Okay, so this has taken forever. I've had a ton of notes to go through, and now I'm finally going to post some of the highlights of my trip to Peru! This is part 1. Part 2 will take... more time.
I’ve wanted to go to the Amazon
as long as I can remember. Dad recently came across footage of my Hawaii trip,
when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. We were next to a town, and there was a strip
of forest next to it, with a pretty waterfall. I marched off into the trees, declaring “I’m gonna go explore the
jungle.” “The jungle?” Dad repeated. But I
came out pretty quickly. It turns out that a patch of trees near town isn’t as fascinating
as I’d always hoped a jungle would be.
So I knew far in advance which trip I wanted to choose from the Earthwatch expeditions. Through Earthwatch, you can sign up to help with studies all over the world.
When I arrived in the LA airport, the last stretch before entering Peru, I called AT&T to
activate my out-of-country phone plan. This had been an unbelievable ordeal. Over a
month before, I went to one of their stores to get this plan. A month later, it
was cancelled, because it turned out they sold me the wrong plan. So I started
making phone calls. Lots of them. And every time, someone told me completely
different information. Finally I got what I thought was the right answer. So
when they told me they couldn’t do it, while I was just about to jump on a
plane to Peru, I was so angry I was almost shouting into my phone in a public place. I quit AT&T when I got home. Their
customer service is utterly useless. I didn't have any way to use my
phone in Peru. Which was concerning, because I had ongoing problems with just about every flight I took.
The flight from LA to Peru was overnight. Near the end, I opened the plane window,
expecting it to still be dark. But the first rays or morning sun were pouring
over the ridge of the Andes. It was stunning. The mountains ran in a
saw-toothed line as far as I could see in either direction. They were massive.
The valleys and plains below were solid with fog. From this height, it looked
like fields of snow. It was incomprehensible that the capitol city of Lima
could be down there. But we dipped down into the fog, which ended up reaching
almost to the ground.
My research had told me to be
very careful with food and water. The same was true in Beijing. You can’t drink
tap water – it all has to be bottled. You can’t eat any food if it’s not cooked
well, or you could get sick. That includes salad, because it may have been
rinsed in tap water. And juice that’s not canned, because it may have been
diluted with tap water. Or drinks with ice, because that ice could be tap
water. Or wet cans, because those cans could be wet with tap water. They even
tell you to use bottled water to brush your teeth.
So I was prepared, and paranoid.
But what really got me were the
toilets. It seems most of my international trips include some unexpected
experience about toilets. In high school, we were stunned to find the hole
toilets in Beijing. Not a raised seat, but a hole in the ground that you squat over. I think we were all afraid we’d fall in, and some of them
did look rather nasty in some areas. Though in hind sight it makes
sense. Toilet seats can be really gross. Japan was almost the
opposite. Their toilets were amazingly fancy. Some of them came with entire
control panels. And most of them automatically played the sound of running
water, so no one could hear you going. There were a couple hole-in-the-floors
too, in the less touristy areas. Peru brought something else. I randomly
happened on a bit of information just a couple days ago that slightly prepared
me. Bring your own toilet paper, because there isn’t always paper available in
public spaces. I have heard that before (I think it may have been parts of
China?) There was paper in the Lima airport. But the TP dispenser was in the main
part of the bathroom, where the sinks are. Not in the stall, where you actually
need it. I spotted the dispenser and was confused. But when I saw people
pulling paper out of it, I had a suspicion. Luckily I brought some in the stall
with me. Otherwise I would have been stuck. But then I recalled the second bit
of information about Peruvian toilets. You don’t flush the paper down the
toilet. You put it in the waste basket. That’s a very hard habit to break. I
hope the bit I flushed by accident didn’t clog anything.
From Peru, I had one last flight to Iquitos - an isolated city out in the Amazon Rain Forest. Iquitos is basically an
island. And not because it’s next to a river. There’s only one road, and it goes a couple towns down. The only ways in and out of Iquitos are by
river, which can take a few days, and by plane.
The head of the study actually runs two museums and a hotel in Iquitos. He arranged for us to go to the Museum of Indigenous Cultures in the brief time we had before we left for our study. The museum was two stories tall,
with displays from cultures around this part of the Amazon. There were feather headdresses,
bows and spears, clothes, and a beautiful wooden flute decorated with bands of
bright feathers.
They had a pair of big drums made from hollowed logs.
The drumsticks were two thick, heavy mallets. I got to play them.
As we were walking around, I spotted a flier on the ground for an upcoming Dia de los Muertos celebration. Needless to say, I was sad that I couldn't attend.
We drove an hour out of Iquitos (on the only road) and then jumped on a boat up the Amazon River for another 1 1/2 hours. Half way through our boat trip, we went up a small river that paralleled the Amazon - the Yarapa. This is where we spent most of our time. The water is dark. Like milky coffee with a
green tinge. Why is the water so dark? Well, the
Andes are actually a pretty new mountain system. They’re still releasing a lot
of sediment. It flows down the rivers, where it’s constantly churned up and
never gets a chance to settle and clear. But if you were to take a bucket of
the water and let it sit, all of the sediment would settle to leave clear
water. The Amazon itself pushes water through at 80,000 square meters a second.
