La Selva (The Jungle)

Thank you all for your prayers for my recent trip to the jungle. Praise the Lord, I made it home without driving off a cliff, being eaten by an anaconda, or (I hope) having developed malaria. It was a great trip. As you can see, the jungle is beautiful...I wish that I had more space to put pictures, but hopefully this will give you a flavor.

I went with most of the other missionary men for 4 nights ultimately about 7 hours past the last point of real civilization (though this was only probably about 20-30 miles "as the crow flies"). The point of the trip was partially to have some good fellowship, but partially to explore this area for future ministry opportunities. Many of the areas have not been mapped well and we mapped everywhere we went with a GPS system.

Allow me to take you on a quick tour...

The trip took us up over a mountain pass between the "Sacred Valley" and the jungle. It has been dry season in Cusco and the Sacred Valley. You can see here that the vegatation on the mountains is fairly dry appearing. Also, it's pretty steep, in case you can't tell by the switchbacks...

The top of the pass was at about 14,000 feet, well above many of the clouds. After this picture, we could see nothing but cloud for about 20 minutes, but then...

...we descended on the jungle side of the pass. It was really neat to see the sharp contrast in the vegetation seperated by the mountain pass.

One of our hopes is to work with local "health posts" to diagnose and treat TB in the jungle, perhaps coupled with an evangelistic project. There were numerous health posts that we ran across during our travels. This is an example of one. Most of the people in the jungle get their medical care from clinics like this (when they are not getting it from local witch doctors).


We spent much of day 2 exploring the "high jungle." The roads left a little to be desired (this was actually a good one), but the views were beautiful.

The following day, we decended further into the "low(er) jungle" and its thick vegetation.

I spent much of my time in this 1980s Toyota Land Cruiser, a really fun way to see the jungle. It only broke down twice!

Gas stations, of course, are a bit different 7 hours into the jungle. This is "the other Greg" and the local gas station attendant. Greg is holding up a big cardboard box so that the rain didn't mix with our gas.

This is literally the end of the road. It dumps you out on the mighty Urubamba River (which later turns into the Amazon). Greg, Keith (the team leader), and I hiked about an hour further along its banks in search of the "Pongo de Mainique," which is where the high jungle officially meets the low jungle and is heralded as one of the most beautiful places on earth. Unfortunately, I think that we ended up about a mile or so short. Turns out, you really have to take a boat to see it. Oh well...a reason to return...