Puerto Maldonado, late December 2018

[cranefly]

12/31/2018: Part 1
[We begin our fourth day at the ecolodge, still no appreciable rain.  It clouds up sometimes, there's the briefest sprinkle, or maybe a light shower lasting a minute or two, not enough to wet the ground.  The river is noticeably down.  This is not normal.]

New Year's eve starts out mellow enough, but will prove to be an eventful day.  The snakers go out in morning, but find nothing.  Paula works out, running the 200-yard stretch of path repeatedly, and finishes with pull-ups and stretches.

After breakfast, some of us clean and dry inflatable rafts while LC helps chef Roy prepare banana-leaf wraps in the kitchen.  We then load the uninflated rafts and wraps into the boat and head upriver.  This will be a long outing, exploring a new part of the jungle, not the protected area around our ecolodge.

A half hour in, there's a shout and pointing.  Finally we see it, a tapir caught mid-river.  Our boatman slows way down and maneuvers us for a better view, but stays a respectful distance away.  The tapir keeps diving, staying down half a minute before resurfacing ever closer to shore.  Finally it emerges onto the opposite bank and quickly climbs out of sight through foliage.  This is an extremely rare sighting.

As we continue upriver, there comes a moment when JJ and Mohsin look at the shore with concern.  There's a small clearing, manmade: Illegal logging.  Something was cut down.  Maybe a hundred yards further along, another small clearing.  Then another, and another.  It's heartwrenching, because it will take a century or more for that bit of jungle to recover, and only if allowed to.

Then we see a bigger clearing that goes deeper.  Mohsin and JJ consult in Spanish, then Mohsin addresses us: "This wasn't part of our original plan, but would you want to check out this logging site?"  We're up for it.  So the boatman brings us into shore, but stays with the boat as we all climb out.  We follow a very cautious JJ and Mohsin.  They're trying to determine if the site is still active.  If so, it's dangerous.

We advance slowly up a 30-degree slope.  The cleared path, maybe 20 feet wide, is clay, hard-packed, uneven with ruts.  I ask JJ if a winch might have been used.  He says they use winches sometimes.  But there's growing evidence that a bulldozer or somesuch was used.  The path just keeps going, deeper into the jungle and ever upward.  JJ says this was done maybe three months ago, and we begin to relax and just explore.

We come to this thick bundle of vines hanging down into the path from high up.  Ian checks it out.  Mohsin tells him to go ahead and give it a climb, but only half as far as he could go (so he'll have enough energy to safely descend).  Ian climbs a ways, comes back down.  I go over to it, check it out, and give it a go, probably climbing further than Ian but I'm not sure, but it surprises a lot of people and Mohsin films it.  Paula tells me to be sure to tap the target at the top (like in a competitive event), so I rear up and slap the vine above me before coming down.  Then it's Paula's turn, and she climbs quite a ways as well, then comes down.  We move onward.

After a while we see it, a bigger clearing ahead, maybe 50 feet across.  On the right side is a massive buttress-rooted stump and the very beginning of the toppled trunk.  On the left side is the resumption of the trunk continuing indefinitely into jungle.  Maybe a 30-foot section of trunk is missing.  That's what the loggers took, which created this clearing.

It's a huge ironwood tree.  JJ goes over to where the trunk resumes to the left.  Maybe seven feet in diameter, it dwarfs him.  I join him, ask if he can read the rings to tell how old it is, but he says it isn't that easy.  Rainforests don't have winters and summers like in temperate zones, so there aren't clear growth rings.  But this tree must be centuries old.  JJ has shown us much younger ironwood trees on our walks.  He will strike them with his machete, and it just bounces off because they are extremely hard.  Explorers have gotten lost in jungles containing ironwoods, as they contain enough iron to throw off compasses.  The bark has rust-colored splotches which might be oxidized iron.  JJ tells me that when you hear an ironwood tree being cut down, even in the distance, it is so loud.  I suggest that sound sensors could be set up to triangulate the noise of such operations, but JJ doesn't answer.  I'm talking nonsense.  The real problem is a lack of funds for such policing.

JJ calls to Mohsin, says he's going to check for a macaw nest.  Macaws only nest in ironwoods, and the loss of one this huge is disconcerting.  Macaws have a very low reproductive rate as it is.  JJ proceeds to climb atop the log, not easily, as it's seven feet thick, but he finds the barest footholds and grabs here and there and slowly works his way up.  He advances along the trunk, disappearing into the jungle.  Eventually he comes back.  I don't think he found one.  Mohsin also climbs up there, as does one or two more people.  I don't try, because even though I could probably get up there, getting down would be very difficult with my hips.

When it's time to get down, Mohsin leaps six feet through the air to hug onto a nearby tree maybe a foot in diameter and slides down to the ground.  After some hesitation, JJ leaps to the tree as well, hitting it hard with a grunt, but he's okay and slides down.  [I later learn that JJ broke his wrist in a motorbike accident years ago, and the doctor didn't set it right; so his grip is iffy.]  The others get down by other means.

We follow another path back down towards the river.  Enroute, we spy a small clearing to the side which is where the loggers ate.  We explore the site cautiously.  There are boards for sitting, and food scraps, tins, and other litter.  Off a ways, I see what looks like a fresh orange lying on the ground.

