selva, agua del rio, mosquiteros, monos

I finally made to a place with no interent access. No phones, no bathrooms, no electricity, blankets and no TOURISTS(except me of course).

I wrote pages and pages about it with a good old pen and pencil in all the lazy hours I had by the side of the muddy jungle river. At some point I might type it all online, but for now probably not as I´ve just sent about a million emails, mostly to my parents concerning rent problems, someone stealing my credit card, transcripts for my job and all sorts of other life matters. I hate how life does not just go away when I leave. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to my parents. I do not know what I would do without them to look out for me. I owe all of them big time for managing my life, staying on the phone on hold forever with the retarded airlines, reading my mail, taking care of my money, delivering my flowers, helping me move out, coming to my graduation, paying for my life and college, supporting my wild trip to Peru, reading my blog, throwing me a graduation birthday party, and more. THANKS! I love you!

I should say a few words about the jungle here. Laura and I wandred along the banks of the river until we found a respectable looking ship to take us to Lagunas, the point of departure into the Pacima Shymara national park. Like usual there was a man more than willing to help the cute gringa girls. As we were eating lunch before departing Yurimaguaas for Lagunas we were approached by a man whose name was reccommended in our guidebook for Jungle tours. He had a book full of reccomendations, a man, and an official looking vest and we decided he was the first of many people we could trust and set up a tour with him. He tooks us to the store to buy hammocks and set us up on the boat, and even asked the nice girl in the restaurant if we could take pictures with her baby mono (monkey).

Laura and I set up hammocks in a huge deck full of hammocks, people and random goods of every kinds headed for Iquitos the great jungle port and the biggest city in the world not accessible by road.

After carefully counting our money we decided we had exactely enough for five days of jungle and the return tickets to Yurimaguas where we could find an ATM.

The boat was really exciting and surprisingly cool and pleasant. We had great views of flat expanses of green jungle all around us on the wide brown river. There were also about 25 crazy looking cows on the boat which were really fun to watch fight in their tiny little cage. We met a group of teachers from Lagunas who had taken the 12 hour boat ride to Yurimaguas to vote in the election. Voting is mandatory and there are stiff fines for failing to vote. They had to cancel school for three days to allow time for people to travel to Yurimaguas to vote. It seemed like they should have been able to send in a ballot by mail or something, it was such a huge hassle and expense for so many people. On the day of the ellection it was practically impossible to find cheap transportation as all of the trunks and vans were packed with people, closer than sardines all moving around to vote.(Alan Garcia won by the way, He was more a democratic and less millitant and favors lowering airline taxes to promote tourism)


We arrived at Lagunas at four in the morning and were met by a representative of the tour company and taken to his palm tree roof, dirt floor house to sleep. We got a bed, complete with a mosquitero(mosquito net). We slept for a few hours but were awakened before dawn by roosters and other various jungle noises.

After a breafast of eggs, plaintains and bread were were taken off in a moto taxi to the control station of the reserve. We had some trouble talking to them about food, trying to explain that we preferred not to have fried food. Everything is so complicated here, and just saying, ¨there is nothing actually wrong with fried food, and it tastes fine and i can eat it but I prefer baked or boiled food because it has less fat¨ seems like a a really hard concept to explain. As we discovered on the trip sometimes misunderstandings were more about cultural beliefs and what seemed normal to us or them based on how we had been raised. Even though I grew up on the banks of cottonwood creek, I had a hard time understanding and communicating with people who grew up on the banks of a huge river flowing into the Amazon.


When we first way our canoes we were a little surprised. They were carved out of a tree and when fully loaded only floated a few inches above the water. The guides were very concerned with us tipping them over and helped us get in and out every single time. They wanted us to lay in the bottom so that we would not tip them but we asked to paddle instead. We would learn that unless we asked to do something, absolutely everything was going to be done for us. After only a half our my guide asked if I was tired of paddling and told me to rest. Normally I would feel a little insulted that he thought I was so weak but given sleeping on a boat full of people, moving to a hut in the middle of the night for a few more hours, the extreme heat and the very heavy carved wooden paddle, I took him up on the offer and just laid back to relax and wait for him to point out animals for me. I have to note here that he was amazing at finding animals and I still have no idea how he noticed some of them.

Some of the first things we saw were monkeys playing in the tree and very pretty colorful birds. I really like the monkeys. There were always lots of them in a big pack and they were easy to find because they made lots of noise. They leaped between trees and slid down the trunks. It was like the zoo but better. Other animal highlights were a small anaconda and a black jungle cat and river otters.

At our first stop for lunch the guides put up our hammocks for us and cooked us lunch. If we wanted anything out of the canoes they got it for us and basically attended to our every need. I was shocked, I had been expecting the jungle to be difficult but I had two guides attending to my every need. Paddling for me, cooking for me, stringing up hammocks for me and insisting that I rest. It felt really weird after weeks of bare bones hostels and lots of work, but I decided that maybe I could accept it.

