Sunday May 6, 2007

As it usually does, 4 a.m. came early, but we actually woke up before Oscar came to get us. Well, by “we,” I mean Crystal, who woke up when one of the lodge staff lit the six kerosene lanterns in our room. We had three above our shelves and three on the wall between the bathroom and the entrance way. Each room was lighted by these lamps, which sat in holes in the wall about 7 feet up, as there was no electricity in the rooms. We also had two candles in our room. Needless to say, lighting was very minimalist in design at the lodge. A generator provided electricity for people to charge batteries from 5:30 – 9:30 p.m. and that was it. When the kerosene lights were extinguished, the room plunged into a deep darkness, despite the open wall. The jungle blocks out light so well that even the stunning stars were invisible from our room.

Crystal had been sleeping with ear plugs because the jungle creatures were loud, a chorus of thousands of insects accompanied by birds and, I like to think, monkeys. The lights were what woke her up, though. We had slept in the double bed, under a large mosquito net, and it was sweaty, warm night.

I put on the same clothes from the day before, since they were already sweaty and dirty and it was inevitable that more sweat and dirt were coming. I woke up fairly easily as we had gone to bed at 8 a.m. the night before – hey, a hot day full of travel on a boat, buses and planes, as well as hiking and sweating and a big, yummy dinner will wipe you out! The cold shower sealed the deal, as I was unable to stop sweating for about 5 minutes and get in bed.

After getting ready, we went to breakfast, where Crystal revealed that her tummy was not well. I revealed nothing, because my love for scrambled eggs and fresh-baked bread are already well-established facts; thus breakfast was quite enjoyable for me. I walked Crystal back to our room, where she said she would go back to bed and try to feel better, as well as probably keep the toilet busy.

I went back to the lobby pavilion. The lodge is divided into several different pavilions or buildings, all made from wood and cane and set on posts about 3 feet above the ground. There are five rooming buildings, where all the guests sleep (there are 30 rooms total, with a maximum capacity of 70 people), a lobby pavilion (with several couches, a gift shop and restrooms) with a ground level section connected by stairs which held six well-used hammocks and the muddy boot racks, a classroom pavilion for ecological discussions, a kitchen building, a dining pavilion (with a bar and several bar tables topped with wooden games of chess, dominoes, Connect-4 and backgammon) and the staff pavilion. The structures are all connected by 6-feet-wide boardwalks and ringed by the dense forest. They are spread out so that each one feels directly connected to the environment.

As we left the lobby to catch the 5:15 a.m. boat up the river, I was glad to have my headlamp, as it was still very dark. We got to the river and shared a boat again with the Brit/Canadian group, and Italian couple and their guide, and Steve, Geri and Pamela. We rode upriver for about 30 minutes and then stopped and headed into the jungle on foot. After about a minute of hiking we stopped because three more Basket-Eating Monkeys were playing in the trees and bamboo. We saw probably 10 more monkeys on the hike. After a mile or so, we came to Tres Chimbadas Oxbow Lake, a large oxbow lake that was left when the river changed course long ago. The lake is slowly being reclaimed by the jungle, first with sections of floating grasses, which die and pile up on the bottom, allowing small trees to eventually take root (these are mainly palms, Oscar said) and finally for large trees to return. We (Mother, Daddy and I, as well as the Italians, Pamela, Steve and Geri) got on one catamaran boat and the Brits/Candians got on another. Our catamaran was rowed by a man named Francisco.

The boats consisted of two large canoe-type boats (20 feet long, 4 feet wide) sitting side-by-side, with a 15-feet by 12-feet platform built on top. Several wood benches, painted blue, were built on the platform. The craft was not covered and was propelled and steered by a single rudder/paddle. It was about 12 feet long, with a horizontal handle and a vertical handle, which Francisco grabbed, a hand on both of them. The paddle/rudder (I know I wrote them in the opposite order before, but the use is very interchangeable, so from now on I’ll just call it a “pruddle”) was then resting on a fulcrum/pivot point (don’t worry, I won’t combine that term into one word) made of wood in a sort of ball-and-socket style. The pruddle’s end in the water was trapezoidal, with the longest side deepest in the water and the diagonals going upward toward the surface. Francisco pruddled in a smooth back and forth motion, both rocking it from side to side and moving it left and right. He rotated along the three axes used in airplane flying, pitch, yaw and roll, which rotate along the side-to-side axis, the vertical axis and the front-to-back axis respectively. Francisco made it look ridiculously easy, but I had a feeling it would take me a long time to go anywhere … maybe so long the oxbow lake would be overtaken by the jungle and I’d be assimilated into the Basket-Eating Monkey Clan!

