Living in Peru : your everyday companion

By John Meils

We smelled them on the way to the oxbow lake — a pungent, pervasive stink. Peccaries, jungle pigs, a sizeable herd. They were thrashing just out of sight on either side of the trail foraging for roots, fruit, maybe a snake. Small branches snapped wherever they went. Our guide was nervous. Earlier he told us that when threatened or surprised, peccaries will attack. En masse.

On the way back from the lake, we ran into the same troop at a different location. A big male emerged on the trail 50 feet ahead and barked at us before raising the bristled hair on his back. “He’s very angry,” said Nicolas, the guide, as we froze. Then: “Get ready to climb a tree.” I looked around. Trees in the rainforest grow fast and tall to compete for sunlight high up in the canopy; they don’t have low branches. At all. And their trunks are usually slick or protected with thorns.

It was my third day in the Manu Biosphere, southern Peru’s fabled national park in the Madre de Dios district. We’d spent the prior two days getting to Manu’s “reserve zone.” Over the Andes from Cuzco via Paucartambo on a two-day, 14-hour journey that included a 4,000-meter ascent on a scribble of mountain roads pounded by waterfalls and wracked by landslides. Then a descent into a pristine cloud forest on the eastern slope of the Andes with lichen-covered trees and bromeliads the size of beach balls. We spent the first night at a lodge in the cloud forest under a thunderstorm that literally shook our cabins. The next morning, we exchanged our diesel mini-bus for a pair of riverboats at the port town of Atalaya on Upper Madre de Dios River. From there, we spent the next eight days in and around one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet.

Manu: Extreme diversity

The Manu National Park was established in 1973 and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. The area, located in the southern-most part of Peru’s Amazon belt, is about the size of New Hampshire or Wales and is one of the largest swaths of protected rainforest on earth. There are more than 1,300 varieties of butterflies, 15,000 different plant species and 1,000 documented bird types. One survey identified 250 different varieties of trees in a single hectare of Manu’s rainforest. Also, given the park’s history of protection, the larger animals in Manu are less spooked by humans and therefore easier to spot.


I was traveling with Pantiacolla Tours, one of the eight companies licensed to bring tourists into the park. Our first destination was the reserve zone on the Manu River, the deepest one can go before butting up against the large “private zone,” which is strictly for researchers and native Indians, including tribes that have rarely been contacted (and perhaps one or two uncontacted groups, according to some).

On the Upper Madre de Dios River we traveled first through the park’s “cultural zone,” a semi-protected area with a smattering of river towns permitted to pull subsistence-level resources from the rainforest. But it wasn’t until we turned onto the Manu River and formally enter the park’s reserve zone, largely un-cut virgin rainforest, that it hit me: This is what the Amazon looked like a hundred years ago.

What the jungle feels like

It’s both amazing and disturbing — the instant spike in plants and animals — everything so urgently lush and yet so obviously a result of rigid conservation. Nicolas immediately begins reeling off descriptions of what we’re seeing: Black Skimmers, smallish birds with a telltale stripe of orange on their beaks, work the shallows off the beaches; packs of sand-colored nighthawks line branches of deadfall stuck in the river asthey sleep the day away; the banksare crowded with stands of Cecropia trees and giant cane plants still used by indigenous Indians to make arrows; side-neck turtles stack themselves like fallen dominoes on rocks and branches in the river. The whole thing feels cinematic, a high-def creation, until we get off the river at a camp near Lake Salvador — when the heat and bugs descend. They too are proof of Manu’s biological richness. Columns of leaf-cutter ants beat worn paths in the jungle. As we hiked to the lodge a green tree snake slithered across the trail with a small bird in its mouth, uninterested in us. Bats are everywhere at night, darting in and out of the shadows. But it’s the sandflies — not the mosquitoes — that terrorize the most. Their bites, discovered after the fact, are small, look like pin-pricks and itch for days.

But the annoyances of Manu quickly fade when we visit Lake Salvador, home to a family of giant otters, of which there are maybe 100 left in the park and less than 5,000 worldwide. Because of their appetites (adults eat about seven pounds of fish a day), they’re excellent indicators of the health of rivers and lakes in the rainforest. They’re also fearless, which contributes to their highly endangered status. As we paddled out into the lake on a catamaran, four of them immediately swam out to us, barking and frolicking as they approached. But they were only one of the attractions — the area was dripping in birds. Within minutes we saw a Ringed Kingfisher, a pair of Hoatzins, a Green Ibis, an Aningha (snake bird) and a Toucan. Oh, and a large black caiman trailing our boat.