A sudden crash puts us on high alert.  A large branch falls through vegetation to the ground 50 yards away.  We relax.  JJ says this kind of stuff happens all the time in the jungle.  It's spooky, can make you paranoid.  You think something is out there, that you're being watched.  Even as he finishes, another crash startles us, not far from the first and possibly related, and a lesser branch falls.  "See?  See what I mean?" JJ says as we all laugh nervously.

We find another small clearing just off the path.  There's sawdust and remnants of ironwood.  This is where they cut the log up into boards.  I wonder what sort of equipment that required.  Presumably the boards were then taken down to the river and loaded onto a boat for transport.  Mohsin tells us that a wealthy Chinese businessman is behind many of these operations, driving demand, and that he's untouchable.

As we head down towards the river, a couple of us need to answer the call of nature and venture aside.  Mohsin encourages us all to go out in the jungle at some point during our stay and take a shit, then hang around and watch how quickly the jungle reclaims what we posited.  Regrettably, I never take that opportunity.

Back in the boat, we turn downriver, heading back towards the ecolodge.  But that's not our destination, not yet.

[Greg]

You tease!

[Drunk Monk]

You tease!

right?  

can we fast forward to the fight scenes?  

or at least the ebene scene?





jk  

tease me, tease me, tease me.  tease me all night long.

[cranefly]

12/31/2018: Part 2
On all our boat outings, we see turtles -- some on shore, some sunning themselves on logs or branches sticking out of the water.  As we boat downriver now, after exploring the illegal logging site, we see the occasional turtle diving in at our approach.  Eventually the boatman aims for shore and slows way down.  There's the barest inlet.  The boatman noses towards the narrow opening, but bottoms.  Mohsin and JJ jump out into knee-deep water to push us back out, then climb aboard.  The boatman comes at it from a slightly different angle ... and skims through.  He immediately cuts the motor.  We're in the barest tributary.  The banks are steep, marked here and there by animal tracks.  The water is still, meandering through overhangs of vegetation.  Mohsin says this is what he thinks of when he hears "jungle."  He says we might see animals come down to the water to drink; but we are too noisy, and we never see any.

We sit there a time, savoring the tranquil beauty.  Then Mohsin starts handing out the banana-leaf wraps that LC helped prepare.  It's lunchtime, and we eat.  JJ brought a couple fishing poles, and he and a helper bait them and cast out, fishing for piranha.  If they catch any, JJ says he'll cook them for us (presumably later).  But they aren't biting today.

As we're finishing eating, LC quietly comments to me that this seems a nice place.  I agree.  Then her statement takes on greater meaning as she quietly pulls out a small box from her backpack.  It's wooden, fabric-covered, gnawed on by unknown jungle critters since our arrival.  Everything gets gnawed on in this jungle, it seems.  Now I agree more emphatically that this is a very nice place.  LC quietly works open the box and speaks briefly to her younger brother, Kevin, then prepares to scatter his ashes overboard.  Paula takes notice, asks if this is a solemn occasion, and others take notice as well.  LC doesn't want this to be a formal public event.  Kevin never liked crowds.  An outdoorsman living in Juneau, Alaska, he had worked on a commercial fishing boat as well as hunted and fished in the surrounding rivers and streams.  He had so many amazing stories to tell, including several close encounters with bears.  In recent years he'd been fighting a systemic illness the doctors never could pin down; and when it took an alarming turn for the worse in the summer of 2018, LC and I rushed up to Juneau to pay our last respects.  Shortly thereafter his widow sent us some of his ashes with the note, "I trust you'll take him to interesting places."

And so LC has.

But this occasion has drawn too much attention, and LC only scatters some of the ashes, saving the remainder for a more private occasion.

[Drunk Monk]

So sweet

[cranefly]

12/31/2018: Part 3
Then we start readying the rafts, and I have no idea what we're about.  To fill them, Mohsin uses this bellows fabric that you swoop upward to trap air, then squeeze it with the arms (in a bear hug) to force the air into the raft.  Only about half of us opt to go rafting.  LC declines, but tells me to go ahead.  In all, four of us take to the single-person rafts: Ian, Mina, Sarad, and me.  They are horrid little craft that mostly spin when you try to paddle, so you advance by alternate spins.  At first I think we're intending to paddle up this narrow tributary in exploration, but it turns out we're supposed to return to the river and paddle downstream towards the ecolodge.

Mohsin tells us not to just drift, as that would take way too long, so paddle, and the boat will follow us under low power.

It's a bit touristy and silly, I suppose.  The rafts leak, by the way; from time to time each of us has to pause to blow into an inflation tube to bring our raft back to snuff.  Still, it's a way of advancing down the river without as much motor noise, and I go out well ahead of the others, hoping to see something on the shore.

Mohsin is shouting something to me, but even with my hearing aids in I can't make it out.  Does he want me to come back?  And what the hell am I doing wearing my hearing aids?  They mustn't get wet.  I begin to edge around a bend where, a couple days ago, there'd been fresh capybara tracks on a clay bar, so I'm hoping to glimpse capybara.  But there's the sound of a motor and a boat appears, headed upriver -- a rare occurrence -- spooking anything I might have seen.

