Pelejo es Pendejo

After the success of our beers on the ferry, Daniel and I decided that we should get some for the tour as well. We calculated thirty beers would be enough for two each per day, plus one for each guide each day. Quite modest, really, but everyone else made fun of the huge bag of bottles we had to get loaded onto the mototaxi which would take us to the reserve entrance. When we got to the park entrance and paid our fees, Daniel did not look impressed with the operation; the canoes were shit, he said. I thought they looked a bit scary and low in the water, especially after they loaded them up with all of our stuff. The Spanish girls and Argentine had already gone; apparently the girls' tour was only two days, so they needed to get going, but also waiting when we arrived was a group of three French people, an older couple and their son, Christophe, a bit younger than me.

Next to the ticket office

Dodgy canoes

While we were waiting for pay our park fees, Christophe's mother was leafing through a flora and fauna book in the ticket office. I was standing beside her, and at one page she pointed to a vine and said to me "have you heard of this plant?". It was ayahuasca. I told her yes, but I didn't know much about it. She told me that it was a very special and spiritual plant, and that the three of them had been working with ayahuasca for the last three weeks. Apparently they had all come to Peru specifically to go on an ayahuasca course, which they all insisted in describing as working with a shaman. They had each paid €2100 to do this ayahuasca ritual fifteen times in three weeks with a French shaman. The woman told me she had been going to the same shaman for every year for the last eight years, and she said she found it very cleansing, healing, and good for her spirit, and that it was even better than meditation for gaining peace and being able to see things clearly and sort out problems with yourself. It's a bit like therapy, she said. The couple, especially, looked like hippies, and now the way she was talking absolutely confirmed it. Later on Daniel discovered that she was some sort of executive of Unilever, so I suppose she must build up a lot of bad karma throughout the year, which the shaman has to help her purge.

Tourist's eye view of the jungle

It was time to set off. We discovered that we weren't getting one guide each as we had been told, but would be sharing one canoe and one guide. I had mixed feeling about this: one the one hand Daniel would be able to translate whatever Esteban, our guide, said that I couldn't understand; on the other hand, I was really worried that the canoe would not be able to take the three of us. It wasn't the high quality canoes Daniel was used to on his expensive Ecuadorian jungle trips, but it certainly seemed very authentic: it was a simple dugout tree. Then we set off without sinking and Daniel had another reason to be unimpressed: there was only one paddle, so we would have nothing to do and the guide would have to do all the work, making the trip much slower than it might have been. Then Esteban didn't seem to know the real names for anything in the jungle, or only the local names, which aren't very informative; Daniel was not impressed: the monos rojos were actually howler monkeys, he told me; the papagallos were actually macaws, and so on. Daniel knew all this from working the Ecuadorian jungle, which is really all a continuation of the same ecosystem.

A bird

A macaw (says Daniel)

Butterfly on Esteban's arm

I thought it was all quite pleasant being paddled down the river and, though we didn't have much to do, we had beers and I had my book if I got bored of the scenery. At one point the subject of injuries and I asked if they had a first aid kit: bandages and painkillers at least, to which the response was no. Daniel asked what the guide would do if something happened and he told him that nothing had happened in fourteen years of him guiding, but if it did there were plenty of medicinal plants in the forest. Daniel was not impressed, and I was a bit apprehensive about this too.

French hippies

When we stopped for a snack at a clearing with a wooden shelter, Daniel told Christophe about the first aid kit, and he responded that, yes, there are plants everywhere. Clearly Daniel was not impressed with this either: I could tell he was thinking "bloody hippies!". They gave us watermelon, which actually wasn't very nice. A feature I have come to recognise about jungle fruit, from Cambodia and the Laos, seems to be true in Peru as well, and probably everywhere: it does't taste as nice as the commercial varieties and it's full of seeds almost to the point of inedibility. In Asia it was tasteless bananas full of seeds, and here it was tasteless watermelon with more seeds that I would have thought possible, but also far bigger than to which I am accostomed. I asked Esteban if the fruit came from the selva and he said yes. Christophe's mother was now telling the Israeli couple about her working with the ayahuasca. The girl asked her, "so it's like a drug?" and the French woman replied "no, no, no, it's not a drug it's a plant". Soon after the break, we passed a little laguna where there were dolphins playing. I joked to Daniel that the French hippies were probably beside themselves, having a spiritual connection with the dolphins, which the New Age seems to hold up as special transcendental creatures. Well, at least they read Douglas Adams!

