For the next few days Blake and I helped Jimmy work on his farm in Padre Cocha, which is a 10 minute taxi ride to the northern port, a 10 minute boat ride to the other side of the river, and another 10 minute ride through the jungle on Jimmy's 3 wheeler cargo transport.Its a beautiful ride through the jungle to his farm, which is at the highest point in all of Iquitos. He showed us around camp and to the ridge overlooking the city. Told us his plans for the place, and the many setbacks he faced in realizing his dreams, all the while intermixing past, present and future tales of his life's journey.We loved every minute of it, he's a great story teller and lovable guy, if you can get past his initial blast of intensity that is. He likes to be very straight forward, almost to the point of shocking you, probably to test your character and sensibilities. A trait that Im very familiar with from my own life, although mostly in my younger years.Jimmy's building a fish farm, but he's also planting a variety of exotic fruits and vegetables and has also gathered rare species of plants from all over South America to grow on his property. Many of which I had never seen or heard of before, and I doubted I would see them anywhere else anytime soon. Its a real rarity's garden and a blessing to be a part of, if only in the capacity of a casual helping hand.When Jimmy found out that Blake had worked as a stone mason he asked if we could help him build the spill overs in the dykes that he needed to complete the project. Spill overs are concrete channels that allow excess water to pass without damaging whatever is holding back the water, mud and clay walls in this case. Blake agreed to help but admitted that he was not a very experienced craftsman and mostly did the grunt work during his year long employment in the trade. Even so, Jimmy was happy to have us help.The next day we returned with Jimmy's daughter, Madelyn, an impressively intelligent and helpful four year old girl that couldn't be stopped from helping in anyway she could. We were very impressed to find that she had planted nearly half the fruit trees and exotic plants on the property from seeds. Jimmy liked to say that she did more work by herself in a few days than any of the local guys he hired ever did. An embellishment to be sure, but not one not to far off considering what we saw of the locals work ethic during our time there.We brought with us Christmas gift baskets full of expensive and locally prized goods, such as spam, chocolate and marshmallow spread, soap, high end toilet paper and marmalade, and then handed them out to the best workers. When we arrived I blew up the new raft that Madelyn had gotten for Christmas, she and her father swam in the pond, while Blake and I cooked the breakfast we had brought with us on the fire.Afterward, Jimmy took us to the dyke and explained what he needed done. It didn't seem too complicated, but the problem with everything in Peru, as Jimmy explained, was the great difficulty of getting the local people to follow instructions, be true to their word, or be in anyway dependable.Much of what we did while working with Jimmy was pulling the wood and debris from the newly dug ponds, stacking them in huge piles and setting them ablaze. For the fish to be healthy and happy the water had to be as clean as possible. We also had the pleasure of taking discarded Yucca trees and planting 70 of them on the hillside overlooking the property. Because the cement was never delivered by the supplier and the forms Jimmy had brought to create the spill overs broken by the workers, the only work we ever did on the dykes was marking out the spaces they were to be built and then digging them out in the proper dimensions.Remarkably I was often charged by Jimmy with explaining the jobs to be done to the workers, a task I did surprisingly well considering the basic level of my Spanish. I don't like giving orders and it felt very awkward doing so In a language I barely understand, and to people I've only just met. The worst was the day when it was raining too hard and Jimmy asked me to tell them that if it was raining they shouldn't come to work, and that they should now go back home, that was tough for me. Jimmy has been living in Peru for almost a decade, but you wouldn't know it from his Spanish speaking ability.Its not as though Jimmy is doing it to be mean, he takes a lot of shit from the locals. Who he takes care of more than anyone else I've seen. One time a group of 11 guys from the taxi drivers association surrounded us while sitting at a cafe and asked Jimmy to pay money to repair the road. Jimmy had just spent thousands of dollars building and fixing the road and asked these same guys to help him, they didn't, and now that they're motor taxis have fucked up the road again they want Jimmy to pay for it once more. He told them off and they walked away astonished that he would refuse them. Many such incidents happened during our time with Jimmy, I feel bad for him, I would have lost my shit ages ago in such a situation, but he's a real tough cookie, a 9th generation Bostonian, a life long fisherman and hunter of some renown. Im really glad we met him.Back in town we helped Jimmy get Madelyn her first bike with training wheels, Blake sent postcards home and got money from Western Union, and I bought my ticket to Sweden for mid May. While at the Hideout we met a girl who had been invited by some people to go have drinks, I had just looked up the best restaurants in town on trip adviser though and we chose Dawn of The Amazon, the first on the list, so we had to refuse her offer. I got the general direction in my mind from the online map and we walked straight to it.As fate would have it the girl was already there when we arrived, her friends nowhere in sight, we sat down with her and were not disappointed by our choice. The food, service and view were all very nice, and the prices reasonable as well. The only hitch was that the power went out three times during our dinner. We walked halfway home with her until the power came back on in the city. Iquitos is truly a fascinating city to experience in the dark.