30 June 05

I woke up safe and sound, and went to the market with the boys at the un-Kath-like hour of 6:30am. The food selection was a wee bit unfamiliar. Turtles anyone?? The grand total for 3 days´ worth of staple foods for the 5 of us came to $6... We were going "Jungle Style" and I was hoping that boiled green bananas would turn out to be a new favourite, or at least edible...

Leaving the "Ecological City" in our speedboat, we were initially pleased to find that Juan had done some shopping of his own, and that we now had a CD to listen to during our long hours on the river. The only "challenge" was that his chosen CD was "Best of the 90s - ballads in English", including such fine artists as Michael Bolton, Scorpions, Bryan Adams and Roxette... It didn´t take us more than 3 hours to get to our next stop, the town of Bretaña, but we were already permanently scarred by the ballad experience.

At the still early hour of 10am we set out to hire a dugout canoe w/motor to take us into the Pacaya Samiria Reserve. Jevon and I sat down to wait while the guys started negotiating with local canoe owners. All the canoes came with its owner as a special bonus, and all were ridiculously overpriced. As we should have expected, it took most of the day to negotiate a deal.

After 6 long, drawn-out hours, many of which we spent waiting by our speedboat listening to Michael Bolton, we finally left Bretaña with our new "captain" at the helm. After registering at the first control-post, we spent 5 more on the river on our way to camp at Yarina. The river was a lot narrower than the wide Amazon, but sitll a good 20 to 40m. The landscape was not my typical idea of a rainforest / jungle, but rather had grassy & shrubby fields with scattered trees reminding me of the African savannahs, obviously with a lot more water added. (I haven`t actually been to Africa so the comparison may be completely out of line...)

We saw great flocks of white waterfowl perched in trees, on twigs sticking out of the water and on the beaches. Grey and pink dolphins would frequently break the surface of the water, and every so often parrot-couples would pass above us. The sunset was colorful and mystical, and the jungle sounds soothing. After dark we peered up at the myriad stars while the sky was occasionally lit up by lightning from a thunderstorm located in a single cloud in the distance. Gorgeous!

Once all light was gone we started scanning the river banks with our flashlights, looking for the telltale glowing eyes of the alligator. Lucho and Juan`s eyes were ovbiously incredibly more trained than ours, and Jevon and I soon found ourselves gliding slowly towards the right bank, and a spot where we couldn`t see anything of interest... The concentration could be felt in the air, and I strained to see the target that was obviously hiding somewhere. Lucho`s arm was raised, spear at the ready. Suddenly there was a huge splash as a monster-size alligator, about 1m thick, rose up from the water right next to the canoe. EEEEEK! I was terrified until I realized that it was only a log and that Lucho had his eyes set elsewhere. Like something out of National Geographic he threw the spear with great force, and a small gator was wiggling at the other end of the rope. (The spear`s hook is attached to its body by a long rope. When hitting the target, the hook stays and the wooden stick floats up, allowing the hunter to rope in the prey). Lucho slayed the gator with his machete and then casually said "Let`s go cook dinner, I`m starving!" - as if we had just come out of the supermarket.

After setting up camp on a wooden platform with roof (protection from torrential rains and flooding rivers) Juan dished up a delicious meal of sauteed alligator tail, the tenderest part, and boiled platanos. Relaxed and full, I soon feel asleep to the wonderful sounds of the jungle; insects, howler monkeys and dolphins spraying water in the lagoon where our camp was located.