Wednesday, April 15, 2009

April 12-15 – A 4:30 a.m. wake-up call in Lima after a few days of sight-seeing. Urghh!!! The consolation prize is we are heading this morning to Porto Maldonado and the Amazon Basin in eastern Peru. Our destination is Sandoval Lake Lodge, home of the famous South American giant otters – six-foot monsters that are now extinct in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Our flight from Lima first makes a stop in Cuzco where we double back to in four days and start our trek to Machu Picchu. We arrive in Porto Maldonado around 11:00 am to a hot, muggy day. This city of 100,000 is filled with shanty homes, dotting dirt roads. The most popular mode of transport is motorcycles. They are everywhere.
Our guide Herbert (“or you can call me Luis”) is a 26-year-old Peruvian Indian, drawn to the jungle for its beauty and peacefulness. He also doesn’t due well in the Andes Mountains due to a lung ailment. Herbert speaks four languages and hails from a town of 200. “We all know each other,” he tells Tony.
After distilling our large backpacks into small duffel bags, we head to the Madres de Dios (Mother of God) River, where a 30-foot skinny motor canoe is awaiting. We head southeast for 30 minutes to a ranger station guarding the entrance to the Tambopata National Reserve. This is also the trailhead for our 4-kilometre hike further into the jungle along a path with mud up to a foot deep. We are at the tail-end of the rainy season.
Herbert warns us not to touch anything as there could be poisonous plants and snakes along the way.
A short way in, Alana takes an accidental dive into the mud. She falls again a few minutes later. Non-plussed, we all forge on.
We spot two types of monkeys, out of five in the area, on the way, along with numerous birds and insects. The Gardner ants are busy cutting leafs and moving them along their highways. No snakes are seen, thank goodness.
At the end of the trail, paddle canoes await us with one of our porters at the helm. Surprisingly, he had beaten us there despite carrying the duffel bags of five guests. Even the two porters carrying a large, full propane tank arrive before us.
Robert is our paddler today. He too is a local, who recently turned 18 and can now legally work in Peru. We learn that a few years ago from this same dock, a local Indian was attacked by a seven-foot anaconda snake. The snake lung at him and bit his arm, then wrapped his body around the man and tried to squeeze the life out of him. An amigo fortunately happened upon the attack and shot the snake dead with a shot-gun. The man lived but suffered permanent damage to his arm.
There are several species of snakes at Sandoval. If the anacondas don’t get you, perhaps the bushmaster might. These are ferocious, and bite at about knee height on humans. The lodge keeps a pickled bushmaster in a jar near the buffet table that was killed nearby. If it looks like Tony is preoccupied with snakes, it’s because he is and chiefly because he’s terrified of them.
We board the canoe for a 40-minute paddle across the shimmering lake. Within a few minutes we see one of the large and extremely rare Black Caiman, an alligator in South America.
Like the Galapagos cruise, the days at Sandoval are filled with guided tours on and off the water. The day starts at 5:30 am with a boat tour. On our first morning we saw several of the 500 species of birds in the area. Peru has about 1800 different species. There are also 200 species of fish in the lake, including electric eels, stingrays and four types of piranha.
Very impressive, indeed, are the Black Caiman that lurk along the shore. They are abundant. We saw one about three feet long and another about nine feet. Interesting that caiman is afraid of the giant otters that can kill the caiman out of protection by ripping open their soft underbellies with their teeth.
Anacondas also kill caiman for food.
We did not have to wait long to spot the elusive giant otters. One of our paddlers on the first morning spotted some splashing across the lake. As we approached we spotted the family of three – the only family on the lake – fishing for breakfast. They would dive and come up with fish in their teeth. The water is very murky so the otters have to rely on their whiskers to help detect the fish. Piranhas are a favorite and they have learned out of self preservation to only eat them tail first.
A two-hour jungle walk followed breakfast. It started with a little education on the brazil nut, the most important product in the region. Most of know the nut as a Christmas treat, but it isn’t harvested until April of each year. The tree is the tallest in the jungle. It produces a hard and heavy fruit that looks like a coconut. These fall to the ground and when cracked open with a machete, yield 10-20 of the brown brazil nuts.
