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August 17, 2005

Gators and Skeeters - Day 4

2 July 05

Another day another chance to catch the big one! So as not to repeat the fiasco from yesterday, we were going out at 6am - before the sun became too strong and all the little fishies had had their breakfast :-) Of course, we were operating on Peruvian Time and weren`t woken up until 7am... Jevon and I were pretty tired from last night`s excursion, but excited to try our luck once more. Like yesterday, I immediately caught a fish, this time a 20cm piraņa which again turned out to be the last catch of the day... We had gone out too late!

The rangers delivered our smoked Paco, which made a delicious breakfast! After relaxing for a while in our hammocks we set out on a jungle walk, hoping to see some animals...

Most of the path was cleared by the rangers, so Lucho didn`t have to chop too wildly :-) After about 10 minutes we encountered our first two creatures - the Dutch girl accompanied by one of the rangers... So there we were, in the middle of one of the most remote parts of a jungle Reserve which had had only 5 visitors in as many months, and we managed to run into one of them... After a while, though, we went our separate ways, and started to meet more interesting creatures such as monkeys. No offense to the Dutch girl! ;-)

The walk was hot, sweaty and exhausting but had its highlights, such as eating freshly chopped heart of palm - the soft inner layer of a palm branch - completely different from the canned version you can buy in Western grocery stores... Another highlight was seeing several of the enormous Ceiba tree whose width and height is impossible to capture on camera - it is similar in size (but not in mass) to the giant sequoia of Northern California. To give you an idea of its size; when building houses, the people of the jungle use a single plank of Ceiba as roof...

The turning point for our walk was a beautiful, green lagoon where Lucho talked with alligators making a guttoral sound - something like coughing as heard from indide your lungs, or a slow heartbeat heard from within an enclosed space. Throughout our trip, listening to Lucho doing this on hunts and walks, I could not hear the difference between the sounds made by the gators and those made by Lucho!

Exhausted and dehydrated from our long walk, we returned to camp where Jevon and I once again collapsed in our hammocks while the guys cooked up a delicious lunch of fresh fish, tomato and onion salad and fried platanos (bananas). While we were out walking, our boat "captain" had had better fishing luck than us, and caught numerous piraņas and other fish. Though a cool concept, eating piraņa was not as exciting as we had imagined... The taste was unremarkable and it was full of tiny bones - I found them stuck in my teeth even hours later...

After dinner it was time to take a bath in the river. In the jungle of Ecuador, the water was muddy but refreshing, and the bottom sandy. In Pacaya Samiria, the water was incredibly thick and murky, teeming with fish, dolphins and gators, the bottom covered in a thick layer of slimy mud, and it smelled of decomposing matter. Not quite so refreshing but better than the alternative of not washing :-) We had to jump in from the boat - forget about walking from the bank - and try to wash while not touching the bottom or get too distracted by the dozens of fish nipping at our skin (piraņas??!!). I was laughing all the time, tickled by the constant nipping... Jevon on the other hand, badly sunburned, was howling with pain as one little fish twisted his nipple while its friends nipped at his chest... :-)

After drying off we packed up once again, going back to our first camp to spend the night a bit closer to the exit and in a place with slightly fewer mosquitoes... What a terror they were, swarming everywhere, biting through our clothes despite covering them and our skin in repellent...

That night we went on yet another alligator hunt in the lagoon and river near the camp. There were quite a few around, but like yesterday they were quite small. Lucho caught a 2m gator for food and, after cracking its skull, placed it in the canoe, head between Jevon`s legs. Slightly nervous about the gator, Jevon was assured by Lucho that there was no way it could still be alive. And dead still it lay until 5 minutes later when it opened its huge jaws and smacked them shut again, nearly chopping off Jevon`s foot!! With only gringoes as witnesses to what happened, Lucho laughed at us thinking we were making it up, but cut the gator`s spine once more to make sure it had absolutely no chance of moving again. Jevon, foot on the gator`s snout, finally relaxed - until it happened again and both of us screamed "It`s alive!! It`s alive!!" making Lucho turn around and finally understanding what the fuzz was about. The gator didn`t get a chance to do it again... And sadly, we wouldn`t get a chance to see it again as we were leaving the jungle the next morning.

Posted by kvabo on August 17, 2005 11:34 AM
Category: Peru
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