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Friday, August 21, 2015

The Rain, the Forest, and Other Tropics

Colds are called colds because folk wisdom dictates that one acquires them by being exposed to cold weather.  In fact, a cold is an upper respiratory infection caused by a number of different viruses.  I had disproved folk wisdom by acquiring a cold in tropical Peru, and on this day this particular Peruvian virus has tightened its grip on my body, twirled me several times around its little virus head, and slammed me into a brick wall.

I’ve somehow managed to get myself to breakfast, but when Michel starts talking enthusiastically about a morning hike I decide that the time has arrived in the progression of my disease to opt out of the hike, to rest, and to see if I can muster the strength to fight back against the virus.

So when everybody else leaves on the hike, I set up my “sick room” in the hammock on the veranda in front of our room.  The set-up is simple:  Me in the hammock, a book, Mr. Mustache Man the cat for company, and a nearby chair holding Kleenex, Tylenol, and a glass of water. First I take a great nap, then when I wake up I continue to lie in the hammock and read my book.  The book is “Talking About Manu – Exploration of a Virgin Rainforest” a book I have mentioned in a previous post.  The book is authored by Marianne van Vlaardingen, the founder and owner of Pantiacolla Tours and is a great guide on the flora and fauna of the Manu Reserve.  It also contains a brief discussion of the human inhabitants. 

It is amazing to consider that in the present day where it is possible to connect with practically anyone almost anywhere, and where “the shrinking world” is a catch phrase, that entire cultures exist that have had little or no contact with the outside world.  There are at least two such groups in the Manu reserve.  One is called the Kogapacori the other is called the Mashco Piro.  These are names that outsiders have given these groups.  Nobody knows what they call themselves.  There have been sporadic sightings of these groups over the years – usually from a helicopter or boat, but very few close encounters.  One close encounter Marianne discusses in the book took place in the early 1990’s.  Three women speaking a language nobody understood showed up at an outpost on the Manu River.  Because some of their words resembled words from the Mashco and other words seemed to be from the Piro,  both indigenous groups in that area, people started referring to them as the Machco-Piro women.  Then that name was transferred onto the entire group that they came from.  The three women lived on the banks of the river for a number of years and subsisted on roots, fruit, and the eggs of birds and turtles.  They showed a great deal of hostility to anybody who would happen along the river and would often run after the boats yelling and throwing things.  Finally they incorporated themselves into a group of Machiguenga Indians and left the area.

An epilogue to the information about the Machco-Piro people in the book is the recent information that has been appearing in news reports.  Starting just last year the Machco-Piro people have made sporadic and increasingly frequent contacts with the outside world, and those contacts have not all been peaceful.  They often appear singly or in groups, seemingly out of nowhere, and demand food or gifts.  Some people who have not been compliant have been killed with arrows.  The village of Diamante has been an epicenter for contacts, and because of the potential danger posed by the Machco-Piro the local eco-tourism lodge has been closed, which has created economic hardship for the village.  The Peruvian government is doing its best to keep control of the situation – trying both to protect the local villagers from the Machco-Piro natives and to protect the natives from diseases carried by the locals to which they have had no exposure and thus have no immunity. 

I lie in the hammock, read the book, nap, join the others for lunch, and then go back to my hammock, book, and lap cat while the others take an afternoon hike.  Mid-afternoon, I’m awakened from a nap by an unearthly noise that would be difficult to describe, but may be close to the sound that would be produced by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir if they were all high on LSD and being attacked by a truckload of rabid swine.  I find out later that I’m hearing a group of howler monkeys.  But as I’m listening to it, there’s nobody around to ask.  So I’m just awake and wondering if I’m safe or if the marauding drug crazed songsters and disease addled hogs will stampede from the forest and kill me .  And since I am awake anyway, I take stock of my personal health and decide that a day spent with hammock, book, and cat have served me well.  I’m not cured, but I’m improving and able to rejoin the land of the living.  The cold continues the rest of my time in Peru, but I do feel a little better every day.
Howler Monkeys Thinking About Hogs and Songsters

Our remaining time at Pantiacolla Lodge consists of day-trips and hikes punctuated by Hubert’s excellent meals.  In no particular order here are some of the highlights:

Ants:  I mentioned bullet ants in a previous post.  They pretty much keep to themselves in the trees where they live, but we often encounter amazingly long columns of army ants and leaf cutter ants.  We carefully step over them and allow them to continue on with their business while we do likewise.  All of the buildings at the lodge are on stilts and each stilt has a ring of poison to block ants from entering the building.  Somehow, though, ants find their way into our bathroom – perhaps they come up the pipes.  Fortunately, they only come at night.  I am more than a little surprised the first time I make a nocturnal bathroom visit and see that the toilet is swarming with millions of ants.  Happily, they do confine themselves to the bathroom and mostly to the toilet, and happily, as a male I can use the toilet even though it is swarming with ants.  But there's no way that I ever could or would sit down on that toilet!

The clay lick:  Macaws and parrots in the western Amazon region, and only those birds in that region, eat clay.  Some biologists believe that they eat clay to make up for a dietary vitamin deficiency while others feel that they eat clay to neutralize toxic or caustic chemicals present in some of the foods that make up their diet.  Regardless of the reason, macaws and parrots show up in the hundreds at specific “clay licks” on cliffs and river banks every day to devour clay.  Very early one morning we travel by canoe up the river to a clay lick.  As soon as we arrive we notice a lot of macaws and parrots circling high in the air and occasionally flying closer to check out the situation on the ground.  They seem nervous and never actually land at the lick.  Michel notices a bat falcon sitting for a period of time on a dead branch. Bat falcons are small and pose a danger only to parakeets, but its presence is apparently making all of the birds nervous. The birds also seem to be having issues with several nearby vultures – part of a group of vultures that are keeping track of a dead capybara near the shore on the other side of the river.  None of the macaws or parrots ever land so we are never able to see any of them close – so the expedition is a bit of a bust.  On the other hand, we are standing on the shore of a river in the Amazon rainforest watching flocks of parrots and tons of macaws.  Perhaps they’re a bit far away, but not as far away as they would be had we stayed in the US.

Flora and fauna:  One day we see a jaguar print in the mud. This is as close as we get to any jaguar - as far as we know. Other than a capybara that swims right in front of me in the river one day we don't see a lot of large mammals.  They exist, but there's a lot of foliage to hide in.  On our hikes and expeditions into the rain forest we mostly we take note of the plants and flowers, insects, and small animals.  In the rainforest, where there are so many species of living things and where there is so much competition for survival, it seems like everything either has thorns or is poisonous.  An example – One day we go to a hot spring to swim and relax.  When we get out of the water, Kathy puts her shirt on over her swimsuit and I notice that there is a caterpillar on the shirt.  In my attempt to brush it off, I push her shirt and the caterpillar right next to her skin. She immediately screams in pain and within seconds a large red welt has formed.  The defense mechanism of this caterpillar is to concentrate the toxins of the plants it eats into the hairs that cover its body.  We immediately tell Michel about the caterpillar exposure.  He shrugs sympathetically and tells us that Kathy will not die.



Above left:  Thorns on a walking palm - Above right:  Cane toad - this large terrestrial Amazonian toad has poison glands.  Its tadpoles are also extremely toxic 



Above left:  These caterpillars move en masse as a protective strategy.  The caterpillars on top go over the leading edge and the trailing edge caterpillars climb on top and move over the mass.  Above right: A poison dart frog.  The lipophilic alkaloid toxins in its skin are used to poison the darts used for hunting by various Amazon cultures.  Scientists have extracted a variety of medically useful compounds from these toxins including epibatidine, a pain killer 200 times more potent than morphine. 

Moths on a Fern
Butterfly
 I can’t leave the topic of rainforest hikes without mentioning that the heat and humidity range from uncomfortable to unbearable, depending upon the day, the situation, and one’s frame of mind.  Bear in mind that we are outfitted in long sleeves and pants to prevent mosquito bites and we are wearing large rubber boots so we can navigate the rain forest muck.  It is possible to swim in the river to cool down, but the river itself is bathtub warm.  During the hottest part of the day, the best approach is to just hang out – move around as little as possible and siesta in the nearest available hammock!

