Mud wrestling. Canopy Zip Line. Rafting. Night hike. Early morning bird watching. Rubber boots. And lots of Yaniv.
My group for the four-day tour of Manú National Park consisted of me, Jonathan from Indiana, Saskia and Olaf from Holland, Alon from Israel, and Alex from Germany. All of us speak English and most know some Spanish. David was our guide. It was a fantastic group!
Our second day of the trip consisted of some walking, a van ride, rafting, and then a motorized canoe-boat to the second lodge. The rafting was fun. It was an easy river, and we got to jump in a float/swim a few different times. Pretty fast moving water in some parts though.
When we arrived, we had to take off our socks and shoes and walk through the mud, practically up to our knees, to get to dry land and our lodge. It was so funny, that I wanted to come back and take pictures after I put my stuff down, so we all did. We were going to go swim in the river, so we had our swimsuits on already. Olaf and Jonathan decided to dive in the mud, and it looked like so much fun, that we all ended up joining in. David took a ton of pictures for us, and we had a blast. We probably rolled around in the mud for a good hour before jumping in the river to get cleaned up a bit.
Over the four days, we saw a ton of monkeys, some very close...capuchin, squirrel, howler, and red howler monkeys. Lots of insects, especially on the night hike. Many flies/gnats along the canopy tour, but just the annoying kind that fly into your eyes and ears, not the biting kind. My repellant kept away all the mosquitos. We got up really early one morning to take a boat down river to see a clay liq with hundreds of parrots and some macaws, too. It was pretty incredible. We had a pair of binoculars and a telescope to see across the river without disturbing them. We saw many other birds later when we took little balsa wood rafts across a lagoon using sticks to propel us and to steer.
All the food was yummy, and the sleeping quarters were nice enough. There was even hot water for showers, which I was pretty shocked about since it is already pretty warm in the jungle.
So, Yaniv is an Israeli card game that we all learned while in Manú. It´s a lot of fun and everyone could play. There was also a good bit of Egyptian War, where the question was, why is it Egyptian, specifically? Who knows. We almost learned a card game from Holland, but they decided it was too difficult to explain in Dutch, so they didn´t even want to try in English! We mostly stuck to Yaniv, and spent many enjoyable hours entertaining ourselves by the light of a candle and a couple head lamps!
