About Time

It had started to rain.

That in itself was nothing new- hell, it would have been odder at this point to have a day in which we didn't get drenched by torrential rain. No. What was new was that we experienced that day's rainforest downpour from the hard wooden seats of a bulky, ungainly, motor-propelled boat which was crawling up the Nanay (or down it, depending on your point of view), taking us to our next field site. We had embarked almost two hours ago to bright sun and humid weather but our poor, straining, diesel engine couldn't outrun the looming clouds. The rain arrived with the dusk.

The storm hits the Nanay.

We had taken a 'shortcut'- a channel cut into the forest that would skirt an otherwise long river bend when the storm hit. Our motorista, to his credit, had the eyes of a harpy eagle and did an insane job navigating against the current in the downpour, dodging floating debris and the larger logs even though he was perched way in the back by the motor and had to contend with the limited visibility of storm and gringo heads. Even so, there were several times where we bumped up against the banks and had to be poled off again, or scraped against a protesting tangle of branches. More than once, we had to scramble out and give the old boat a shove free as its motor whined and strained in its attempts to get free.

All of the 20 some person crew was in this one boat and she was riding low to the water. Most of us sat with our backpacks in our lap and our rubber boots on as the bottom of the craft, not completely leak proof, oozed slow pulses of river water around our feet. The motorista seemed nonplussed at least as far as his boat was concerned. He was less sure about the second boat, the gear boat, which had been loaded with all of our food, our banding supplies, our day packs, and Judit whom we had last seen perched precariously on the giant mound of stuff.

Look at the boat. Look at the waterline. Look at my bag, sitting there like a condemned sailor. Look at the crate of papayas about to fall in even at a standstill. And take a wild guess what happens next. 

Only Todd, good old cynical Todd who could always find something to worry about, had any worries about the situation. The rest of us had just been happy to finally be on board and on our way (we had gotten lost trying to find the docks and what was only supposed to be a half hour van ride had taken closer to 2). Here. Have some pre-disaster pics!

The crew, hopping off the vans and organizing gear for the river trip.

Jonno and amazing his bottle of white wine which would be put to good use later that night.

                                     

As we disembark, storm clouds start gathering over the Nanay.

Finally on our way.

Best seat in the boat! Watchband from an Iquitos street vendor (7 soles watch repair), Chernz bracelet from Mr. ShankJim, and a grupo chevre bracelet from Gerson. <3

The last rays of sun poke through the storm clouds.

After another hour and a half of navigating the Nanay through the rain, we finally arrived at our next field site- the *relatively* developed San Martin community complete with a schoolhouse (our campground), a corner store (more warm cokes and cookies!), and a satellite. We hopped off the boat with our small backpacks, trudged up the hill to the community, (the more hardcore birders of us noting the massive colony of caciques that were watching us from a nearby tree), and then stood in a semi-circle wondering what to do next. 

It was still raining when we arrived. Daniela carries the last of our gear up the banks as our motorista tends to his boat.

                                

Judit hadn't given us specific instructions or directions or even told us the name of the hombre in charge. Kids gathered in droves to stare at us. A few missionaries wandered through in the background curiously unconcerned with the whole affair. And then, thankfully before things got really awkward, a group of men and women came up to us with an official welcome and asked us to make ourselves at home inside the school building. When they asked where Judit was, all we could do was shrug and say 'coming' (we hope.) 

The next several hours dragged by. We didn't have tents to set up. Gear to sort. We didn't have food. No one really knew what to do. Chris, Adam, and Todd began scouting out the cacique tree. Veronica and Alvaro took it upon themselves to communicate with our hosts and for lack of anything better to do, Daniela and I went with them. Night was falling. We sat on the 'porch' of a house, surrounded by the skulls of alligators, piranhas, and javelinas and talked to several men of the community- the nicest of which, I'm ashamed to admit, I can't remember his name. The conversation turned from Judit and the boat to the community, to the benefits of Ayahuasca- a drug our host claimed granted tranquility and inner sight. He was just about to smoke some, he admitted, like he always did around this time of night. Travelers came from as far as Australia to experience the sensation...would we like to join in? Alvaro and Veronica considered the proposition with more enthusiasm than I did. With night on us and still no sign of Judit, I had the sinking feeling that the gear boat had, well, sank. 

Daniela agreed with me. As we walked to the corner store to buy a Coke for a sol, leaving the Spaniards to the Ayahuasca, she added glumly, "And if the boat did sink, I don't think they will be able to retrieve everyone's bags. They're so heavy, they'll sink like stones." 

"I bet mine's gone," I answered. 

I was only partly kidding. I was suddenly sure, in an indescribable grim way, that my bag would be one of the 'unrecovered' ones, lost at the bottom of the Nanay, surveyed by curious piranha and the occasional river dolphin. Don't ask me why. I guess I know that I just have that kind of shit awful luck.