After that I paddle back towards our boat, and I take out my hearing aids and pass them off to LC.  Others are in the river by now, swimming about or wading.  LC even gets in for a while.  In spots it's only waist deep, even at mid-river.  Navigating the river requires considerable skill, and I've noticed in the past how JJ gives subtle hand signals to the boatman to guide him past hazards.  Mohsin then calls us all in, and one by one we dock our rafts and climb aboard.  I do so in my own awkward way.  We pull the rafts aboard and uninflate them, then head back to the ecolodge.

Back at the ecolodge, after the others take off shoes and socks and head off to get cleaned up, Mohsin, LC and I linger in the staging area.  Mohsin looks at me and asks if I am just genetically blessed.  I guess a lot of people were expecting me to be problematic on all these outings.  I am 68, after all.  But I'm hanging in there.  After the trek where I slipped off the plank bridge, one of the staff even greeted me back at the ecolodge by shaking my hand.  When I mimed my fall and gave myself two thumbs down, he vigorously shook his head and gave two thumbs up.  Anyway, my vine-climbing was an even bigger surprise for a lot of people, including Mohsin.

I deny it's genetics.  My family history is a disaster zone in terms of health and longevity.  I attribute my relative fitness to martial arts training under Sifu Wing Lam, who died in the spring.  I try to explain this to Mohsin, but not very well.  Anyway, one of the last things Sifu told me, emphatically, was to never stop exercising.  And while I've had lapses over the 36 years training under him, in the past few years I've been very diligent.

Still, whether this translates into health and longevity is another matter.  There's really no stopping the aging process, and these treks are taking a toll on me.  I was dizzy after that vine-climb, and I've been having other problems that I don't want to tell anyone.

[Drunk Monk]

Yay for Kung Fu! It’s the secret weapon for getting older.

[lady_cranefly]

Caveat.  There are few and not very good photos for a number of reasons.  Sometimes we didn't want to be saddled with the camera, sometimes it was fogged and wouldn't work properly, and sometimes we just took terrible shots.  Links to photos show as blue text, I think.  Click to see them.

2018/12/24-25
The early part of the trip is largely uneventful.  There is an emergency the day before departure (Xmas eve), when we discover a package on our stoop.  It's from LC's oldest brother, chocolate-covered strawberries in a refrigerated container.  There are two big boxes of them.  They can't be frozen and only last a few days.  Despite cleaning up our diets in readiness for the trip, we manage to consume one whole box, and leave the other for the cat sitter.

The 5 am Uber ride to SFO on Xmas morning is like the zombie apocalypse.  US 101 is all but deserted.  From SFO we fly straight to Lima, which is longer than you think, because even though SFO and Lima are on the west coasts of North and South America respectively, Lima aligns vertically with Florida.  So we're essentially flying across the US as well as flying far southward.

At Lima, we're confused about how to proceed after customs.  We get in another line, but a guard waves us forward and has us walk through.  We don't know what we were supposed to do.  We have a layover of 9 hours, which we spend in the airport.  Lots of people have long layovers.  Last time we were here, there were a few benches and chairs, but none this time.  Travelers are sprawled on the floor with their bags all along walls where it doesn't impinge on shops or shop displays or fire extinguisher boxes or doors, etc.  There's competition for spots, and we're regularly being ushered to move elsewhere as cleaning crews come through to mop area after area.

---

2018/12/26
It's a very long uncomfortable night on linoleum floors with bright fluorescents overhead, and we barely nap.  In the morning, we eat something from China Wok in the food court, greasy and salty, but satisfying on an empty stomach. As our flight time approaches, we check through into a very crowded gate section where the restrooms are crowded and stalls all clogged and closed for cleaning.

We board our flight and fly eastward over increasingly jungly terrain and eventually land in Puerto Maldonaldo (gateway to the southern Amazon).  There we wait for our bag in baggage claim, but it never appears.  After lots of failed attempts at communicating our problem, we learn our bag is still in Lima, and we were supposed to have retrieved it there and re-checked it as part of the customs process. No solution is offered us.  We have no choice but to proceed without all the stuff we packed for this jungle adventure.

Outside, a 3-wheeled mototaxi pulls up and we're about to get in when a man runs up shouting, "Taxi?" grabs something from LC and leads us to his car.  He makes some contemptuous remark about riding in a mototaxi.  Still, when the mototaxi driver gets another customer as we drive off, our driver shouts a congrats to him.

Puerto Maldonado has only a few traffic lights; most intersections are negotiated in a game of chicken.  Cheap motorbikes predominate, with a fair number of mototaxis as well (most of Chinese make, as LC notes), and only a few cars, pickups, or minibuses.  All share the road with little room to spare, with lots of tight passing and beeps of the horn. We finally get to our hotel where our group will be staying.  We're a day early, so no one is there yet, but our reservation is honored and we get our room, all without benefit of English.

Access to all the rooms is via bizarre atrium.  There is no hot water, but the showers aren't that cold.  There is an overhead fan that we run full-blast throughout our stay.

LC communicates our luggage problem to our expedition leader, Mohsin, who tells her that JJ will be stopping by to get more info on the situation.  I'm surprised, because JJ is like a god, he shouldn't be bothered with our problem.  But this is part of his job, and he shows up with his adorable son Tristan.  LC explains our problem in greater detail, and he proceeds to trade texts with three different people all at once.  Finally they hit on a plan -- to have a member of the group coming through Lima tomorrow bring the bag with him.

