Peru: the Amazon

Peru:  the Amazon

We left the cool altitude of Cusco for the steamy Amazon jungle, a whole different world.  Amazonia has 1000 rivers and 20% of all the fresh water in the world.  Latitude is about four degrees south of the equator, so it is very warm all the time.  There are 34 million people living in the entire Amazon basin and half of the world's species of plants and animals.  The Peruvian Amazon itself has 2000 varieties of medicinal plants:  analgesics, antiseptics, stimulants, pain relievers.  A common medicinal fig is used for intestinal parasites, common among these people who live on and drink the water.

Iquitos (named for a long-gone native tribe) is the largest city in the Peruvian jungle with nearly half a million people. They are not connected by road to the rest of the world—you must arrive by plane or boat. Since there only a few flights per day, most connections are by a week-long boat trip. The city has many more motorcycles than cars. Main industries have been oil and making plywood. The oil moves through a pipeline 820 kilometers long to the coast. Both of these industries have shrunk due to low prices and environmental concerns.  Rubber has also dropped off due to synthetic rubber becoming the norm.  These industries have caused damage to the land and untold exploitation and suffering for the native people in the case of rubber.  Now the urban area has a large population and few jobs.

Our cruise ship has all the luxuries we want including the most important--air conditioning. The food is gourmet, the presentation exquisite, the rooms spacious and lovely, and the beer, wine and pisco sours free.

Our Amazon voyage.

We have around 30 passengers, separating into three skiffs for our twice daily excursions up tributary rivers.  We headed south going upstream on the massive Amazon River.  The first day we explored Rio Tahuayo and the Rio Yarapa.

Our local guide Reni grew up in a remote Amazon village and studied to be an expert on Amazonian flora and fauna.  He is fascinating, especially when he talks about living deep in the jungle.  Remote village people will go several days deeper into the jungle where no people live to hunt deer, tapirs, peccaries.  They talk of hearing voices, seeing ghosts and small men-spirits trying to protect the animals.  Drinking certain plants can cause humans to turn into jaguars.

Peru has only two seasons, not four. The dry season is in winter, May to September. The wet season is in summer, November to March.  The Amazon basin has two seasons also, the wet season and the wetter season.   Amazonia has 250 days a year with rain, an average of 120 inches a year.   Four trillion gallons of water pour into the Atlantic every day though the more than 100 mile wide mouth in Brazil.  During the wettest season in summer, the water level rises five, ten, fifteen feet some places, flooding over half the land.  The dark part of the tree trunk is the high water mark.

Amazonia is huge, and the animals do not necessarily wait at the riverbank to greet us, but we are seeing lots of birds, animals, and interesting plants.

The tangarana tree hosts large colonies of fire ants. Early tribes sometimes tortured and killed their foes by tying them to a tangarana tree.  They also punished crimes and cheating wives by tying them to a tree for a shorter length of time.  Hmmm, not husbands?

The Amazon abounds in food—camucamu, a popular tart fruit rich in vitamin C; yuca for tubers to eat and also ferment into a strong beer; cocona, bananas, cashews, Brazil nuts, and rice.  Some crops are sold.  Fish is the main meat.

Cashews

Most trees are softwood and live about 100 years. Ants and termites live in large hives on the trees.  They would be flooded out on the ground. Termites cannot tolerate the sun, so they create tunnels down the tree trunk to reach the ground. Their defense mechanism is to spit a foul-smelling liquid. 

Cecropia trees are large, numerous trees. 

Spider monkeys have a symbiotic relationship with some birds, particularly the black-fronted nun birds. As groups of 10 or more monkeys swing through the trees, they shake insects loose which are eaten by the nun birds following them. In turn when the huge harpy eagles hunt the monkeys, the birds alert the monkeys to hide from the harpy eagles. 

Reni said that when he was a child deep, they simply scooped the river water into a tall vessel and let the sediment settle down, then pour off the top and drink it.  Today the people who live in Amazonia bathe, swim, play, and fish in the rivers all the time.

San Francisco is one of the larger river villages, having a population of about 500.  All the villages have government-sponsored schools for the mandatory two years of kindergarten and six years of primary school. Only larger ones like San Francisco have secondary school which is five years. Some students then attend university in Iquitos.

