Saturday 10 March 2012

After breakfast (omelette and a large sweet American-style pancake, juice, sliced brown bread and pineapple), we were to go piranha fishing. We got into the motorised canoe, and after about 20 to 30 minutes ride, we transferred to a smaller one and were handed paddles.

We paddled our way to the bank and as I was at the front (the outcome of travelling on my own, I hadn´t realised how much of a "couple" destination Cuyabeno was, or maybe it was just this lodge! However, it did mean that I quite often sat at the front with the guide and had an unobstructed view: no bad thing!), had to tie the canoe to a tree at one point. (As an amusing aside, I skimmed through the visitors book and saw one entry which praised the lodge - of course - but then went on to say that it was "odd being rocked to sleep by the lovemaking of the couple next door"!!!)

We were handed a simple wooden fishing pole with hook and told how to attract the piranha (by the simple expedient of splashing the water with the rod, the faster the better), and then a bag of raw meat was passed round to be attached to the hook.

We had to paddle to a third place looking for piranha and here we were successful! Here, I found that the meat on my hook had disappeared, and I was sure that it had been placed securely. When it happened twice, I knew we were in the presence of piranhas. The third time I placed meat on the hook and splashed around with the rod, I felt the rod become heavy and pulled. Out came a small wriggling piranha! It was only a baby, but I was the first to catch one - it was quite thrilling. After taking a couple of photos, I let it dangle in the water, until the guide eventually freed it (it managed to stay alive for quite a significant amount of time, it seemed to me, whilst I tried to get my camera out and then take a photo, but not with me - it was wriggling too much to make it practical).

It spurred the others, and we got two or three others, larger than mine. Not everyone got one but at least everyone got a look at a piranha, which can grow up to 35 centimetres long, apparently. I wasn´t able to get another although I felt them bite and a heavy weight twice, but lost them trying to pull them out of the water.

We then had to paddle our way back to the reserve (about an hour´s paddling: definitely a workout for the arms). Along the way we saw saki monkeys (also known as flying monkeys, due to how they look when jumping between trees), oropendolo birds (oro for their partly gold-yellow colour, and pendolo for the shape of their hanging nests, like pendants), "stinky turkeys" - a crested bird which tastes bad due to their diet of leaves. They have two stomachs to help them digest the leaves, the first to break it down (like a cow) and the second releases all the chemicals and gas which permeates their flesh, making them smell and taste bad. They are prehistoric (or share some characteristics of prehistoric birds) as their young have these claws on their wings so that when they fall into the water, they can climb back up the branches of the tree. I was disappointed to not be able to get a photograph, especially as they are common here, and we ended up seeing three in total.

We also saw squirrel monkeys amongst others, a vulture, and a turtle (well, I only saw the splash as it dived from the log, but I understand it was a turtle!) and more birds, too.

In the afternoon, we were to meet with the local Siona community (one of three indigena groups: Cofan and Achuar), to watch the making of a typical food: yucca tortilla, a bread) and then the shaman.

Along the way, we went to the site of the only nocturnal monkeys in the reserve, and I managed to get a faraway photograph of two of them peering out of their cubbyhole in the trees.

At the Siona community, we were made welcome in the visitor´s hut and then followed the Siona woman as she harvested and peeled the yucca tuber with her machete (of course, what else?) and replanted a portion it back in the soil (i.e., a clone of the harvested plant).

She then washed and grated it. Afterwards, she placed the grated yucca onto a woven strip (like a giant woven bracelet) and then wrung this out from a hook on the hut. It was amazing how much liquid could be rung out (the liquid´s collected and used in soups and sauces and flavouring) and how dry the resulting yucca could be. It was so dry she was able to sieve it and it looked just like flour. Then using the heated flat ceramic plate (made from the clay at the bottom of the lagoon when it´s dry), she spread it out and then flattened it into a tortilla using the curve of a bowl, without using any salt, sugar or oil. At a distance, it looked smooth but closeup, it was very textured.

We all had a taste of it alone and with various toppings that our guide, Zamula (not sure of the spelling) had brought: tuna, mayonesa, hot sauce, ketchup and jam. It went really well with all the toppings and was also quite nice on its own: we all had more than one piece and I noticed that Zamula especially seemed to like it: it was very close to dinner time, La Hesperia time, at least (6pm).

Then, we were introduced to Rafael, the shaman and father to the woman who had demonstrated the making of the yucca bread. He related his experiences with the hallucinogen central to their rituals and also gave us a mock demonstration of how he would treat someone, after possibly giving them a physical examination too. He said (this was partly from my interpretation and Zamula´s interpretation later) that he first drank the licor from the hallucinogenic plant at 8, when his father (the shaman at the time) told him to as he would be shaman later.

Not knowing that he needed to drink it little by little, he drank the whole bowl and slept from 6 am to 8 pm at night, with unclear visions. Each year, they prepare for this ritual cleaning (it makes you vomit) in August (the dry season, when the weather makes it better to get clear visions due to the light), for ten days drinking and vomiting (nice!). It was only after 10 years of this before he began to have clear visions and not confused ones, the first being one of his house having beautiful people in traditional dress and where he was taken by the hand by the god of the hallucinogenic plant, saying that he would show him what to do, how to sing and what plants to use to treat people. In this way (and from the knowledge passed from generation to generation), he learnt how to be a shaman and treat people. The guide Zamula did say, however, that they are also just as likely to send people to hospital, if the shaman feels they need to go there rather than be treated by him (spiritually, that is).

We had to donate $4 each person to help the community: they make money from land rent (ecolodges, motorised boats, demonstrations). There are only about 150 people (20 families) on both sides of the river and they own about 70 hectares of land in the reserve).

On the way back, again, we tried to spot caimans but were unlucky. Dinner consisted of a thick chicken soup (not that keen on it) and nice version of spag bol, with a dessert of sliced banana in a chocolate sauce sprinkled with desiccated coconut.

That evening, it rained so we weren´t able to have our activity of attracting insects at night with special lights, so we amused ourselves with locating the resident boa constrictor. It was yellow, quite slim and about 1.5 metres long. We spotted a very large tarantula (size of my palm, very much bigger than the ones I´ve spotted at La Hesperia), and it was clear that at one point (until one of us got too close with his camera/phone with the bright focusing light) that it was hunting down the tarantula. It ended rearing back and then hiding its head the remainder of the evening (hence a photo of its body only). Checking later, the boa was still there but not the tarantula, but we did spot a small rat, which got onto someone´s foot before escaping.

I also got a photo of the evening cicada (which makes a slightly different noise to ours at La Hesperia: a mixture of drilling and a hissing sound as if water from a high pressure hose). This is a pretty big bug, and can be quite alarming when it jumps and flies at you. I now know what large bug it was that was buzzing and flying outside my mosquito net the first night! I found it quite illuminating when Zamula said that we were provided with mosquito nets, not for the mosquitos, but for other surprises in the night! Hmmm...(by the way, things smell just as musty in the Amazon as in the cloudforest: letting down my resident mosquito net, it smelt strangely familiar...)