Into the Rainforest

Cloud forests and rainforests are both extremely humid and both have considerable rainfall, but beyond all that moisture, they are fairly dissimilar.  Cloud forests occur in the mountains at high altitudes and consequently tend to be cooler than rain forests.  Because they’re cooler, mist or fog is often visible – which is why, of course, cloud forests are called cloud forests.  Because cloud forests are in the mountains there can be substantial differences in altitude from one part of the forest to another, which allows for a variety of microclimates.  Rainforests, though, don’t vary much in altitude so have a more uniform climate.  The uneven terrain of cloud forests creates small rapidly moving rivers and waterfalls.  Rainforest rivers, on the other hand, meander slowly through the flatness and are wide and silty.  All of these differences mean that rain forests and cloud forests support very different types of plants and animals.

On this day we travel from Posada San Pedro Lodge in the cloud forest at around 5000 feet to the village of Atalaya in the rainforest at 1500 feet.  At Atalaya we’ll continue on in a large motorized canoe on the wide and shallow Madre de Dios River.

We need to get an early start so we’re out of bed at 5:45 – early but almost slothfully late compared to the last few days.  I do a systems check of my body and determine that my cold has not improved – the landscape of my bed beneath the mosquito netting is littered with soggy Kleenexes.  As a matter of fact, one immediate crisis that I have to face is a Kleenex shortage.  I also do a systems check on my camera.  The moisture that was fogging over the lens and mirror seems to have dissipated for the most part.  I flip on the power and note with some concern that the monitor is strobing on and off while the camera is emitting a soft crackling sound.  Then the camera produces a loud pop and the monitor goes black.  Not a good sign. The next ten or fifteen minutes are a period of manipulation and investigation infused with a certain amount of swearing.  I finally conclude that the monitor is never going to monitor anything ever again.  Also, the telephoto lens will not electronically link to the camera. The really important question is, “Can this camera take pictures?”  The shutter works but is the camera collecting images? There’s no way to tell since I can’t review pictures on the monitor.  I finally decide to be optimistic and assume that the camera is really taking pictures.  The other alternative is to continue to travel through this visual wonderland with only my phone to record it.  As the journey continues over the next week, my optimism varies depending on the day and the time of day, thus at times I take pictures with my questionable camera using the standard lens and at other times I rely entirely on my phone. 

My waterproof camera bag would have prevented this tragedy.  Or my rain poncho.  Or a simple Ziploc bag. The Girl Scout’s motto is “Be Prepared.”  I have no choice but to blame this tragedy on my cursed and capricious fate for having been born a boy, thus never having been in Girl Scouts to learn their motto.

As we walk from our cabin to the dining hall we notice a variety of hummingbirds flitting among the flowering shrubs by the path.  Michel tells us that we’re seeing sparkling violet ears, wire crested thorn tails, and spectacled hummingbirds – great descriptive names for these little guys!  Sadly, I have no working telephoto lens to get their pictures.

After breakfast we take down all of our wet hanging clothes, stuff them into plastic Ziploc bags and pack the bags into our packs – little fungus incubators, to be sure!  Kathy and Madeline had stuffed towels into their wet shoes before going to bed, but their shoes are still very wet.  They put them on.  They have no choice.  We’re back on the road by 7:30. 

By mid-morning the road and the countryside around it begin to flatten out – we’re moving out of the mountains and into the flatlands of the Amazon basin. We start to see occasional farm fields, houses, and even small villages along the road.  Michel tells us that one of the crops grown here is coca.  The Colombian cartel used to be a very active buyer in this region and in one village we see an overgrown grass runway where cartel planes used fly out the crop.  The Peruvian government, according to Michel, has successfully combated the drug trade by cracking down on the illegal trade in cocaine and also by supporting efforts to market coca tea, candy, cosmetics, energy bars and other non-refined legitimate coca products.  Coca in any form, of course, continues to be illegal in the US.

