Oct 2009 Amazon Rainforest in Peru Part 1

Captions
Pat, Cornelia, Don and Tom
Floating village on the Amazon
Market day in Iquitos
Young girls in their village

What an experience! The life along the Amazon and its tributaries was a journey into another world, a world where the main source of transportation is a dugout canoe. The children are happy playing with marbles and bottle caps and are lucky to get their equivalent of a 5th grade education. Their houses are on stilts because their land is flooded 2 months of the year. The lucky ones might get electric 2 hours per day from solar energy, but the houses have no bathrooms, not even an outhouse (just a jungle). The principle job of the men is to provide food, mostly by fishing and a little hunting. Fish, plantains, and yuccas are the basic foods here. The woman are busy with their children, washing clothes in the river, hauling water from the river, cooking, cutting the grass with a machete, and making handicrafts to sell to tourists. Despite all of this, these are very happy people.
If you think the men have it easy, you haven’t seen them work. We watched them construct the foundation for a lodge renovation. They carried all the sand, water, rebar and water up a steep hill from the boat on their shoulder, a human conveyor belt. They dug the foundation with a shovel while wearing flip flops, but they never stopped smiling. Their only construction tools were a machete and a chain saw (they cut raw wood to made concrete forms). Without electricity, power tools are useless.

Oct 2009 Amazon Rainforest in Peru Part 2

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Silky Anteater (photo by A. Santos)
Poison Dart frog (photo by A. Santos)
12 Foot Anaconda which we released back to the river
Pygmy Marmoset (photo by A. Santos)

We planned this trip through Amazonia Expeditions. The owner is an American biologist, who did years of research in the Amazon rainforest. His wife is from Peru and her family runs the office and lodge in Peru. In addition to their regular staff of guides and boat drivers, they hire local men and women from nearby villages, on a rotating basis. This keeps the communities in close ties with the lodges and serves to educate them about the importance of preserving the wildlife in the protected areas.
The Amazon was the source of wealth for the Rubber Barons of the past. Now the biggest threat is oil and gas development. When oil is found near a village, the government can sell the land to the oil company and force the natives to move elsewhere. The national government is not highly regarded, but things have improved since the 1980’s and 90’s when thousands of Peruvians were killed as the military tried to rid the country of the Shining Path Marxists and their supporters.

Oct 2009 Amazon Rainforest in Peru Part 3

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Sea turtle

Pat and Cornelia enjoying a dugout canoe ride

Piranha

Shaman works on Tom

Enough about politics, I’ll tell about our experience. After meeting our friends Tom and Cornelia from Washington State at the Atlanta Airport, we all flew to Lima, Peru and took an extra day to explore the city. Next we flew to Iquitos, in NE Peru, a town with a million people, all zipping around on 3 wheel motor/bike taxis. A two and a half hour motor boat ride up the Amazon and its tributaries took us to a jungle lodge where we spent six nights. It was very hot and humid and after our first hike in the rainforest, I didn’t think I would make it through the trip. Fortunately, it either cooled down a bit or I got acclimated. In addition to these hikes, we took boat rides looking for wildlife or went fishing for piranha with raw meat. At night we might go out in small dugout canoes looking for wildlife we could sneak up on. It was amazing how the guides could spot critters that the rest of us could not see until we were right on top of them. In the rainforest, a zip line was set up in the forest canopy; it was quite a view from the top. We visited the local villages where we were always the biggest attraction for the children. They found our binoculars particularly fascinating. One village was participating in a project to reestablish sea turtle nesting areas. They received dozens of turtle eggs and raised the turtles until their chance of survival improved, and then they were released on nearby beaches.
Natural remedies are still used in the villages. We visited with a herbalist who showed us her garden and treated Tom’s arthritic thumbs. He was quite impressed with the results. On another trip to the village we met with the Shaman -first she purified her potions with smoke and she treated his chigger bits with camphor water. This considerably relieved his pain and itching. We also saw a dugout canoe and paddle being made. For $110 you could buy both.
In between these trips we ate. Most Americans have to be very careful about what they eat or drink south of the border, but at the lodge treated water was brought in and used in food preparation. As a result, we had plenty of opportunity to eat the local fruits and vegetables. I ate so healthy I actually lost weight.

Oct 2009 Amazon rainforest in Peru Part 4

Capitons

Pat with Wooly Monkey named Darilla
Snack time open wide, spit the head out
Rainbow boa pees on Don

Caiman (photo by A. Santos)

On a boating trip up river we met Darilla, a wooly monkey that had been orphaned. It later became a village pet, until it knocked over a kerosene lamp and burned their community house down. It was banished to an island and now welcomes any boaters that stop to feed it. It instantly became Pat’s best friend as it devoured three apples.
Our guide, Edson, found a Rainbow Boa on the trail. While we were holding it, it displayed its displeasure by peeing on my hand. Now it’s Pat’s favorite picture. Later our guide challenged us to a grub eating contest. Believe it or not, Pat ate more grubs than anyone else, even the guide. Since Cornelia and I failed the grub eating contest, we made dye from the tattoo fruit. Our hands were stained bluish-black for about 10 days as a result of straining the liquid dye from the fruit.
Because our accommodations were basically a screen room in the jungle, you could expect to find just about anything running around your room. The large pet boa that roams the lodge dwellings never appeared in our room, but a loud shout from Tom indicated something interesting was going on in their room. Turns out a tarantula decided Tom’s pants made a good spot to spend the night. Tom shook him out of his pants, but now the tarantula was loose in the room. Cornelia grabbed the camera and tried to track him down.
In addition to a resident Boa at the main lodge, the research lodge had a caiman who made his home in the waters just off shore. This, along with the piranha, was enough to keep us out of the water.
For all our adventures we had a guide and a boat driver/assistant. While Spanish was their native language, the guides all spoke English, some better than others. The assistant guides, while not being too fluent in English, were experts on jungle survival. We were taught how to make a pack for carrying game in the forest and even how to make a thatched roof for shelter.
In addition to the six nights at the lodge where we had an extra large screened room with private bath, we spent an additional three nights at their research lodge further up river in a nature preserve. Here we could explore 80 km of trails laid out in a grid pattern. The grid was used to better document the location of the wildlife. After 15 inches of rain one night, the trails were a bit muddy, over Pat’s boots on several occasions. The preserve is where we saw the most monkeys. One morning a troop of spider monkeys were passing overhead in one direction, and larger monkeys were moving overhead in the opposite direction.
If it was not for the heat and humidity it would be a great place to stay long term. This is fortunate however, because like Northern Canada, with its mosquitoes and black flies, these irritations help preserve vast tracks of land from becoming vast tracks of second homes. Only the government can protect these lands from logging, mining and industrial development.