Day 1 at Iyarina Lodge was a blast! We started the day off by having an amazing breakfast with tamales, fresh fruit, and fresh orange juice!! Then we had the opportunity to learn how to handmake our own pottery bowls. It definitely was pretty difficult and we had to start over a few times, but I think they all turned out great in the end! We still have to wait for them to dry and be fired before we can paint them but I am excited to see them all finished!

We then had lunch which was yet again super delicious! It was a kind of meat stew with mashed potatoes, vegetables, and watermelon! The food here is definitely the best that I have had on the trip so far and I can’t wait for more! Soon after lunch, we went to see the Neo Napo River for a little bit before we left to go see some cacao plants in the forest not far from Iyarina. We got to taste the cacao pods again, which are super sweet and so so yummy.

We came back to the lodge and swam for a while before we had dinner, which was talapia… plot twist because I got the freaky looking head. It was really good though and we also had vegetables and pineapple along with it. To finish out the day, we went for a short nature night walk and saw some interesting plants, animals, and flowers. We walked to a neighboring hotel bar and had a super fun night singing and dancing together for one of our hosts birthdays!!

Now today, we had an exciting day ahead of us at our river walk. We weren’t sure if it was going to happen as it poured all night and the waters were pretty high, but it was a go which was so exciting! We left around 9:30 to get to the hike in our outfits complete with water boots (very stylish). We started in pretty shallow water, but soon realized just how deep the water gets. We had the opportunity to swim in pools and see waterfalls, which was beautiful and such an amazing experience. I will say we got pretty banged up with scraped from the rocks AND a lot of us kept falling as it was pretty unpredictable where the rocks and sticks would be under the water. It was a great experience though and most definitely my favorite day we have had so far.

After we got back from the river walk, we had lunch, which as always was delicious. Then we had some free time so we al took naps as we were pretty exhausted from our around three-hour hike through the water. After waking up still pretty tired, we had a visit from Kallari, the chocolate shop, who came to us and gave an amazing tasting and presentation on their company! Then we all bought some chocolate and went swimming, yet again, with the remaining free time of our day. We showered and headed to dinner around 7 and had roast with potatoes and carrots which was pretty good! Then we wrapped up the night with a presentation from Skip on chocolate and then packed for our early and long travel day tomorrow!