Soaking Up the Pleasures of Peru's Rain Forest

David Creason of White Plains, Md., is the latest contributor to our Your Vacation in Lights feature, in which we invite Travel section readers to share the dish about their recent trips. It's a big, confusing travel world out there, and you can help your fellow travelers navigate it. Your hot tip can be the next guy's day-maker; your rip-off restaurant, the next family's near miss. To file your own trip report -- and become eligible to win a digital camera -- see the fine print below.

WHO: My wife, Linda, and I, both 63.

WHY: Friends had been to Peru and loved it. We trusted their judgment.

THE TRIP: A four-day journey to the Amazon rain forest in Peru ($695 per person), an add-on to our 11-day Overseas Adventure Travel trip ($1,495). You may need a map for this one. I did, and I was there.

WHEN: March. We looked on OAT's Web site, picked out a date and made a reservation. OAT did everything else. Boy, was it easy.

BIGGEST SURPRISE: My Dorothy-in-Oz moment occurred on our first night at a lodge on a creek off the Amazon. Linda was returning from the dinner buffet when a tapir walked out of the kitchen and into the dining room. Nelly the tapir also swam with us during our evening boat ride. Her head kept popping out of the water to look at us.

WHAT, NO HEATED TOWEL RACK?: Rustic means latrines and cold showers in an open-roof shed. We slept under mosquito nets and read by kerosene lamps (no electricity). Ambient conditions in the Amazon mean warm temperatures, high humidity and lighting too dim to read, shave or see your food.

WISH WE HAD SKIPPED . . . Iquitos, a Peruvian city at the confluence of several major rivers that join to become the Amazon. Iquitos is accessible only by air or water. There are no roads out, which may explain why all of the transportation seemed to be rickety buses and motorcycle taxis. Along the river is a mass of shipyards and wood mills. It was one of the least attractive places I've ever seen, and our boat to the Amazon could not have left soon enough.

WILDLIFE SIGHTINGS: We saw freshwater pink dolphins, three-toed sloths, iguanas, birds of all kinds, snakes, frogs, capybaras, marmosets and termite nests. We fished for piranhas and caught catfish that we ate for dinner that night.

BOATING AMAZON-STYLE: We spent a lot of time on boats; it was the only way to get anywhere. The top-of-the-line model had an outboard motor that looked like a weed-eater motor. Our local guide, Renilo, grew up on an island in the Amazon and said he paddled everywhere. We pop in the car to go somewhere; they pop in a canoe.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: I chased a parrot off my mosquito net, but he stayed to watch me shave. Another lodge had guinea hens that tried to eat our bracelets when they weren't grooming the dog.