Some observations by Clark – the Amazon

Some observations by Clark – the Amazon

We just returned to Lima from a 4 day trip on the Upper Amazon River.  Specifically, we started at the city of Nauta (Peru) and travelled almost 300 miles up the Amazon, and then back down the river  to the city of Iquitos (the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road).  For most of our trip, this section of the river is called the Rio Ucayali and its tributaries.  According to National Geographic (which had a feature on our tour, so of course the magazine was in the lounge), this section of the Amazonian Rainforest has fewer than 3000 visitors a year.

This is more like what I thought the Equatorial regions would be about.  Always 90+ degrees.  Always 90 percent humidity.  Lush vegetation everywhere.  And lots of bugs.  But beautiful.

Our riverboat, thankfully, had air-conditioning.  And each day, we would get in a skiff at about 7AM for about 3-4hrs to see the daylight creatures, and again at 4PM for 3-4hrs to see the evening/nocturnal creatures.

We were fortunate in our timing.  We arrived at the end of the Dry Season.  In the week prior to our arrival, the river rose 10 feet, which made some of the tributaries accessible to the skiffs, and gave us many more opportunities to spot wildlife.

However, ‘up close’ in the Amazon is very different from at the Galapagos.  In the Galapagos, you had to be careful not to step on the animals you were trying to film.  Because the creatures there had no predators, they didn’t run from anything.  However, in the Amazon, everything is trying to eat everything else, so the animals are all very skittish, and are very well camouflaged.  Finding animals is very much like playing Where’s Waldo – but most of the time Waldo isn’t on the page.

Fortunately, our guides were very, very good.  But the conversations were sometime frustrating:
“See?  Right there!  It’s a giant iguana!”
“Where?”
“Right there.  Right below that tree.”
“There are a lot of trees.”
“THAT tree.”
“What tree?”
“Give me your camera.”  He took a picture at 10x zoom, through his 10x binoculars, and expanded it in the view-screen by another 10x.  And pointed.  “See?  It’s right there!”
“Really?  That’s an iguana?”

Or:
“See that?  That’s a sloth!”
“A sloth?  Where?”
“See the tree with the red leaf?  It’s in the tree to the left of that.  It’s got a branch that goes to the left.  It’s to the right of that and up about a meter.”
“Which branch to the left?”
(pointing) “That branch”.
“I thought that was a termite nest”
“Nope, a sloth”
“How can you tell?”
“Because I am the guide.” 

The way these guides and skiff-drivers can spot these creatures on a skiff going by at 20mph is amazing.  And they can instantly identify any bird or animal by sight or sound.  Highlights included seeing:
* An amazing number of birds.  Outside of the insects, these were by far the most numerous.
* A handful of sloths (I really, really wanted to see a sloth).  One of the sloths was a mama with a baby clinging to her chest.  I was able to get video of this one through my golf-telescope.  Which also greatly magnified the shaking of my hand and the vibration from the boat.  But it was very, very cool.  Like ballet in slow-motion.
* Two troops of squirrel-monkeys.  Got video on one of the two.  It’s much easier to see the monkeys in the video rather than to find them in still photos (even though at lower magnification) because your eyes are drawn to the motion.
*  A handful of red-howler monkeys, the loudest land-animals on Earth, though we never heard any (it’s just the wrong season for them to yell).
*  Amazon River dolphins, though we never were able to successfully capture a photo.  There are two types – the grey dolphins and the pink ones.  And the pink ones are indeed bright pink.  Since the Amazon is a fresh-water (lower density than sea-water), dolphins here are not so buoyant and don’t come out of the water nearly as high as marine dolphins, so they are more difficult to spot.
*  Caimans.  Smaller versions of fresh-water crocodiles that prey on almost everything.
*  A lot of different fish (during our fishing trip), including piranhas, which will prey on anything.  One of the folks on our boat managed to catch an Oscar-fish, which had no tail due to a prior encounter with a piranha. 
*  The bullet-ant – an inch-long beast that both bites and stings.  The bite is extremely painful and can lay you out with a high fever for 24hrs.

