Friday, October 10, 2008
Sunday, 9.21: Amazon River Basin
At around 4 a.m., we were awoken by a flashlight shining through the curtain that was our door, accompanied by the sounds of Jorge saying, “Chicas? Hola, chicas!” I sat up in bed and whined blearily, “Are we going, then?” Jorge laughed and said yes, so we all roused ourselves and got dressed in the darkness. Thanks to the rain, the temperature had grown considerably chillier, and I cursed myself for not bringing anything warmer than a thin long-sleeved button-down.
At 4:30, we joined Jorge for a not-so-romantic candlelit breakfast, during which he continued to make fun of me for saying “Are we going?” while he took pictures of Heather and me in the candlelight with Bri’s camera. After breakfast, we hiked back down to the dock and boarded a boat for a short trip down the river. We disembarked and walked a short way through the jungle until we reached Oxbow Lake, home to one of the rarest creatures in the Peruvian rainforest, the giant river otter. (Our guides told us there are only 1,000 of them left, but I’m not sure if that’s in the world, or just in South America.) We boarded a wide platform boat and cruised slowly around the perimeter of the lake, spotting toucans and various other jungle birds. Finally, just as we were about to complete our circle of the lake, the river otters decided to make an appearance, playing in the water just across the lake from our boat. After we’d all gotten a good look through the binoculars, the rain had started to pick up a bit, so we headed back to the dock and took shelter under a random hut with a few bathroom stalls while eating a mid-morning (or what felt like mid-morning; it was probably only around 6 a.m. at that point) snack of bananas. The guides brought out some crude fishing poles and offered to let us fish for piranhas off the edge of the boat, so Bri, Heather, and I headed back out into the drizzle to try our hand at it. We could feel the fish nibbling our lines but weren’t able to actually hook them; fortunately, one of the Germans had better luck, and before releasing his tiny fish, Jorge brought it over so we could check out its razor-sharp teeth.
We hiked back to the river, spotting some giant termite nests on the way, and rode back to the lodge for another mid-morning snack, this time of some delicious cheese-filled breadsticks and some not-so-delicious instant coffee that inexplicably appeared to be piping hot as it came out of the carafe, yet was freezing cold by the first sip. We had a little time before our next activity, so Bri and Heather went to the room to lie down while I took the opportunity to try out one of the hammocks in the main gathering area of the lodge.
We met back up with Jorge a little while later to head to a clay lick where we could spot some parrots. On the way there, Bri and I discussed all of the silly clubs we had formed together in high school, such as the Saved by the Bell Preservation/Appreciation Society and Hamsters Against Drunk Driving. Hearing the word “club,” and clearly not understanding the fine distinction between high-school clubs and dance clubs, Jorge turned around to ask us, “Do they have 2 for 1 drinks?”, which sent us into gales of laughter. We had to cease our carousing when we got to the clay-lick blind, however, so we wouldn’t scare off the parrots. We sat very still inside the blind, and after several minutes, we began to see bright-green parrots fly in and land in the branches around the bare clay. As we traded two pairs of binoculars back and forth to get a better look, more and more parrots flew in and migrated down to eat the clay. By the time we left (after snapping dozens of pictures), about 20 parrots and two spyx’s guans were congregated around the lick.
We then hiked to another clay lick on the other side of the lodge that was frequented by macaws. This time, we didn’t have to wait at all for the birds to appear—there was already another group from the lodge peering at about a dozen macaws from inside the blind, so we quietly traded places with them. It was at this point that Jorge noticed how good the zoom on my camera was, and he promptly took it from me and began snapping so many pictures that I was worried I might never get it back. I did, though, simply because Jorge didn’t want to miss the opportunity to lay some more smooth pick-up lines on Bri. (When a couple of macaws started fighting over the same patch of clay, he leaned over to her and whispered, “I think they’re mating.”)
It was just time for lunch by the time we arrived back at the lodge (amazing how long the day seems when you wake up hours before dawn!), and after we ate, the three of us headed back to our room for a much-needed nap. When we woke up, it was time to meet Jorge again, this time to hike to a giant ceiba tree. On the way there, we got to see thousands of leaf-cutter ants marching across the jungle with their slices of green. We also saw another giant termite’s nest, and Jorge explained to us that if you get lost in the rainforest, termites are the only safe thing you can eat because they provide protein but aren’t poisonous. To demonstrate this claim, he plucked one off the tree and ate it. Bri asked him what it tasted like, and he thought a moment before replying, “Carrots.” We were pretty skeptical of this claim, so Bri decided to investigate by downing one herself, ultimately concluding that just one termite was way too small to have any sort of taste. Heather and I decided not to partake and really hoped we would never find ourselves lost in the rainforest and forced to test the tastes-like-carrots theory. Once we reached the giant ceiba tree, there wasn’t much to do other than marvel at what a big tree it was, so we sat and talked about the various sports we played, which lead to a demonstration by Heather of the mechanics of broomball.