After a few days of being pampered we were starting to get a little bored. Our sleep debts had been paid off with day time naps and sleeping in while they caught and cooked breakfast for us. Breakfast was fish every day which sounds kind of weird but was actually pretty good. Lunch and dinner were also fish. We started to get a a little curious and Laura asked if we could help with the food and learn how to catch, clean and cook fish. He was using a net to catch fish and offered to take us with him in the canoe to set the net that night. We put a huge net accross the river and as we were doing it spotted the red eyes of a crocodile in the headlamp and spent an hour or so tryign to catch various crocociles unsuccessfully.
The next day Jose found some fish in the nets and showed us how to clean the fish. It was a little disturbing because the fish were still alive (more on that in a bit). We scraped the scales off of them, as their gills continued to flap, it was like being skinned alive. Then we slit open their stomachs to remove the intestines, gills, vital organs and such. One fish was split open with both sides laying face down on the dock and it was possible to see its heart beating still. I hope that it wasn´t actually conscious of what was going on. We learned that it was easier to just stick our hands in the fish to rip the guts out when our guide was able to clean fish three times as fast as us with our dainty knifes delicately removing innards without making a mess.

The next day we hiked through the jungle and learned all about medicinal plants. We learned about trees that could stop the pain of broken bones, cure hemmoroids, save people from deadly snakebites and more. We also learned about a bad spirt tree which avenges the death of murdered children. Just cut a hole in the tree, put the murdered child´s clothes inside and then murderer would be unable to go to the bathroom and swell up and die. The tree looked pregnant, with a big lump on one side, just like the bad man would. Our guide believed that trees enjoyed smoke and that it was good for them, so he smoked a cigarrette and blew the smoke on the trees. I believed that me breathing carbon dioxide on the trees was probably just as good, and that way I did not have to kill trees for the paper for the cigarettes. He seemed pretty convinced. I thougth a lot about culture, upbringing and beliefs on this trip.
The jungle was very wet and in many places our rubber boots sunk deep into the mud. We threw down small logs and carefully balenced on them to cross the mud bogs. At the end of this hot sweaty, but interesting trek we arrived at a small river teeming with fish. Jose explained that it was really warm water right now because there were not a lot of rain and the fish came to the top to try to be cooler. He pointed out a large fish that had no bones that he wanted to catch. This sounded exciting as I had been struggling to eat small fish, still complete with heads and all of their tiny bones.

He found a stick in the woods and attached a small hook and line that he had brought in his pocket. We asked if he had brough bait and he told us he was going to use a fish. We weren´t really sure where the fish was as it was not in the backpack of fruit we had brought. He surprised us by pulling a small bloody fish in a zip lock bag out of his pocket.

He caught a fish almost immediately, it seems that they are rather canibalistic.
Then he handed me the machete and asked me to kill it by wacking it over the head with the blunt end. This took me back for a few moments but I decided if I was willing to order fish at Creektown Cafe back in Walla Walla I probably should be willing to bludgeon the small animal flopping around in the jungle in front of me.
I tenatively whacked it with the machete and to my dismay it didn´t die. I whacked it again more forcefully and it was still alive. Four or five whacks later I figured that it was probably dead. Little did I know these fish are amazinly resiliant. Democrito, the other guide, strung a vine through it´s gills to carry it home and at this point I realized it was still breathing. The next time he pulled a fish out of the water it was Laura´s turn to whack it. She was equally unsuccessful at actually killing it. I whacked a few more fish and then Jose gave me the chance to try fishing. I think that my success was mainly due to the fact that the river was spilling over with fish, but within a few minutes I was flipping a fish out of the river over my head and almost onto Laura. Luckily she avoided it, and grabbed the pole to take her turn. Now I had to whack the fish I had caught, which the guides assured me had few bones and was very rico(delicious). I tried to whack it hard wanting to put it out of its misery, and when it flopped to one side I thought I had succeded. Laura caught a fish almost identical to mine and whacked it as well.
After stringing up the rest of the fish we began the two hour trek back to the control station where were were sleeping. THe guides tried to string up our hammocks for us but we insisted that we wanted to clean teh fish we had caught and bludgeoned. We got them on the dock of the control station and I dumped some water over them to rinse the dirt off. To my surprise the two little fish Laura and I had caught and whacked started moving after two hours of being strung through the gills and hauled through the jungle! We were a little disturbed and called Democrito over to show him. We thought that he did not believe the fish were still alive because he put them in the river to show us that they woudln´t swim away. We said we understood that they were done for but that they had been moving. Finally we figured out that he was trying to show us that they would move more if you put them in the river. They sadly flapped there side fins as other small manta ray looking fish started nibling their flesh. I tried whacking mine again because I didn´t want to skin another live fish. This didn´t work and as I began to scrape the scales off the gills were still moving. I was pretty disturbed by it all and asked Jose if he thought it was in pain. He answered yes, as if I was kind of dumb to wonder if it hurt to be whacked on the head, dragged aroudn the jungle with a vine strung through my respiratory system and skinned alive. He said that if I whacked them hard enough to kill them they wouldn´t be in pain any more. I felt guilty for not being a better bludgeoner.

Finally, as we sliced open the stomach and continued to whack the head the fish stopped moving. Though as I took a bite of it later, I did a quick check to make sure it was really dead.