The Rio Amazonas is the boat we’re
staying on. It's 40 meters long. Since we’re staying on a
boat, we don’t need to carve up the riverbank for buildings and paths. It was built about a hundred years ago for the rubber boom. That was a truly awful time. The Amazon people were enslaved and forced into the difficult process of harvesting and refining
rubber from the trees. It also lead to such things as a giant opera house in the
middle of the rain forest, for all the fancy white people. The fact that a boat from this era is now used for environmental research is amazing. They’ve published several studies on the impacts of
climate change, for example.
As we stepped onboard, a tiny gray tabby
cat came over, meowing and purring. I’d been warned not to touch animals in
Peru. But there was no way I could resist this greeting. I started scratching
her head and back, and she loved the attention. I was so glad we had a boat
cat. Her name is Bigote, which means mustache. They named her before they knew
she was a girl. I don’t know why, because unless you count her whiskers, she
doesn’t have a mustache. But she’s so sweet. And very chatty. Only about 5
months old.
There was actually some internet! Not great, but I didn’t expect any at all. It comes from one of the nearby
towns, and they get the choice of the service. Not much is left by the time it
reaches us, I suppose. I only managed to access it a couple times with any reliability.
On our first full day on the Yarapa River, we spent much of the morning going
over the projects we’d be working for the next couple weeks. From the smaller
boats, we'd be doing several surveys: shorebirds, fishing bats, fish, macaws, frogs, and caimans. We’d also go out to the Amazon River
for the river dolphins. And we’d have ground surveys both for mammals, and
lizards.
This part of the Amazon gets rain all year
long. There’s no dry season - just a less wet season. And in the wet season, water levels can be 30 feet higher than their lowest point. I was here about a month after the driest part of the year
We went out in a motor boat to survey shorebirds. The boat is pretty loud, which scares up the birds. That makes them easier to see, though it probably scares some away before we can see them. I learned about Horned screamers. They're big
chicken-like birds. And they have a freaking unicorn horn. Not a feather, but an actual horn.
After our survey, we turned downstream and headed back to the Rio Amazonas. We went a little faster since we were no
longer surveying. But our driver spotted something and turned around. We all
thought it was an egret. But it turned out that in the tree just next to the
egret was a sloth! A three-toed sloth. One you won’t see in US zoos because
they can only eat tropical plants. This sloth had lovely spots, and
was hanging by his back toes. He was like a piece of laundry strung up. It was
adorable.
During a night survey, we spotted a couple capybara and a
couple large owls. And there were a lot of fishing bats. As we came to the end of our survey route, they cut the boat motor. All around were animal calls.
Crickets, birds, frogs, and any number of creatures. It was incredible.
Nov 1 2022
We boated down river a short way for a land survey. This time of year, the banks are thick with tall bamboo-like grasses. When water levels rise, these grasses float. All of the land we're near will be underwater when the floods rise. The flooded forest is a different habitat than you usually see on TV. You can kind of see on these trees where the waters will rise. It's where the trunks shift from dark to light.
I stepped foot into the Amazon Rain Forest for the first time. Our guide cleared the new grass growth with a machete. Our guides were amazing. They could
spot stuff that seemed impossible. Like a tree about 20 feet from the path,
with a hole in it. A rat was sticking its head out of the hole. A really cute
one, called a yellow crowned brush tailed rat. It did have a cute, fluffy
tail, which we saw when it jumped out of its hole, sat on the tree
trunk and then squeezed back into the little hole.
Our guide also spotted a frog in the
middle of the path. It was colored and shaped like a perfect dead leaf, and one
of our group had trouble seeing it even when someone had their finger almost on
top of it.
Pygmy marmosets are tiny tiny little primates,
and he also spotted a couple of those. It took me a minute, but I managed to
spot one in the tree high above us. We could hear birds, but not see most of
them through the leaves.
Mostly we saw insects. Bright
crickets. Sinister-looking long-legged mosquitos. Beautiful butterflies,
including a couple blue morphos. As I leaned over to watch one, Kim warned me
to be careful of the fire ants crawling on a nearby trunk (one person did get bit by a fire ant later on). More interesting were the
leaf-cutter ants. We saw a few at first. Them more. Along our little trail,
there was a bare area with lumpy soil, maybe 15 feet across. A giant leaf
cutter ant colony. Some of them were using our trail. I tried to step to either
side of them, but I could see them panicking and scrambling from the boots in
front of me. Up one small tree was a line of leaf-cutters carrying chunks of
leaf larger than they were. I think they only use certain tree species. They
don’t eat them – they use them to grow fungus.
The trees were stunning too. Some
had those amazing buttresses, and I was excited to learn that they were kapok
trees. Some of them were truly massive. One of our guides, Kim, said they were only about 100
years old. They can reach around 500 years, but they don’t get very old around here
because the flooding can cause root rot.
Then there was the walking tree. Its
roots grew in a tipi shape above ground. Some of the roots even branched into more tipis,
and many of them were lined with thorns. The roots die and regrow, so that the
tree appears to be slowly walking. It’s one of many thorny plants.
