4 - More tales from Humidityville
“Travel has a way of stretching your mind.”
Anonymous
Life is tough for villagers in the Amazon Jungle. There’s not much in the way of commerce when you’re out in the northwest corner of nowhere. Fishing is the primary activity for the locals. That and sitting along the riverbank washing clothes. If you’re not doing either of those, there isn’t much life has to offer. We noticed a lot of the women sitting and staring out at the river.
The heat and high humidity is a perfect breeding ground for microorganisms that rot your wooden house unless the floods claim it first. Millions of gallons of water flow by every day steps from the front door of most homes and villages. During a particularly high wet season, the water occasionally flows directly through those same front doors. Flooding is a part of life here. A lucky few have houses built on tall concrete piers instead of the typical shorter wooden ones, but they still have wooden stairs leading up to the front door of their wooden house. You may win one battle but lose the other.
El Chino, a typical village along the river
The water for flushing the toilet, taking a shower, doing laundry, or washing hands, is unfit to drink for the tourists, due to tannic acid, but the locals grew up with it so to them it’s all they know and ok to consume. All water used for cooking or drinking at the lodge is brought in on a regular basis from Iquitos, a 3-hour boat ride away. The continual cycle of dead and decaying plant life produces tannins in the water which darkens the color and makes it virtually undrinkable. As the water flows down from the Andes, it pools into several nearby lakes, and it’s in these lakes the decaying starts, poisoning and darkening the water. The Tahuayo River originates from these surrounding lakes.
The food here is good, plentiful, and occasionally eclectic. For example; today’s breakfast offered a choice of fried eggs, pancakes, bread, juice, fresh fruit, green and black olives, and potato chips. The staff is friendly and happy to tend to any wish or want, and they generally greet you by your first name. The evening we arrived, Xiomi, (pronounced See-o-me) one of the cooks, stood behind the buffet line explaining what there was to eat and greeted everyone, asking their name. By the time twelve new faces had gone through the line, she’d memorized everyone’s name and then greeted them by name at every meal.
“Good morning, Mr. Andy. Good Morning, Miss Mary,’ she says to us as we enter the dining room every morning.
Guests come and go based on their previously determined itinerary, not some set tour schedule. You come for as many days as you wish and are assigned your own private guide during the entire stay. Most guests stayed for 3-5 days before moving on to Cusco and Machu Picchu, if they hadn’t just come from there. On the last night of your stay, the kitchen prepares a cake with ‘Thanks for Coming’ written in icing. Of the 11 nights we were there, they prepared nine cakes, including a birthday cake for one of the guests.
Due to the almost total lack of artificial light in the Amazon, the night sky, when it’s not clouded over, is spectacular and allowed us to spend an evening photographing the Milky Way. On the short boat ride to the photo site, in an otherwise clear sky, thunderheads rimmed the horizon dissipating their energy in brilliant flashes and faraway rumbles, though planets, the Milky Way, and several constellations were still easily visible overhead. Just after returning to the lodge from the evening’s photo shoot, the thunderheads caught up to us.
After a night of steady rainfall, moisture clings to every surface making the already humid conditions unbearable, so getting ready in the morning is a fine-line dance. Do we dress in shorts and T-shirts to stay as cool as possible while out on the boat, but greased up in sunscreen and mosquito repellant? Or do we wear a long sleeve shirt with pants to avoid the above greasing up, only to suffer in the heat/humidity?
Screw it. Pants and long sleeve shirt, it is.
One afternoon we were out photographing pygmy marmosets, which are about the size of a rat and the smallest of monkeys. When we left the lodge, you could hear the growl of thunder off in the distance, and the dark clouds looked quite ominous. After spending 30-40 minutes with the marmosets, the rain came down hard. It wasn’t coming down in buckets; it was coming down in dumpsters! Municipal fire departments would be envious of the amount of water raining down. Scooping up camera bag, day pack, and everything else, we scrambled for shelter under one of the nearby houses, thankfully raised 6’ up off the ground.
After a few minutes and with the torrential rainstorm failing to let up, we made another run, this time for the local bar/grocery store/hardware store/someone’s home to wait out the deluge. As we sat out the downpour, there was a serious game of soccer in the field in front of us. From our vantage point, the far end of the field was hard to see due to the amount of rain coming down. This didn’t faze the players though as they ran down the heavily rutted field filled with rainwater.
Ninety minutes later and with the rain coming down just as hard, we decide to go for it and head back to the lodge about three miles away. Sitting in the bow of our runabout in the torrential rain and going 30 miles an hour, my Gore-Tex jacket was no match for the dumpsters of water being thrown at me. We all arrived back at the lodge with our clothes and shoes washing-machine wet.
Oh well, shit happens.
The heavy rain continued all night and into the early morning, making us wonder if our planned morning activity would be canceled. My guess is there was 10” - 12” of rain between 3:30 pm and 8:00 am. As we sat down to eat breakfast, with a choice of scrambled eggs, ham, French toast, pancakes, sliced mango, wontons with sweet and sour sauce, slices of tomatoes, cucumbers, and radishes with an onion relish, plus cookies for dessert, the rain let up and our guide said we were going out.
