We Need to Go Deeper

Keep in mind, that from the time we left Buenos Aires, all the way to our return to the village, we saw four other people. The whole time. They were also tourists and a guide from the same company, camping nearby.  

The third morning, we woke up to the incessant burping sound of howler monkeys. They are, and I cannot stress this enough, so loud. I imagined that they’d be like 10 feet tall and a menace to everything around them, seeing as you can hear them from many miles away. But not to let my imagination run wild, we set out at 6 AM to find them. Unfortunately, they stopped howling by time we got moving, so we quickly pivoted plans to try to finish day 2’s unfinished business of catching ourselves some piranhas.

Piranhas

We took the canoe upstream a different way from the day before until we could see the splashes in the water—piranhas jumping to the surface. The scenery around us was, as usual, stunning; we were inside a tree. I haven’t brought this up yet, but because the water level in the Amazon changes so drastically with the season, during the wet season, trees rooted into the ground are submerged. Some entirely, some not at all, and some, partially submerged. We were canoeing by the trunks of a partially submerged tree, and next to us were the leaves of another. You can see, actually, where the water level has been recently, as formerly submerged leaves and trunks take on a darker, blacker color.

I should note at this point that I was more comfortable with the canoe at this point, as Tony scuttled all water from the storm the night before. It was a lot less prone to tipping and downflooding.

Using our catch from day 2 as our bait, we started fishing. Soon, Tony caught a piranha, and I was close behind with another. We let him take care of taking them off the hook, as their teeth are sharp and can bite you. Zack struggled to catch a piranha, instead pulling up two catfish, but he eventually caught one seconds before I caught my second. I ended the day with three piranhas and a catfish, and our catch from the morning would become our lunch and dinner.

Skipping our post-breakfast activity for now, I’ll cover how we turned our biting, squirming little devils into a delicious lunch at our second campsite, probably 90 minutes upstream from the previous night’s. I figure much of this this is typical for fish preparation worldwide, but still, it’s something I’d never done before. We used our canoe paddle as a cutting board, the canoe as our kitchen, and the river as our sink. All the remaining piranhas were sitting in the water in the canoe, ready to be cleaned, while we took care of each one. We scaled the piranhas before cutting them open and cleaning out their guts. Yeah it was a little gross, but we had the river right there to wash our hands in afterwards. Lastly, you have to cut little slits into their backs to break all the bones. This was the hardest step, though we eventually kind of got the hand of it.

We left Tony and his dad to fry the fish, and in due time, we had our delicious fried piranha for lunch. It'd be a lie if I said that the fried piranha didn’t just taste like “fried,” as piranha is not a particularly meaty fish, but regardless, it was very good. For dinner, he put the catfish in some batter and fried it to make nuggets to complement our pasta, but I didn’t see the process of preparing the catfish at all. Along with the fried piranha, Tony also made us our first ceviche. He called this a real jungle ceviche, as it used ingredients typical of the Loreto state that we were in. It was a pike ceviche, with other typical ingredients to compliment it, including the cilantro, lemon, red onions, and these small Amazonian spicy peppers. We also had “jungle potato” to compliment the ceviche, but I frankly couldn’t stand it. It was super starchy and had no taste whatsoever. Regardless, the Peruanos really love their lemon and cilantro taste, as many of the foods from the country have it as a marinade or garnish, and I for sure could get used to it. In fact, I think I’m going to bring it back to Ann Arbor to offset how often I eat teriyaki and soy sauce.

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle

After fishing, we left the campsite for our first hike. There’s a series of trails that connects the different campsites, following the water, which we took that for a bit. It was more of a walk than a hike, and the trail was in pretty good shape. At some point, we’d decided that we’d had enough of this easy, manicured trail, and we decided to go deeper. Though still following a trail, we had to cut, using a machete, through vines and spider webs that had grown in the way, wade through nearly knee-deep puddles of water, and mark the trees around us so that, if we got lost, we could see where we had been. All this time, we had our eyes out for wildlife; we caught a few capuchin monkeys and plenty of birds. During the day, though, there’s not all that much wildlife around. We did also admire all the different species of trees.