---

2018/12/27
The next day JJ drives us to the airport.  The plane hasn't arrived yet, so we immediately exit, and JJ conducts some business with locals.  Then back to the airport, but no plane, so we exit and hit a tiny café.  Finally we go to the airport and the plane is there.  As it stands, the person couldn't bring our bag, but the airline agreed to load it, and only we can touch it, which works out.  A minibus also picks up the other people in our group, and we all go back to settle into our hotel.  Later in the day Mohsin and JJ walk us to a restaurant where we eat a big meal while receiving orientation.  It's difficult to focus on their talk, as there's a big-screen TV on the wall behind them playing some Peruvian version of Naked and Afraid.

As for our group, there are eight of us: Swedes Olaf and Magnus (late 40s), who are herps (snakers); Ian and Mina (20 and 18 respectively), world-travelers and also herps; Sarad (30ish, Indian), who spends lots of time in the tropics; Stewart (late 30s), a big guy who seems to be doing this just to check off the rainforest on his to-do list; Paula (late-50's, once a world-class triathlon athlete, still highly competitive in her age group); and LC and me, doing research for stories and other things.  And yes, I'm also interested in snakes.  The group is overloaded with herps.

A few notes. We weren't on the Tambopata, we were on the Las Piedras.  The strawberries were from my youngest brother.  We flew SFO->LAX->Lima.

---

2018-12-28: Part 2
Mohsin waits with the rest of us for JJ's return.  It's not far, he tells us, so we tell him we could just walk it.  We're almost there when JJ returns, so some of us just walk to our destination, a dock where our boat awaits (actually, this shot is of the boat next to ours).  There's a small settlement here, and a place to buy drinks.  We descend the muddy, slippery slope with our luggage and load up the boat.  Once we're all aboard, there's a big splash.  Mohsin just dived in.  He comes up, climbs aboard, then proceeds to dive in again.  He says it's refreshing.  Once he decides to join us, we head upriver.

The vegetation steadily gets more jungly (yes, I keep saying that).  We see Hoatzin in the shore brush, pheasant-sized birds with a prehistoric look, then spot some capybaras on the shore.  Mohsin and JJ say they haven't seen any in a while, so it's a rare sighting.  (BTW, LC cut her hair short for this expedition .)  After maybe a 30-minute ride, the boat turns into shore at an unmarked spot.  This stealth is by design.  There we unload and carry most of our stuff up a steep, convoluted series of footholds to steep wooden steps and then to a more gently upsloping path.  That eventually brings us to a dilapidated board bridge with big holes that we have to step around, then more steps, some with a muddy walkaround because they're in bad shape and the tree next to them has bullet ants, then still more steps that are very steep.  We were very sweaty on the boat ride, but now we're drenched as, huffing and puffing, we reach the top, where the ecolodge is some hundred fifty yards away.  JJ built most of it, an impressive achievement.  Shoes are forbidden on the wooden deck, so we all go barefoot.  Mohsin assigns rooms, and LC and I get the one closest to the restrooms.

After we've had time to settle in, some of us go back down to the river with Mohsin and JJ "for a swim."  Actually, we just wade in next to the boat to wash and cool off.  Before we do, JJ pokes the bottom all about with a stick to scare off any stingrays.  He says they like the spot.  We're instructed to shuffle our feet as we wade about, as this is likely to make them move off, where stepping on one will get you stung.  As Mohsin tells us, "If you get stung by a stingray, you'll have a very bad day."  Mohsin recommends dipping under all at once to get used to the river.  Waist-deep, I decide to do so.  I ball up and go under, staying there a couple seconds.  When I come up, I can't touch bottom.  The river has pulled me out over a precipitous ledge.  I know a rudimentary swim stroke, but when I try it, my legs don't work like they used to.  It's my hips.  Seeing my struggle, Mohsin asks if I'm okay.  I'm too busy treading water with my arms to answer.  I keep hitting a steep cliff of clay formed by boat dockings that bounce my feet off.  Finally I grab the lip of the boat and work my way back into shallower water. "Yeah, I'm okay," I tell Mohsin.  He grants that there's a pretty strong current past the wading spot.  I see it clearly now, and wonder what the hell they could have done if I'd been swept out into it.

Note #2: none of us walked all the way from where we were abandoned to the river. What are you thinking, dood?

---

12/31/2018: Part 2
On all our boat outings, we see turtles -- some on shore, some sunning themselves on logs or branches sticking out of the water.  As we boat downriver now, after exploring the illegal logging site, we see the occasional turtle diving in at our approach.  Eventually the boatman aims for shore and slows way down.  There's the barest inlet.  The boatman noses towards the narrow opening, but bottoms.  Mohsin and JJ jump out into knee-deep water to push us back out, then climb aboard.  The boatman comes at it from a slightly different angle ... and skims through.  He immediately cuts the motor.  We're in the barest tributary.  The banks are steep, marked here and there by animal tracks.  The water is still, meandering through overhangs of vegetation.  Mohsin says this is what he thinks of when he hears "jungle."  He says we might see animals come down to the water to drink; but we are too noisy, and we never see any.

We sit there a time, savoring the tranquil beauty.  Then Mohsin starts handing out the banana-leaf wraps that LC helped prepare.  It's lunchtime, and we eat.  JJ brought a couple fishing poles, and he and a helper bait them and cast out, fishing for piranha.  If they catch any, JJ says he'll cook them for us (presumably later).  But they aren't biting today.

