How It All Started
My
wife Gladys owns a travel agency in Matawan, New Jersey called Travel
Pavilion.
Once a year we like to celebrate
our Anniversary with a major trip. We had been to Ireland
last year during the week of 9/11/2001 and had already visited Spain
and over the years have had some very exotic trips. Egypt still ranks
very high for me and one day I will put my Egypt photos up for you
to enjoy.
Gladys called me in early
September to let me know that there was a trip available to select
agents to visit the Amazon River by boat. Not really knowing much
about this area of the world and being a photographer for over 45
years, I agreed to go thinking it would be a great photo-op and would
add nicely to my new Stock Photo business.
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About a week or so we received a
beautiful package from the folks at International Expeditions
the people that run many Exotic and interesting trips to such
destinations as: Africa, Alaska, Amazon Rain Forest, Australia,
Bali, Belize, Costa Rica, Galapagos to name a few. |
Getting Our Shots
I
didn't really have an opportunity to read the information and left
it to Gladys to handle. I remember the night she called me from work
to let me know we had to go for the shots necessary to visit this
section of the world. After she read the list to me which included
vaccinations for Typhoid, Hepatitis A, Yellow Fever, Tetanus, pills
for Malaria and more, I started to have a sinking feeling in my stomach
and thoughts of backing out before it was too late.
I knew this would not be easy
with my wife, since she is quite adventurous, never wants to go to
the same place twice and wants to learn as much as she can about various
travel destinations. A web site she tells me can't explain what a
trip is really like, so her clients expect her to know everything
about a destination...the good and the bad.
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Approximately 5 weeks before
the trip we visited the Jersey Shore Center
for International Health and Travel Medicine
located in the Jersey Shore Hospital. We met a nice doctor who
explained the health risks and precautions necessary for this
trip and pointed me toward the Center for Disease Control
on the web for further information. We received the shots, paid
almost $400 for both of us and began taking our Malaria pills
(one each week). Of course I was on the internet reading about
all the possible diseases I could catch in South America and I
was really quite concerned and even called the folks at IE to
have them reassure me it was safe, which they did. |
Shopping and Packing
Now
it was off to buy long sleeve shirts, boots, hats, insect repellant
with DEET, binoculars, baggies to keep our photo equipment dry (it
is very humid in the rain forest) and other necessities. I made sure
to stock up on plenty of film, batteries, video tape and pack only
the most necessary photo and video equipment.
I decided to only take my Nikon
F100 35mm camera
with an awesome Tokina 17mm wide angle lens, a Nikon 28-105mm lens
(which broke the second day on the boat) and my trusty Nikon 70-200mm
lens. I took my nice little Olympus Camedia 3030 3.3 Megapixel Digital
Camera, my Sony TRV-900 Digital Video Camera, a Realist
Stereo Camera (vintage 1948) and of course necessary filters, monopod
and other supplies. I wanted to pack light so I only took 3 camera
bags on this trip :-)
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As the time neared I began to
close down my eBay auction ads,
put notices on all my web sites that I would be gone, set
up my email auto-responders so that people that emailed me
would know I would be gone and prepared for the trip.
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Getting to Peru
| Getting
to Peru was relatively easy. We flew from Newark Airport via a
non-stop flight to Lima by Continental Airlines.
The flight was a pleasant 7 hour trip and I was able to see two
movies and try out my new sound canceling ear phones :-).
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We planned to arrive a day early
since arrival was midnight and we would have had to leave for Iquitos
and our Riverboat the next morning if we came in as originally scheduled.
We were greeted in Lima by an IE representative who scooped all of
us up and put us on a bus to take us to our beautiful hotel (Swissotel)
in Lima.
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The hotel sat behind high
concrete security walls and large steel gates. This we were told
was necessary in Lima due to the past and current crime. Lima
, I was told, is the Cocaine growing capital of the world. |
Check in was fast and we found
the hotel to be extremely comfortable and was pleasantly surprised
at the luxurious accommodations and wonderful breakfasts. Click the
hotel link above to see a really cool virtual tour of the hotel. Also
see my Photo Album of Lima now and come back here.
Lima Shopping & City Tour
The
next morning we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast and headed out
to do some shopping at the Indian Market. We found the market
a wonderful place to buy everything from rain sticks to wonderful
clay sculptures and fun items. Our hands were full of goodies
and we returned to the hotel to drop the packages, take a short
nap and go out to their small but pretty Mall. Then a visit
to the Lima Marriott and a fabulous Chinese (Chifa) dinner.
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The following morning we joined our group and checked out of the hotel, took
a very nice city tour and onto the bus to the Airport for our
two hour flight to Iquitos.
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Are You Ready To Visit The
Amazon?
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© 2002 Len Rapoport - All Rights Reserved - May Not Be Reproduced in whole or part without permission.