Because we were just coming into the wet-season, it was a great time for catching fish – they are all confined to the narrow tributaries and rivers.  However, it gives the land creatures a lot of room to move around, so we have less opportunity to see them.  It would have been nice to see a jaguar, capybara, or anaconda, but it was not in our cards.  During the height of the rainy season (water level about 20 feet higher than now), almost all of the land disappears.  It becomes impossible to find fish, which are no longer confined to narrow tributaries and come far inland to eat fruits and vegetation, too.  During this time, it is easier to find the land-dwelling animals because they are much more confined and the skiffs can go so much further inland.

Another highlight was our jungle-walk with our tour guide (all of our guides grew up in the rainforest).  Our guide knew the identity of every plant and what it could be used for.  This vine could be cut and would drip clear water that is good to drink, but that vine has a milky drip that is poisonous and will make you sick.  The sap of this tree can be mixed with the leaves and can be made into a poultice/cast to set broken bones.  The flowers of that tree can be used to kill dental pain.  You can stick your hand into a termite mound and rub crushed termites on your hands/face and it keeps mosquitoes away – but don’t use this termite nest because it has been taken over by an ant colony. And this particular tree (covered with spikes, and harbors a particular species of ant) is called a ‘punishment tree’ – when someone in a village does something particularly bad, he gets tied to the tree, and after only 10 minutes, he will decide to be good again.  When you have little access to the outside world, you use what is local; and it is amazing what these folks have figured out. 

The first major stop during the walk was at a pond with giant lily pads (named Victoria Regia after Queen Victoria – because she couldn’t remember the indigenous name).  Many were easily 6+ feet across.  I tried to persuade Christopher that they looked to be able to support his weight, but he couldn’t be convinced.

It became clear on this trip that Peru is really making an effort at conservation and environmental protection, but it is a tough battle.  The Amazon Basin is huge, and the number of enforcement officials is small.  Much of the efforts are to educate the locals and then count on them to do the enforcement (or at least report violations by neighboring communities or by poachers).  As a result, we saw few souvenir stands selling illegal items (pelts, butterflies, feathers., jaguar teeth…), but it still does exist (though you will be arrested if you are caught trying to leave the country with one of these items).  Most of the souvenir stands now use exclusively sustainable materials, which is a big step forward. 

We also visited a Turtle rescue station and a manatee rescue station to help bring back species on the brink of extinction.   And the Picaya Preserve (several times stated as being the size of Belgium) allows no hunting/logging, and only limited fishing (some fishing right are granted to volunteer enforcement agents in exchange for their time).  Despite these efforts and future plans, there is also a real fear that small changes in the climate might kill out many of the reptiles and significantly alter the ecosystem – gender-determination for turtles and caimans is based on the egg incubation temperature and an increase of a couple of degrees could mean that only males will be born. 

Some other facts:
*  The Amazon brings down a LOT of silt from the Andes, so the mocha-brown water is naturally(?) called ‘white water’.  Visibility in the white-water is maybe a couple of inches.  The main river is all white-water. 
*  The water in the tributaries are full of tannins from the trees, which makes the water very dark (coffee colored, no cream). This is referred to as ‘black water’.  Visibility in black-water might be a foot.
*  Where we were on the Ucayali portion of the Amazon river, the width varies from a few hundred yards across.  during the dry season, to a few miles across during the wet season.
*  The Amazon has a huge water-flow.  At the high point of the rainy season, it dumps more than 60 times the volume of the Nile into the Atlantic. 
*  Where we were on the Amazon, we were at an elevation of 350 feet.  The 350 foot gradient to the Atlantic is enough to push the Amazon river the 2000 miles to the Atlantic.
*  Families in the Amazon villages tend to be very large – 6 to 8 kids are the norm.  Typical marrying age starts at 14 for girls, and is not much higher for boys.  At the village we visited there was a girl who looked to be about 15, who was clearly pregnant.  Age, though, is hard to tell.  Two kids who came up to Christopher’s shoulder (and looked to me to be about 9 and 7 years old) said they were 13 and 11.
*  There is no source of dairy along the Amazon.  The primary source of calcium for the villagers is through fish-bones and turtle-eggs.