INTERNATIONAL SERVICE OPPORTUNITY

• Have you always wanted to see the Amazon?
• Dreamed of exploring a tropical rain forest?
• Toyed with the idea of volunteering for an international service project?

Achieve all three of these life goals this year with a trip to Peru during 13-25 August! Carol Foss is organizing a team of volunteers to help local villagers construct dormitories and bathrooms for a secondary school in a remote village on a tributary of the Amazon River where she has been studying birds since 2001. The group will spend one day in the capital city of Lima as guests of a local family and one day in the jungle city of Iquitos, where we will visit Red Ambiental Loretano, the Loreto Environmental Network, for an update on petroleum exploration in the Amazon rainforest. We will also have the opportunity to buy snacks for the jungle and each participant can buy a hammock for their daily siestas during the work project. We will then travel 3-4 hours by boat to a rustic but very comfortable lodge on the Tahuayo River, which enters the Amazon about two hours upstream from Iquitos. The group will have four days of jungle activities, including opportunities to fish for piranha, experience the canopy zip line, search for poison dart frogs, and observe a myriad of tropical birds, and four days of participating in a minga, the local version of a community work party, before returning to Iquitos for flights to Lima and the United States.

The approximate schedule will be:

13 August (Wednesday) - Travel to Lima
14 August (Thursday) - Sightseeing in Lima, evening flight to Iquitos,
15 August (Friday) - Visit Red Ambiental Loretano, sightseeing/shopping in Iquitos
16 August (Saturday) - Morning travel to Tahuayo Lodge
17 August (Sunday) – Jungle activities
18-21 August (Monday - Thursday) Minga

6:30 – 8:00 Early morning activities (jungle walks, birding by boat or canoe)
8:00 a.m. Breakfast at lodge
9:45 Travel by boat to Chino Village
9:00-12:00 Assist with construction
12:00 Lunch in the village
1:00-2:00 Siesta in hammocks purchased in Iquitos, strung in the market building
2:00-5:00 Assist with construction
5:00 Return to lodge by boat
5:30-7:00 Showers, relaxation
7:00 Supper
8:00 – 9:30 Evening activities (night walk, boat trip, shaman ceremony)

22 August (Friday) – Visit to upriver villages and schools
23 August (Saturday) – Jungle activities, Fiesta in Chino
24 August (Sunday) – Jungle activities
25 August (Monday) - Return to Iquitos and Lima
26 August (Tuesday) - Arrive home

What will the work involve?

Construction methods and materials in the jungle are very different from those in North America! Our help will likely involve digging holes for support posts, carrying construction materials to where they are needed, helping to raise framing members, handing materials to local workers up in the rafters, and some nailing.

Accommodations

Lima: Private home in Santiago de Surco, a safe and prosperous section of the city

Iquitos: Hotel Maranon, a comfortable, convenient and moderately priced hotel. Small rooms, but clean and modern with air-conditioning, cable TV and private baths. Breakfast included.

La selva (the jungle!): Tahuayo Lodge (www.perujungle.com) is an amazing complex constructed of local materials. It is remote (three hours from roads and phones) and rustic (no electricity, simple beds) but comfortable (private baths, mosquito netting, great food).

Approximate costs

 Health considerations

The Center for Disease Control recommends that visitors to the Peruvian Amazon be immunized against yellow fever, typhoid, and hepatitis A and B at least 6 weeks before traveling. Some visitors chose to take malaria prevention medications.

Transportation
Participants will need to make their own flight arrangements to Lima. Delta and Spirit Air have flights that leave Boston around 10 a.m. and arrive in Lima between 10 and 11 local time (no daylight savings, so an hour earlier than NH) with one stop. Friends will transport us to and from the airport in Lima in private vehicles. Carol will make arrangements for the flights between Lima and Iquitos (Lan Peru). Transportation will be provided by bus or van to and from the airport in Iquitos. During our stay in Iquitos, we will travel by motocarro, a three-wheeled open taxi that can hold three people. We will travel to the lodge on a large, covered motorboat.

For further information

If you are interested in hearing more, please email Carol at cfoss@nhaudubon.org. She will be holding an information session for potentially interested participants in May.