Amazon - Part 3

Every day we did a little something different. Most days started very early, anywhere from 3:30-5:00, depending on the outing. We had resiliency sessions in the evenings and often didn't get to bed until sometime after 11:00, one night it was much later for a dance party. Here is Geoff wowing with the limbo!

To say we were sleep deprived is an understatement. People caught naps when they could...

The heat and exhaustion got the best of me on two occasions and I missed out a bit. One of those days I was very nauseas until I finally vomited and then felt better. But somehow, when in the jungle (and not the lodge), I didn't feel the tiredness. It was as if the trees included us visitors as part of the beneficiaries of their nurturing.

One morning we woke up at 3:30 and took a 45 minute boat ride to a salt lick, the discoteca for macaws. Macaws mate for life and often flew in pairs, but the salt lick is also the place for them to find mates. We all had binoculars, but the guides had a high quality scope that allowed us to take some pictures with a better view. Some day I want one of those. The macaw colors are so vibrant and glorious. The Incas made clothing out of them for the king and nobles. There were parrots too.  We visited a second clay lick too. 

The guides set out a breakfast for us. Amazing local fruits, unbelievable plantain chips, and always rice and beans for us vegans.

Adele led the group in a meditation on that rocky beach. She did an amazing job! She's a natural!

Every day we took a forest walk, the flood plain one day, to a lookout the next, another the palm swamp or bamboo forest. All different in their own way, and all providing loads of delightful variety and life.

A few days the teens and guides and workers set off to play fútbol (soccer) at a makeshift field. I opted to nap instead of watch, but one of our guides called Ceci a fútboler, so I'm bummed I missed the games!

One evening we boated to a spot where we all went swimming. It felt so refreshing! It was a little unnerving knowing there are caimans in the river (our guides watched for them while we swam). Our guides set out a snack, someone brought a speaker and we danced around, played American football and soaked in sunset on the river with the Andes in the distance.

After four days at the Tambopata Research Center we took a three hour boat ride to Posada Amazonas where we stayed for the remainder of the trip. 

This forest had a different feel. It is closer to local villages and before a partnership was made to build this particular lodge where locals could receive the proceeds and adjust their lifestyles to take care of the forest ecosystem, they cut down the larger trees for wood which reduced certain monkey species, which in turn effected this or that and on and on. It was interesting to observe the differences. One afternoon we hiked to a 200 meter tower where we could look out over the canopy. It rained on the way but stopped as we climbed the tower. This invited birds and animals out. The view was so spectacular and reverent. It was one of Geoff's highlights. The sun was setting, macaws and toucans were out and about. It was expansive and pure. Hard to capture.

As the sun was setting we spotted a group of howler monkeys making their way toward the tower, jumping from branch to branch, tree to tree, sliding down and leaping and swinging their way along. There was another tower maybe eight feet away from our tower, and those monkeys began to climb it until they were eye level with us. Since the locals don't hunt monkeys anymore, they are not afraid of humans. They sat and observed us with curiosity. There were wee babies and mothers and protective males. The guides said that in the 15 years they have been guides they have never been so close. It was magical.

One early morning we went to a lake created by the ever-changing river's path called Oxbow Lake. A local rowed us around on a flotilla, so silent and still. We observed all kinds of birds. We also had some caimans approach the boat (these were small). The local paddling us around had a piranha he had caught for lunch in a bucket. It was dead so our guide took it out for us to look at. Our guides said the piranhas were only in the lake, but wasn't the lake created by the river? Probably best I didn't know that when swimming!

We visited the local village and toured the medicinal garden where local shaman's gather healing plants to treat the community. I was so fascinated by their remedies. Most locals can't afford a doctor and rely 100% on the community shaman and the healing plants he uses. 

After seven days our time in the jungle was over. On the one hand, a warm shower and change of clothes sounded really nice (I was pretty sure a new fungi system was growing in my clothes!) A bug-free bed, cooler temperatures and a little variety of food would be welcome. And at the same time we had made some really good new friends. We were deeply connected to the earth, almost feeling her heartbeat, and energized by her. It was hard to imagine crowds, screens and hustle and bustle. 

I'll miss our guides Jair, Claudia and Fernando.

We took a boat ride to a pick up point where a bus took us an hour to the airport. We took a flight to Lima where the teenagers and Geoff fit in as many poker games as they could (with Geoff and Nico cheating all along) and then quickly said goodbye to our fellow adventurers and ran to our connecting flight to Cusco. In Cusco we were picked up and drove an hour and a half to the village of Ollantaytambo for the last part of our Peruvian adventure.

Stay tuned!