Crushing sugar cane to ferment into rum.

This man is weaving palm fronds to make the ridge row of thatch for roofs. The government gave the villagers tin for roofs which lasts longer, but makes the house much hotter.  Thatch is cooler when no one has air conditioning and electricity is sporadic.  It is on during the day if the villages has enough money for gas for the generator.

The toilet was given by the government but there are no water or sewer lines to use it.

Palm fronds are ripped into strips and dyed with plants and woven into beautiful baskets.

People plant rice in the fall along the shore when the river levels go down.  Villagers beat the hulls from the rice harvest, and then toss to let the chaff blow away. 

The village band and dancers performed for us and even invited us to dance with them.

For Milt’s birthday, the women painted his face with a plant dye for good wishes.

We had brought school and health supplies for the village children.  They were thrilled to get the little gifts.

One afternoon we hiked in the jungle a couple miles along trails made by a local native tribe. Several in our group came prepared with mosquito nets:  Jim, Marcie, and Carol.

A young man from the local area came with us to find interesting creatures.  A tarantula didn't seem to faze him.

This baby anaconda was scary even though he wasn’t full-grown.

The three toed sloth moves slowly and deliberately.  One arm reaches out to grasp a branch, then a foot slowly follows. The other arm moves in slow motion beyond the first and the body moves along. They let us get very close as we watched in fascination.

Walking palms had no trunk near the ground, but many spiked roots, each four or five growing from above the previous set.  They sometimes send more roots toward the east and the sun, thus gradually moving the whole tree over as it grows.   

Cannonball trees sprout flowers and then round fruits right on the trunk rather than on branches.  Capuchin monkeys crack them open by slamming them on a root or another fruit.  

We saw ficus trees that act like strangler figs, engulfing palm trees within their many long winged trunks and roots.  Amazon soil is poor, so roots tend to stay near the surface.  They are fast growing trees and Reni estimated this monster at just 100 years old.

Wandering these rustic trails was other-worldly--listening to big frogs warning that rain would come soon, hearing birds and insects, realizing that without Reni, I would never be able to find my way out on these intersecting trails.  I love, love, love trees.  They are God’s most impressive symbol of life for me.  Here the trees are thick and wildly different.  I just stood looking up at the myriad of leaves and odd shaped branching, dappled sun and deep dark greens, thick vines reaching up and across the tree tops, philodendron clinging halfway up but sending a root to the ground, a canopy filled with life, green, and sounds.  I could die here right now a happy woman.

River dolphins are found in only a few places in the world, and pink dolphins, also called boto, only in the Amazon.  Gray river dolphins are common, but the pink ones are more rare and elusive. We were thrilled to see them twice. The legend in remote old tribes is that the males, which are pinker than the females, can be shape-shifters and sometimes appear on land as handsome men dressed in white to seduce young women and get them pregnant or take them into the river to live in Encanto, the magical underwater world of the pink dolphins.  The stories make people fear them which serves to protect them from human intervention.  (I could not get a picture as fast as they move, but I found these online to show you what we saw.)

Amazon natives swim and bathe in the rivers all the time.  We had one chance to try it in a tributary that had clearer water than the big muddy river.  The water was dark from tannin, but clean.  It also was a place that does not have piranhas, anacondas or caimans.  Don't ask me how they know that.  We just trusted our guides. Here were a few grey dolphins, but they did not come near.  The water was wonderfully refreshing as we bobbed around the boats with swim noodles.   We loved it.  A lovely break from the unrelenting heat.

One night we took the skiff up a quiet tributary in search of nocturnal animals and sounds.  The guide caught two baby caimans (like alligators) and let us hold one, carefully holding the mouth shut.  The silent time with the flashlights off was not silent at all, but filled with birds and animals calling through the darkness. 

One morning we went out fishing at 6:30 AM for piranhas and other fish.  We used a simple stick with maybe six feet of fishing line and a hook baited with raw meat.  The piranhas were constantly nibbling the bait, but not quite so easy to hook securely.  However, many of us caught one or more fish.  That day lunch featured a fish soup with a whole piranha in it, eyes, sharp teeth and all.  I passed. 

