Into the Amazon

A little over a week ago we left behind all of the luxurious and touristy comforts of Cusco and took an overnight cama cama bus loaded with la-z-boy recliners, movies, AC, questionable airplane food, and even our own flight attendant. It was quite the experience, but short lived and the pampering was over when we woke up in the sticky heat the Amazonian river town Puerto Maldonado. The town is fairly small and seems to thrive on housing many tourists looking to venture out into the Amazon.
After one layover day spent almost entirely between internet cafes and a throwing all of our business at a single restaurant eating their almost-deli food, frozen lemonades, cakes and milkshakes, we left for our own Amazonian excursion. We took a long, rough ride in small taxis along the side of the Tambopata River, high-centering over bumps and dragging out of the potholes making us all cringe – all the while our drivers seemed pretty indifferent about losing a few parts along the way. After driving for as far as we could, we loaded all of our bags up on a dingy river boat (a bit like Rambo’s but smaller) which would be our daily transport for the next week. It was maybe thirty feet long and 5 feet wide at the most, with a frayed tarp covering two thirds of it and a little motor humming its way to victory. With the boat and engine both pushing their capacities it took us over four hours chugging up stream before we got to volunteer project site, Camino Verde. After a brief introduction the the farm, the project, and to our contact Robin van Loon, we settled back into the boat for a ten minute ride further up the river to our hostel, El Gato.

It’s a small complex of shaky-shacks above the river bank, tucked in and off the grid, and sitting on a corner formed by of a connecting stream which feeds into the Tambopata. There’s a seven foot waterfall just before the merging point of the rivers which added to the incredible jungle atmosphere we were engulfed in, and also offering a swimming area safely situated above the stingrays, caimans, pirañas and anacondas lurking in the big river. The place is run by a man named Eduardo and his wife in conjunction with two fishermen brothers, who first picked us up and also shuttled us back an forth in the boat all week. They both seemed to be such impressively knowledgeable and self sufficient people who were completely in harmony with the lives that they have built for themselves out there. We found out that the older brother is a pretty acclaimed fisherman and traveled up the river some years ago and ended up building a home for himself at that spot before El Gato came to be. What they are doing is so simple, but there is incredible knowledge surrounding the history of their existence there. The trial, error and perfection of jungle life that was obtained and passed down and allows them to draw upon the jungle for everything they need (except gasoline). This is a bit of a rant but I really was just pretty amazed with these two guys.

Camino Verde is a tree conservation and seed bank project aimed at preserving the the Amazon, and also acts as a model farm trying to promote ecological living and cultivation practices to others in the region. In the past, many people have relied on destructive agricultural methods cutting down hectares of primary forestry to sell their rare and precious products or using the land to grow one crop which would leave the soil foul and nutrient deprived after a single harvest. The problem with this is that it takes over a hundred years for a primary forest to re-establish itself, during which time the Amazon in its entirety could be destroyed and a third of the known plant, animal and insect species on earth could die out. So Robins effort is to learn as much as he can about conservative cultivation techniques and introduce those to the people who would benefit from utilizing them.
Every morning at 6:30 we would get a quick breakfast at the hostel and then scram down to the boat and make our way over to Camino Verde. We would hustle off the boat, across the beach, up the sandy bank, into the jungle, and around to the front of the cabin – an epic journey of maybe one minute. Typically, we would just head straight out and work as soon as we got there, which during most mornings involved pruning the mahogany, catahua, and teak trees so that they will grow straighter and eventually able to be used as lumber. From around 11:30 until about 2:30 pm it gets so hot that it just doesn’t make sense for the people here to work, so we got a big siesta period everyday to chill in hammocks, swim in the river, chow some bananas, and wack coconuts to drink water from. Our time was pretty laid back and mellow for the most part. Our afternoon work period only lasted for a couple hours but was a bit more diversified. A couple days we split up into groups where one group was responsible for plotting the locations of different trees around the farm as well as taking various measurements of the heights, circumferences, and distances between each plant. The other group had the herculean task of moving one thousand liters of “natural fertilizer/biodigester” one of the days – which I heard smelt pretty rank. We also did some work around the farm planting cover crops and harvesting several foods which we brought back and were taught how to make fermented sauerkraut with – interesting process. On our last day we spent the morning out on the boat collecting rocks in buckets from a nearby bank sides and then hauling those buckets back and up to the house to use as a filler for an upcoming concrete project.

Anything said about this week wouldn’t be complete without touching up on our blow dart pepper experiences. So… I was lead to the vegetable garden by Ursula, a woman who co-directs Camino Verde, to pick some of the various vegetables that we were going to use for the sauerkraut later on. At the garden, picking kale and goodies, I saw some peppers hanging and thought i would ask about the hottest pepper the farm had to offer. She pointed at the one I happened to be analyzing and said “uh, I think that one.” She didn’t seem too certain or warn caution so I popped it. It was good experience though because I spent the next 20 minutes really challenging myself culturally while trying to hold a conversation with her in spanish and surviving the awkward burning hick-up-gasp for breath thing I was doing. I was still making my way out of the pain cave when I got back to the cabana, and I let a few guys know that I had “had a pretty hot pepper.” It wasn’t really brought up too much until we were about to leave at which point I told a couple of them that they should grab some to try on the boat ride back. And the brave lads Charlie Leonard, Noam Benkler, and Ryan Freitas stepped up that day. They toasted, bit, chewed, swallowed, and suffered. At one point I recall Ryan considering cooling off with the caimans and pirañas rather than staying on that miserable boat ride. As he described it, “…once we swallowed it, it began. I immediately started sweating profusely, my nose was running uncontrollably, I was crying involuntarily, and salivating so much I had to spit every 10 seconds. My chest began to contract inside itself and hurt so bad, my mouth and whole head were burning so badly that I even felt heat escaping from my ears. My hands started to go numb and I hiccupped twice before the pressure in my mouth, throat and stomach was too intense, and I leaned over the side of the boat dry heaving.”

The Amazon is a mystifying place and we loved everything about the work we were doing and the incredibly people we got to learn from during our time there. However, the heat and humidity did get to be a bit much for some people, and the bugs had nearly devoured us in only six days. Thus we were happy to get back to those almost-deli sandwiches, frozen lemonades, and milkshakes. But I think we’re all already looking back and seeing that we took a lot from the experiences we had last week.