Back at the lodge, we had a bit of time before dinner, but not wanting to nap again, we chose to sit in the common area and play a few rounds of cards before heading over to the bar for a drink. Heather and I again opted for beers, but Bri decided she wanted to sample Peru’s national drink, the pisco sour. I was curious, too, but shied away from it because I’d heard it had a high alcohol content and was still worried about being dehydrated when we arrived in Cusco the next day. In retrospect, with regard to both the actual alcohol content of a pisco sour (which I didn’t find to be noticeably high) and the way things would unfold over the course of the evening, this seems a bit silly. Anyway, apparently the bartender had won some sort of medal for making the best pisco sour, and I can vouch that the sip I had of Bri’s was indeed yummy. As we sipped our drinks, the bartender played Bob Marley on the stereo (our first introduction to Peruvians’ love affair with Bob Marley) and entertained us with card tricks.
After dinner (during which we discovered another of our favorite Peruvian delicacies, yucca fries), Heather, who hadn’t been sleeping very well, decided to call it a night. Bri and I weren’t quite ready to turn in yet, though, so we offered to buy Jorge a beer to say thanks for being such a good tour guide. Of course, as we sat at the bar and chatted with Jorge and the bartender (and listened to more Bob Marley), one beer turned into two, and two beers turned into three… Bri was getting more and more inebriated by the minute (as was I, let’s be honest, although her pisco sour pushed her a little further over the edge). As she tried to explain to us the root of the global economic collapse, she kept touching both my leg and Jorge’s (she was sitting between us), and after we’d moved on to another subject, I glanced over to see that she and Jorge were holding hands. I could see where this was going, so after I’d downed the remains of my beer, I quickly excused myself and giddily raced back to the room, where, in my semi-drunken state, I thought it would be a good idea to wake Heather up with the news that Bri was totally hooking up with Jorge! Heather, on the other hand, did not think this was such a good idea, as she’d finally managed to fall into her first comfortable sleep since we arrived in the rainforest, and was scared senseless by me looming over her and hissing her name. Oops. Chastened, I climbed into bed, too, and promptly fell asleep, only waking up when Bri crept back into the room at around 2 a.m.
Continue to Day 4: Amazon River Basin to Cusco
At around 4 a.m., we were awoken by a flashlight shining through the curtain that was our door, accompanied by the sounds of Jorge saying, “Chicas? Hola, chicas!” I sat up in bed and whined blearily, “Are we going, then?” Jorge laughed and said yes, so we all roused ourselves and got dressed in the darkness. Thanks to the rain, the temperature had grown considerably chillier, and I cursed myself for not bringing anything warmer than a thin long-sleeved button-down.
At 4:30, we joined Jorge for a not-so-romantic candlelit breakfast, during which he continued to make fun of me for saying “Are we going?” while he took pictures of Heather and me in the candlelight with Bri’s camera. After breakfast, we hiked back down to the dock and boarded a boat for a short trip down the river. We disembarked and walked a short way through the jungle until we reached Oxbow Lake, home to one of the rarest creatures in the Peruvian rainforest, the giant river otter. (Our guides told us there are only 1,000 of them left, but I’m not sure if that’s in the world, or just in South America.) We boarded a wide platform boat and cruised slowly around the perimeter of the lake, spotting toucans and various other jungle birds. Finally, just as we were about to complete our circle of the lake, the river otters decided to make an appearance, playing in the water just across the lake from our boat. After we’d all gotten a good look through the binoculars, the rain had started to pick up a bit, so we headed back to the dock and took shelter under a random hut with a few bathroom stalls while eating a mid-morning (or what felt like mid-morning; it was probably only around 6 a.m. at that point) snack of bananas. The guides brought out some crude fishing poles and offered to let us fish for piranhas off the edge of the boat, so Bri, Heather, and I headed back out into the drizzle to try our hand at it. We could feel the fish nibbling our lines but weren’t able to actually hook them; fortunately, one of the Germans had better luck, and before releasing his tiny fish, Jorge brought it over so we could check out its razor-sharp teeth.
We hiked back to the river, spotting some giant termite nests on the way, and rode back to the lodge for another mid-morning snack, this time of some delicious cheese-filled breadsticks and some not-so-delicious instant coffee that inexplicably appeared to be piping hot as it came out of the carafe, yet was freezing cold by the first sip. We had a little time before our next activity, so Bri and Heather went to the room to lie down while I took the opportunity to try out one of the hammocks in the main gathering area of the lodge.
