Welcome to the jungle...

On the flight from Bogotá to Leticia I was listening to my IPOD and had it set to play random songs. Right before landing in Leticia and right before they made the announcement to turn off all electronic devices, my IPOD randomly played Guns N Roses ¨Welcome to the Jungle.¨ How fitting (and a nice segue from the Grateful Dead song I had been listening to before). The flight over the jungle was really amazing. From 35000 feet, the ground is just dark green as far as you can see, occasionally split up by a river snaking its way through the jungle. I have never seen so much forest in my life. No roads, no cities, no signs of humans, just trees as far as you can see. Amazing.

Leticia, Colombia sits at the southernmost tip of Colombia and is in the middle of jungle. It sits right on the Amazon River and shares a three-way border with Peru and Brazil. Not much to do in Leticia so I´ve just been wandering around and taking advantage of the pool at my hotel. Tomorrow morning at 4am I am catching a boat that will take me up the Amazon to Iquitos, Peru.

As I walked to the airport today to get an exit stamp in my passport, I passed a training center for the jungle unit of the Colombian Army. These are the guys that basically go through the jungle hundreds of miles from anyone trying to root out the guerillas. Pretty tough job. Anyways, they were parading around in some kind of official ceremony and it reminded me of the never ending parades and drilling that they had to go through in Catch-22 (read it and you will know exactly what I mean). Kinda funny that these elite forces who specialize in jungle work would spend so much time learning how to march in unison. Can´t imagine there is much marching in unison as you are trying to struggle through nearly impenetrable jungle. Maybe it has something to do with unit cohesion and discipline. Then again, I am not a military person so don´t know too much about it.


Sunset over the Amazon.