Jungle

Death awaits ye all

Hanging nests

We carried on, passing lots of birds, and a couple of three-toed sloths, or pelisosos in Spanish and pelejo in the local dialect. Daniel seemed to be enjoying himself a bit more and kept asking Esteban to remind him what the local word for sloth was, finally settling on the mnemonic pendejo to remind him, which Esteban thought was very funny, repeating pelejo es pendejo and laughing. At one point a small fish jumped into the boat and Esteban warned me not to touch it. I think it was a catfish, which he said can give a nasty bite. Daniel continued his banter with Esteban, constantly exclaiming sucsio! when anything annoying happened, like getting splashed. At first both Esteban and I thought he was saying sucio albeit a bit strangely, until he insisted, no, it wasn't sucio but some word everyone says in Ecuador, but has no meaning other than itself. Soon Esteban was saying it too: Sucsio! Pelejo es pendejo and then chuckling.

Best shot of the pelejo I could get, pendejo!

When we arrived at the accommodation for the night it was a nice surprise: a large jungle hut with a "proper" porcelain toilet, though it had no flush and had to be emptied with a bucket of water it was still far nicer than the one at the agency, and there were even showers and taps with running water. Then came the shock: the tea, bread, and jam we had been served when we arrived was not a snack before dinner; it was dinner. Daniel with his obsession with three proper meals a day, returned to his former unimpressed mood and we went to bed about 8:30pm.

The dining room-kitchen

Main entrance

The toilet out the back

I woke before 5:30am by which time the Spanish girls and Argentine has already set off, the girls back to Lagunas and the Argentine on for another half day, since his full tour was three days. I discovered that a few extra beers were missing from our hoard, as well as all of the few that the early risers had bought. Some people had stayed up after we went to bed; was it one of hte guides who had taken without asking? We had brought beers for our guides, but Esteban didn't want any and we only had one guide between us, so we did have a few extras for ourselves and would have been happy to give some away if asked, but for someone to steal our beer like that, we were pissed off!

We had an absolutely enormous breakfast of fried, very fresh fish, fried chips, and fried plantain. The previous day I was surprised to learn that it is allowed to fish in the reserve, when we saw several people letting out large nets and some other gutting fish on the river bank. Apparently the reserve only applies to things that are not fish. Odd, since you would think that lots of other things depend on the fish, but there did seem to be an awful lot of them: when we swam in river, little fish nibbled us all over, and any time some food waste was thrown in the river, not very ecological behaviour either I thought, fish would thrash around just below the surface to devour it.

Christophe

Woodpecker

When we set off and got into the run, I realised that I had burned my parting the previous day. Without Joanne to rub factor 50 into the gaps between my dreadlocks, how could this be avoided? I certainly wasn't going to ask Daniel to do it, a fact I'm sure he would have been glad to learn, so I had to improvise: I had been carrying my krama since receiving the Cambodian scarf for my birthday from Joanne, and decided it would make a reasonable bandana. I looked silly, but it did a good job protecting my head. We started on the beers early, worried what would happen to the rest if we didn't use them all up. The tour was more of the same: lots of birds, though this time we also saw some giant spider webs and at one point I was more than a bit shocked when Esteban stopped next to what he said were nests of lobos del rio, which I guessed were river otters, and started hacking at them with the oar, because there are babies at the moment, he explained. I suppose he wanted to rouse them into coming out, but what an appalling way to treat the wildlife in a reserve!

Cool, eh?

Oh yeah!

Big web

How big is the spider?