Most of the wildlife in the area is sustainably hunted: deer, peccaries,
large rodents, and game birds. Tapirs and large monkeys are not a
sustainable food source, but luckily they're not a preferred meat. The locals take fish at sustainable
levels too. Annual flooding gives fish a population boom, so they’re doing better
than most fisheries. Here, the number 1 predator of fish is other fish. After
that is birds. And humans come in third.
Fishing was our next survey. I stuck a bit of fish on my hook
and tossed it in. I could feel the swarms of fish nibbling. But I kept jerking
the line too enthusiastically, sending the hook flying into the air. You don’t
want a hook flying at your face. Although the line was probably too short to
have snagged me anyway. Then I was pulling up too timidly. But I did manage to catch
a couple fish. Everything we caught was about the size of the palm of my hand. And we each caught one or two.
But
we’d heard some thunder and saw some distant lightning flashes. The rain was
approaching. So our guide Pedro went to pull in the nets I'd helped him set up (I didn't help that much-just paddled the canoe some). While he was gone, the rain started. It was like a shower of bullets
thundering down. It tore up the entire surface of the river. I passed out
umbrellas, but the water ran down the boat benches so we were all sitting in
ponds. I held the umbrella over my backpack and let myself get soaked. I had to
shower anyway. The rain was so heavy that it was hard to see. But it felt
amazing.
Unfortunately the rain seemed to
bring out clouds of these little midge things. And they’d bite. The marks faded
within the hour, but it itched and stung at first.
Our nets had caught three armored
catfish. We turned and headed back to the Rio Amazonas.
Paula grabbed one of the catfish –
twice as big as anything else we’d caught. She flipped it upside down so we
could rub its belly. Petting one direction was fairly smooth. But the other way
felt like sandpaper. The fins had stiff rods inside. And their backs had rows
of little thorns. I fished one out of the bucket, and as it tried to wriggle
free I could feel the thorns. But it didn’t break the skin.
Someone saved a little fish for Bigote. She sniffed it, then took
it. She started crunching away immediately. I was impressed, because my cat
would have no idea what to do with a whole raw fish. And no interest, either.
She doesn’t know she’s a cat.
We got to try the armored catfish we caught. Because of their tough armor, you
have to cook them like a lobster. I got a tail. You had
to peel all of the scales off first. It took a long time, but the fish
was delicious.
I’d been hoping we could see a bit
of a Dia de los Muertos celebration. But we’re four hours from the nearest
city. Oh well. The survey tonight was cancelled due to rain, So I took the evening to watch my favorite movie: Coco.
Nov 2
We had a cold snap, which lasted through the night. The staff were saying they were cold. But it
was nice and pleasant to the rest of us, who weren’t raised in the humid heat.
With lunch, we got to try a couple little
piranha we’d caught. There were only two, and we each only got a bite. But it
was tasty.
There were squirrel
monkeys across the river. They were jumping around in a couple large bushes, and
then leaping down into the tall grass. You could see it rustling as they moved
along beneath it. And a green kingfisher landed on the bow of the boat while I
was standing there.
Not far from the mouth of the
Yarapa, two rivers meet and form the very beginning of the Amazon River. We boated past this area and stopped. This was the place to see river dolphins: both pink and gray. Our job was to call out when we saw a
dolphin, which direction it was, how far it was, whether it was a pink or a gray,
and how old it was. The ultimate goal is to form a picture of what dolphins are
where, so we can figure out how many there are.
Luckily the dolphins are doing
pretty well. Locals have strong taboos against killing the pink dolphins (also called botos). If
one’s killed accidentally, they give it a human burial. If one is killed
deliberately, they go and get the police to turn in the killer. The dolphins are said
to come out of the water as humans dressed in white.
Botos are pink because of capillaries
close to the skin. When they’re resting, they’re gray. The more excited they
are, the pinker they are. That makes it hard for researchers to identify
individuals.
There’s also gray river dolphins.
And once when Dr. Richard’s team was out measuring the dolphin calls, a group
of pinks and grays came together. The frequencies of their calls steadily
matched up, as if they were shifting to the same language. Then the grays swam
off, leaving one of their babies in the nursery with the pinks.
Viewing river dolphins is tricky,
because of the brown water. If they’re swimming normally, only the tops of
their heads and backs break the surface. If they’re diving down to feed, you’ll
see their tails too. Pinks are larger, and have smaller dorsal fins than the
grays. Though their colors sometimes overlap.
We did a night frog survey. We headed downstream a bit. There are some areas
where the water lettuce and grasses are thick 20 feet out into the water. And from
out seats on the boat, the grasses can be higher than your head. They turned
the boat and plowed it directly into these floating meadows. None of us
expected it and started laughing and shouting. When the boat came to a stop,
surrounded on all sides, we started counting frogs. They can be as small as
your thumb nail, and they have good camouflage. But we found nine of them. Four
species. But there are 68 confirmed frog species here.
In addition to the frogs were
spiders. Lots of them. Some as big as the little frogs. After the last survey, we all
turned off our flashlights and I saw tiny glowing dots sitting down near the
water surface. Like the fireflies on the shore, but tinier and not moving.
They’re glowing spiders!
Nov 3
The trail we hiked today had been hiked two weeks ago,
but the grasses that covered the riverbank were already three feet tall.