We now understand why brazil nuts are so expensive. Locals search out for nuts on the floor of the jungle. If they start too early in the season, the nuts have been known to fall and kill an unsuspecting local. Beginners have also lost fingers to razor-sharp machetes. If that isn’t enough, Bushmaster snakes have killed many with their bites. The nuts are then taken into neighboring towns and processed by women for export.
The jungle is an undergraduate course in biology. There is an amazing array of flora and fauna. Among the flora you see are the chocolate tree, mango tree, the plant that produces a natural antidote to malaria, the walking tree (yes, it actually moves about a metre a year towards better sunlight), the rubber tree, Birds of Paradise flowers…….too numerous to name them all.
The days were broken up into different guided tours, usually to try and see specific things. One morning we took off at 5:30 am, paddled for 30 minutes, then hiked in the mud for 30 minutes to a swamp to see blue and gold macaws, parrots and parakeets. There were hundreds of them. We watch a macaw work on building a nest for 15 minutes and two others watched.
Peru is actively setting aside more land every year to protect the Amazon forest. About 15 per cent is now national reserve, compared to 10 per cent about a decade ago, an increase of 50 per cent. Nevertheless, the Amazon basin is in jeopardy under the onslaught of economic activity. An Amazon highway connecting Brazil, Peru and Bolivia is nearing completion, which will only bring more pressures.’
There is no question Sandoval Lake Lodge is in a rain forest. We encounter rain almost daily – none of it light -- and our clothes do not dry. The mosquitoes are better than expected, although we do sleep under bug nets.
April 9-11 – Lima is much different than Quito. For one it is extremely dry, a desert bordered by the Pacific Ocean. It also has more than 8-million people in 43 regions, each having their own mayor and council. Quito seemed large with 2-million. The other thing that strikes you is how cosmopolitan Lima is. It has been influenced by many European countries and the United States. Many of the US chains have a presence here. It was explained to Tony this is due to Peru having good relations historically with many countries, whereas other South American countries have swung back and forth from socialism to capitalism. We stayed in the district of Mira Flores, near the Pacific. It is a fashionable area with good shopping and restaurants and is considered more secure than other parts of Lima. We spent this afternoon on a tour of downtown Lima, which is filled with gorgeous colonial architecture and dotted with cathedrals. It was our first exposure to pre-Inca construction as well, where adobe blocks and mortar were used to help survive a history of earthquakes. Perhaps the highlight was a visit to church catacombs, complete with authentic human skulls and bones. Our guide used the occasion to brief us on earthquakes as we hunched in tiny underground caves.
The church and surroundings were extremely crowded due to Easter celebrations. It was literally wall-to-wall people as we headed into the church. Just inside the gates, Tony heard the clip to his Blackberry holster snap. He’d been using it to keep his camera. The camera was gone, in the hands of one of the masterful pick-pockets that survive stealing from locals and foreigners. A woman saw the crime occur but it was too late to do anything. Later, a magnificent sunset at Love Park almost made us all forgot of the theft.
Nearby Lima is the Pre-Inca Ruins of Pachacamac. These ruins are believed to be among the most important of religious centers for the indigenous people of the central Andes. First occupied by pre-Inca cultures such as the Wari Empire, Pachacamac was later incorporated into the Inca Empire and continued to figure prominently throughout the extended rule of the Incas. Peruvian civilizations predate those found in Egypt, and because of the dryness of Lima artifacts are well-preserved. We saw this first hand later on a tour of the National Museum of Lima. Entrance to this magnificent museum is free but you have the option of taking a guide for the equivalent of $15 soles or USD $5. We opted for the guide and was introduced to Maria, a delightful archeology student and enthusiastic about Peruvian culture and history. She even danced a native jig for us during the tour, captured on video.
The Inca’s receive disproportionate attention, despite only being in power for less than a century in Peru, and leaving no written history.

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