On the way back we square off with the big male peccary, the angry one. After he raised the hair on his back, 30 to 40 of his herd crashed across the trail behind him. He was keeping an eye on us, standing guard. Eventually, he followed the herd into the underbrush. As we passed the spot where he stood, we heard the cries of baby pigs to our left. Nicolas told us to run. The herd had inadvertently left some young behind — and they’d return for them soon enough.

Torrential rains pounded us that night. The next day the river was loaded with flotsam, mostly big chunks of sand that broke loose from the beaches as they were overrun. It looked like ice. The day was cloud-filled and chilly, an about-face from the hot, steamy conditions of the previous 72 hours. “Frios,” winds from Argentina that blow towards the end of the dry season, had arrived. Despite this, the remaining riverbanks were dotted with white caiman as we traveled to a trailin search of woolly monkeys.

The Amazon Rainforest Four reasons to protect it; four ways you can. By John Meils

Over the next five days, the jungle film festival continued. We keep going to new locations to see different shows: a massive clay lick during a morning feeding for parrots and macaws; a sulfur-infused hot spring near the edge of the river; a night walk to find tarantulas (which, FYI, were everywhere!). The pace was break-neck.

How to tour the Amazon

Tours into Manu’s reserve zone are not cheap (from $750 to $3,000+, depending on duration and extras), so the operators are typically keen to give you a large dose of the jungle. We’d generally be up with the sun, greeted by the stereophonic growl of whatever dominant male Howler Monkey was close by. A quick breakfast would be followed by us — our group was seven — piling into a boat with all of our gear to take off to a new location for a night or two. The constant river travel, often four to six hours daily, was grueling at times. Creature comforts were scant, on and off the boat. Some of the lodges had hot water, but not all. Electricity was generator-produced and typically shut off by 9 p.m. The food, though stellar on my tour, was basic by necessity. And it was impossible, given the humidity, to keep clothes dry. By the end, most of us began to smell.

The unexpected part was learning the rhythms of how locals lived in Manu. Everyone seemed to know everyone else and was quick with a smile or joke. Because so much “necessity” (engine parts, doctors, the Internet) is hours away by boat, people who live in the rainforest seem preternaturally patient. They also help each other unfailingly — giving boat rides, pitching in on construction projects, sharing food and other supplies. In most cases, I got the sense that a lot of Manu natives would be just fine living as their ancestors did a hundred years ago.

As we were leaving the park I asked Nicolas, who has been guiding or doing doctorate-level research in the park for almost two decades, about his wildest experience in Manu. “One time a local indigenous group shot at me with arrows,” he said, matter of fact. “They didn’t want contact with the outside world.” When I asked him why, his answer was simple: “A lot of their ancestors were enslaved by rubber barons in the past — and they remember.”

I thought I understood. I wanted to protect Manu and I’d only been there for ten days.




John Meils is a freelance writer. He has written about tripping on Ayahuasca and a volunteer trip to Huancavelica. To see more of his work, visit johnmeils.com.

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3 Comments

# Tanguy Mezzano says :
16 December, 2010 [ 07:24 ]

Hello John,

I read your story in Manu's Biosphere with a lot of pleasure as it reminds me my own adventure in the same place 3 years ago. After winning a competition for a big brand selling outfit material here in Belgium, we left with a group of 5 youngsters to live an unforgettable adventure in Peru's jungle for a trek of 10 days in the mountain and ending by building a raft. The tour was organised aswell by Pantiacolla Tours... I think I have a similar picture with the same Ceiba tree. I still can hear and see all those black flies and sun flies getting into my eyes while cutting a balsa tree. Our guide was named Darwin. I wish I could return to that feeric world :) Cya. Tanguy

# jorge vargas says :
28 December, 2010 [ 08:55 ]

wonderful John
i worked as a tour guide n teh amazon of peru.
i am getting back at tit and will be travelling to the amazon. the city where i was born is Iquitos peru, right on the amazon river.
i will love to keep in touch with you,
respectfully,
jorge vargas

# Maria Nelson says :
9 January, 2011 [ 09:51 ]

Wow! I'm trilled! I already feel I have been in Manu and in that part of the Peruvian Jungle. Thank you!!!

Maria

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