We stopped at the end of the trail
for a rest. Our guide Pedro went off to explore and came back with a handful of red
seeds. I'd seen these same seeds used to make key chains back in Iquitos. Wayruro seeds. They’re
red, sometimes with black patches. They’re lucky, especially if you have one with both colors. Pedro
pointed out the tree on the way back. But he hustled us along, because he’d
just spotted a wasp nest on the other side of the trunk, at stomach level.
We passed a tiny snake, only half as wide as my thumb, but
longer than my hand. It was colored with black, white, and orange bands. A type of coral snake known here as the nakanaka. Very venomous, and this tiny one was full grown.
Beautiful.
As we were nearing the boat, I
found a fallen water bottle. At first I was disgusted that garbage
would wash all the way out here to the rainforest. But it turns out that
fishermen use empty bottles as floats for their nets. Sometimes they break free
and drift away. We gather them when we can, so I brought this bottle out too.
Our lunches and dinners consisted mostly of rice and beans. Not much variety, but it was always very good. Especially after a hike. Meals always came with a side too, like a piece of chicken or fish. And we had a different juice every day. Today’s juice was from a fruit called cocona. It
was good. We were all curious about the fruit, so they brought a couple up from
the kitchen. They start out with a fuzzy skin, like a peach but with a longer
fuzz. They have to clear the fur off, because it prickles. Underneath is an
orange skin. When cut open, inside looked like a round, orange guava. It was
very sour. Either this one wasn't too ripe, or they added a lot of sugar to the juice.
There are two villages along our stretch of the river. Today we visited the little village at the mouth of the Yarapa River: Belem. Though there were only about four or five houses. The houses are built
on stilts, since this is all the flood area. The water can reach your waist. During the dry season, at least, they keep a pig in a pen under the house. With chickens and dogs wandering around.
All around were
the different crops they were growing. Cocona, plantain, grapefruit, coconut, cotton,
jackfruit, and hot peppers. In one of the
overhead trees, there was a swarm of wasps. We hurried past.
As we walked along, something
shoved against the pack of my knees. It didn’t feel human, and I expected to
turn around and see a dog or something. So when the pig trotted past, I said
loudly, “oh my god.” And then started laughing. I certainly hadn’t expected
that.
We were talking to the family at the next house when the pig came again and shoved his
muddy snout against my pants a couple times. The man chased him off. Time to wash my pants.
The night survey was for fishing
bats. They had a device that would pick up bat calls and make them audible to
us. So we zoomed down the dark river with a spotlight, and I recorded all of
the bats we saw and heard.
Nov 4
This morning we did a lizard survey. We took a stretch of path and walked very slowly, looking for movement or little camouflaged bodies. I spotted a caterpillar inching
along a stem. A lizard spotted it too and dashed for it. The caterpillar was
about as long as the lizard’s body, but he started chomping it down. The
caterpillar held onto the twig with its front half, even though the back half
was down the lizard’s throat. It was still hanging on when we left.
Back at the boat, we looked at some of the footage from the camera traps. They have 15 cameras in the upland forests and
about a dozen in the flooded forests. There's an amazingly huge list of the wildlife they've seen. But this is the spookiest. There’s
an Amazon spirit called the chunchi. One person said it was sort of like a
devil, while another said it was more of a spirit. And they say it turns into smoke.
In one of the camera videos, there was a paca (kinda like a big guinea pig). Something startled it and it
bounded out of the frame. A moment later, a wisp of smoke passed in front of
the camera. Oooh.
I started learning some of the local names for the animals. The jacana is the most common bird we saw (except maybe for the white-winged parakeets). They have long toes, which they use to delicately walk across the floating water plants. Pedro told me that their word
for jacana is tukituki, because that's the sound the birds make. A much cuter name.
During the night survey, Pedro lent me his good flashlight (mine was pretty cruddy). If I
shone it at the owls their eyes would glow like orange embers. I realized my
light might be blinding their sensitive eyes, so I stopped.
The boat will
sometimes scare fish into jumping out of the water. A couple nights ago, a
small fish landed in the boat. Tonight, I heard a
loud thud, and continued banging. I thought we’d hit something until I realized a huge fish had jumped into the boat. An arowana. It was about as long as my arm, without the
hand. Mario grabbed it and held it up for us to see. So beautiful and strange.
I touched it and found it both smooth and slimy. They can jump six feet out of
the water, grabbing bugs, fish, even birds on branches. And they are good
dads. Father arowana carry eggs and baby fish in their mouth for a couple
months. This was actually a young one. They can get well over a meter long. So
we slipped it back into the river.
And amazingly, this was the night I
got my first mosquito bite. At least the first one that showed up. I guess my
precautions are paying off. They’re not always a problem on the river, unless
it’s dawn or twilight. Richard knows the hours the mosquitoes are out. The
forest is where mosquitos are the worst, and I always cover myself with bug
poison before transects. I guess it’s mostly worked.
But yeah, those malaria meds are
interesting. The others who are taking them said they’ve been getting bizarre
dreams. Amelia doesn’t drink, but she had a dream about getting a DUI and going
to court, knowing she’d go to prison. And Laura said that on a previous trip,
she had some really bizarre dreams about one man on the tour, who she
didn’t really know. I’m glad that hasn’t happened to me. I’ve remembered some
dreams, but they’re no weirder than usual.