We met back up with Jorge a little while later to head to a clay lick where we could spot some parrots. On the way there, Bri and I discussed all of the silly clubs we had formed together in high school, such as the Saved by the Bell Preservation/Appreciation Society and Hamsters Against Drunk Driving. Hearing the word “club,” and clearly not understanding the fine distinction between high-school clubs and dance clubs, Jorge turned around to ask us, “Do they have 2 for 1 drinks?”, which sent us into gales of laughter. We had to cease our carousing when we got to the clay-lick blind, however, so we wouldn’t scare off the parrots. We sat very still inside the blind, and after several minutes, we began to see bright-green parrots fly in and land in the branches around the bare clay. As we traded two pairs of binoculars back and forth to get a better look, more and more parrots flew in and migrated down to eat the clay. By the time we left (after snapping dozens of pictures), about 20 parrots and two spyx’s guans were congregated around the lick.
We then hiked to another clay lick on the other side of the lodge that was frequented by macaws. This time, we didn’t have to wait at all for the birds to appear—there was already another group from the lodge peering at about a dozen macaws from inside the blind, so we quietly traded places with them. It was at this point that Jorge noticed how good the zoom on my camera was, and he promptly took it from me and began snapping so many pictures that I was worried I might never get it back. I did, though, simply because Jorge didn’t want to miss the opportunity to lay some more smooth pick-up lines on Bri. (When a couple of macaws started fighting over the same patch of clay, he leaned over to her and whispered, “I think they’re mating.”)
It was just time for lunch by the time we arrived back at the lodge (amazing how long the day seems when you wake up hours before dawn!), and after we ate, the three of us headed back to our room for a much-needed nap. When we woke up, it was time to meet Jorge again, this time to hike to a giant ceiba tree. On the way there, we got to see thousands of leaf-cutter ants marching across the jungle with their slices of green. We also saw another giant termite’s nest, and Jorge explained to us that if you get lost in the rainforest, termites are the only safe thing you can eat because they provide protein but aren’t poisonous. To demonstrate this claim, he plucked one off the tree and ate it. Bri asked him what it tasted like, and he thought a moment before replying, “Carrots.” We were pretty skeptical of this claim, so Bri decided to investigate by downing one herself, ultimately concluding that just one termite was way too small to have any sort of taste. Heather and I decided not to partake and really hoped we would never find ourselves lost in the rainforest and forced to test the tastes-like-carrots theory. Once we reached the giant ceiba tree, there wasn’t much to do other than marvel at what a big tree it was, so we sat and talked about the various sports we played, which lead to a demonstration by Heather of the mechanics of broomball.
Back at the lodge, we had a bit of time before dinner, but not wanting to nap again, we chose to sit in the common area and play a few rounds of cards before heading over to the bar for a drink. Heather and I again opted for beers, but Bri decided she wanted to sample Peru’s national drink, the pisco sour. I was curious, too, but shied away from it because I’d heard it had a high alcohol content and was still worried about being dehydrated when we arrived in Cusco the next day. In retrospect, with regard to both the actual alcohol content of a pisco sour (which I didn’t find to be noticeably high) and the way things would unfold over the course of the evening, this seems a bit silly. Anyway, apparently the bartender had won some sort of medal for making the best pisco sour, and I can vouch that the sip I had of Bri’s was indeed yummy. As we sipped our drinks, the bartender played Bob Marley on the stereo (our first introduction to Peruvians’ love affair with Bob Marley) and entertained us with card tricks.
After dinner (during which we discovered another of our favorite Peruvian delicacies, yucca fries), Heather, who hadn’t been sleeping very well, decided to call it a night. Bri and I weren’t quite ready to turn in yet, though, so we offered to buy Jorge a beer to say thanks for being such a good tour guide. Of course, as we sat at the bar and chatted with Jorge and the bartender (and listened to more Bob Marley), one beer turned into two, and two beers turned into three… Bri was getting more and more inebriated by the minute (as was I, let’s be honest, although her pisco sour pushed her a little further over the edge). As she tried to explain to us the root of the global economic collapse, she kept touching both my leg and Jorge’s (she was sitting between us), and after we’d moved on to another subject, I glanced over to see that she and Jorge were holding hands. I could see where this was going, so after I’d downed the remains of my beer, I quickly excused myself and giddily raced back to the room, where, in my semi-drunken state, I thought it would be a good idea to wake Heather up with the news that Bri was totally hooking up with Jorge! Heather, on the other hand, did not think this was such a good idea, as she’d finally managed to fall into her first comfortable sleep since we arrived in the rainforest, and was scared senseless by me looming over her and hissing her name. Oops. Chastened, I climbed into bed, too, and promptly fell asleep, only waking up when Bri crept back into the room at around 2 a.m.
Continue to Day 4: Amazon River Basin to Cusco
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