Jungle Joy

“I’ve never been this ridiculously happy!” Kristie said after we had finally managed to stop laughing. Raquel looked at us like we were crazy. Nothing was particularly funny – we had just been smiling hugely to ourselves as we walked through the jungle, and happened to look at each other. We were eating oranges almost as big as our heads. The juice was running down our arms, dripping off our elbows onto our dusty feet. The day was warm and we had walked three kilometers to a clean river. For several hours we waded, swam and collected interesting rocks in the refreshing water. The walk was gorgeous and we took pictures of the Urubamba River, banana trees, passionfruit, chirimoya and a plethora of other plants. The birds were loud and numerous. The air was warm and heavily scented with plants. Occasionally, a nasty dead smell came to us from across the river where buzzards were circling.  A couple days later, we returned to the river with our Bibles, sat on big rocks in the middle and spent a good part of the morning just reading with the sun warm on us and the minnows nibbling on our toes. Of course it would be a waste to come to the river without washing, so we climbed in and had fun floating down. Those were probably my favorite days on my whole trip.