“Wild”life
The easiest airport experience we’ve had so far has definitely got to be while traveling from Lima to Puerto Maldonado. We had an early flight, so we missed rush hour traffic. We strolled in with a single backpack to be checked in each. They accepted our bags, no problems there. Due to what I’m increasingly begin to appreciate as a very sound bit of legislation, our backpacks were allowed to be only 8kgs in weight and so we drifted about the airport, happy as larks. The highpoint of the experience was the discovery of a fully stocked clinic inside the airport that offers yellow fever shots 24 hours a day for 85 soles. You can only guess at my thoughts at that point! (see previous blog post)
The journey across the Andes is surprisingly quick – an hour’s flight to Cusco and then a mere 45 minutes to Puerto Maldonado.
Lima is covered in a thick layer of cloud cover that rather ruined our excitement to be heading to the jungle. I have come to really loathe clouds because they always bring with them the bumpiest rides in aircraft. I only caught my first glimpse of the Andes, proper, quite close to Cusco. They’re an impressive bit of geology, sprawling for miles in the most interesting shapes. We saw signs of populations living tucked away in valleys all throughout, commuting it appears through the most delightful roads that are clearly visible from the sky.
Eventually, we began our descent to Cusco, rivaled in terms of giving me a fright only by our ascent out of Cusco to come shortly after. The pilot appeared to pick a valley to follow and we dropped low beneath the clouds, mountain ranges towering over us on both sides. Houses and streets flew past beneath us and I held my breath for what promised to be an exciting landing. At what seemed to me to be minutes before touchdown he banked a steep left, pulled a u-turn mid-air and then came thudding to a halt on the runway. The end of the jet engine that I happened to be closest to actually lifted off and rested hanging over the mouth of the engine as an extra effort to slow down the aircraft on the short runway.
We deposited most of our passengers, accepted a few crazy jungle fanatics, and were told that it was about 50F outside. Interestingly, the English announcements always use Farenheit and the Spanish ones Centigrade. Take off, as I said, was worse than the landing and I will spare you the description. Suffice it to say that I sat gripping the seat tight, quite aware of my mortality, while Gideon snored softly by my side, unperturbed as ever in the air. As I eased out of the rigor mortis my muscles always decide to adopt in situations of anxiety, the dulcet tones of the passengers seated at the front of the plane came wafting over to me. Could it be…no, no way…hindi!!??
If you haven’t noticed yet, we Indians are absolutely everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard hindi in the jungle, amidst the loud macaws and monkeys. It might be that there are just a lot more of us than most other people, but I think we also tend to have a serious case of wanderlust. In any case, about 30% of the passengers on the flight turned out to be Indian!
We soared over the endless Amazon jungle, one of my favourite experiences. This time of year, there are a few more clouds than usual but one can still see a vast sea of green, disturbed only by the occasional meandering, leviathan river, deep orange with the silt that has risen up with the recent rains. Every so often you see an oxbow lake, split off from the river, with deep green waters – a haven for anacondas. The very history of the course of the river is evident in the lakes that abound by its side. You notice lakes that are old, barely visible from the sky and drying up now, and then the newest ones, thick and full of water, dangerously close to the river itself.
As we neared Puerto, a mere 35 minutes in the air, signs of human population began to appear. Roads followed the rivers, and where there are roads, there is deforestation. Large patches of rainforest were cultivated or had recently been cleared, logs strewn about haphazardly like a bunch of matches waiting to be lit. Some patches had indeed been recently burned, evident from their dark black soil and desolate appearance.
In the middle of it all, like a large eye-sore sits Puerto Maldonado. As the capital of the Department of Madre de Dios, Puerto serves as an access point to the jungle. Few roads go through it and the lodges in the neighbouring forest are set up to accommodate some high-paying customers indeed. Canopy walkways, tame animals, and excellent restaurants – they’re all available through one easy tour booking from Lima or Cusco. All of this is about to change drastically as the extensive Interoceanic highway linking the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific slowly takes form. It runs right through Puerto and will span both Peru and Brazil. With a single stroke it will bring easy access to hitherto untouched forest to miners and loggers, provide an impassable barrier to species within whose range it lies and create a whole thriving industry of cattle farms and agriculture to support the influx of people it guarantees to attract.
