Dad and I got a crash course on Latin American time early on during our trip to Peru. Upon arrival to the very tiny Puerto Maldonado airport (Passengers walk on the tarmac…like in Wichita!), our Amazon jungle lodge, the Explorer´s Inn, had our personal tour guide, Mariano, waiting for us. It had just began raining, a type of rain that is reserved for the rainy season in the jungle. The problem? This is the dry season! Come ON, rain! At the Explorer´s Inn office, we wait for awhile so they can get another bus, one that might make it through the muddy, muddy roads. New bus, check.

Then the real journey begins. We go through streams that are really impassable, wait some more, once for about 10 men to push a giant tour bus up a hill, then they finally decide that one lake-sized puddle where the road should be is a no-go. So we wait by the river for our boat to pick us up. For two hours. But it DOES arrive, and although someone´s bailing water out, we get in very excitedly and begin the 3-hour journey up the Tambopata River to our lodge. It´s a wide, muddy river, and I think the Amazon River has to be pretty similar.