Nov 5
For the parrot surveys, you have to identify birds that are flying high overhead. Except they're too far to see. But parrots are noisy, so Kim could tell species by their different calls. The most common bird we saw out here was the white-winged parakeets.
When national parks started in the
US, the idea was to mostly keep humans out. And by that, I mean the American Indians. But then there grew the idea of a
community reserve, where communities stay and hunt sustainably. Companies can’t
come in to exploit resources. Some people were concerned because they didn’t
believe that humans could live in an area without overusing the resources. Even
though humans have always done so in much of the world. Peru’s first community
reserve is the Tamshiyocu Tahuayo Regional Conservation Area. It’s named for the
two rivers that it sits between. And it’s worked very well. The people are
responsible for their home, and largely keep to sustainable levels of hunting.
Caiman are the main problem.
At one point, the government was
going to change a nearby reserve to a type that restricted hunting. So everyone
rushed in to hunt as much as they could before the restrictions fell into
place. They tried to crack down on the severe over hunting, but it escalated
until a band of locals broke into a research station and killed some assistants
and staff. After seeing how well the first community reserve went, about the
year 2000 they finally decided to go with that model in this land too. And it
worked. Community reserves continued to spread, with seven more added to Loreto
since then.
"Indigenous territories" are
different. They allow mineral and oil extraction. There are three of these
territories at the east of Loreto. This leads to major conflicts between them
and the locals. There have been 2,000-3,000 reported sites of oil spills, which
the companies don’t clean up. The equipment is way past its expected lifespan.
The oil is piped over the Andes to the Pacific, and only one of the original
ten pipelines still works. The others have corroded. In fact on November 3rd,
up in that region of Loreto (about 100 miles from us) there was another
conflict. A group of people took a boat that had foreigners aboard. It’s the first time
foreigners have been involved in one of these conflicts, so it may change the
dynamics of the situation. Everyone was released within the next couple days. Luckily my parents didn't hear about that, because they would have freaked out.
Deep in the reserves, there still
live uncontacted people. They had awful experiences during the rubber boom, and
want nothing to do with "civilization." Unsurprisingly. Plus it means they
don’t have to share hunting with anyone. It’s great they can still live
traditionally. Though I wish they knew things aren’t so terrible for them
anymore (even if there are all new problems, like pollution and… many others).
Once a year, they’ll stand across the river from some of the communities, just
to remind people that they’re out here. And sometimes they’ll send in a few
people to obtain steel, since there’s no way to get that in the Amazon. It’s
good for axes and such. Though sometimes they just steal them.
During the floods, Natural earth levees, left by
shifting rivers, provide dry ground for animals that can’t climb. Wild dogs,
tapirs, little deer, peccary, and big rodents. But when climate change leads to
more severe floods, those animals are stuck. The opposite is true when climate
change increases drought. Then the fish all end up suffering. If the forests
don’t flood, fish can’t swim in to eat the fallen fruit and insects. So they
eat each other.
It’s illegal to sell bush meant in
cities. Only in towns. This prevents huge increases in demand. But there’s
still bush meat sold in Iquitos. They tried to stop it a few times, with no
success. Instead they started managing it. And it’s been sustainable. There are some communities that
have licenses for fish and bush meat, and they can sell some legally in the
cities. Like to certain restaurants.
Aguaje is a type of palm tree with
an edible fruit. The trees have to grow very tall – 30 meters - in order to get any
sunshine through the canopy. This means they need a strong trunk. They pull in
sand from the soil and incorporate it into their bark. That gives them a sort
of glassy surface that can chip. The inner part of the trunk is more springy.
People used to cut the aguaje palms down to gather the fruits. Many of the
fruits would be crushed when the tree fell, and the tree was dead and could no
longer produce fruit. It’s 15 years before a young aguaje can produce fruit. Many
other animals rely on them, so when people cut them down, it would have a
ripple effect to other wildlife. But there was no other way people had to
gather the fruit.
But if aguaje are planted in open
areas, they don’t get very tall, and are much easier to harvest. It’s a good
addition to agroforestry. People can also use harnesses for climbing telephone
poles, to climb up and gather the fruit. It’s a superfruit in Peru. Dr. Richard’s team helped one company do a biodiversity
study to develop an aguaje drink. They want to help spread this superfruit in a
sustainable way. It’s called Bio Amayu. Richard had some bottles to share with
us. It was unusual, but good. They had other flavors of local fruit too – like
the one we tasted in Belem. I haven't been able to find it for sale since I left Peru though.
After our lessons, we got back on the boat and went to the other nearby village: Castilla. We went up the Yarapa and hiked
about 15 minutes across a little strip of land between us and the Amazon River. We ended up right at the start of the
Amazon, where we'd seen the dolphins. Castilla is more what I expected a village to
look like. It was very nice in comparison to Belem. The animals looked much
healthier too: dogs, chickens, and Muscovy ducks. There were a couple peccary
hides stretched out to dry. More stilt houses. Above one house was a tree that housed a sloth.