William pulls the van over at the small sleepy town of Pilcopata so we can stock up on food and supplies.  The town extends for a few blocks along the road and does not widen out much beyond the main drag.  There are a few dusty little shops that turn out to be stocked with everything that we need.  I’m overjoyed to discover a stack of Kleenex packages in the display case of one shop.  The Irish lads all find and buy rain ponchos, flashlights and plastic sandals.  Kathy and Madeline get rain ponchos as well.  There are perhaps more animals than people along the main street and Madeline gets right to work making friends with the local felines.  My passion is chickens, so I’m very pleased at the large collection unusual ones clucking and pecking along the street.  I try out try my camera, sans monitor, for the first time on these chickens, but I’m unsure, with no monitor, if I’m really getting pictures.  (Spoiler alert:  The camera is, in fact, capturing images – take note of pictures in this blog - though it no longer links with the telephoto lens, and the monitor is toast.  I would later determine that it was not repairable.)

Animal Residents of Pilcopata Found Along Main Street

A bit down the road from Pilcopata we stop at an animal rehabilitation center that supposedly rescues injured and illegally poached rainforest animals and returns them to the wild.  I say “supposedly” because the animals I see at this facility appear to all be unfearful of, and perhaps even imprinted on humans.  They are not caged or abused, and appear well fed, but I doubt any of these animals will ever live in the wild again – which would, in fact, make this facility more of a zoo than an animal rehab center. 

The courtyard contains a tapir and peccary and a number of monkeys.  There are no barriers separating them from each other or from the guests. Shortly after we arrive a fierce looking little tamarin attached himself to Michel’s ankle and started scrambling up his leg.  I fully expect biting, screams, and blood, but Michel just shakes his leg and the little guy detached himself and scampers off into the bushes.  Then a large group of school children arrives.  They are amped up, bouncing around like they just chowed a week’s worth of candy and are way under-chaperoned.  They are definitely more than the one staffer and one intern at the rehab center can manage.  Some of the kids start jumping up to grab the monkeys in the trees by any appendage they can reach so they can drag them down.  The monkeys fruitlessly try to get away and one starts biting the children grabbing him.  If this were the US, this is where the lawsuits would come into play.  One poor persecuted little woolly monkey finally decides Madeline is a safe haven from the children and climbs up to her head where he remains for the rest of our visit. 

Above:  Tamarin Attached to Leg
Below:  Wooly Monkey Seeks Refuge 

In addition to the animals in the courtyard, there are some parrots and macaws in a building.  And that’s about all there is to see, except for the plot of coca plants in the back.  Apparently in this part of Peru the small plot of coca plants out back is as common as the small backyard herb garden that is ubiquitous in the US.  Michel tells us that many of the farm workers and the Inca Trail porters chew the leaves for an energy boost and to suppress their appetites. Unrefined coca compared to cocaine is perhaps like beer compared to pure ethanol.  While the US drug policy is to make all things containing coca illegal, maybe a better policy would be to follow the ancient wisdom inscribed on the Temple to Apollo at Delphi: “μηδέν άγαν – nothing to excess.”

At our next stop in the small river town of Atalaya the road ends – To continue, we must travel by river.  We get out of the van and visit the Pantiacolla offices where we’re issued rubber boots for our treks in the rain forest over the next couple of days.  I am relieved that they do, in fact, have a pair of boots that will fit my size US-14 feet.  We say goodbye to William, our excellent van driver, and board a large motorized canoe then head down river toward the Pantiacolla Lodge.  The canoe is just large enough to accommodate us:  Kathy, Madeline, me, the three Irish young men, Michel, Hubert, the boat pilot, and his assistant.  

The Group/The Canoe

Rio Madre De Dios (The Mother of God River) starts in the Andes and then winds for miles through the rain forest. Its waters eventually reach the Amazon River.  It is wide and shallow, changeable, and hard to navigate. This is the time of year when the river is quite low – there are a lot of rocky beaches, sandbars, and rapids. The pilot's helper uses a pole to keep us away from sandbars.  Michel explains that if we get hung up, the pilot will attempt to back up and take another run. If we get really hung up, people will have to go overboard and attempt to push the boat over the shallow spot - starting with the boat operators, but not exempting the guests. 