As we're finishing eating, LC quietly comments to me that this seems a nice place.  I agree.  Then her statement takes on greater meaning as she quietly pulls out a small box from her backpack.  It's wooden, fabric-covered, gnawed on by unknown jungle critters since our arrival.  Everything gets gnawed on in this jungle, it seems.  Now I agree more emphatically that this is a very nice place.  LC quietly works open the box and speaks briefly to her younger brother, Kevin, then prepares to scatter his ashes overboard.  Paula takes notice, asks if this is a solemn occasion, and others take notice as well.  LC doesn't want this to be a formal public event.  Kevin never liked crowds.  An outdoorsman living in Juneau, Alaska, he had worked on a commercial fishing boat as well as hunted and fished in the surrounding rivers and streams.  He had so many amazing stories to tell, including several close encounters with bears.  In recent years he'd been fighting a systemic illness the doctors never could pin down; and when it took an alarming turn for the worse in the summer of 2018, LC and I rushed up to Juneau to pay our last respects.  Shortly thereafter his widow sent us some of his ashes with the note, "I trust you'll take him to interesting places."

And so LC has.

But this occasion has drawn too much attention, and LC only scatters some of the ashes, saving the remainder for a more private occasion.

Older brother.

---

What problems are you having that you don't want to talk about?

We never did get our wills made.

[cranefly]

12/31/2018: Part 4 -- Alcohol
To recap, this has already been a hugely eventful day.  A tapir sighting, a lengthy exploration of that ghastly illegal logging site (and the vine-climb), the idyllic inlet where we ate and JJ fished but caught nothing, then rafting (or just swimming) on the river, and I even forgot (LC has since corrected me) that it was this morning that we went to the "blind" across the river to watch the scarlet macaws on the clay lick.  So it's been a full day of activities, and now we're back at the ecolodge, dusk has settled, the howlers are calling us to dinner.

Dinners in this jungle setting are always interesting affairs.  We sit on benches at three adjoined picnic tables on the deck and eat by candlelight, as it's invariably dark by dinnertime.  We're mostly away from critters, but not entirely; and we sometimes pause in our eating to pick flying bugs out of our food.  Being eternally sweaty, we draw sweat bees, which land undetected on the forearms and then migrate down to the elbows where sweat accumulates.  Everyone, being ill-mannered, eventually puts their elbows on the table, at which point they sting.  This happens repeatedly until you wonder why you never learn.  Then there's the tiny ants crawling on the tables, which bite.  Likewise, bigger ants on the floor that bite your bare feet if you step on them.  Some of these bigger ants find their way to the tabletop where, for whatever reason, they make for the candles.  You see them now and then scaling upward through wax and heat to reach for the fiery apex in a smoking death spasm.  

Our chef, Roy, is highly regarded, and the food is always excellent.  Tonight promises to be over-the-top.  It is, after all, New Year's eve, and Roy is preparing something special.

I'm late going to dinner, still in my room as the others are starting.  If I recall, I'm trying to find clothes that don't stink too badly.  That's been a problem and is getting worse by the day.  We don't have facilities to wash clothes, so we hang them over the railing outside our room to dry, only they don't dry, or if they do, very slowly.  Even special fast-dry shirts, pants, and underwear that LC and I bought for the trip often stay damp.  Sometimes we wear clothes into the shower, hoping to clean them in that way, only we're supposed to conserve water, just rinse off, so the clothes just get more wet.

While fussing, I hear cheers and clapping from the dining area.  LC later fills me in that Roy just received a sustainable cooking award from the government.  Finally I join the others.  LC has saved me a spot.  But first I go into the kitchen to get a plate and food.

The ecolodge staff tend to gather in the kitchen.  They mostly eat separate from us, and only after we've had our fill.  On this occasion, two are sitting before a monitor viewing camera-trap footage.  They jump in amazement at something they see and give a cheer.  I look over their shoulders as they replay it.  Two giant anteaters pass along the trail, one with a baby anteater riding on top.  It's amazing footage, and I watch it several times as they replay it.  Then I go get my food.  Roy had intended to prepare a duck dish he's famous for in the region.  But alas, duck isn't available, so he has prepared a merely excellent chicken dish.  There's also chutney, which is Mohsin's special recipe (he owns and operates a food truck on the East Coast where he lives), and other stuff, all delicious as always.  Likewise, there's fruit juice of one kind or another coming from local trees or plants.  But tonight there's another choice of potable: Pilsner.  Large bottles of Pilsner.  I'd noticed them being lugged up from the boat on our arrival days ago, but figured they were for the staff and guides.  Now I see that it's for us on this special occasion.

I grab a Pilsner, someone uncaps it for me, and I join the others.

Dinner is always a sociable occasion; the lot of us get along surprisingly well.  And tonight it's helped along even more by alcohol.  As those who know me well can attest, alcohol puts me in a good mood, makes me more talkative, more outgoing.  I suppose that's true of most people.  Of late I've noticed that even one beer will start slurring my speech.  I attribute it to the aging process.  Anyway, we all eat and chat and have a wonderful candlelit dinner; one could hardly ask for a better way to end 2018.  Mohsin and JJ eventually go off to tend to things, LC heads off to our room, likewise Paula goes to hers.  The rest of us -- Magnus and Olaf, Ian and Mina, Stuart, Sarad, and I -- linger and talk.

