The Amazon has always been on Melody’s bucket list, which helped kickstart our action-packed itinerary to Peru this summer. Melody returned from a work trip at midnight to find us still awake ahead of our 5am flight. We bought playing cards to replace our forgotten MTG deck for our 5-hour layover in Houston, but had only 30 minutes at the KLM lounge to learn Spit and Speed before filling on gumbo and etouffee and starting our malarone prophylaxis. Our Barranco hotel served as home base to explore Huaca Pucllana and the historic city center. After learning about Lima culture and the adobe and clay pyramid, we shared La Lucha’s chicharron sandwich and La Mar’s ceviche and arroz marisco, then Ubered to tour the ornate altars at Iglesia de la Merced, Moorish facade of the Palacio de Torre Tagle, and mosaics at Catedral de Lima. Plaza Mayor was bustling with tourists as we squeezed our way to the Convento Santo Domingo, bought Westley a fluffy toy alpaca, and sampled street vendor churros, queso helado, and mystery crema. We snapped photos of Casa de La Literatra Peruana’s stained-glass ceiling in the historic Desamparados Station en route to the impressive catacombs of Convento San Francisco and nearby Parque de la Muralla. Too exhausted for the Circuito Magico del Agua, we shared wonton soup and beef chow fun at Chifa Dragon Tong before calling it a night. We awoke Monday for our flight to Iquitos to meet our Aqua Expeditions crew, enjoy lunch on a floating restaurant, and bus to Nauta for orientation and safety training for our 4-night Amazon cruise. Our first morning excursion included sightings of kingfishers, vultures, and fly eaters as we passed pink and gray dolphins and a distant blob of a two-toed sloth on the Marañon River. Our afternoon visit to a local village taught us about high-low water seasons, a fisherman’s catch, a little girl’s pet turtle, and poking at a venomous snake carcass. We relaxed with Animalogic and a napkin-folding workshop before our night excursion featuring sloths, toucans, macaws, fishing bats, saki monkeys, river turtles, and a baby caiman but no anaconda, capping with ceviche & picarones for dinner. We awoke Wednesday to dolphins playing boatside and a morning excursion with a green iguana, a caracara unsuccessfully chasing a kingfisher, and an egret nearly faceplanting on the riverbank. We attempted to canoe dugouts while local women propelled us before we transitioned from the brown to black waters of the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, where our jungle walk included sightings of termite nests, leaf cutter ant mounds, two millipedes, and giant ceiba trees. We hurried back for a picnic lunch on our boats under a gang of squirrel monkeys, then took a cooling dip in the iced-tea waters near some gray dolphins. After siesta and backgammon, we enjoyed a chocolate demo and a sunset jam with the crew on deck. Our attempt at piranha fishing on Thursday proved successful with Westley catching white and red belly piranhas plus an herbivorous silver dollar. We celebrated our last night with a final toast on the Amazon River, a round of Scrabble, and slideshow from the crew. Our last morning excursion included sightings of Amazon turkeys and a pygmy marmoset but no capybara. Afterwards, we disembarked to visit the Amazon Rescue Center for closer views of manatees and other animals we missed, then headed to the airport where our lounge access supplemented our bag lunch before our flight to Cusco.