An Adventure Along the Amazon
As summer looms and you're in a panic about what to do with the kids (an all too familiar scenario in my household), allow me to throw out an idea: instead of sending them off for expensive weeks away, consider taking them, and you, to the greatest science camp on Earth-the Amazon.
That's what I did last summer with my ten-year-old daughter, Indigo, and it was a roaring success. I'd been agonizing over how to keep her occupied during the long summer months when I received my annual International Expeditions catalog in the mail. It had pictures of a three-storied, rubber baron style riverboat gliding down a mirror calm river, children merrily traipsing through a jungle, butterflies with turquoise wings, extravagant birds, and that crazy evolutionary aberration, the sloth.
Being that Indigo is an exotic animal fanatic, and given that I'd not been to Peru myself, I jumped at the idea of an Amazon voyage (with a Machu Picchu extension). The cruises, the catalog said, are family-friendly with built-in kids natural science programs.
And so, in mid-August, we met the rest of our group in Lima, where we all flew north to Iquitos, a place that was once a moneyed rubber town built on the banks of the Amazon. Once Mr. Goodyear invented vulcanization and the world clamored for all things rubberized, Iquitos boomed into a sophisticated and prosperous trade center. Although it was the farthest inland seaport on the Amazon-2,117 miles from Atlantic Ocean, it had an abundance of trees that wept liquid money in the form of rubber sap. It also had cheap labor (some would say slave) to tap them. Nowadays, the old quarter is reminiscent of a faded New Orleans, with elaborate ironwork, plazas and fountains.
As the sun faded quietly into the jungle, we caught our first site of the Amazon, vast in girth and brown from plant tannins, weaving steadfastly through thick jungle. And there floated our boat, La Amatista, a rubber baron's dream. La Amatista is a 127-foot long, 14-cabin boat that takes 29 passengers and 16 staff. Our cabin was small, about 170 square feet, but air conditioned and serviceable, with twin beds and a tiny en suite bathroom and shower stall. There was an upstairs, open-air bar, and a wood-paneled dining room at the front of the boat with windows on all sides. The boat was a little long in the tooth, but I was told that there are plans for a new, environmentally friendly boat in the hopper.
There were eight children on the trip, and by the time the engines fired up, they had broken off into age-and-gender-appropriate pods. As always, there were a wide variety of characters on board: The silent father with his vivacious wife and two gorgeous college-age daughters. A couple from the Bronx who'd brought their niece. The upstate New York family who were there for the same reason we were. The Los Angeles mother and her two squabbling teens, and the Israeli grandparents who came all the way to fulfill the fantasy of their seven-year-old grandson.
Hernando Vallenas, the trip's Family Director, was responsible for keeping the kids in check and entertaining them with crafts, movies and dance lessons. There were also two naturalists on board, Roland Balaezo and Victor Ramirez, both locals with degrees in natural biology and trained specifically on the quirks and comportment of the fish, bird and mammals thronging the Peruvian Amazon.
Technically, within one day of motoring upriver we had left the Amazon. A battle still rages among academics as to which is the longer river, the Nile or the Amazon. Most sources state the Nile, although actual measurements differ. On volume the Amazon trumps, carrying more water than the next eight largest rivers combined. It would be a slam dunk in length too if it didn't split into two rivers 78 miles out of Iquitos, where technically the Amazon ceases to exist and forks into the Marañon and the Ucayali rivers. There are those that hold the Amazon should be measured until its source, a glacial stream 18,000 feet up in the Andes, hence the raging debate. Regardless, it is one very long river, approximately 4,000 miles.
We were headed up the Marañon and into the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve. 5.1 million acres of preserved rainforests, no legal hunting, no deforestation, fewer tourists than the Brazilian Amazon, and species that are rarely found elsewhere, Pacaya-Samiria is one of the richest places left on earth for wildlife. International Expeditions, one of America's most upstanding eco-tourism companies, chose this area to operate for obvious reasons. They use an all-Peruvian crew and have government permission to navigate within the reserve, a privilege few get.
Being that it was summer and we were right below the equator, the heat thumped down on us, holding between 90-95-degrees with 95% humidity. This meant the days had to be well planned. We took early morning and late afternoon excursions into the forest or up small river tributaries by skiffs that enabled us to negotiate shallow areas.
The best news of the whole trip was that we were able to swim in the river, particularly in the clean waters of remote tributaries. Despite movie depictions and sensational Internet myths, piranhas do not attack a perfectly healthy human. We'd be catching piranha with raw meat bait one moment, then motor a little way upstream to ensure they did not confuse us with the beef, and leap off the side of the skiff, no questions asked.
