This story needs to be told and who gives a damn if it's almost two months old by now. The tl;dr version is that this was a once in a lifetime experience. And it involves manatees.
After our two week stint in Irapay, we had three days in Iquitos to get in contact with the outside world, catch up on some much needed sleep and showers (and oreos and cokes), and generally do whatever the hell we wanted. In-town highlights before Sunday included an amazing egg, tomato, and avocado sandwich, drinks at the most precarious bar ever, and more ice cream than I've ever consumed in my life, eaten with the group in a kind of wordless happiness at night, beneath the lights of the cathedral.
And just when it seemed like things couldn't get any better, Daniela (I miss you so much, buddy) got it into her head to visit the manatee rehabilitation center. She did all the work of figuring out where it was (just outside of Iquitos), how we should get there (bus), how much it would cost (1 sol for the ride), and when it was open (until noonish on the weekend.) I was vaguely aware of her asking La Pascana's receptionist about something but it was only when she came over to my table and asked me if I would like to visit the manatees that I realized this was something you just don't say no to.
Or you shouldn't. Chris and Adam were all game to accompany us but the rest of the gang was sleeping off hangovers or shopping for replacement bug spray/snacks for the field, so it was just us four that set off for the corner to catch our bus. Turns out, our group's small size was actually more conducive to bus travel in Iquitos than anything else-because what seemed initially like a spacious bus when we first got on, filled up with alarming speed to the point where there were anywhere from 3-5 people sharing a single seat and more than twice that number, standing in the main aisle. Adam quickly made for the back, which was the only place he could stand where his head didn't brush the ceiling. And to make the sardine-like conditions even more hectic, the driver's assistant decided to collect fares halfway through the ride, going around, squeezing his body through impossible cracks between passengers, collecting a sol from every person personally. Daniela and I handed over our change, exchanging a look in silence.
Crazy, right?
Oh yeah.
The bus disgorged us at our stop with some difficulty, hacking us up and spitting us onto the dusty road along with a woman and the two chickens she held, swinging in her hand by their feet. We looked at our destination.The dusty road turned away from the main street, shot straight past a pair of massive iron gates (thankfully open) and in front of a guardhouse whose uniformed occupant had stuck his head out to regard us. We approached and were waved over before we had gone a few feet.
Hello, hello. Buenas.
Passaportes por favor?
Passports? Oh, shit.
It's one thing to bring your passport with you when you're traveling from place to place and quite another to have the actual document with you on your day around town. In all fairness, I should have had a copy at the very least but no one knew we needed one. Daniela had her Chilean driver's license/ID, but none of us gringos had so much as a driver's license on our persons. It was Daniela who saved the day, begging with the guard for some kind of legislative mercy. "Please, no one told us we needed to bring our passports. We've come from so far away, all of us. This is our one day to see the manatees," etc. It was her polite Chilean epicness that finally won the guard over and, thanking him over and over and over again (with more than one handshake thrown in for good measure), we made our way into the reserve.
Past watery fields. Past herons fishing in the shade. Down a grassy slope, into a modest building, following the wooden arrows planted into the ground with the single tell-tell word etched into their surface.
"Manatee."
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| Daniela finally gets her wish. |
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| Adam and I take our turns feeding the manatees. |
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| Curious and gentle, the manatee babies investigate visitors' hands without fear. |
There's something indescribably special about the manatee. Maybe it's its goofy appearance- a cross between bovine, cetacean, and walrus, couple with its tiny little eyes, embedded above a whiskered mouth that looks almost toothless. Maybe it's the manatee's demeanor- placid to the point of being almost docile, slow but not quite lethargic. Unrushed. Unhurried.
These are not small animals. The ones we fed were siblings and only a few months old yet, already, they weighed a few couple hundred of pounds and were probably around four feet from the nostrils to the tip of their paddle-like tail. Yet they came off as completely benign.
Gentle.
There's really no other way to describe them.
The rehab center was, by all accounts, doing good, successful work. They rescued manatees who had been orphaned, their parents primarily killed by local communities for food and the misconception that manatees damage riparian ecosystems. All individuals stayed within the center until they were old enough, and large enough, to be released back into areas with fewer humans. If this center had been in the U.S., we would never have been allowed to do what we did- touch, feed, interact with these animals. We would have stared at them behind glass walls watching through that artificial barrier and we would have been charged an arm and a leg to do even that.
But here, it was free to feed baby manatees. Donations? The label on the jar said 'Appreciated but not required.'
We almost filled it up.