Amazon - Part 2

The jungle felt so good. There was just pure nature. No bright lights or sirens or horns, no contention or division or shouting. No news. No masks. It was just our group and the forest. Nature is quite brutal. All living things are struggling for their survival, trying to get a piece of the limited resources. It appeared that there is a lot of destruction. Vines climb trees until the tree becomes too heavy and falls. With that sudden opening to sunshine, many plants that have been waiting for their turn in direct light begin to grow as fast as they can for a chance to survive. Everything that dies is immediately consumed by living things around it. Despite the seeming dog eat dog, surviver takes it all ecosystem, all living things contribute to all other living things. While every living thing appears to be doing its best to fulfill the measure of its creation (and taking what it needs to do so), part of that measure seems to be giving to the whole throughout the entire life cycle and even in its death. This was evident in every direction.

 

There was so much variety in the bugs, plants and trees. Geoff was captivated by the seemingly endless types of fungi. He took pictures of every new species he saw, capturing over 120. Here are just a few...

 

 

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Our guides explained endless amounts of information about the things we saw. For instance, there is only an inch or two of soil supplying nutrients to the entire forest. Beneath that thin layer is pure clay. To stand upright, large trees create "buttresses" to hold themselves up.

There are "walking palms" that literally move an inch or two this way or that depending on where they can get a sliver of light.

Termites build their large nests high up in the trees because the river swells up and floods the forest floor (from rainfall in the Andes mountains). They create "tunnels" down the tree trunk to get to the forest floor. One day I was in a different group than Geoff and the girls, but somehow Geoff challenged the teens to eat termites. Ceci, who is always up for a good challenge, ate a few live termites right from the tree!

The bugs were so interesting!

 

 

Of course this is just a sample of all the LIFE we saw.

 

We wanted to see a jaguar or puma along the shores of the river or in the forest, but we never did, despite our hopes. But we did see a LOT of monkeys. And this first picture is the howler monkey who is very, very loud with a noise that Ceci described as a 1970 haunted house recording. She is pretty much spot on.

We saw lizards and geckos, lots of different birds, a lot of macaws, a few of which were like seagulls who would wait for an unsuspecting kid to leave their plate for some reason before jumping to the table to steal some food.

They are also loud birds, but their magnificent colors make them tolerable.

We saw these large rodents a couple times on the beaches.

We saw an agouti, the small animal that cracks brazil nuts.

On one night hike, Geoff, Adele and Ceci saw a snake, I saw a tarantula (a very large variety) and many saw fluorescent scorpions and frogs. The forest is so alive. We woke up to howler monkeys and birds at 5AM (dawn) and went to sleep to the sounds of crickets and frogs of endless variety. It got dark at 6PM when the day shift ended and the night shift began. In the dark, red eyes are mammals and yellow eyes are amphibians. 

So. Much. Life.

Amazon - Part 1

There are very few parts of the entire South American amazon that are protected and where the ecosystem is still in its robust and complete form, but we were lucky enough to go to such a place. Upon landing in Puerto Maldonado, we were picked up by Rainforest Expeditions (who organized our week in the jungle), drove for an hour on a dirt road until we came to the spot on the Tambopata river where we filled up two boats and took a three-hour boat ride away from civilization and deep into the heart of Mother Earth.

The hot, humid jungle felt very familiar and natural to us. We assume it is from our time on the islands off of Cambodia. Finally we arrived at the Tambopata Research Center which is a beautiful lodge in the middle of nowhere. Across the river is a Peruvian National Park where visitors are not allowed. It is designated land for the tribal people who live there and have no contact with other humans. Apparently they are naked and live like hunters and gatherers. If they happen to see a boat pass by, or an airplane, they shoot arrows, but they are rarely seen.

The lodge was very nice and comfortable. The rooms only had three walls, with the fourth open to the jungle. Hearing the sounds of the jungle day and night was amazing. 

There is so much life! And that life made it into our rooms. The first night Adele found this on the outside of the mosquito net on her side of the bed.

Geoff and Ceci captured it and took it outside. All the teenage boys in the group came to witness the capture, but all were a bit freaked out. The next morning a spider in the wolf spider family was on Adele's suitcase, which was luckily closed. We kept our mosquito nets and suitcases tightly secured after that! Sometimes there were crickets or flying bugs in our beds regardless of our mosquito nets, which was a bit out of my comfort zone. Three to four-inch beetles, grasshopper-looking creatures and cockroaches scurried in the bathrooms and in our rooms. 