A family walked by with a tiny
piglet trotting at their heels. But it wasn’t a pig. It was a three-month-old
peccary. Very cute. Though it may end up as food. Who knows.
We headed further into the village.
Paola pointed out some of the plants. Like one spiky teardrop shaped fruit with
bright red seeds. Achiote fruit. It can be used for medicine, and paint. Apparently
the paint is quite potent, lasting about 10 days on skin.
A dog joined us,
trotting alongside with tail wagging. At the far end of Castilla was the
school: A collection of little brightly painted buildings. There was a big
awning with benches under it, for outside classes. The rooftop above was a
water collection system, which was hooked up to taps through the village. And
oddly enough, there was a big cell tower above Castilla, which I’d seen from
the dolphin boat. Those with working phones got excellent signal, and
called their families.
We were waiting for the townsfolk to set out their
crafts., so we started playing with the ant lion pits. These bugs scoop out little
funnels in the sand, and when an ant falls inside, they nab it. If you gently
prod the bottom of the pit with a piece of grass, you can see the ant lion pop
out.
And then their craft fair was ready! There are amazing artists here, doing everything from bead work to weaving.
The scales of a large fish were worked into
the jewelry. As were anaconda vertebrae, peccary fangs, piranha jaws, and the
wayruro seeds. There were these strange gourd-like
fruits growing from a couple of the trees. Some of them were as big as a
basketball. They’d hollow them out and carve the surface.
I got several things, but everyone else finished pretty fast. I’d wanted to buy a bunch of gifts, but I had to follow the others out.
We’d brought gifts for the kids. In
my luggage, I’d hauled in three packages of colored pencils for the school (Though
I’d taken them out of the packages). And I brought a little bag full of cute or
pretty stuff. Except it wasn’t enough for all of the kids. I wasn’t sure what
to do with it, but Paula said I could start handing it out. The kids packed
around me, and I started handing things into the many palms. I couldn’t tell
who got what, so hopefully no one took more than one thing. When I ran out, and
not everyone got something, I felt like a jerk. But hopefully some of the kids
were happy.
Kim asked me how it went, and I
said, “I feel like I started a riot.”
We looked at the sloths again on
the way out. There was a second sloth we hadn’t noticed before. And she had a
baby!
November 6 2022
Up early to do a transect walk. We
didn’t see much. A squirrel monkey, and some interesting bugs. And there
was a beautiful caterpillar that was bigger than my finger. I never knew they
could get that big.
I found a pretty green frog
attached to a leaf. He was hunkered down, trying to camouflage. I felt
accomplished for finally spotting a vertebrate on a land transect (not counting
the lizard transect).
We got a brief glimpse of a tarantula, up on a tree
trunk. They had a web-pouch that they retreated into. A blue morpho butterfly, wings shut with the eye spots showing. And another
butterfly with beautiful dead-leaf camouflage. And a millipede under a leaf.
Some scattered logging has been done around here,
though not extensively. Which is a relief.
There are so many thorns. Palm trees with needle-like thorns almost as thick as fur. Trees covered with thick claw-like thorns. And there are vines and stumps and mud on the trail, so sometimes people trip and fall into the thorns. The palm trees are the most terrifying, because you see the fallen fronds which are over 15 feet long. And you wonder what would happen if one fell on you.
I didn't have too much free time because I spent most of it writing down everything I could remember from the various excursions. Bit I
started reading a big book I’d brought. A compilation of Jack London – both
short and long works. I always liked his two famous dog stories. The rest
of his writing is far different. Often quite bleak. Though I have to say, it’s
bizarre reading stories that take place in the far north when you’re sweating
in the hot, humid tropics. The book is quite massive, and I didn’t get a chance
to read much of it.
We crossed the Yarapa and hiked across that strip of land. One of the staff has a little farm there. They had a pen of boars,
several sows, and 18 piglets. Almost all of the piglets were spotted. They were super curious and most of them came
swarming over to check us out, along with a couple of the sows. Laura has pigs,
and she says that whenever you start to rub their belly, they can’t help but
roll onto their side to get the belly rub. I’ve seen her do it to three
different pigs, and so far it’s always worked. (And it works with the pigs at the zoo too! As well as another pig at a fair petting zoo)
We walked the rest of the way to
the Amazon River – we were almost there. The sun was just getting ready to set.
There’s a cliff between us and the river, but someone had carved steps down to
the water. Milan and I went down to the bank and stood in the shallow water of
the Amazon, just to say we had.
I went in the shower to rinse off
the bug spray, and saw a big cockroach. I'd seen it earlier, running under my bed. I
didn’t want to touch it, so I stuck to the far wall of the shower. But eventually the water
spray knocked him onto the ground. He landed on his back, and couldn’t right
himself. Normally I’d help a bug, but not this time. He was still there when I
went to bed, legs occasionally twitching.
November 7 2022
I’d been looking forward to
fishing, but it was so hot out today. I’d been
frustrated with my sunscreen, because it seems to make me sweat a lot more than normal.
Even on my arms, which don’t really sweat. And it was so hot and humid today,
that while fishing, my sunscreened face was pouring sweat. Everyone was kind of
shocked at how much was coming out of me. Whenever I reached up to wipe it off,
I could literally flick away drops of sweat into the river. On my arms, the
sunscreen was frothing on my skin. Yeah, I think I need a new sunscreen. It was
gross.