I'm mostly talking to Sarad, who I've said little about up to now.  He's Indian, works in Ecuador for a company that exports Cacao, and is amazingly generous, knowledgeable, and resourceful.  I talk to him about White Tiger, a book that enlightened me to how a caste society could possibly persist in this day and age.  He seems to agree about the merits of the book, though he might just be tolerating my ignorance.  I should mention that Olaf asked if anyone wanted to share a second beer, at which point my hand shot up, so I have a beer-and-a-half in me -- actually more, as Olaf doesn't drink his full half and puts more in my glass, and these are big bottles.  So I'm in a fine space at this point, and Sarad and I are hitting it off grandly, or at least to my mind.

But the thing about alcohol is that it doesn't affect everyone in the same way.  And suddenly I'm hearing a voice from down the table, a voice not altogether happy.  It is Stuart.

Stuart is addressing the snakers and giving them a piece of his mind.  He's not happy with what they've been doing.  At issue is putting the snakes in a sack overnight.  To paraphrase, "You say it doesn't bother them, that they just shut down.  Well, they don't!  They're living creatures!  They're suffering!  They don't belong in a sack!  They belong in the jungle!  What you're doing is sick!"

He's loud, judgmental, full of disgust.  The snakers, caught off guard, are contrite, at least in his presence.  Then silence prevails over the gathering.  Soon Ian and Mina get up and head to their room.  I get up and head off to join LC in our room.  I tell her what just happened, how this is probably the end of our cohesive gatherings.  She asks how Mohsin reacted to Stuart's outburst, and when I say he wasn't there, she sets off to find him and fill him in.

[LC just now informed me that she also stopped in on Ian and Mina and told them that Stuart was full of shit.]

I return to the gathering area of the deck, where people still hang out, but not together.  Ian and Mina appear, but they go to the staging area, put on their shoes, and head off on a night walk.

Soon LC comes back from notifying Mohsin.  She tells me that Mohsin says he will work on Stuart.  That's the great thing about Mohsin, as well as JJ.  They are not confrontational; they affect change through gentle persuasion.  They stay friends, nudge from within the relationship, changing attitudes.

Mohsin soon joins those in the gathering area.  He doesn't mention the incident.  He's cheerful, friendly to all.  He's like a healing salve.  He makes the suggestion that people ought to welcome in the New Year by stargazing.  He's mentioned stargazing before, that the boat docked in the river gives the best view of the night sky and that we should all take advantage of a clear night to do this.  Tonight is a clear night.

Olaf and Magnus opt out, and Ian and Mina are off on their walk.  That leaves LC and I, Paula, Sarad, and Stuart.  We go get our headlamps, put on shoes and socks, and head down the trail into the dark.

[Drunk Monk]

Sweat bees
Great band name

[cranefly]

12/31/2018: Part 5 -- Stargazing
As we head down the path, we're chatting away.  Stuart is in the lead and a ways ahead of us.  At one point he stops and turns to say something -- nothing significant, just joining in the conversation.  As he finishes and walks onward, that's when we see it, a large pale spider descending on a filament from the heavens.  It comes down right where he had been standing.  As it settles on the path before us, I stop to study it in my headlamp, letting the others go around.  It has a mean countenance, like a wolf spider, but not robust enough, and wolf spiders don't spin webs.  Gossamer and ghostlike, it crouches there facing me, and I sense a tremendous significance about it, like when a black cat crosses your path, only I can't fathom what it might mean.

Up ahead, Paula is cautioning everyone to be careful on the steps, which are treacherous even in daytime.  I keep calling out (with a slight slur) that there are no steps, as if this will prevent them from materializing.  But they do, one series after another.  Knowing my somewhat impaired state, I take them slow and easy, and on those occasions when a tree-limb railing avails, I make sure to use it ... after checking it for bullet ants.

As I strive to catch up with the others, I find myself halfway across the dilapidated wood bridge before recognizing it, and shift aside at the last moment to skirt holes.  

As we walk, there's lots of chatter, and the subject keeps changing.  At mention of movies, I announce that I only watch movies that contain a chainsaw, centipede, and piano.  That's sufficient cue for LC to mention my watching The Human Centipede.  Paula and Sarad have no clue what that is, and I try to explain the gist of it.

The last set of steps end in a 45-degree downslope through tree roots.  I am especially heedful of this section, knowing I need to proceed with the correct foot and placement among the roots so I end up oriented to grab a root for support at the steep jump-down point.  We all descend to the shore without incident.  Climbing into the docked boat -- me by sitting and swinging my legs in -- we get situated.  Our headlamps show a clay bank next to us that, upon our arrival three days ago, was under water.  Ominously, the river is down two feet.

Turning off our headlamps, we let our eyes adjust.  The sky is clear, full of stars, the Milky Way prominent.  We remain in a chatty mood, touching on lots of subjects, but it always circles back to The Human Centipede.  Paula is having trouble visualizing it.  "So, in other words, they're headless," she says, to which LC and I say, "Oh, they still have their heads."  "So...  That means..."  "Yes."  The questions keep coming, from Paula and Sarad.  Stuart has gone silent.  I begin to sense he's put off by our discussion.  But I don't really care.  Sarad wants to know how the people stay attached.  Paula wonders how successive individuals get any nutrition.  How many people are there?  The first movie had three, the second had maybe nine, the third used all the inmates in a prison.  I mention how the surgeon has a pet centipede in a terrarium, but it's clearly a millipede, and this scientific inaccuracy is what most bothers me about the whole series.  Sarad finds this particularly amusing.