There were no fans and we only had electricity for a portion of the day. It was HOT. We had to wear long sleeves, long pants, long socks and rubber boots when walking in the jungle to avoid bites from both bugs and plants. We all only brought two jungle outfits for the week, switching them every day trying to give the clothes worn a day to dry out, but things don't really dry out in the jungle. So we were mostly sweaty and wet with layer upon layer of sunscreen and bug spray. Cold showers (the only option) felt so good, but it was a brief respite because as soon as you got out of the shower you were sweaty again. In the afternoons in the lodge we could wear shorts and t-shirts, and in the evenings we had a long-sleeve and long pants outfit but lighter in weight. Apparently, starting at dusk there is a small, biting bug that can spread a disease, so we covered up again.

The food was pretty good. They prepared vegan options for us which usually consisted of rice or quinoa with beans or lentils and some cooked veggies. The fresh fruit was sweet and delicious, as tropical fruit just off the tree always is. We ate at random times of the day, rarely feeling hungry because of the oppressive heat, yet finding ourselves famished and eating enormous amounts of food when finally sitting down for a meal. We sat at a long table for meals, always sitting by different members of the group and engaging in interesting conversations.

Almost everyday we had "resiliency sessions" where Julia took us through exercises and led us in discussions. The teenagers joined us for these sessions and contributed great insights. Meanwhile the younger kids were out with guides setting camera traps and exploring the jungle. These sessions helped us open up to each other and, between our shared thoughts and perspectives and the many shared experiences of the amazon, we became very close.

These new friends were so interesting and do incredible work in the world. All are very accomplished. Yet we were all students of our three local jungle guides, Claudia, Fernando and Jair who taught us about the plants, bugs and trees of the forest, and who explained just how delicate the ecosystem is in the amazon jungle.

Peru!

Last year our planned trip to Peru was canceled due to Covid, but this year we were able to make it work! Geoff belongs to the Young Global Leaders (YGLs) and one particular YGL, Julia, who is a professor of sustainable leadership at Stanford, organized a family resiliency journey to the Peruvian amazon, and we were joining the expedition.

Even though we were with a group and all was organized, it was an enormous amount of work to prepare for this trip! We had a guide for the amazon and I organized a guide for a trip to Machu Picchu, and they needed all sorts of information and documentation. There were multiple flights and hotels to book, a whole packing list with specific items we had to find and buy, Covid forms and tests to fill out and take and arrange for different stages of the trip according to current regulations, and on and on. We discovered six weeks before the trip that Ceci and Adele's passports were going to expire within six months of returning to the US, so they needed new passports, and quick! But there is no expedited service that can guarantee anything faster than three months right now. We sent them in with the understanding that we would have to travel to the nearest passport agency 72 hours before our trip (NY for Adele and Denver for Ceci). Miraculously, we got both of their passports back in THREE weeks! 

I did a little crash course in Inca history, trying to fill in Geoff and Ceci as I read.

We had to carry everything on our backs in the jungle, and we had cooler days we tagged on post jungle to Machu Picchu, so packing had to be minimalist yet sufficient. We packed in stages, picking things up we had forgotten and leaving things behind that didn't fit. Finally it was time to go and we headed out on the 14-hour journey to Lima. Ceci and I got a solid 1.5 hours of sleep, and Geoff, who is always upgrades and therefore more comfortable, got a bit more. It was the beginning of a very physically demanding trip.

We arrived early in the morning in Lima, got checked into our small, local hotel and headed out to get a SIM card for Geoff's phone (which unfortunately took the entire day and three different locations. Eventually we got out to see some of Lima's Old Town. I wish we had time to explore more, but we were grateful to get a quick glance and tour of some interesting sites.

First our hotel...

We made our way to the Plaza de Armas, passing Iglesia Merced on our way.

The Plaza was full of Colonial Spanish architecture, but somehow we had a difficult time really appreciating it knowing what was lost because of the Spanish being in Peru.

We toured the cathedral where Pizarro is laid to rest (he is the Spaniard that led a mere 200 men to conquer the Inca Empire), followed by a tour of the archbishop's palace.

We saw Peru's "White House", the Palacio del Gobierno, unfortunately missing the changing of the guard at noon.

We also didn't have a chance to tour Casa Aliaga, the 1535 home of the Aliaga family that is still inhabited by the family's decedents (17 generations!) We also wanted to tour the Convento de San Francisco where there is a library from this same time period of the early 1500s, but we couldn't get a tour in our short amount of time before dinner. Darn!

Casa Aliaga doors...

We met up with the YGL families for a welcome dinner at a lively Lima restaurant in the Miraflores neighborhood where Adele met up with us. She was a bit last minute in deciding to go with us and I'm so glad she did! We missed Tennie, who was concerned about missing so much school. (During the trip she found out that the classes she was most concerned about were canceled for two additional days around Thanksgiving, so she could have come. Bummer. But she had her own adventure. More about that later.)

After a very early wake up call we were on a flight to Puerto Maldonado where we would start our Amazonia adventure!