Day 6 – Iyarina Lodge, wow, first full day here, and the walk that felt brutal after travelling the whole day and lugging the luggage at night to the rooms was definitely worth it, it is an amazing walk back and forth between the lodge and tables in the day. We started the day pot making with some local clay, kinda, several hours downstream. We had an expert ceramic artist help us make these pots. In the end, she basically just did it for us since we were not very good.

After a bit of pot making, we went swimming in the river with some of the children who stay here when they can, it was amazing, they taught us how to get clay paint from specific rocks and paint on our bodies, I got a nice hand print tattoo on my back.

Drying off from the swim in the rivers, we then went to visit the Iyarina cacao plantation, in which I ate a lot of the super slimy seeds, but that’s the best part.

After a full day of great activities, we celebrated one of the staff members’ birthdays and then headed to sleep for the big hike the next day.

Day 7 – We woke up nice and early again, ready for the special rainforest hike that has been hyped a lot this trip. We put on our very uncomfortable boots that felt like they gave us blisters on the walk from the room to the lobby. We arrived at the hike, which started off the road and dove headfirst into the rainforest. Staying dry for a slim amount of time, we eventually started walking upstream and got soaking wet, but what can you expect in the Amazon? After a while we reached the first waterfall, then we got to the second one which was a lot bigger and got a great group photo. After that group photo, we ditched the boots to swim through a passage, where we saw bats fly overhead. We made it through, threw the boots back on, and headed forward, the next stop being a little rock-jumping spot, where we got another great group photo. Finally, we went to the last big pool in the stream with a mini waterfall, played with some clay, made our way back to the road and got back to the lodge.