Lunch time

Papagallos

Another bird

And another bird

Just before lunch we crossed paths with the Argentinian coming the other direction. Esteban suggested that we swap boats with him because the one we were in was unstable. It had been rocking from side to side unnervingly but we hadn't taken in any water. When we set off in the new boat, we discovered an empty bottle left behind by the Argentine. Now we knew which bastard stole our beer! The new boat was more stable, but much lower in the water, we started taking in water frequently and Esteban had to constantly bail out to prevent the leaks from accelerating. When we stopped for lunch at only 11am I couldn't eat anything because I was still stuffed from the huge breakfast. I just hung up my hammock and read some more of On the Road. Luckily Daniel had complained about the absence of dinner and we got a decent sized meal that night, by which time I was starving. After dinner, Esteban took us out in the boat in the dark, hunting for caimans, not to kill as they are protected. We didn't find any, but we did see a fair bit of nocturnal wildlife. In the absence of caimans, Daniel was offered Esteban's spear to fish with, but did not have any success, only injuring a few. No breakfast for you, I teased, but didn't bother to have a go myself. I've fished with a spear before and know that it isn't as easy as Esteban made it look. I don't really like fishing.

Andean toad

Mystery bird

Esteban shows Daniel how it's done

Another mystery bird

Big toilet spider

Boo!

In the morning a little caiman was tied up by the boats and the hippies were soon out and began tormenting it. I wasn't very happy to see the poor thing like that, but I didn't really think they should have been hunting them at all. That day our itinerary was a walk in the jungle supposedly to see wildlife. I was quite excited. We were given boots and headed off behind the lodge we had slept in. Near the start was quite a big tree, which was nice because I had been disappointed and surprised how small most of the trees were. Yes, there was a lot of thick forest, but it wasn't really any different to forest I have seen elsewhere, even the few patches of primary forest still existing in Scotland are similar. I expecting absolutely gigantic trees everywhere, but that's not how it was.

Esteban with poor caiman

Terrified caiman

So called hippies tormenting caiman

Aguajes, which come from a palm and taste a bit like olives

Second night's accommodation

"Mono negro"

Goodbye to the Israeli couple!

It was now only Daniel, me, and Christophe, because the Israeli couple and the french couple were both staying for longer and were heading further downstream; only the three of us were turning around the next day. I soon discovered that the older couple weren't actually Christophe's parents, which really surprised me because the woman in particular had seemed very close to him, like she was looking after him. The working with ayahuasca together had made them very close, he explained. He had also found it very beneficial, he said, and he now felt much better physically and phychologically; their shaman had insisted that they become vegetarians during the course and Christophe has decided he was going to continue now that the course was over: the three of them had been eating vegetables with spirulina, which is just cyanabacteria for goodness' sake, sprinkled over it, which they told me contains "all the proteins your body needs", while we sat down to our delicious, juicy fresh fish. Whatever, I had thought. He went on to say that, although it is widely believed that you must be sick when you take ayahuasca, this is only because of all the impurities and toxins that most people have in their body, but with their shamans dietry method, his disciples have very little vomiting and he was sick only three times out of fifteen. However he had not received the "visions" that the oher two had, which he put down to the fact he did not yet meditate. Maybe the shaman didn't give him enough of the ayahuasca, I suggested. No, no, Christophe explained, the amount you take has no bearing whatever on the effect: it's up to the shaman and the spirit of the ayahuasca whether you have visions. He's a nice guy, but this just sounded like more hippie nonsense to me! Actually they were all nice, and they all did seem to have a calm and peaceful air about them.

Big spider in the jungle

Big tree

Big tree

We pressed on a bit further and Daniel had a great time hacking away at any undergrowth he could with the machete he had brought all the way from Ecuador. Esteban pointd out various jungle fruits and medicinal trees, all of which Christophe was keen to try, presumably because they are natural, whereas I really wasn't that interested after the jungle watermelon. One vine was for getting water when you were lost in the jungle, so he hacked some chunks off and let us drink. I had a quick taste and it was OK, but Christophe seemed keen to drink as much of the stuff as possible. Why? We each had bottles of water with us.