The sun set on us.

Our faithful boat 'at anchor.'

A calm sunset after the storm.

8 pm. Word came from the river, from a boat man that didn't even stop, that a boat had sank upriver. No one was really surprised.

 9 pm came and went. Our hosts provided us with rice which we cooked up and served in a meager dinner. 10 pm, Daniela and I walked down and got a second coke. We drank it on the steps of the school house and eyed the river in silence. And so it was that we were in a good position to see the sudden flare of lights on the Nanay and to watch as an unfamiliar vessel, sitting low in the water, drifted into our view. We weren't the only ones-a minute later and the crew had all stopped what they were doing and converged on the shore to watch in silence as a decimated looking Judit docked at San Martin.

She didn't say anything to us. Just hopped over the side and stood in water up to her knees, conversing in a raw voice with the boat man. We edged closer, hoping to hear. The boat man's motorista had already begun the task of unloading the craft and that galvanized us into motion. We saw that he was lugging a day pack to the shore with difficulty disproportionate to its size but quickly realized when we sprang to help, that that was because the day pack was soaked. It was drenched. Permeated. What had once weighted 50 lbs now weighed closer to 90. And they were all like that. Everyone's gear had very obviously gone into the river.

The crew dragged backpacks up the shore one by one. Everyone helped-- but everyone, I know, was keeping a lookout for their own, and their relief was evident when they found it. Daniela, struggling with her massive pack, asked me in passing if I had seen mine. 

I hadn't.

As the pile in the boat dwindled it became evident that 1) our food was completely gone and 2) my pack was nowhere to be found. When Judit finally turned her red-rimmed eyes on the crew who stood, breathing hard over the wreckage of out supplies, and asked who didn't have their stuff, Katie beat me to it. "I don't either," I told her. Judit looked about to cry. She didn't say anything.

The crew started to disperse, dragging their gear back up to the hill to take stock of the damage. Katie and I followed them in a kind of sleepwalk. I tried to take inventory of the things I'd lost as I walked. My tent, my brand new, first ever field tent--gone. My sleeping bag--gone. My pack itself--adorning the river bottom. My favorite field shirts--fish food. And then I thought about the things I had the foresight to take with me like my camera and my notebook and  my ipods and my favorite knife and I realized things could've been much worse. Katie and I watched as the crew lugged their field packs into the school house and began to inventory the damage. Tents and bundles of wet clothes were pulled and hung on makeshift lines indoors. Sam's Kindle was ruined. Field guides, utterly soaked, were lined up next to the data laptops in the vain hope that they would dry. What had once been a vacant school house now looked like a refuge camp.

Judit still hadn't said a word to us.

It was only when the majority of the team, their stuff hung to dry, finally decided to try and get some sleep, that my emotions teeter-tottered back into despair. No one had clean, dry clothing. I was still wearing my contacts and didn't have their case or solution. I had no blankets, no towel, no sheets, no mosquito repellent. No shoes except my teevas. I looked bleakly around at my tired crew mates, stretched out on the floor in rows and almost as if sensing my despair, Jonno appeared out of nowhere with a bulky brown bag under his arm. He caught my eye and gestured to the door. I knew what was in that bag. Katie was already waiting.

And well fuck it, I thought as I heaved myself up off the bench and followed him (headlight less) into the Amazonian night, I could use some wine.

Alvaro, Veronica, Cesar, and Blaine joined us as we sat on a convenient log on the banks of the Nanay, making a considerable and effortless dent in the bottle. Boats cruised lethargically up and down the river, sometimes lit, often not. Vero lit a joint. Passed it around. Insect song filled the night. The stars were out.

"Well shit," Jonno said at length. "What now?"

"No idea. Go home, I guess," I said.

"Seriously?'

"I don't have a tent." I could buy replacement field clothes. I could buy replacement headlights and boots and foot powder. But a tent, a real working, I-can-survive-Amazonian-downpour tent, was going to be a challenge. I didn't mention the host of other issues we had discussed about the experience. They went without saying.

"I don't blame you," he replied at length.

"What will you do?"

"Stick it out," he said, and then washed down that statement with another gulp of wine. "At least for another site. And then...I don't know. Go traveling around Peru for a bit, I guess."

"Machu Picchu?"

"For sure."

We were quiet for a time. Finished the wine.

And then, out of nowhere- splashing- movement- something large cutting through the river in front of us. Ghostly shapes in the water through the beam of their headlights. We pointed, voices raised.

"Did you see? Did you see?"

The shapes moved on with muted splashes. 

Afterimages of dolphins.

-------------------------------------

The next day, mid-morning, the park service boats came to take Katie and me back to Iquitos. It was a rushed departure. We barely said goodbye. We stopped at the sink site on the way- found a boat already there, scavenging- saw a tell-tale bottle of yogurt on its stern.