So, we set out and soon Oscar started pointing out birds on the grass and small bushes on the forest-reclamation area of the lake. The floating grasses stretched out like a large field on the end of the lake. We pruddled around the edges of the lake looking at birds with a spotting scope the guides had set up on the front of the boat platform.

We continued around the lake and were surprised by group of large, squawking Hoatsin birds. They are about as big as chickens and have blue faces and orange Mohawk-style feathers – I joked that there are some people who try to look the same way sometimes. The birds are also loud. The locals call them “stinky birds,” because they are ruminants, with two stomachs for digesting their leafy diet. Such digestion produces an unpleasant odor, which makes the local not particularly prone to eating them. We also saw a group of bats hanging on a tree overhanging the water.

We had pruddled on for a few minutes when Oscar suddenly told Francisco to take the boat to shore. He had spotted something only about 20 percent of the groups who go to the lake get to see – Giant River Otters. They are rarely seen because they are night hunters and consider the whole lake their territory, while tourists can only visit half the lake, because the other part is a protected environmental area. Anyway, we got to see three members of the otter family as they swam along the other side of the lake, about 150-200 yards away. WE could see their heads pop up, then their backs humped above the water and they went down, to reappear a few feet ahead. Oscar said they grow to about 6 feet long. Very cool!

A few minutes after the otters passed, we saw a Black Cayman swim by in the same area. Oscar said that species of Cayman can grow to about 18 feet long. While we were talking about the Cayman, Francisco nonchalantly picked up a sticke with about 6 feet of fishing line tied to it, baited a hook with some raw beef and started dangling it in the water. He would plop it in a couple times, pulling it out quickly, then finally dangling it in. He flicked his wrist quickly and pulled it out, but this time it brought with it a 6-inch piranha. He gave it to Oscar, who took it off the hook and showed us its tiny set of razor-sharp teeth. It was a white piranha, one of four species in the lake (yellow, black and red are the others.) We all got to try our hand at piranha fishing, and I was amazed at how quickly the little fish would strike the bait. I didn’t catch any, but I did get one out of the water before it got away. Oscar caught a couple more and stuck a leaf in their mouths to show how their jaws can chomp. Francisco almost caught a red piranha (it flew in the air and almost landed on the boat), which he said are the biggest, getting about as big around as a dinner plate. People do eat piranha, he said, but they are bony and don’t have a lot of meat.

While on the lake, the clouds built up and looked like they were going to rain on us, but didn’t, for which I was grateful. The clouds did make the day stay cooler, for which Mother was grateful. After our angling, we returned to the dock and once we were back in the forest, Oscar showed us some cool plants, including a tree whose bark smells like garlic and, as it grows older and needs more nutrients, allows its base to become hollow so that bats can live inside it and nourish the soil with their guano. We also saw a large termite colony built on a tree – it was as big as a beach ball. Oscar broke a small hole in it and allowed the termites that came swarming out to crawl all over his fingers. The insects didn’t bite, but he did make us smell them – they smelled delightfully like pine sap. The termites use live trees to hole their homes, but only eat dead wood.

Once we were back to the boat, we went to the lodge, where we got a small sandwich and some juice and headed out on our next hike. Crystal was still convalescing in the room, so Mother, Daddy and I took off with Oscar to a clay lick on the river bank where jungle birds come for their daily salt intake. The others in our group decided to rest. The path to the lick was quite muddy, but we had decided against the mud boots again, so our shoes got dirty and we had to walk carefully so it wouldn’t get worse.