What’s super cool about the trees in the Amazon is that, interestingly, the soil in the Amazon is not that rich. It’s only nutrient rich for about a foot, so, to solve that problem, trees grow their roots out and up. You end up with trees having roots, say, ten feet away from the trunk, or even cooler, trees whose roots have pushed the trunk upwards, revealing a teepee-like structure in its place. Tony said that in the worst case, you can use that as a shelter at night if you know what you’re doing. Finally, there are so many species of vines. Yes, there are the green swingy kind of vines, but most of them are thick and have bark. Vines are inherently parasitic, and some but not all seek to kill their host. Those who do wrap around their tree like a snake, squeezing it to death over time. See here the largest tree I’ve ever seen, being, albeit slowly, squeezed to death by a series of vines. This is successful, in the end, as we saw plenty of huge trees that were hollow, supporting thriving vines who are waiting for its collapse.

Trees and vines being cool

During our night hike, we got to see all the crazy wildlife come out. This included caimans (a small alligator-like thing), tarantulas, frogs, the largest toads you could imagine, and enough moths to make even the strongest of heart queasy. The nature in the Amazon is truly different from the nature back at home—these animals have taken a different evolutionary path than Michigan’s have, given their incredibly hostile and competitive environment. You end up with, then, unbelievably large versions of any animal imaginable. I mean, these toads, for instance, were probably the size of a kid’s head.

At sunrise on our fourth day (~5:45 AM), we once again awoke to the screams of howler monkeys. The voluminous burp-like sounds are enough to wake any sleeping animal. Knowing that in a short time, they will eventually quiet down, we hurriedly rushed to the canoe to paddle. You cannot take a motorboat to see the howler monkeys, as they can hear you coming and will shut up instantly. Instead, we had to silently row against the brutally strong current until we heard their sound nearby. We struggled to hear any in our direction, even after an hour spent fighting upstream, so we decided to turn around, as we had to make our return to civilization. Flowing now with the current, we were relaxed, enjoying the birds, until the growl of a howler monkey alerted us. It was very close by, and we figured it would only take about 15 minutes to cut into the jungle and find it. Though we’d resolved to head back to the campsite, I silently looked back at Zack and Tony, and, with Tony’s fierce nod of approval, we stirred the canoe to the riverbank. What we were about to embark on was truly an adventure. I mean, it could have been decades since the last humans were where we were. We stuck the oar into the ground, tied it up, and macheted our way through the jungle, cutting everything in our path. After a decent hike, stopping every few steps to listen to where the monkeys were in relation to us, we looked up to see branches moving—red alert for any avid monkey spotter. Soon enough, there they were in all their glory, at the top of the tree we were next to, probably at least 50 ft away still. What did I say earlier? That I thought they were gigantic, given their screams?  Well, they’re tiny. They’re no larger than any other monkey, and their human-like faces, in what detail I could make out from far away, looked like they’d been shrinky-dinked. It was so rewarding to know that we achieved our goal—this lofty goal that Tony had set out from the start of our time. We felt as if we’d won this “game” of becoming people of the Amazon.

Listen to the screams of the howler monkeys in the background

Throughout this third, spur-of-the-moment hike, there was one thought I couldn’t help but have: what belongs to humans? And to this, I still don’t have an answer. This is a thought I’d had for much of our time in the Amazon, but it became painfully obvious at this point. We were cutting through the jungle, spotting poisonous caterpillars and larger-than-life spiders, breaking spider webs with machetes that couldn’t be broken if I supported my whole weight on it. Despite that, this is what the howler monkeys called home; this is what those spiders and caterpillars called home. We snuck up on the howler monkeys, treading as lightly as possible, hoping that the metallic ring of the machete didn’t give away our quest. We didn’t belong here, and yet there we were. We forced ourselves into their world, bent it to our will, did what we set out to do, and left, having irreparably changed it. Do we belong there? Does this little corner of the world now belong to humans? We did, after all, change it with a power and force never before deployed. Or have I, upon leaving, ceded it back to the monkeys and spiders that lived there? Should I feel bad for having cut through spider webs, vines, and countless leafy plants just to bring me the amusement of seeing a howler monkey? I felt weirdly like an invader on my own planet, in this jungle that I’d called my home for the last few days.