Puerto’s streets are largely unpaved and therefore, everything soon becomes covered with dust from the innumerable motorcycles and tuk-tuks that roam them. We were no exception. My throat was parched in minutes and we consumed large quantities of water and juice to make it through the day. Exploring Puerto doesn’t take much skill – neatly laid out on a grid, this compact town has a population of 75,000 and rising. One central Plaza and an accompanying mercado are its chief features. The airport is a mere 7km from the center of town and hostals and some rather good hotels abound.
Our first delightful experience occurred right at the airport – we bumped into some good friends, Megan and Antonio, who were taking our plane out to Lima. They waved and yelled and grabbed our attention right at the baggage claim area and it was quite wonderful to walk out into friendly arms, right in the middle of the jungle. Megan is an entomologist and has worked at CICRA for a long time. She met Antonio, a Puerto Maldonian (?) while she did her research here in Peru and they were married a few years ago. Together, they bring a cheery sort of goodwill and spirit to anywhere they go. Antonio is most remarkable in how he seems to, within seconds, make everyone around him as jovial as he. We couldn’t have had a better welcoming committee in Puerto. We got tonnes of advice, were enthusiastically helped with our bags, and in a matter of minutes had everything loaded and ready into two tuk-tuks. Percy, the driver of one of these autorickshaw-type vehicles would turn out to be our guide and companion for the rest of the afternoon.
On Megan and Antonio’s advice we sped off to our hostal, dropped off our bags and then returned to a restaurant near the airport to see an exciting type of tamarin. This little fellow had created quite a fuss because from a distance, he looks exactly like a saddle-back tamarin with a mustache – in other words, a cross between the emperor and saddleback tamarins! With visions of discovering a new hybrid flashing through my brain I coerced Gideon into to visiting this tamarin’s home, a hotel, for lunch. Perhaps, I thought, I'd never have to worry about funding my work again - I'd be the great discoverer of Saguinus mrinaliniensis. Once there we unearthed, to our incredible surprise, a whole host of young monkeys being kept as pets.
Martin, the capuchin was by far the most intelligent of them all. He was also unafraid of all human beings, which rather means he will never live successfully in the wild even if he ever gets the chance to be free. He brought over his close friend the spider monkey, a much less coordinated or friendly being that made cooing noises and kept changing his mind about being our friend. Soon the little titi monkey, Callicebus, came over and sat on my lap for a cuddle. He looked like the misfit of the lot, I’m afraid, and I hope he will fare well at his new home. The most interesting couple were the pair of tamarins – one emperor tamarin and the mystery monkey, Saguinus labiatus, no new species as it turns out. White distinctive markings around the lips gave him away. The tamarins were crazy about our hands and nipped and gnawed at them till I was covered with a hundred delicate little scratches.
So one day into it all, Gideon had managed to meet tame versions of all the monkeys in the jungle, pretty much. It took me about a year longer to do so!!
To be perfectly honest though, enjoyable as it is to cuddle with these incredibly smart creatures, my heart was troubled over their plight. The owner of the resort, and thus the monkeys, was a jovial Swede who had decided to quit his native land and live in Peru instead with his Thai wife. Together they started Puerto’s first Thai restaurant and then proceeded to buy the monkeys for good measure. They want to buy mates and have their own colonies they say. I promised to send him some literature on what to feed the howler monkey because that’s the hardest to raise in captivity – it’s a leaf-eater, and a very picky one at that. I must say that I don’t think these guys will make it very long. For one thing, they’re all of a different species and it will take a whole lot of domestication for them to feel like brethren. I can envision all sorts of complications as they grow and mature. Nevertheless, I can finally say that I’ve held my first monkey.
We spent the next two days exploring Puerto, where you can buy a giant, 50lb bunch of bananas for the equivalent of $3 but a small, and rather poorly constructed digital camera will cost you almost $300! The market is teeming with unusual stores– plastiquerías where they sell everything plastic, and ferreterías where they sell everything iron-made. If you want something in Puerto, you can find it in a two block radius. We stocked up on all sorts of things from pillows to shampoo and were in bed, exhausted by about 9pm.
In the morning, at about 7am, we awoke to what appeared to be a combination of a chainsaw, a generator and a discotheque all starting up at once. We had discovered the key difference between a hospedaje and a hotel in Puerto. One is in the process of being constructed while the other stays relatively quiet till the late morning.