 From the port Katie and I took a moto taxi all the way to Iquitos, jouncing along the road, re-entering that city of dust and noise feeling like we had been gone for weeks and not just a single day. Back to La Pascana. 

Phone calls. 

Emails.

I started them all the same way- This is the story of the Amazonian Titanic.

-------------------------------------

In the end, I went home. In the end, I believe that was the smartest thing to do. Katie met up with Judit in Iquitos and tried to tough it out for at least another field stint but the last I heard, her parents were demanding she come home ASAP. When Judit did arrive back in Iquitos, she brought Sara and Daniela with her- the two had decided a boat sinking was the last metaphorical straw and were opting to go home. Daniela and I flew out on the same day and caught the same plane out of Iquitos. We sat together, not saying much, watching as the jungle vanished below us.

Lima crawled into view.

At the airport, we clambered down from the tiny Iquitos plane and boarded a shuttle to the main terminals. It was cold and gray outside. I waited with Daniela for her bag at baggage claim. When it didn't show up right away, we joked that it had survived the Nanay only to be lost in the airport but almost as soon as we had made the joke, it appeared on the carousel. From baggage claim it was a short walk to the main floor of the airport.  Daniela made me promise to stay in touch. I told her I was extremely grateful for all her company and advice these few short weeks. We hugged. And then she turned and walked outside to catch her bus and just like that, it was over.

I watched her go.

And then I turned my back on the airport doors and went to check in for my 8 hour layover.

Manateeeeeeeeeeeee

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."

Daniela finally gets her wish.

Adam and I take our turns feeding the manatees.

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.

The Birds (Allpahuayo Mishana)

The majority of these photos are of birds in hand that I banded. Sadly, I had virtually no free time to try and photograph individuals behaving naturally but I thought I would still share some of my favorite species we caught and worked with.

Scale Backed Antbird (Willisornis poecilonotus)- Male (Little Sarah)

White-crowned Manakin (Dixiphia pipra)- Male 

This was the first White-Plumed we caught. His little mohawks are uneven!

White-plumed Antbird (Pithys albifrons)

Golden-headed Manakin (Pipra erythrocephala)- Male

 

 

Bicolored Antbird (Gymnopithys leucaspis)

Allpahuayo Antbird (Percnostola arenarum)- Female- ENDEMIC

Thrush-like Schiffornis (Schiffornis turdina)

Pearly Anshrike (Megastictus margaritatus)

Just wanted to add here that it's a lot harder to take good pictures of birds you're actually holding than you'd think it would be. The light was crap for the first week or so, the birds didn't like looking at the camera, you can't hold them for too long, and it's tough to get some of their neat wing patterns in the shot while avoiding your fingers/hand. This was one big learning process and these photos are by no means amazing. They actually kind of suck. 

But I think I figured out a setting that works and some tricks to holding them so next round should be better.

Field Life (Allpahuayo Mishana)

So I've thought about this a bit and I think I found a way to organize photos and blog postings from my time in AM that makes more sense than a day by day recounting (which I don't even have written down anyway). This post will be all about the generalities of field life in the reserve- how we set up nets, what we did in our down time waiting for birds (including some wtf moments), people, snake encounters, bugs, etc. I'll add to it as I continue to edit and sort through photos so scroll down every so often to see if it's been updated.

That being said: Day 1 of actual field work is the only day I have a complete list of all the things we did- namely because the day's main task was just: set up mistnets. It meant we got to wake up a little earlier and hang around camp longer because we weren't actually catching anything that day but there was an associated tradeoff we really didn't think too much about at the time.

First morning in AM, Aug 26th

But here's the catch, ladies and gentlemen: a midday slog through the rainforest. Hello, sweat! On days where we set up nets, we get to leave a little later but 11-2 pm is the worst time bracket to begin a hike. You can't even really see anything neat because the animals know better than to be at all active during the hottest parts of the day. Only the insects are out in full force.

Todd looking decidedly maniacal, Adam in the background carrying a set of mistnet poles. They look long even when he's carrying them and he's a little over 6 feet. Now. Picture me hauling those things. Imagine the physics at work.

I didn't take any pictures of net set up because that's fairly boring. If a trail exists, you can string the nets along the already cleared path. If not, the guys bust out the machetes and slaughter all plant life along the transect so we have enough clear space to sling 20, 3 meter high and 12 meter long nets. And it's 20 nets per site- when we got good enough at banding, we split into two groups each in charge of 20 nets. Nets have to be checked once every 30-40 minutes. Quick math reveals that each time you walk a string of 20 nets, from one end to the other, you're walking a quarter of a kilometer. Add all these net checks up + the walks to the actual sites, and we were averaging on total around 8-10 miles of walking each day.

