene. Gudrun's 30 years in Peru are of no use - she remains the eternal foreigner in this dispute - nor does she want to support this corrupt system or the disloyal guides.

We, volunteers, try to help by standing at the entrance and intercepting the arriving visitors. Already in these first days, we feel the loss of income. We are happy when we can pinch off some people, but after a short time, we realize that these attempts alone cannot save Pilpintuwasi. We are all furious and desperate. Nobody seems to have a solution. We report the situation to the tourist information as well as to the police in Iquitos; without apparent success.

On our last day in the reception center, we hardly have any visitors, a fainting rage overcomes us. What can we do? Gudrun has to pay the guides as well if they are to bring her tourists. But to give additional money to this bunch of scum, who wanted to suck up to us volunteers as good friends? Does the report to the police bring anything? Because Roble's business - with him it is nothing else than a profitable business, he does not have to feed animals through - is illegal and will never be approved because of its location; unless he can pay the authorities enough.

We are at a loss and have to leave Pilpintuwasi somewhat ambivalent. So many ugly stories we had to listen to, so much hypocrisy and superficiality we had to experience. And that in this beautiful place.

Nevertheless, we say goodbye to Gudrun, Dan, Tony, Kathy, and the staff. Our journey continues. Not as first thought further south, but down the Amazon to Leticia, back to Colombia.

South America Tour 2013-15

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South America Tour 2013-15

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