Our departure to Laberinto being fixed up for 10am, we gathered all our bags and deposited them in the small cramped lobby of our hospedaje. In the next hour or so it took for our taxi to arrive, we were befriended by a Peruvian Texan who was trying to buy some land near the new highway to set up a clinic to see what he claimed was not a hallucinogenic Amazonian plant, but instead, one that lets you see your past lives. Hard to tell the difference, in my opinion, but I am a mere novice at these exalted levels of consciousness.
Later, on the taxi ride we met Roxana, who is an entomologist and will be working at CICRA for the next couple of months with us. In her delightful, lilting English she proceeded to keep us company for the next 6 hours. We boarded the station boat, meeting old friends as we proceeded. I even waved to someone I knew from last summer in a passing boat. Gideon, I hope, was suitably impressed .
Six hours of beautiful sunshine, the soft purring of the engine in the background, and chocolate water swilling around us, left me in a state of pleasant intoxication. I gazed about me in happiness, glad to be back, sorry only that I’d already received the first of my new set of bug bites. There’s no place like the jungle to add more living companions to your person.
Our arrival at CICRA was pleasant enough. Friendly faces come to greet us at the bottom of the stairs, lots of helping hands to move our things onto the bank, and a lot of hellos and hugs to go around. All of which were to come tragically and abruptly to a grinding halt with CICRA’s least inviting feature, 250 stairs leading you 40m higher into the canopy to the camp site somewhere in the clouds.
Normally, these stairs are a wonderful place to experience the jungle. Monkeys love to clamber down the stairs, birds come whooping by and little multicoloured lizards bound away as you approach. When you add about 300lbs of stuff to that picture, it deteriorates in a grueling, heart-racing, foolish, and utterly exhaustive endeavour. If you’ve read some of the previous writing, you will have an idea of the extremes we’ve endured to get all our equipment this far. I was ready, about halfway up the stairs, to chuck it all back down and call the whole thing off. Some hours after it was all over, and my heart had just returned to its normal pace, my legs were still quivering so much I had to remain seated. We were so tired that upon reaching our cabin in the jungle neither of us noted the 400,000 termites we were sharing our small living space with. We just put the bed together, threw on some sheets, tucked in the mosquito net carefully and went to bed.
Over the last few days in the jungle, we’ve spent about 8 daylight hours battling a creature much, much smaller than ourselves. What they lack in size, however, they make up in sheer numbers and persistence. Termites are a common feature in the forest, and the least harmful of its inhabitants. Great architects in their own right, they build the most beautiful homes to house their societies, sometimes twenty meters up a tree trunk. When they chose a place to build their home, they begin to lay out the infrastructure that goes into maintaining such a palatial residence. They lay down roads, intersections, underground tunnels and some vertical paths that are a sight to behold. They put it all together, it seems, by masticating wood and then excreting it to bind it together into tunnels using dirt as cement. These tunnels are maintained daily and can develop into permanent, wood-staining structures, if not evicted along with their residents.
Ours seemed to have been in residence for some months now. It was the Mohenjo-daro of the termite world. The El Dorado of ants. The place where every little ant wants to go to college. And we brought the whole thing down with the widespread use of baygon. A terrific compound that kills almost anything the size of a cockroach or smaller, this stuff smells absolutely awful. It succeeded in keeping the termites and ourselves out of our cabin for the next 6 hours. Overnight, Gid developed a really sore throat and a cold, possibly from having sadistically slaughtered a few hundred thousand ant lives without compunction and with too much baygon. He was in such a hurry to blow his nose in the morning that he omitted to notice the large and vibrant ant highway that stretched across our front door.
“In your face, humans”, chirped a few hundred termites.
Upon checking the cabin again we realized that the termites had gathered together in some sort of council, had decided that relief work was necessary after the massacre of yesterday, and in a feat unmatched by any human government, had actually succeeded in ending enough troops to rebuild the infrastructure of their lost city overnight.
The construction of cabins in the middle of the jungle being a highly expensive endeavour, we have now been allotted dormitory rooms and are biding our time until our cabin is successfully de-anted using some unnamed poison. We think we’ll give it a few days before risking it in there for a night. Also, I don’t really thing we humans are a match for the termites – they’ll probably have the basics set up in a week.
And so it goes in the jungle…
Next blog post highlights: trapping commences, a new field assistant arrives, and the tamarins show us how to make like a monkey.
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