Welcome to the Jungle (Parque Manu)

Ok, so I´m cheating, I´m actually writing this from Copacabana, Bolivia which is on the coast of Lake Titicaca. So much has happened in the past week without internet access that I don´t know if I can do it justice, but I´ll sure try. In short, I went to the Amazon Jungle for 5 days and then hopped a bus to Bolivia where I now find myself.

My experience in the jungle was nothing short of amazing. After a week of searching in Cuzco, I put together a crew of 3 adventerous souls which included myself, Mark, a 40 year old welshman who carried a big knife and who was very clear that he was british and not english, and Johannah, a 19 year old girl from Berlin who´s been on the road for several months. This motley crew of 3 was led by William, 23 years old, having lived his whole life in the amazon where we visited, and Lourdes his 22 year old sister who did a damn good job of making sure we had our stomachs full of food.

The trip was 5 days and 4 nights and basically broke down like this. The first day was spent driving a dizzying and perilous 10 hours in a van over mountain passes and down 2000 meters, through cloud forest, to the town of Pilcopata, at the mouth of the Madre de Dios river which is a tributary of the Amazon. The ride was long, BUMPY, and just dangerous enough so that you didn´t want to think about it. We stopped in the cloud forest and from that point on, I knew it was going to be an amazing trip. Just walking through the high trees, we spotted several families of monkeys, flocks of tropical birds, and beautiful butterflies. Upon arriving in Pilcopata, we found ourselves right smack in the middle of a festival for the Imaculate Conception, which consisited of the entire town out in their parading best, playing marching music and dancing their druken butts off in what I can best describe as a sort of folkloric music played by 20 slightly out of tune horns. Of course I loved it!

The next day, we woke up early, drove down to the river, stopping in a Coca plantation, painting our faces with local fruit, and stealing away a bit of wild pinapple (Small but DELICIOUS!) from the side of the road. At the river, we found a long boat with an outboard motor waiting for us on a VERY quickly flowing river. To the bonanza reservation it was a 5 hour boat ride that was one of the most relaxing times I´ve yet to have on the trip. Wind blowing in my face, surrounded by the amazon rain forest, I even sat out front and took a chance to play my guitar, (Yes, I brought my guitar to the Amazon, of course!), along with half dome, europe, isreal, and india, I can add that to one of the real special times of playing that guitar for me. We stopped into a natural hotsprings where we covered ourselves with river mud, and indulged in what I acturately guessed was about 108deg farenheit water. Much fun was had jumping from the cold river to the hot pond and back and forth again. It also brought new meaning to the difficulty going to the bathroom in the woods, as every where I looked, there was a large meanicing spider hanging between a branch, or crawling in the grass. That´s where I first learned that the Jungle is all fine as long as you don´t look in detail, and the more detail you look in, the more you actually realize that you´re covered in bugs and insects all the time, whether you know it or not. We arrived to Bonanza to find a few wooden platforms for us to put up our tents for the night and meet Will and Lourdes´ parents. Charming and loving people, who only spoke Quechua (the Incan language) which reduced communication to smiles, laughs, and guitar playing :).

That night we went looking for insects. Luckily, we were in the jungle, so we found a whole lot of them. Wolf Spiders, Scorpion Spiders, Tarantulas, Translucent Butterflys, Millipedes and a host of other creepy crawlies. This was the start of my introduction to the jungle where I would find myself getting les reserved and more comfortable with each new experience that took me out of my comfort zone, until I found myself on the last day walking barefoot and in shorts through ankle deep amazonian mud and bullet ants (comfortable or just stupid, you decide).

The next day was one of the truly special experiences of my trip so far. We woke up early, ate a light breakfast, packed up our big backpacks with tents, put on rubber boots that went almost up to our knees (unfortunately they didn´t have boots quite big enough for me, like everything down here), and head off on an 8 hour hike into the jungle. Before the hike, we had to stop for a morning snack of course, which amounted to finding a rotting log, chopping it open and find some ´oil worm´grubs to much down. Mark happily chomped down 2, while Jo wasn´t anywhere near considering it. I had a rather puzzleing experience. While initialy disgusted by the little slimy guys, I held one in my hands for a few minutes, and in its desperate spasming and crawling around, I developed what I can only describe as a genuine empathy for the little critter, which I really wasn´t expecting. I was no longer disgusted by the thought of texture or taste, but by the thought of holding him by the head and physically killing him with my teeth. I was conflicted, feeling peer pressure to eat him just to have a story to tell, but I sided with this new feeling and convinced Will to stick him back in the log (saving him from Mark who wanted to eat him) (Sorry Will!). On the walk back to camp I tried to understand what just happened, did this mean that I really should be a vegetarian? I had extended my empathy that I value for other humans to a disgusting worthless worm, how could I ever eat another sentient animal again? I decided that in the very least, it made me want to excersice more, thinking of all the perfectly good animal protein that has gone to waste on me not making use of it. Either way, I felt good about my decision, if not a bit confused.

The hike itself was a gradual transition from walking on firm land, to taking off our boots and fjording a river, to wading through a bit of mud, to balancing on logs over rivers and swamps, supporting ourselves with bamboo sticks, to swinging across streams on high hanging vines, to outright dredging through miles of thick juicy mud and stagnant water. Each step in the process found me rolling up my sleeves a little bit more and more, getting less paranoid about bugs and mud, and just feeling at home in the jungle. All along the way we saw a bunch of wildlife, including bullet ants, giant ants (aprox an inch and a half), one of the most dangerous insects in the jungle. Speaking of ants, we saw all types, including swarms of army ants with nasty stings and herds of those entreprenurial leaf cutter ants.