A typical day at the lodge consists of one to four activities. If you’re ambitious, you can go out for an hour or so before breakfast, two hours after breakfast, another three hours or so after lunch and then again after dinner for about an hour. Fishing for piranha; searching for anacondas, monkeys, or caimans; swimming with pink dolphins; bird-watching; and laying around sweating are some of the adventures offered. However, today’s activity for Mary & I was a 2-hour hike in a spot about an hour and a half away by boat. Leaving the dock just after 9:00 am, we head up the river aiming the boat towards dry (relatively speaking) land.
During the early planning stage of our trip to Humidityville, while sitting at home in the comfort of our sofa with two obedient dogs by our side, we both envisioned long hikes in the dense jungle, not sitting in a boat or canoe for a long ride. That’s not to say we’ve been disappointed in any way with what we’ve seen or done.
Well, ok, maybe I am a little disappointed.
Along with the previously mentioned anacondas dropping out of trees, moths the size of ceiling fans, and Zika carrying mosquitos, I want to see local tribesmen. Ya’ know, guys standing around wearing loincloths and with bones through their noses, menacingly holding spears or blowguns, and with shrunken heads for necklaces. So yes, not having seen any of that has left me a little bummed.
Oh well, shit happens, and maybe the tribesmen were hosting a book club or down at Starbucks when we passed by.
What we did see and do was pretty damn cool though. Well…, ‘cool’ may not be the right adjective here since it’s constantly in the 80’s both in temperature and humidity. During the boat ride up the river, we came across a 3-toed sloth lounging in a tree. With our guide loudly whistling at the sloth to get its attention, it manages to raise its head and stare at us. Whistling again, it had enough of the catcalls and decided to leave the very high perch it held in the tree and move on – all of 4 feet in about 23 minutes.
I’m not sure if the word ‘sloth’ came from our Neanderthal relatives when Grokk was too lazy to go out and hunt woolly mammoths with his dad, or the animal was named after Grokk’s lack of ambition – much too his parent’s disappointment - but either way, the word is entirely apropos.
Tired of sitting around watching a sloth do what it does best (note the irony?), we continue upriver. Arriving at our makeshift dock, we go off in search of poison dart frogs, monkeys, snakes, birds, and The Bat Cave! No sooner had we started our hike when Manuel, aka ‘Jungleman,’ and his assistant, Max, stop dead in their tracks and listen intently. When they confirmed the sound they stopped for, they told us to hurry and run back to the boat but didn’t give us any explanation as to why.
In a panic, Mary and I both haul-ass back to the boat and jump in. Only then did Manuel tell us giant river otters were coming up the river, and to get our camera ready.
Damn it! No slithering snakes, monster moths, mad-cow mosquitos or terrorizing tribesmen were chasing after us! We did happen to get a quick look at the river otters, but only their heads and from quite a distance.
Being outfoxed by the otters, we begin our hike again and find a small toad plus three different types of frogs, two of which at full size could fit on your thumbnail with room to spare. These tiny critters look cute and harmless, but when not hanging out at Starbucks with the tribesmen, back in the good ‘ole days hunters used the toxic venom the frogs exude on the tips of darts to bring down monkeys, birds, or most any game they were hunting. I am guessing that’s why they call them poison dart frogs.
Hiking through the jungle is a full sensory environment. You can hear the birds and monkeys, smell the river, feel the spongy earth under foot, and see the welts of mosquito bites. This is the epitome of what we were expecting the trip would be.
Then, not only did we find The Bat Cave, we got to go inside! KAPOW!
This particular bat cave was just the trunk of a huge fallen tree that termites and Mother Nature had eaten the insides of, leaving behind a thick bark skeleton. Duck-walking through the 3’ tall interior of the hollowed out tree, hundreds of bats were hanging upside down, being, well, bat-like. Not surprising though, they didn’t like these human gate-crashers barging unannounced through their home with lights ablaze and cameras rolling, so we were greeted by a few flying directly at us. Most retreated further down the long tunnel. We choose to use one of the exits in the middle of the dead tree and left the bats to calm down.
The Bat Cave
After dinner, we took a nighttime canoe ride in the marshy area behind the lodge. With headlamps shining, thousands of tiny spider eyes reflected back at us. The jungle lit up like the Las Vegas strip had it been built in a rainforest and not the desert. We did manage to find a pink-toed tarantula. Yes, that is a real spider, not one that just came from having a mani/pedi. Unfortunately, we traveled light on this hike and didn’t take a camera with us.
Worn out from our jam-packed day of frog hunting and bat chasing – which kinda’ makes us sound like 11-year old boys - we retire to bed to the sound of light rain falling and the soothing opus of a 10,000 cricket orchestral.
Kwaheri!