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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Into the Cloud Forest

The Manu National Park in southeastern Peru is 4.5 million acres of rain forest and cloud forest.  It’s a place of towering trees, meandering rivers, 15,000 species of plants, vast numbers of mammals, reptiles and insects, and over 1000 species of birds – more species than are found in the US and Canada combined.  It is inaccessible by road and because of its remoteness and protected status it remains one of the few pristine places left on the planet.  In addition to its designation by Peru as a national park, it has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  

“Talking About Manu – Exploration of a Virgin Rainforest” is a slim but excellent travel guide about Manu written by Marianne van Vlaardingen.  The thumbnail biography of the author that appears on the back of the book explains that Marianne went to Peru in 1988 after completing her Master’s degree at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.  Her mission was to study the Tamarin monkeys in the Biological Station of Manu Park.  She obviously found her life’s purpose and meaning in the Peruvian rain forest, since she has never left.  She has built a rain forest lodge in the Manu Cultural Zone and founded an eco-tourism project called “Pantiacolla”.  Pantiacolla’s mission is to share the unique Manu rain forest with tourists in an Earth-friendly way, and it is so dedicated to reducing the human footprint on our planet that the company brochure even provides travelers with information on how they can engage in a tree planting project to offset the carbon emissions produced by the airplane that brings them to Peru.

We’ve booked a five-day trip into the Manu Reserve through Pantiacolla and on this day we leave Cusco and head toward the cloud forest.  We’re out of bed at 3:45 AM.  The word from Pantiacolla is that there is a bridge being repaired on the Manu road and that said bridge is open for traffic only for an hour at noon each day.  Our early start is so we can be at this bridge at the right time to get across.  I’m not getting used to these inhumanly early mornings.  A cold now has full possession of my body.  I unsuccessfully attempt breakfast, then we grab our packs and stumble down to the San Blas Plaza to wait for our ride.

At 4:30 the Pantiacolla van pulls into the plaza and a man hops out and introduces himself as Michel, our guide for this adventure.  He seems amazingly cheerful and energetic for this early hour.  He introduces us to the other occupants of the van:  William the driver, Hubert the cook, and three fellow tourists – Adam, Alistair, and Martin, all in their late twenties and from Belfast.  We make a brief stop to pick up supplies then we are on our way.  Shortly after leaving Cusco we run into some serious road construction, so it is slow going.  But before too long, the early hour, the darkness, and the gentle rocking of the van lull all of us off to sleep. 

Then we hear Michel announcing that it is time to wake up.  It is still dark.  The van is coasting to a stop by the side of the road.  Michel pronounces that we are near the village of Ninamarka and that we are going to explore some chulpas; cylindrical above ground tombs.  These funerary structures were built in pre-Incan times by the Lupaca culture.  It is just starting to get light enough for us to tell that we are on a mountainside and that everything is encompassed in a thick fog.  There is not much to see other than this cluster of now empty circular tombs, but the fact that they were built hundreds of years ago to hold the dead of a culture that is itself now dead creates a peculiar effect that is further enhanced by the dark, the quiet, and the fog. 


The Pantiacolla Van Parked on the Fog Shrouded Mountainside

A little girl appears out of the mist and offers to sell us woven bracelets from a basket she carries.  Both Madeline and Kathy buy a bracelet and then the girl walks away into the mist.  I assume that she’s an enterprising youngster who lives in the nearby village who gets up really early to sell her bracelets to passing tourists.  Interestingly, when I check Google Maps later, I can’t find any village named Ninamarka or Ninamarca or Nina Marka.  I find the tombs, but there doesn’t appear to be a village nearby.  Perhaps Ninamarka is like Brigadoon and only coalesces out of the mist one day every one hundred years. In the next couple of days both Kathy’s and Madeline’s bracelets disappear, so there’s no proof that the interaction with the girl ever happened except for my pictures of the eerie chulpas in the fog.  

Chulpas

 After we are back in the van and on the road again, the sun rises above the mountains, the fog burns off and we are able to see the countryside that we’re traveling through.  We’re losing altitude.  We had started at over 11,000 feet in Cusco and are headed toward the village of Atalaya which is at 1500 feet.  As we go down, the mountains become richer with foliage.  And we are definitely in the mountains.  We are often traveling on a road that has been inscribed into the side of a mountain with a sheer wall thousands of feet high on one side and a sheer drop of thousands of feet on the other side. The road is dirt/gravel, full of ruts, and essentially single lane.  This is problematic since the traffic is two way.  Meeting a vehicle means that one vehicle has to back up to a "wide spot" and park with wheels right on the edge so the other vehicle can pass.  In some places the road is more like a half-lane since the road has crumbled into the abyss in a landslide. There are also occasional rocks on the road that have fallen from above.  I am awestruck by the scenery but a little freaked out by the driving conditions.  My life is in the hands of God – and William, the driver. 

Above:  The Road Through the Cloud Forest
Below:  The Road Snakes Through the Mountains



Eventually we dip into the Paucartambo River Valley at about 9000 feet and enter the picturesque (sorry, there’s no better word!) market town of Paucartambo, a town of whitewashed buildings with blue trim and tile roofs, cobblestone streets and an 18th century arched stone bridge across the river.  Everybody piles out of the van and we gather around a table in a little restaurant for breakfast.  Afterward we stroll through the town to a bakery where the baker and his helpers are baking flatbread in a hug brick oven.  Since the oven retains its heat for so long after it gets hot, there is a whole queue of items to go into the oven when the bread is done – ranging from baskets of potatoes to trays of guinea pigs. This oven has been in the baker’s family for over 200 years and is still baking delicious bread.  We buy several bags of bread and enjoy some of it warm and fresh.  Hubert, our cook, will continue to serve us that bread over the next several days. 