Above: Rio Madre De Dios
Below: Poling Away from Sandbars

Once we’re underway, Hubert whips together our lunch right on the canoe – a fantastic chicken salad with fresh fruit.  We notice men stacking large bunches of bananas along the shore to be picked up by boats and hauled up river.  There is also an abundance of birds – Michel points out yellow headed vultures, Amazon kingfishers, tiger herons, cormorants, black vultures, turkey vultures, Cocoi herons, and snowy egrets.  They are all photogenic and I regret this time and every similar occasion for the rest of the trip that I don’t have a functioning long lens for my camera.

It starts to rain – an occurrence we are becoming very familiar with.  The canoe has a canopy, but the wind is driving the rain right under the canopy, so the pilot’s helper pulls out large plastic tarps for us to cover ourselves.  After about a half hour the rain decreases in intensity and almost simultaneously we arrive at Pantiacolla Lodge.  We grab our packs and luggage, get off the boat and climb a muddy path up a long steep embankment through the rain forest and finally arrive at the lodge.  The lodge consists of a group of cabins, a dining hall, and some ancillary building in a mowed clearing in the forest.  There’s a large tree filled with oripendola nests in the middle of the cleared area and the oripendolas’ calls fill the air almost continuously.  The buildings are wooden with tin roofs and on stilts.  Each stilt has a ring of poison to keep out ants.  Our cabin is divided into four separate units by walls that go up about eight feet but end quite a bit shy of the roof.  There’s a veranda along the front of the building and a hammock is hung on the veranda by the door to each unit.  Each room has a back door that accesses a “bridge” that connects to a separate building about ten feet behind the cabin that contains the bathrooms for each unit.  Our room furnishings are basic but quite adequate – a couple bare bulbs for light during the few hours the generator is running, a mirror on the wall, two mosquito-netted beds, a small wooden table, and a couple of wooden chairs.

Our Cabin at Pantiacolla Lodge

The Veranda - note hammock, lounging cat
& wet clothes hanging from rail

Oripendola Nests

We unpack – starting with the bags full of wet clothes which we hang over the veranda rail.  While we unpack the two local black and white spotted felines introduce themselves.  The cats have Spanish names but I rename them “Holstein” and “Cow”.  Those names don’t stick.  In the end, we are all calling them the names that Madeline gives them:  One becomes “Mister Mustache Man” because of the black mark on his upper lip.  “Scabby Head” gets his name because…well, you get the picture.  We all wonder who or what he’s had a fight with.  Both cats are very friendly and obviously enjoy hanging out with the lodge guests.  Before we’re done unpacking, we see a troop of saddlebacked tamarins moving through the trees right along the edge of the lodge grounds.  It drives home the realization that we really are in the rain forest and are surrounded by all sorts of cool rain forest plants and animals!

Madeline with Her Friend "Scabby Head"

As we move into late afternoon, Michel leads us for a short hike along some paths near the lodge and points out an astonishing number of plants, birds, and insects.  We see red and green macaws, speckled chachalacas, Spix’s guans, strangler figs, chicken foot trees, walking palms, and belly palms.  But the creature that makes the biggest impression on me is the bullet ant – a largish black ant.  Its sting is ranked as the most painful insect stings in the world and has been described as "waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continue unabated for up to 24 hours".  Some who have been stung by this ant, and who apparently have also been shot, have described the pain of the sting as equal to the pain of a bullet, thus the ant’s name.

Our Room

So, of course, there would have to be an Amazonian tribe that uses the ant’s sting in its initiation rites.  They dump the ants in some sort of natural sedative and then weave hundreds of them into a large mitten.  The boy undergoing the rites must put the mitten on and keep it on for ten minutes.  It sounds like it’s one of those things that doesn’t kill you but makes you wish you were dead.  When the victim finally takes the mitten off, his arm is temporarily paralyzed and his body shakes for days.  He finally recovers and then he is considered a true man by everyone in his tribe.

Ha-ha – just kidding.  As a matter of fact, he has to undergo the mitten thing nineteen more times before he is considered an official manly dude.  The tribe, by the way is the Sateré-Mawé.  So if you run across any of these folks and they ask you to join their tribe, you now know what to expect.

The Notorious Bullet Ant

It is growing dusk by the time we finish our hike.  We have dinner in the dining hall, then head back to our cabins.  My head and lungs have become quite clogged from my on-going cold, so I almost immediately call it a day crawl beneath my mosquito netting.  It turns out that for me at least, it will be a very short night.