There comes a moment when the boat lurches.  Stuart has gotten up.  He steps past us muttering something about going to bed.  LC queries whether our discussion has offended him, and he mutters something, but it's not clear.  He gets out of the boat and heads on up.  Sarad decides to call it a night too -- not offended, just tired.  It's crazy that any of us are still up.  It's been such a long day.

LC, Paula and I sprawl out in the boat, gazing at the sky.  I keep insisting that at midnight, despite the surrounding jungle, the sky will light up with fireworks, just you see.  Midnight is 45 minutes away.  We engage in crazy, loopy discourse.  Bringing in the New Year is a tradition for Paula.  She hasn't missed a year for as long as she can remember.  I suspect that LC and I might have called it a night except we don't want to abandon her.  She can be very flighty.  On several occasions she jumps at some noise coming from water's edge or from the jungle.

Lightningbugs flash and streak about, not a lot of them, but some.  LC identifies constellations and notes that they're upside down in the southern hemisphere.  I try to mentally wrap my mind around this, none too successfully.  LC is puzzled though, and so am I, that the Milky Way isn't brighter, and that there aren't more stars visible.  We are in the middle of the jungle, after all, away from any and all artificial lights.  LC eventually pins it down.  It's the high humidity, all the moisture in the air.  It especially affects stars towards the horizon because there's more atmosphere (and water molecules) to look through.

Occasionally we see a falling star.  Sometimes we're fooled.  Once, when LC reports seeing one, Paula and I start to laugh.  From our vantage points we clearly see that it's a lightning bug flashing just over her head.  To be fair, they can be hard to distinguish, and I can't say with certainty that the three falling stars I saw were legit.

Midnight approaches (announced by Paula, checking her smartphone), and we commence a countdown.  "Ten, nine, eight..."  At midnight we shout (quietly, respecting the sanctity of the jungle), "Happy New Year!"

There are no fireworks.

[Drunk Monk]

I bet the all got home and watched the Human Centipede.

And that spoiled all their memories of such a special NYE.

Well played, cf. That’s DOOM at its finest.

[cranefly]

1/1/2019: Part 1 -- The New Year begins

JJ is missing.

He was supposed to take us on a medicinal plant walk at around 7 am, but it's now after 8.  Mohsin can't locate him either.  Not that he's all that concerned, just mystified.  He's also amused, because in checking JJ's room, all he finds is a tiny plastic lizard on his bed -- as if some crazy Kafkan metamorphosis has taken place.  This is actually an artifact of Stuart's early efforts to break the ice with everyone, handing out tiny plastic snakes, frogs, lizards and other things (I got a frog and a lizard, LC got a tiger).

While waiting, Olaf, Magnus, Ian and Mina take the vine snakes and tree boa down near a small tree just off the deck.

Olaf with tree boa:

As they handle them and take photos, Mohsin and Stuart go down there too.  Mohsin is talking to him about why it's important to catch the snakes and bring them back to the ecolodge.  It's for "show and tell," to help educate people and change their attitudes so they have a greater appreciation for the wonders of the jungle.  After a day or two, the snakes will be returned to where they were found and released.

Mohsin with tree boa:


Mohsin then has the snakers put the snakes in the small tree for a more natural background and gives some photography tips.  LC goes down and takes photos too.  It is not easy getting good shots of snakes.


It doesn't help that the tree boa keeps curling up.


Ian brought some hardcore camera equipment to the jungle, including a drone.  On the day of our arrival he flew it while most of us went for a swim in the river.  I asked him later how it went, and he showed me this short but amazing clip of dense, verdant canopy.  I had also seen him using this weird contraption on the camera when shooting by hand.  I asked if it was a Steadycam.  He said it was a programmable camera gymbal allowing yaw, pitch and row control.  I asked him if he ever did any time-lapse filming, and he said some.  I mentioned a friend who did a lot of time lapse and also used drones, and that one of his recent projects seemed to be combining the two, though I didn't know how.  Ian seemed intrigued.

Soon it is breakfast time, and we eat.  JJ shows up during breakfast.  He's low energy, says he has a sore throat, but we wonder if it's a hangover (I'd heard him with the ecolodge staff partying late into the night).  As JJ goes off to get ready for the outing, Mohsin tells us that JJ mentioned a sore throat the day before, so it's probably a combination of that and a hangover.

There have been a growing number of ailments among the group.  LC's back has threatened to go out a couple of times, but she's managed to fight it off and get up each morning.  Ian sprained his left ankle -- actually, a re-sprain.  Olaf and Magnus have had bouts of stomach trouble, and maybe others.  Paula is having a different kind of problem; with so little body fat and her high metabolism, she's like a hummingbird, needing to eat more often than our meals.  Running low on fuel is physically hard on her and also affects her mental state.  Sometimes she gets very loopy.  As for me, I'm feeling my years, finding it ever harder to recuperate after each day's activities.  I'm also having a harder time sleeping, often lying awake for hours through the middle of the night.  All in all, though, the lot of us are holding ourselves together.