Massive Brick Oven

Bread in Oven 

Potatoes and Guinea Pigs Waiting for the Oven

 Paucartambo has a small but first-rate museum and we spend some time there.  A significant part of the museum is dedicated to the annual Festival of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel that draws tens of thousands of visitors to Paucartambo every year from July 16 to 20.  The more I learn about the festival the sadder I become that we hadn’t planned our trip a month earlier so we could participate in this spectacle. Depending on who you ask, the festival either started in 1640 and celebrates the patron saint of Paucartambo, the Virgin of Carmel, or is much older and originally was a pre-colonial festival celebrating the Pachamama, Mother Earth. 

This is ostensibly a religious festival and the church is packed around the clock when the festival is underway.  But beyond that it is a festival of revelry, parades, music, theatrics, street food, drinking, and general crazy fun.  There are seventeen dance troupes that perform specific traditional roles during the festival.  The troupes are made up of local people who spend the entire year making their costumes and perfecting their routines.  Each troupe represents a specific group or tradition important in Peruvian culture. The C’apaq Ch’uncho, for example, represent the indigenous rain forest tribes, the Cápaq Negro represent African slaves, the Cápaq Chuncho are warriors who form the honor guard of the Virgin who is carried around the town on July 16 and again on July 17 when she is carried to the bridge where she performs a blessing. After parading through town all day, each troupe finds its way to its own house for an evening of feasting and drinking.  And the tens of thousands of visitors who pack the town do likewise.  

The version of Paucartambo we see is a pleasant market town going about its business.  We can only visualize in our minds eye what it would be like during the festival, although to help us visualize it, there is a group of seventeen statues near the museum that represent the seventeen troupes. 
Seventeen Statues
After Puacartambo, we continue on the meandering mountain road and eventually reach the bridge under construction that had caused our early departure.  We are right on schedule and join a line of vehicles crossing over the narrow single lane that is available for use.  Shortly after crossing the bridge, we pull to the side of the road and Hubert fixes our lunch.  We sit on a roadside guard rail and eat while appreciating the natural surroundings and keeping an eye on the grazing cows who amble past. 

Cow
After lunch we hike along the road for a while and Michel effortlessly tosses off the names of all the birds and plants we encounter.  (In this short walk we see a Golden Headed Quetzal; a Andean Pootoo, a Slate Throated Redstart; a Masked Tanager; a Russet backed Oripendula; an Olive Oripendula; a Lemon Browed Flycatcher; a Tropical Kingbird; and a Green Jay.)

Back in the van for more mountain driving, I quickly fall into a slumber. I wake to Michel’s announcement that we have arrived at a viewing blind for Cock-of-the-Rocks.    The plan is to spend some time in the blind and then walk for an hour to the lodge where we’ll spend the evening. 

The Cock-of-the-Rock is the Peruvian national bird and to call it colorful would be an understatement.  We are overwhelmed by the display we see from the blind.  Cock-of-the-Rocks are polygamous and the males all gather together in communal groups called “leks” where they engage in display rituals for the females.  A “confrontation display” involves two males jumping and flapping their wings at each other while squawking and basically trying to act macho.  Eventually the female shows up and the males notch it up to an even higher level of crazy.  Finally the female decides which male has the hippest moves and they fly off wing-in-wing for some Netflix and chill, while the other male sadly goes home pops a beer and plays video games. 




Cock-of-the-Rock Being Outrageously Colorful

After being wowed by the birds for quite some time, and getting some fantastic photographs we leave the blind and start our hour walk to the lodge.  It is only then that we take note of the troublingly dark clouds over our heads.  Hmmmm…..it looks a lot like rain.  Hmmmmm…..this is the cloud forest where it rains a LOT.  I have a rain “resistant” jacket.  My rain poncho is in the van and the van is already at the lodge.  I also have my camera and the waterproof camera bag is also in the van.  Hmmmmmm

It starts pouring rain.  My rain resistant jacket is soon soaked through.  I’m holding my camera under my jacket and water is streaming off of it.  Then it starts raining harder. The only good thing I can say about walking in a downpour is once you are completely wet you can’t get any wetter.  Eventually, we forlornly squish into the Posada San Pedro Lodge.  Kathy and Madeline are carrying packs and they’ve had the foresight to pack all the contents in the packs in plastic bags, so the contents are dry but the packs themselves are soaked.  My pack and the suitcase containing the bulk of our clothes is, fortunately, in the van.  The clothes we’re wearing are, of course, completely soaked.  I am the only person with dry shoes because my shoes are waterproof (note the important distinction between “waterproof” and “water resistant”!).  Our Irish friends are apparently not well prepared.  They have no rain gear and no other shoes to wear but their soggy ones.  (They didn’t bring flashlights, either!)

We strip out of our wet clothes, wring them out and hang them up.  Note that I didn’t say “hang them up to dry.” Since we’re in the always-humid cloud forest, there isn’t much chance of anything actually drying.  I towel off my camera as best I can.  The lenses are all completely fogged with moisture, so I open the camera as much as possible and decide to let it dry overnight before taking a further assessment.  I hold onto a thread of hope for my camera since it is touted as being water resistant.  But again, note the distinction between “waterproof” and “water resistant”.

Posada San Pedro Lodge is a pleasant collection of thatched cabins with mosquito-netted beds, a building with showers and toilets, and a dining hall.  The power comes from a generator and the generator only runs for a couple hours.  But the lights are on in the dining hall as we gather for the delicious dinner of fish, rice, salad, and fruit that Hubert has prepared for us.  Then we all go back to our cabins and climb into our beds beneath our dry, warm blankets.

Kathy and Madeline by Our Posada San Pedro Lodge Cabin





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