While hiking, we saw a couple of monkeys, and while Daddy was trying to photograph them, Oscar picked up a leaf, folded it, put it between his thumbs and blew on it. It created a shrill whistle, and he did it repeatedly for several moments, then stopped. Shortly after he stopped, a squawking and rustling of feathers and flapping of wings approached us as four Red-throated CaraCaras (large raptor birds that live in the forest) flew in from other parts of the jungle. Oscar had called them to us! So cool! He leaf-whistled a few more times and the birds squawked back, the whistle was quite similar to their vocalizations.

We kept hiking and eventually came to the clay lick. No birds were anywhere to be seen, although the blind we hid in was quite neat and worth the hike. It was a dirt-floored hut, completely covered with woven palm fronds tied to sections of wood. Those sections were layered, shingle-like, and were completely waterproof. The high roofs of the lodge pavilions were made from the same thing. Oscar said the woven palms last 10 to 15 years. Small holes were cut out of the palm mats on the wall of the blind so people could look at the clay lick without frightening the birds. After a half-hour of no birds, we walked back to the lodge for lunch, and to see Crystal who was feeling a little better.

Another home run meal by the staff! I think the amount of hiking and sweating helps the food be even better, but it would be great in a restaurant. We had rice with chicken in an orangish/yellowish sauce called huancaina and made from peppers. It can be spicy, but this one wasn’t very spicy. Then, there were fresh veggies and more star fruit juice. We were then told we had until 3:30 p.m. before our next excursion. It was 1:45 p.m., so we went back to the room.

I showered – so nice – and took a nap until it was time to go again. The clouds that had been threatening all day started to rain right when we got back to the room, so we had a cooler time for napping. Plus, mega-bonus!, it stopped raining right before we had to leave again. It was cool to watch the water cascading off the roof onto the small clearing outside our room’s not-wall. The sound of the rain on the roof is what lulled me to sleep.

We met back at the lobby pavilion (Crystal came this time, yeah!) and all put on mud boots in order to avoid more muddy shoes. What a difference they made! It was so much less stressful to walk without having to prance along the firm edges of the trail to avoid mud. We hiked to the river and rode downstream for 20 minutes or so to a medicinal garden area.

We were met by the local “Chaman” – a shaman, spiritual-type, natural healer guy. We went on a tour of one of the several gardens, one which holds various jungle plants used as medicines. Among the plants were a natural anesthetic (we all chewed a piece and it made our tongues numb) and an anti-impotence plant called “Para Para” (which means “get up, get up” in Spanish). We also saw a plant used to make a love potion and another than made a natural dye. We ground those leaves into out palms and the green leaves produced a deep-red dye. The shaman, who was Oscar’s uncle, would explain each plant in Spanish, then Oscar would translate in English. By hearing it twice, I could understand it all pretty well, which was nice. The last plant they showed us was Ayahuasca, a special vine the shaman uses to gain insight and enlightenment into how to treat people. It is slightly hallucinogenic, Oscar said, but it is not addictive or hangover-causing. We went into the shaman’s “laboratory,” where he prepares the medicines with a cool-looking set of chemistry gear. We were offered tries of some of the medicines, but they had all been prepared with alcohol, so we declined.

By then, it was getting dark, (it was about 5:45 p.m.), and so we got back in the boat and went back to the lodge. There, we had dinner, which was more yummy rice, soup, plantain bananas and beef stir-fry noodles, as well as juice and cake. After that, we sat around talking and Daddy pulled out his laptop to show Pamela some the pictures and video he took. Pretty soon, Oscar and six other members of the lodge staff were watching, too, entranced by the pictures of the flight from Lima over the mountains and the trip up the river. Oscar said he had never been to Cuzco and I felt humbled and blessed for my chance to travel so much. I should never complain about not getting to go on vacation as much as I’d like to ever again!

It was fun to see how Oscar and the others liked the pictures so much. Oscar knew or was related to about two-thirds of the people who Daddy had taken pictures of while they were on the river in canoes or washing clothes on the banks. Oscar identified each person as the pictures came up. After dinner, it was time for bed.