Macho Daniel

Esteban prepares "monkey fruit"

The monkey fruit

The easy bit

Walking tree

They move around for water apparently

Then it turned bad. We were walking through deep mud, which was horrible ot walk through. On both sides of the "path" were trees covered in spinas which frequently jagged into my hangs when I put my hands out to stop from slipping in the mud. It went on for ages, just squidging through deep mud in the hot sticky jungle, with mosquitoes buzzing around. It felt completely pointless and I hoped it was going to be worth it: maybe we would be climbing a hill for a superb view over the jungle, or perhaps going to a clearing we might catch a glimpse of a puma, of which there are some in this part of jungle, we were told. In fact, after at least an hour of this torture, we ended up at a stagnant bit of water, where there were even more mosquitoes and Esteban told us we were going to fish. Great! All this horrible effort just to do something I hate. Christophe's guide appeared with some berries and Esteban caught a fish, explaining that this was just carnada, a word I didn't know, but soon understood when he hacked at it with his machete (without first killing it) and put a piece on the hook. Soon he had caught a piranha. He tried again, but dropped the next, though a pipe fish had bitten onto the line and was brought up without need for carnada. This he tried to feed to the piranha, but it seemed more worried about the fact it couldn't breathe than eating the other fish. Esteban insisted that I give it a go and I also caught a piranha quite quickly, but Esteban wasn't quick enough to collect it where I dropped it, maybe too close to the water, and it managed to wriggle back in again. Then I kept trying again. Yup, I still hate fishing: it's really boring. And pointless if you don't need to do it to eat. If I were actually living in the jungle I'm sure I would fish quite happily, and it really seems very easy there. I think this indicates how much extra unnecessary work we all do in modern life: in archaic times people would only have to catch a few fish a day, which I think would take about ten minutes max if you knew what you were doing. OK, every so often you would have to work hard for a few days to build a house or harvest a crop, but nothing, usually, like the ridiculous eight hours a day that is standard now. We need to get over our Puritan work ethic!

Poor fish

On the way back I was miserable. A whole day of this: mud fishing mud. I wondered whether this was the worst thing I have ever done and decided that it might be, but it's definitely the worst thing I've ever paid for. I decided that two days in the jungle would have been enough; three days at the most.

The next day we headed back upstream. And I felt a little burned all over, though nothing like as bad as my head had been the first day, and it seemed like Estaban was actually paddling to avoid the shadows of the trees. Even not considering the sunburn, I was absolutely sweltering. The jungle is hot! Finally I had escaped the cold that seemed to grip most of the rest of South America, even in early summer. Luckily in the afternoon, as most days in the jungle it seems, it clouded over and pissed down, forcing us to shelter under blue tarpaulin, causing me to remember the bus journey of hell in Nepal. We had finished our beers the day before, and we weren't going to see much more as Esteban had to focus on the paddling to get us upstream in time, so I spent much of the day reading and finished On the Road. It was very disappointing, considering how much people rave about it, and how many people seem to claim it is their favourite book. It was only when I got to the last two parts and they left the US for Mexico that I got any real enjoyment from the book. The message of the book seems to be that travelling around the US is pointless because it's awful wherever you end up, and painful to get there, with an underlying theme of homosexual infatuation between the two main characters. Not at all what I was expecting. Really dull.

Heavy, dark, and pendulous

The final day, I started a Paolo Coelho book that Lucy had lent me in Huanchaco. I hadn't read any of his work before, but at some point I had developed the impression that his is something I would like to read. I'm not sure if someone recommended him, if I read a positive review, or if it was just the constant presence at the front of Borders that made me curious. I read this simplistic piece of rubbish in less than four hours; probably the worst book I have ever read in my life, and one I certainly would not have read more than the first few pages of if I had another book to change to. If you ever have the opportunity to read The Valkyries or any others of his books, I assume, burn it instead of even opening it!

Every afternoon this happened

Finally we arrived back at the park entrance, and we were back on the agency's mototaxi through the jungle back to town. Esteban indicated that several cleared bits of forest used to be illegal airports used for cocaine trafficking. Apparently this area was until quite recently a major cocaine hub, which I suppose is also why the Sendero Luminso were so prominent there.

written by  The Happy Couple on December 9, 2009 from Reserva Nacional Pacaya-Samiria, Peru
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
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