Other highlights including trying to climb a 30m tree that had been eaten alive by a parasite tree and left hollow on the inside. We were supposed to climb down a vine from the top`(about 100 feet), and decided to try it out on the bottom first despite claims that ´it was perfectly safe´. I hopped on and did my best to pull it down, but found that yes indeed it was pretty strong. Then Mark, the everstrong welshman tried his turn. He lasted about a second and a half before we heard a huge ´SNNNAAAPPPP´and fled from the 100ft of vine falling down all around us. The next 5 minutes were spent sitting around looking up at the tall tree and realizing that if we hadn´t tried it out first, Mark would surely be dead right now. As if that weren´t motivation enough to stay on the ground, we still attempted to climb up, but both Mark and I found ourselfs either to lanky or too big to make it all the way to the top, it still was a lot of fun.

We stopped for lunch by a stream, where we ate rice out of banana leaves that William had been carrying for us. Jungleicious Delicious! We then found ourselves having to fjord a stream that very nearly hit our boot level. William eagerly showed us that we could avoid the fjord by just attempting a tarzan like vine swing across the river. We obviously didn´t learn our lesson as Mark lined up for the swing, took off, heard a ¨Snap!¨halfway across the river and found himself flying into the mud!

Not like it mattered very much, because the arduous last 2 hours of the hike were through a straight swamp. Trail is a very loose term, as at times, we found ourselves entirely surrounded by orange stagnent water(anaconda territory) navigating across the swamp on small logs that we had to feel out with our feet. It was at that point that I really felt like I was in the Jungle. When not swamp wading, the trail was composed of just a bunch of deep and watery mud. Suprisingly, insects didn´t really bother us (Go Deet!), although they haven´t apparently ever had any cases of Malaria in parque Manu, but whatever. What I did find, however, was that I started to get dizzy, and cranky, and totally lost track of any thoughts except taking each next step and getting to our damn campsite. Probably didn´t drink enough water, but the heat and humidity, it made me feel delierious with what I could only describe as a ´jungle fever´.

Anyways, my coordination lasted just long enough to get me to the campsite, a rock crop on the side of the river tributary where we would stay the night. I wasted no time in derobing and hopping in, washing off the filth of the day. I waited till afterwards to learn that the waters were home to piranha´s and caiymans. Then we got real setteled, set up some bamboo fires, tents, and cooked some spaghetti we had brought with us while will and mark went off for a short night hike. 2 hours later we started to worry. I joked, ´they better come back with a caiyman´, and sure enough a few minutes later they walked right up to the fire and plopped down a bloody aligator head in my lap. Will had caught the crock, blinding it with his flashlight, while Mark took out his oversize traveler´s knife and straight up cut off its head. We gutted the now placid looking krock and set up a few stick spits above our bamboo fire, and cooked it up. So what does alligator taste like you may ask? Delicious! Like a combination between chicken and fish.

I was ambivalent about all the killing, especially given my worm experience, but the interesting thing is that there was a lot of respect in it. Sure we didn´t NEED to eat it, we had spaghetti, but we ate everything (Eyes and Brains included, although Mark felt it the next day). It was a nice counterbalance to my worm experience, a lesson about primal urges for meat, and the killing you have to be ok with to get it.

Anyways, the next morning, we woke up early and walked the whole way back. We really hauled ass and got back in 5 hours [again I got delierious towards the end, but at least this time Jo did too :) ]. We only stopped for a herd of wild boars which we didn´t see but heard and I can only describe as sounding more gnarly and fierce than the worst creatures from the Lord of the Rings. We started walking off into the jungle, tracking their sounds. When we got close, and I could really hear them, I realized I might be in danger and I asked Will what I should do if they decide to charge us and he calmly tapped a thin tree trunk next to me and said ´you need to at least get a meter and a half up or they can get you´. Its things like this to remind you that no matter how safe I felt with the group, this was the real jungle and it Really was dangerous. He told me a story of how he once had a tour with some Danish girls, they had to climb tree trunks to escape the boars, but the boars sat there for hours. The girls just clung on and eventually had to go to the bathroom just clinging to the trunks.

The thing is, all this wildness, was Will´s backyard all his life, and his constant humor and good attitude made you feel like that too. By 2 hours into the hike on the way back, I almost even felt at home. I felt so at home that I decided to try a Jesse of the Jungle swing across the dubious stream. Ignoring the lessons of yesterday (will tryed it first!), I jumped off for a glorious second and a half before the all too familar ´Snap!´, signaled my return to earth. Muddy earth at that. But it was great! I sat there, covered in jungle mud, mosquitos buzzing around, and I couldn´t have felt more at home. It actually turned out to be my highlight of the trip, because from there on, nothing really worried me that much, the jungle had acquired me and I didn´t have to keep my guard up anymore.

Once we got back, I fell into a deep state of relaxation, so deep that I didn´t put back on my shoes or pants to go on a 20 min hike to see some birds. This found me squishing through the mud barefoot, which would make my big toe infected, and me a bit concerned, but you know what, it was ok! What a great experience to help give me confidence that it always finds a way to work out. The basic rules of the jungle that I put together over the course of the trip was this:

1) As opposed to not touching anything, Touch EVERYTHING! Get bit! Get
spiked! Get Muddy! Get Rashy!

2) Don´t worry! The bites go away, the mud washes off, the rashes
subside!

3) When it comes time to take things seriously, take things VERY seriously.
Infections, wild boars, deadly insects, you don´t mess around, but just do
everything you can to take of yourself.

And you know what, if that was all that I learned... it was worth every
penny.

I finish this from La Paz, tommorow I head off to Uyuni, on my way to
Santiago for christmas to spend with Juan Eduardo Justiano and his family, so
obviously a lot else has happend, but hopefully I´ll get time to catch up on the
rest of it soon.

Chau for now!