I got the little fish hook, which was better for little fish. I caught five. Actually
seven, but two of them slipped loose before I could grab them. I caught 3
sabalo, a sardine, and a piranha. The piranha was missing half of his face.
Like someone had bitten off his top jaw. How could he eat? Or bite? How was he
still alive? Somehow I managed to hook the sardine through the outside of his
gill and it bled quite a bit when I took it out (considering how little the
fish was). On the first fishing trip, I’d hooked one of my fish in the side. I
don’t know what the heck I’m doing to make that happen. I guess I jerked up so
hard that the hook snagged into a fish that happened to be floating nearby.
But I’m also questioning this. I
tried taking the hooks out myself this time. Except the piranha – Kim had
gloves for that. This may be less of a problem with bigger fish, but this hook looked
like it was doing serious damage to these little ones. Not necessarily if it
hooked them through the bottom lip. But it didn’t always. One hook curved back
out just above the poor guy’s eye. Do the hooks hit their brain? My little
sardine was belly-up in our bucket pretty quickly. A lot of these caught fish might get picked off
right away because they’re weakened. This is a river full of piranhas, after
all. But I guess nothing will go to waste. We’re not catching enough fish to
hurt populations. But it still hurts the individuals. Even if it is in the name
of making sure fish populations are healthy.
Vlad hooked a fish, but once he
brought it into the boat it fell off the hook and onto the floor. From there,
it slipped beneath the floorboards, where it was stuck between the boards and
the bottom of the boat. No way to get it out. It didn’t even flop around. It
can’t have lasted long, in that hot metal boat.
So some of the fun kind of wore
off. Though I can’t deny that feeling of success when you catch a fish.
One of Laura’s fish bit her. Nit a
piranha, luckily. But she yelped in pain. It had teeth.
The study team has an agreement with the
communities. We’re allowed to take a few fish, just to taste them. But we’re
not allowed to make a meal out of them. They don’t want to compete with us for
food.
The afternoon macaw transect at
least took place mostly after the sun had sunk behind the trees. It was still
hot, but we were treated to a rainbow!
Oddly enough, there aren’t a lot of
smells around here. In Hawaii, there were tuberose and other
sweet-smelling blooms. But nothing like that has caught my attention. Just
people’s lotion. And an occasional bubble of methane gas coming from under the
river. Maybe it’s different up in the canopy. Or in the upland forest.
Richard told us a few stories of
past excursions. Like the time he stepped on a fer de lance. A venomous snake
I’d read about a few times before coming here. He felt movement under his foot
and got out of the way. The snake turned and looked at him, and he turned and
looked at the snake, and they both screamed and ran in opposite directions.
November 8 2022
This morning was our last land hike. Some of the team had done this hike already, but Laura and I wanted to go because this is where the hoatzins live. They're a strange bird that has claws on their wings. There's a statue of them at the zoo, so I was eager to see a live one.
Our guides knew to look
for the home of a certain monkey. They pointed up, and we could see his little
face peeking out of a high hole in a tree. A black headed night monkey.
Not much further on was a red
howler monkey. Though he was hunkered down at the very top of a tree, and was
just a red smudge through the leaves.
We saw wild chocolate trees! Though a different variety than they generally make chocolate from.
There was a sort of marsh, or
string of marshes, at the end of this path. That’s where the hoatzins live. As
we turned toward the marsh, someone called out a warning. I turned around and
found that we’d just walked past a big snake. Not thick, but very long.
Beautiful colors. Not venomous, but with a painful bite. It’s a type of indigo
snake, locally called an afaninga.
I got to the pond first. As I
stepped up to the water, I heard a great splash, and sloshing of water. I saw movement
out of the corner of my eye. I must have scared a caiman off the bank.
Above the pond were several oropendula nests, and a beautifully symmetrical wasp nest. Everyone though it was some sort of human-made device until I zoomed in on it with my camera and saw the wasps coming out the bottom.
The hoatzins started squawking when
we approached. They were in a couple trees across the little pond. They were
tricky to see through the leaves, but we could catch glimpses. One by one, they
flew off.
There was a boat parked up here. They paddled it in during the floods, and left it here to travel across
these little marshes. The locals use wooden boats. If a metal boat were to bump
into a tree, the metallic sound would scare away all the animals that they’d
want to hunt.
Out on the river, especially on the
floating meadows, you see a lot of butterflies. But in the forest, it’s usually
just one or two you see at a time. All of a sudden, there were ten
butterflies around us. They spun and flitted with each other. And then five of
them lined up, one above the other, and flew in formation threw the trees. Then
they scattered and disappeared into the forest. A beautiful little dance.
As we were getting close to the
boat, we stepped over a fallen log. Pedro, Laura and I made it before there was
another warning. A snake was curled up on the part of the fallen log we’d
just walked past. I must have been 1-2 feet away from it. A fer de lance: the
venomous snake you read about when you learn about the dangers of Peru. Its camouflage was
amazing. It was a tiny one. Curled up it was a little smaller than a
hand-length. The full grown ones can be around 7 feet long. The rest of the group went around a different way, to avoid this little
guy. He was hunkered down, hoping no one would see him. It turns out
they like to sit on top of logs. Quite the exciting encounter (You're supposed to be scared when you pass that close to a dangerous venemous snake).