The Fantastic Food:  I have already mentioned the great culinary skills of Hubert, our cook.  He continues to produce delicious meals every day, three times a day for the entire excursion.  Our traveling companions come up with a plan to bring him back to Belfast and open a Peruvian pub where he will be the cook.  For one lunch he serves his version of a Peruvian layered potato dish called causa rellena.  We all unabashedly consume huge amounts because it is so good.  Then we discover that this is only the appetizer when he follows up with an equally wonderful stew of rice and meat.  We can’t do the second course justice!  For dinner one evening he serves lomo saltado, an interesting fusion dish created by the Chinese who settled around Lima.  It is a stir-fried stew of beef, onions, peppers, peas, and tomatoes flavored with soy sauce, and is served with rice and fried potatoes.  We always look forward to mealtimes, and we never leave the table hungry or disappointed.

Huito Fruit Tattoos:  The huito is a small tree that grows in the Amazon region.  The juice of its immature fruit is clear, but produces a chemical reaction with skin that results in a permanent dark blue color that only fades after several weeks have passed and that layer of skin is sloughed off.  The natives of the rainforest use the juice of the huito fruit to paint elaborate patterns on their bodies.

While I am in the rainforest I’m adopted into a native Amazonian group.  In the adoption ceremony they use sticks dipped in mashed huito fruit to make a pattern on my arm. The rest of the ritual involves days of fasting, hallucinations, virgins, jaguars, condors, serpents....all the usual stuff.

Of course the preceding paragraph is entirely a bald-faced lie that I make up when I get back to the US to explain to my friends why there is a huito fruit tat covering my arm.  The truth is slightly more mundane but no less entertaining. One afternoon, Michel presents a huito fruit that he has picked up in the forest and asks our Irish friends if they will grate the fruit into a bowl for a project that he will explain in detail later.  The guys each take a turn grating and then present the grated fruit and the leftover portion of the fruit it to Michel.  He shakes his head and says that he really needs the whole fruit grated.  So they get back to work, and after Michel gives his approval of the completely grated fruit, we all go off to take our afternoon siesta.  I wake up from my nap to the sound of great exclamations of consternation coming through the wall from the room of the Irish gentlemen.  Their hands, of course, have all turned a very dark shade of blue.  Michel is very amused at his joke.  That evening, Michel offers to paint tattoos onto anybody who is interested and we all volunteer.  It is, in fact, several weeks before my tat completely disappears.  What a great souvenir to bring home! 

Evenings at the lodge are fun. We play cards a lot. There’s also a game table in the lodge that has holes on the top and a drawer underneath.  In addition to the holes on top there’s a brass frog with an open mouth.  The game is to attempt to toss brass coins into the frog’s mouth.  This is apparently a popular bar game in Peru.  It is very challenging but also lots of fun!

My Cool Huito Fruit Tat
Up the river:  The day arrives when we have to get back in the canoe and head up river.  Our route back is exactly the way we went in since there is only one route.  Going against the current takes longer than when we were going downstream, but we eventually arrive at Atalaya where we climb aboard the Pantiacolla van and continue back into the cloud forest.  We spend the night at Posada San Pedro, where we had stayed on the way down.  The next day we stop in Paucartambo and have lunch at the same little restaurant where we had stopped before for breakfast.  They serve a lovely beet, bean, and pea salad with a rice and vegetable pilaf.  It is market day in Paucartambo and it’s much livelier than it had been on the trip down – we enjoy observing the commerce along every street and appreciate the opportunity just to people watch.

Market Day in Puacartambo:  A Cartload of Dressed Out Alpacas
We arrive in Cusco late in the afternoon.  I am embarrassed to admit that the first thing we all do is link to wi-fi after the hardship of having been disconnected for nearly a week.  We also assemble a large mountain of dirty clothes to be laundered.  Kathy is under the weather – perhaps an altitude issue after having spent time at almost sea level in the rain forest.  So she rests while Madeline and I peruse Cusco for dinner options.  The really pleasant reality is that we have nothing booked for tomorrow, thus we can spend an entire day in Cusco doing whatever we want to!

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