Notice the teeth on the piranha.

The official start of the Amazon River itself is at the confluence of two big rivers—the Ucayali and the Maranon, but the entire Amazon has many tributaries. The rivers that originate in the Andes, reaching all the way from the Sacred Valley in the south, are lighter in color and carry a load of mud. The rivers that simply collect the rain and flood waters are sometimes called black water rivers because of tannin from rotting vegetation. 

The smaller rivers have a lot of floating plants, especially water hyacinth and water lettuce.  The Amazon manatees eat vast quantities during the flood season to put on extra weight to carry them through the winters when there is less water lettuce. 

The villagers of Santa Ana showed us typical foods they eat.  They make charcoal to sell in Iquitos by forming a teepee of freshly cut branches, covering the outside with mud, and smoking it with a small fire inside for three days. The boys love to play soccer, the national sport of Peru.

Yuca tubers are eaten for food.  Women also mash and chew it and let it ferment into a strong beer.

Their school

Martita is an 80 year old shaman healer in Santa Ana and neighboring villages.  Her parents were both shamans, and they helped her train for the position.  The difficult process takes 1 ½ years deep in the forest living on a limited subsistence diet and learning the healing plants.   The novice shaman drinks ayahuasca to see visions which teach healing. Martita heals diseases like diarrhea, rheumatism, and others, sending patients to doctors for problems that are beyond her scope.  She is also a midwife.  She uses tobacco, singing and whistling to “invocate” the bad spirits out to enable healing.  She says you must believe for it to work.  No one is training to become the village shaman after her.  Some of the natural healing plants and methods are written down, but much knowledge will die with her.

We gave the other half of our school supplies to this village's school.  Each place we stopped and met the native people, they had hand-made goods displayed for us to buy.

I felt uncomfortable in Peru at times when we visited poor villages and looked at their homes and clothes and food and lifestyle. It felt so condescending. We buy a few cheap trinkets that we don’t really want so we can help the local economy.  But are we?  Does owning a TV for the sporadic times that the village generator works, really help them live a happier, more secure life? 

Condescension is so uncomfortable.  We think we are not guilty of the atrocities of war and colonialism, but aren’t we doing it a bit too when we look down on someone’s lifestyle or work ethic or speaking habits or any of the other things we think when we are being covertly judgmental?  We donate. We volunteer. We try to be kind. But maybe it is not quite enough to make up for the horrors of history. 

Armando’s sugar cane rum factory has been operating since his grandfather started it many years ago.  He uses the same 300 year old cane crusher turned by three men or a horse that his grandfather used.  This horse has been walking this circle for 25 years.  Armando cuts cane every two or three days and crushes it to extract the sugar sap every other day from 4:00 to 10:00 AM.  The juice ferments five or six days in a large plastic vat.  He then pours it into the still and cooks it to catch the vapor and distill it into pure rum of 20% alcohol.  We tasted it at the still and again bottled and flavored.  Strong stuff!

Monkey Island is a large lowland island that is one man’s dream come true.  For 20 years he has taken in mistreated or discarded pet monkeys and rehabilitated them.  Injured or aggressive ones are kept in cages as long as necessary.  When possible the monkeys are released to roam the island and get used to taking care of themselves.  Eventually he releases many deep in the jungle away from people.  This spider monkey was the welcoming ambassador, and jumped right on our skiff as we pulled up.

The Amazon Discovery ship was a wonderful home for a week.  The food was great, the staff fantastic, the service great.  We had live music a few nights with the staff musicians playing traditional Peruvian music for us and then some dance numbers.  Juan Carlos shared his selfie.

Several crew members danced for us two nights.

One night the bartenders demonstrated how to make a pisco sour which became everyone's favorite cocktail.  To see the ship's video of our trip and the amazing Pisco sour dance and demo, click on the video.  Carol and I sat in the front row, and of course, Carol likes to dance.  They picked her to demonstrate.  Juan Carlos said no guest before ever participated like that.  Enjoy.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByUd6QeSGShYREM3MGdockpNVVE/view?usp=drivesdk

I will always hold Peru in my heart.  I loved it.