Regardless, with our achievement, it was time for us to make our lengthy return.  

(Slowly) Back to Civilization

We took our motorboat back to Buenos Aires, where we were able to swim a little in the river before lunch. Just before getting in, we saw dolphins and piranhas swarming the water, though Tony encouraged us that it’d be safe. I suppose we made it out alive and without bites, so that was a success? But regardless, swimming was so refreshing. The heat and humidity had really gotten to me and Zack by this point, and the cool water of the Yanayacu cuenca (stream) was refreshingly cool. We were also more than excited to rinse ourselves of the concoction of sweat, DEET, sunscreen, fish guts, and mud that four days of jungle life had caked onto us.

When walking around the area, I also saw a wrinkly man in baggy clothes hunched over himself, chopping a deep red wood. His concentration seemed to be elsewhere; he’d clearly cut his fair share of this wood in his life. He exuded the aura of Buenos Aires, and I could not stop myself but from asking him what he was up to. To my surprise, he was more than happy to share with me what he was up to, in his frail, raspy, quiet voice. Though some of our conversation got lost in translation, I’ll share the bulk of what I got.

He was cutting a wood with medicinal properties. Somewhere in the jungle, according to him, there’s a remedy to most all ailments if you know what you’re doing—whether it’s a fungus, a plant, or a tree. What he was preparing in particular is known to stop bleeding. Typically, they use it to heal wounds, but in this case, there was a villager who had taken some damage to her eye and had used up the village’s supply of this medicine before her return to Loreto. After cutting the tree trunk into discs, he then cut it again into rectangular blocks, before storing them in a 2L soda bottle with some water. Then, the water would then adsorb the healing properties of the wood, turning it into a blood-red drink. Now, the wood itself isn’t what causes the healing, rather the fiber between the grains which dissolves, along with the pigment, into the water.

He showed me a different kind of wood as well, more yellow in color and of a strong herbal scent. His wife prepared for me a cup of this wood’s healing serum, this time, to remove any cold- or flu-like virus. The serum was strong; I was taken aback by my first sip, and the couple laughed. It definitely had alcohol in it, and if I were to wager, it was close to 30 or 40% ABV. Over the course of about ten minutes, I slowly took this medicine for an ailment that I lacked out of respect, savoring the punch and bitterness I got with each little sip. I used this time to get a few pictures and ask him about the natural medicines the Amazon has available.

We took the woman with the eye injury back with us to Nauta, and though I wanted to get a chance to talk to her, Zack, Tony, and I had a funny time chatting about nonsense. Most of our conversation was teaching Tony some slang and conversational English, much of which he’d heard but never was formally introduced to. He was particularly obsessed with Zack and my use of “though” at the end of a sentence, and we had a good time coming up with silly sentences that you may end slangily with “though.” He never really got the hand of it, though. We also taught him some Gen Z slang, like “no cap,” and “rizz,” which made us laugh. He introduced us to some local dialect words that’ve worked their way into the Loreto Spanish, including Pusurpaki, meaning both you’re welcome and thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation and was happy to have had this as a way to end our time together. Tony was nothing but great, and I think our experience in the Amazon would have been much worse without him.

After leaving the campsite at 9 AM, we finally arrived back in Iquitos at 5:45 PM. So when I say we were in the middle of nowhere, we were indeed nine hours from the nearest city, seven hours from the nearest town, and two hours from the nearest village.