JJ returns, ready to go, and we follow him into the jungle on the medicinal plant walk.   I bring pencil and notebook, but ask LC to do the honors since her hearing is much better than mine; in exchange, I carry her stuff.

JJ uses his machete with masterful precision, cutting into things just enough to reveal what he's talking about.  He shows us roughly a dozen medicinal plants on our walk.  There's bark with a garlicky smell that can be made into compresses for arthritis;  a houseplant relative (patiquina) with poisonous leaves that, if properly prepared, can be applied topically for "bum problems"; a cinchona tree (viney and hollow, resembling a strangler fig) whose under-bark is rich in quinine and can be boiled and ingested to treat malaria; the leche-leche tree, so named for its milky sap, which is good for treating coughs (JJ has brought a teaspoon along and takes three teaspoonsful on the spot; LC tastes a teaspoonful and says it has a very mild milk taste); the Caña Caña plant that has spiral growth up to 8 feet and contains acetylsalicylic acid, an ingredient in aspirin -- drink a little, take a bath, and sweat it out; the Vicks vapor rub plant (our bastardization of what it actually is), which contains mentholatum; wasayi (sp?) palm whose red roots can be crushed and boiled, good for kids; [non-medicinal] pona palm, also known as penis palm (for obvious reasons); a tree used for parquet flooring; sanipanga (sp?) plant, whose crushed leaves create a reddish dye that acts as a mosquito repellent; the Sangri de drago (sp?) tree with heart-shaped leaves, whose brown sap turns creamy with rubbing and is good for the skin (some take it internally); the pedi-pedi (sp?) plant, a grass whose tuberous roots can be crushed and boiled, good for digestion.

JJ also shows us the plant (a bamboo relative) used for the leaf-bundle rattle used in the Ayahuasca ceremony.  The way to identify the plant (which Mohsin later tells us has always befuddled him) is to pick some leaves, shake them, and if they make the right dry rattley sound, it's the correct plant.  The sound is anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing), which helps prepare the subject for the Ayahuasca journey ahead.  JJ tells us he has taken the journey three times.  He says it mustn't be undertaken lightly, that it involves 7 hours of prep time, then a 3-hour ceremony before ingestion.  One must be in the right state of mind.  He says it can be very effective treating drug addicts, changing their lives.

We return to the ecolodge and eat lunch.  After that, we get ready for another outing.  Mohsin will lead this one.  It's his favorite trail, mysteriously called Transect C.

[Drunk Monk]

Australian woman bitten by snake in toilet

• 25 January 2019
  

Image copyrightJASMINE ZELENYImage captionA professional snake handler was called to remove the 1.5m (5ft) python
An Australian woman "jumped off her seat" after being bitten by a snake on the toilet, a reptile handler says.
Helen Richards, 59, received the non-venomous strike in the dark at a relative's house in Brisbane on Tuesday.
She received minor puncture wounds from the 1.5m (5ft) carpet python.
Handler Jasmine Zeleny, who retrieved the reptile, said it was common to find snakes seeking water in toilets during hot weather.
Ms Richards told local media she had felt a "sharp tap".
"I jumped up with my pants down and turned around to see what looked like a longneck turtle receding back into the bowl," she told The Courier Mail newspaper.
Image copyrightJASMINE ZELENYImage captionThe carpet python was most likely seeking water, handler Jasmine Zeleny says
Ms Zeleny said Ms Richards had treated the minor bite marks with an antiseptic, describing carpet pythons as relatively harmless.
"Unfortunately, the snake's preferred exit point was blocked after being spooked by Helen sitting down, and it lashed out in fear," Ms Zeleny told the BBC.
"By the time I got there, she had trapped the snake and calmed down. Helen treated the whole situation like a champion."
Carpet pythons are a common species along the east coast of Australia. They are not venomous but tetanus shots are recommended for bites.
Australia has experienced a fortnight of extreme heat that has broken dozens of records across the nation.
Several wildlife species have suffered, with reports of mass deaths of horses, native bats and fish.

I keep waiting for this part.  That and the ebene trip.

[cranefly]

A NOTE BEFORE CONTINUING
In hindsight, it occurs to me that I've painted Stuart a little too darkly, as I share some of his sentiments.  I came here to see wildlife in its natural habitat, not plucked from the jungle and presented to us back at the ecolodge with lots of human handling.  I recall an occasion thirty years ago at Marine World (then located in Redwood City, CA) sitting outdoors on bleachers watching, of all things, a lion-tamer act -- some guy with a whip in a cage with a lion.  I couldn't believe I'd paid to see some macho man "proving his courage" by making a lion jump through hoops.  Let me see the lion in some semblance of its natural habitat doing what it does, bringing down prey!

So, yes, I wished I'd seen the two vine snakes and tree boa in their natural jungle habitat, not after capture and in human hands.  And I wasn't really interested in holding them, as that seemed a bit of machismo wasted on me.  Still, I did not fault the snakers for doing so.  They handled snakes for a living, loved them, were environmentally conscious.  They certainly didn't deserve Stuart's contempt.  As for Stuart, he never struck me as all that eco-conscious.  If he were made steward of this jungle region, he might very well convert it to high-rise rental units, whereas the snakers could be fully trusted with such a responsibility.

All in all, Stuart stays very much a part of our group going forward, talkative, often funny.