Other point of major contention on this trip was water. When we had reached the small river where Laura and I caught the fish the guide went to wash the bananas in the river becuase they were mushed. The fruit was clearly exposed and it was obvious that we would injest river water. I inquired if this would be a problem as I have had to regretfully turn down all salads and washed fruit in Pere so far. He assured me the water was safe, but I´m not sure I believed him as I had been a bit sick the day before the trip started and had recieved a fair amount of mosquito bites trying to go to the bathroom frequently in the woods.
I ate the bananas because i figured there was not much we could do.

That night Laura was sick all night, sweating, making midnight bathroom runs from the control station, trying to avoid the giant spiders in the bathroom. The next day he served us the usual lunch time lemonade and when we finished it he refilled it with a bucket that did not seem to be filled with the bottled water we had been drinking. I asked, Is that water from the river? He said it was and I told him that Laura was at this very moment sick from river water and I couldn´t believe he was giving it to us. He told us it had lemons in it and I couldn´t figure out why I should care that he had put lemons in River water for us when we´d both been sick.
I tried to ask him about iodine, but I still didn´t know the word.
Later that day he asked us if we wanted him to boil bottled water for our usual nightly tea. We realized that he did not understand the difference between boiled and non boiled river water. We drank boiled river water to top of the river water lemonade. I thought I explained the difference between boiled and not boiled but the next day I realized I was wrong. He tried to serve us lemonade again, and I was a little confused, thinking that he should understand that we didn´t want to drink river water and increase the number of jungle bathroom trips which necessisated dodging spiders and getting at least three or four new mosquito bites per trip.

He said that it had lemon and explained that the lemon killed the bacteria. I looked skeptical. He said, do you understand what I´m saying. I said, yes I don´t understand but I don´t agree. So we didn´t drink the lemonade that day and I was left feeling frusterated with his belief the river water. I realized that it had a ton to do with beliefs. He has been drinking the water all of his life, just scooping it right out of the river with his hands. He thought Laura was sick from overexertion(considering that she almost made it to the Olympics I found that hard to believe). If someone told me the well on my farm was not safe I would not believe them either. The water issue was the only problem with the trip and I realized it was very much about cultural and linguistic misunderstandings and forgave the guides.


After we finsihed our river trip we made a mad dash to Chachapoyos. We took a River boat from Lagunas to Yurimaguas overnight, a pick up truck on the bumpy road from Yurimaguas to Tarapoto as the sun rose. There we restocked at an ATM and used the bathrrom in a restaurant to brush teeth and get more water.(WITH Iodine i might add).
We found a bus to Pedro Ruiz. We had learned about buses a little bit more and were a bit more savvy this time. We asked if there was a bathroom, the man told us yes, then we asked to get on the bus and look at it as the bus was right there. There was no bathroom and we asked him why he had lied to us. He told us no buses had bathrooms and so we asked him again why he would have told us that. I told him I wasn´t stupid just because i was blond and spoke Spanish badly. He told us the trip to Pedro Ruiz lasted six hours and left at noon. We told him we didn´t believe that either. After wandering around and realizing that this bus was the first one to leave we decided to take it despite the fact that he was clearly not telling us the truth. He offered us a 10 soles discount when we walked back, which seemed to annoy the ticket seller who wouldn´t believe the price we quoted. Of course the bus did not leave at noon. At a few minutes before noon I pointed out to him that no one was on the bus and that the driver had told me that the bus leaves at twelve thirty. He continued to insist that the bus would leave at 12 on the dot. At 12:03 I asked him what time it would leave, it still being empty and he insisted again that it would leave at 12. At this point we were looking at a clock. I asked him how many hours it really took to get there and asked if I could get a free ticket if it took longer. He promised me that I could. Of course it took a little more than 7 instead of the 6. I wasnt surprised but it did make it difficult to know when I needed to start paying attention to the stops. Luckily the lack of a bathroom was never a problem as the bus probably stopped every half an hour to pick up more people. In fact, if it saw people walkign down the road it honked and picked them up. In the beginnign Laura and I had the entire back to nap in but eventually they oversodl the bus and we were moved so that six people and a small chicken could have the five seats of the back. The chicken was making pleasant enough noises adn I did not really mind it. I was glad that they had removed the full grown chicken earlier that a different man had tried to smuggle on board against the posted no live animal rules.
Eventually the six people in five seats caused a problem and the bus stopped for half an hour to move people around and set up buckets in the aisle next too me for people to sit. I was starting to feel like it was time to pay 10 dollars for a bus instead of 7 to avoid all of this crazyness.
We watched some more bloody action movies typical of the buses, including predator with Arnold Swarznegger. People seem to really like him here and know that he is the new governer of California.

Finally we arrived in Pedro Ruiz and took a car on a road carved into the side of a cliff to Chachapoyos. I was really tired and was almost able to fall asleep in my cramped position.
Today we washed clothes and spent about four hours on the interent and tried to figure out a good way to go to some more ruins and the third highest waterfall in the world. We will be doing that for a few days. Hopefully there won´t be any more urgent credit card fraud emails in my inbox when I return! Man those are annoying.