Piranhas are pathetically gullible when it comes to being caught, much to the delight of the children who fished with rods made of stripped branches with a line, rudimentary hook and small cubes of meat. The danger with piranha lies in landing them. When humans lose a chunk of flesh to their savage teeth, it most likely happens in the boat. "Never unhook a piranha on your own!" Victor warned us repeatedly. "Listen up kids," I said, "that there is a metaphor for life."
With 16 people in each of the two skiffs, we'd catch 80 or so piranha in 30 minutes and the cook would fry them up for dinner. They make great eating and are a staple for the local Ribereños people.
Ribereños are "people of the river," Amazon native Indians mixed with Spanish blood. They reside in traditional villages on the riverbanks, subsistence farming and fishing. The highlight of the trip for me were stops at these villages, where the children spilled out of their houses or the school to welcome us, singing songs and dragging our kids onto the soccer field for a hot, rousing game where the American children were always soundly thrashed by barefooted Ribereños, some as young as six.
The village women would see us coming and emerge en masse to spread woven mats and handmade wares and crafts. As Victor said, amazed at the universal female ability to go shopping, even in the heart of the jungle, "If you can't go to Walmart, Walmart comes to you."
Before coming, a friend had told me the significance of huayruro seeds, found all over the Amazon. Red and black, they are worn by Peruvians as an amulet to attract good luck and repel bad. Laid out in these impromptu markets were necklaces, earrings, bracelets, handbags, dolls and sundry other items fashioned from the seeds. I found a particularly fetching huayruro necklace with a gnarly looking piranha jaw dangling in the middle. I bought it for my friend and later suggested she wear it to her next meeting with her boss.
Ribereños live as they do in villages all over the world-thatched huts, hammocks to sleep in, cooking fires, no electricity, and about 200 people in a typical village. Each one had its town drunk, its honey-eyed children, its laughing women, its free-roaming pigs and its share of emaciated dogs. And yet in every one there was a cinderblock schoolhouse with both boys and girls inside, a wonderful sight not seen world over.
One evening we were taken ashore after dinner for a night walk and asked to tread silently so not to scare off nocturnal animals. All hope of this was dashed by the groups' two teenage boys, John and Johnny, who crashed through the jungle like a pair of Sasquatches. At one point Roland, our guide, asked us to turn off our headlamps and stand still. He began to talk of the spirits that his people believe inhabit the forest, and of the life force given off by trees around us. It was pitch dark and the air was perhaps the freshest in the world. It was astoundingly peaceful and for a moment all seemed right in the world, until John and Johnny began making fart noises.
It took us three days to reach the Pacaya-Samiria Reserve. Once there, we spent a day in the skiff exploring the Pacaya River. The increase in wildlife was immediate. Pink dolphins played around our skiffs, brilliant plumaged birds swooped in the canopy, capuchin monkeys infested the trees, howler monkeys let fly with their terrible, belching cry and sloths hung motionless fifty feet above the jungle floor.
Indigo adores sloths and was jumping up and down to see one, even at a great distance. Admittedly, Sid, the hapless hero of the Ice Age movies, has influenced her impression so it was important for her to learn a few actual facts about the creature. This herbivore, Victor informed us, lives at the top of the canopy and moves only when absolutely necessary, with a top speed of 15 feet per minute. The theory is that they behave this way to detract attention from predators. A jaguar, for example, might wonder what that hairy brown blob in the tree is, but if it isn't moving, it couldn't be living. Sloths descend from the canopy only once a week to relieve themselves, and if chased will plunge into the river where the swim away at an impressive clip.
Amazonian pink dolphins are also extraordinary creatures. Like the grey dolphin, they were forced to adapt to fresh water when the Andes rose up, separating the Pacific Coast and the Amazon Basin and causing the Amazon River to change direction and flow towards the Atlantic thousands of miles away. They adapted quickly, and have a close relationship with the humans that live on the river too. They are not hunted by the river people, who believe that their children will be born deformed if they were to harm one.
In the week that we were on the boat, we covered a staggering 800 miles, including our skiff adventures. Much of La Amatista's motoring was done at night or the very early morning. In the evenings we'd gather in the bar to drink pisco sours and listen to the crew play Peruvian music on traditional instruments. Each night they'd enlist the kids to play maracas and huiro, the latter a gourd with ridges carved into it and a handheld stick.
The crew, as were all the Peruvians we met, had a great sense of humor and a strong national pride, sweeping the children along with their enthusiasm. They learned about Peruvian customs between playing soccer, weaving baskets, fishing, swimming, dancing, attending talks by the naturalists, checking species off the spotting list they'd been given, and madly snapping photos of every sloth we passed.
Now it's that dreaded summer camp time again and our Amazon voyage set the bar very high. Currently stacked on my daughter's bedside table are all the adventure travel catalogs that have so conveniently arrived in the mail.