So this is what a faily gathering includes. My would be grand fether passed a year ago. So as the custom goes we had a mas and killed lots of animals. The pig they are cleaning ws my first swine kill. I am a veteran of the goat. We dreank moonshine and native wine and sang lots of folkloric songs. It was a good time. I can not see the pictures right now so I can not describe them. I can tell you that the cleaning method for the pig is very different here on the coast then what I saw in the mountians. In the mountians they used a blow torch. They take there pig very seriouly up there. so the first pic is of my dad giving a nature lesson on bats. If you clic on the photo you can see it better. We found it sleeping in our hand drying towel. The rest are of the prosess of makeing the food. And one of my extended family.

The Jungle was amazing, my best vacation yet. I did not see all that I wanted to so I will have to go back. Tarapoto is a really interesting town. It has the best infurstructure of any place I have visited. There is a large police tranning facility outside of town. I believe that is why. The people obey the street lights, the streets are clean, really quite amazing. The food was different and increadible. I still prefer the food of northern coast, buit it was really good. In the sierra the base of the diet is potatoes, on the coast rice, and in the jungle platino. I also had the best sandwich, pulled pork with a delicious sause from native herbs. The diet also includes a lot more pork and beef than in the mountians and coast. As you might imagine the fruit is increadible. So many jucies so little time. With in an hour of Tarapoto you can get to numerous lagoon and water falls. Tarapoto lies on the boarder in between the eastern andes and the amazonian flood plain.

My favorite place that I visited was a town called Lamas. It is still very traditional to the native lifestyle. The natives here defeated the advances of the Incas so the culture is very different from what I have seen. In this small town the villagers still dress the same, use the sme mothods to cook and live very much with in the limitations of the land. One belief the people have and I could not figure out why is, The build there houses with out windows. You have to imagine in the summer it is 100 percent humidity and about 110 degrees. No windows are you crazy. The first picture is of this village Lamas, the second of the mopuntians outside of Moyabamba the third is of one of the many lagoons in the area, this lagoon contained many large turtles. I could not get there fotos. The fourth is a view of the limits of Tarapoto. The last is of another form of traditional house. This for usually does not have walls, but a second floor. Much like a barn with out walls and apalm tree roof. The family will sleep above. The first movie is cutter ants, they are about and inch long. The second is of the exit to Tarapoto. I will have two more blogs in the next week. Chau