I asked Kim about more of the
animals' local names. The tuki tuki (jacana) is called that because it makes
a “tuki tuki” sound. The screamer is the camungo. The black collared hawk is
the mamabija, because it sounds like an angry, scolding mom. The oropendola is
the bocholocho. Tamarin monkeys are called pichiko, because their voices sound
like kissing. And the howler monkey is called the coco, because they sound like
they have a hoarse throat.
Shorebird survey next. We heard the undulated tinamou calling out
from the trees, but didn’t see it. Its call was three whistles in a row.
Paola’s bird book said that the calls sound like “comprar pan.” Or, “to buy
bread.”
We drifted a bit on the Amazon,
watching the sun set. The water was like pooling paint.
And a bat survey at night. We
finally got a proper view of a caiman – the common white type (there are three
species in the area). Not many bats tonight. But a beautiful full moon.
November 9 2022
Our last day in the rain forest. We have
a bit of cloud cover, which helps some with the heat. But it’s a thin layer of
clouds. We did one last dolphin survey, boating out to the “restaurant” right
across from Castilla. They call these areas where dolphins gather
“restaurants.” Since there’s not a proper term, they made one up. I sat on the
bow of the boat, my bare feet hanging off the front. This is the larger boat,
so my toes weren’t too close to the water. But it’s exciting when a pair of
pink dolphins surfaces about ten feet from you. A group of five hung around for
a while, with a baby. A few grays and pinks showed up later.
As we turned to leave, a couple of
the botos surfaced more than usual, giving me a good view of them. A good
farewell.
We went back to the Rio Amazonas and packed up. We said goodbye to everyone and piled on the boat that would take us back to civilization.
As we were in the car, I looked out the window and found
the houses looked a little more normal to me this time around. They are
small and bare, often made of wooden planks with gaps between them, sometimes
with corrugated metal fences or roofs. Many had nothing in their windows – they
were just open. But there were still kids playing outside. Swinging on the
rafters, charging around the watering hole, playing soccer. You don’t need a
lot to have fun. And where I live, houses are far too big. The mansions not far
from my house are disgustingly excessive. They should live in places like this.
It started raining. One last rain
from the Amazon. It had stopped by the time we reached Iquitos, but it was nice
to see one last rain.
We had a bit of time left, so we went to Dr. Richard's other museum. It was very close to the Casa Morey.
This museum is inside an old boat, much like the one we'd spent the last couple weeks on. It’s on solid ground this time of year. And as we stepped on board, a boat cat came to greet us! Her name’s
Maria. We greeted the cat and the person at the desk, and went to look around.
Each room has a different theme. The engine room shows you the workings of the
boat, for example. But many of the other rooms have artifacts and information
about different eras. Like the rubber boom. There was a nice breeze on the top
level. And the cat followed us there too.
At the hotel, they had trouble looking up my plane tickets. Paola said she’d try to get in
touch with her brother, who works for the airline. In the meantime, we all
headed to dinner. Laura ate here before the study
and said it was good. Dr. Richard said it was a good place, which I take to
mean they get their meat from sustainable sources. I wanted to try some Amazon
meat I wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere. I decided on peccary. Laura got
Crocodile-lagarta (or maybe caiman, but that’s not really sustainably hunted, so
I’m not sure). The others got slightly tamer dishes.
Laura exchanged a taste of her food
with mine. The crocodile tasted just like chicken. I wouldn’t have known the
difference if I hadn’t been told. And the peccary was like pulled pork. It was
good. Mine
came with – surprise – rice and beans. But also fried banana. And I ordered a
coconut to drink the juice. Now that we’re off the boat, I have to be paranoid
about food again. But the coconut had been inside a shell, so I figured it
would be okay. And everything else was cooked.
A couple street cats came over,
acting charming. We gave them bites of our meat. Peru really needs a
spay/neuter program. There are strays everywhere. But despite some big tourist
sites, Peru is not a wealthy country. Japan needs a spay/neuter program too, and
I’m sure they can afford it.
Paula got a message from her
brother saying there was something wrong with my plane tickets. But no one knew
what was wrong. So I started freaking out. I wish I could have been calmer
while saying goodbye to everyone. But I managed to cool it for a couple minutes
at least.
Back at the hotel, I had to call
Mom on facetime and ask her to call someone about my tickets. But that person was
out of town, and couldn’t look anything up. And the only person she could ask
wouldn’t be in until the next morning, well after my first flight was scheduled
to leave. I’m supposed to meet someone to pick me up in Cusco. What do I do if
my flights change wildly?
So, once we return to civilization,
stuff starts to fall apart. What a surprise.
I was reckless and didn’t really
wear bug spray after our last hike. Though we hadn’t been to any big
mosquito areas since then, I ended up with several more mosquito
bites. I only had a couple up until now.
My time in the Amazon was at an end. But I had more to look forward too. The next morning, I would be going up into the Andes.
(The rest of the trip is in part 2!)