And here's what a typical banding station looks like. Tarp on ground. Tarp on top. A line to hang bird bags. This was during training day so all 15 people are clustered around this one tarp, watching birds get handled and banded. You can see why we were relieved to finally break up into smaller groups.

Banding station during our training day. Sadly, this was one wet, wet morning

But breaking up into smaller banding teams involved moving further from base camp, longer walks, and earlier mornings. An the problem with the latter was that it put us tromping through the forest in morning so early it was still technically night.....and snakes like wet nights.
Our longest hike (a little over 3 miles) involved crossing a wide stream on a crude branch bridge but we always stopped on the sand banks around before we crossed for a bit of a breather. We had just arrived at our designated rest spot one morning around 5 AM when Chris looked down at his feet, said "Fuck!" very loudly and backed away in a hurry. "Snake," he shouted, pointing at the 2 meter long fer-de-lance that had just started to coil back on itself in full defense mode. It had been no more than a foot from the toe of his boot.

In case you didn't know, fer-de-lances are highly venomous. Note the shape of the head of this bugger. It's got some serious venom glands.

Between the snakes, the wasps, the early mornings, and the work load, it was no wonder that people started going a little insane in the field.
In particular,
Adam's sense of fashion was an early victim:

And I had a morning realization that everything melts in the tropics. Note to self- never, ever sleep on top of a Ross bag in South America unless you want some blue tattoos! Luckily it was only my hand. (Hope you can at least still see the trademark R in its circle- snapped this with the itouch!)

I also learned that I really like taking pictures of some of the bugs we had hanging around our banding stations. This was especially fun on slower days when we had no birds to process.

Tongue!

Our constant companions- these guys chewed on everything

And my nemesis. I tried for so long to get a good picture of this guy. EDIT: Mom tells me this is a Hamadryas butterfly. Thanks for the ID!

And this is by no means bird or insect, but look what fell into our nets  late morning one day:

This is a tent-making bat. It got spooked out of its roost by the noise of net checks and flew into the net itself. Cute guy. He kept grinding his teeth together in a mini tantrum the entire time we were extracting it.

I'd like to break here and say that days off were a nice change of pace: that cooking food was a simple, relaxing, and straightforward task. That one could look forward to the simplicity of a day at camp in the face of all the bugs and bats and banding. But that would be a lie.
Nothing in the field is normal. For example, this is how we purchased our daily supply of bread- by flagging down the caballero de pan on his tiny motorcycle which wheezed and chugged and threatened to die every time he drove it up the hill to our camp.

The super hero of the Amazon: Pan Man!

And to get water, you had to hitchhike about ten minutes down the road in a bus, a car, a truck, or any combination thereof that had room. ('Room' by the way, is a flexible term in Peru- if you can manage to squeeze one butt cheek onto a seat in some of these vehicles, you're doing great. It doesn't help either that, compared to the typical Peruvian, you're some bloated giant trying to clumsily navigate down the aisle/to the back of the vehicle, dragging water buckets and your backpack in front of you and trying not to bash anyone's head in). This is where we got water-
 

Adam, Gerson, and Daniela in 'town'

The 'town' of 13 of February (founded on the 27th of April) is a collection of poor houses, shops that sometimes double as poor houses, a single restaurant, a soccer field, and roadside stands that sell an assortment of crackers, cookies, and drinks. My favorite shop was the corner tienda that boasted a giant cooler in the corner where you could buy cold cokes, beers, orange sodas, or just plain bottled water that didn't taste like someone's swimming pool. It became customary for water groups to sit for a bit on the scarred benches around the scarred table and drink their cold poison of choice while watching ten minutes of the bad soap opera that was continually on the tiny TV. Then, moment of bliss over, we walked down the road, down the bank, and into the water shed where we filled the pictured buckets and hauled them back uphill to wait a ride back.

When we were running low in food in camp, we also scoured 13. de Feb for anything edible. Our search for 'papas' (potatoes) led us to this strange thing which the woman assured us WAS a potato but is actually something that sounds like 'mandi.' It was excellent boiled and mashed up.

And this was another town buy- easily the best lollipop I have ever had.
 

It even has fake seeds!

And that's really about it in terms of the major events of A.M. The beginning of our stay dragged on and on but by the end when we had completed training, broken into smaller teams, and gotten into the swing of things- time flew. Before we really even knew it, the 10th had arrived and it was time to pack all the crap back up. Oh. And find a ride back to Iquitos. Because, apparently, the bus company Judit had contracted to come pick us up conveniently forgot they had ever agreed to such a thing. With all our gear again in a mammoth pile by the side of the road, we had to flag down passing roadside buses and ask if they could send two or three empty vehicles to come get us.

In the end we got a single car (a family stopped to see if they could squeeze any paying gringos into their vehicle on their way to Iquitos) and a single "bus."
This is how everything fit:

Tetris for biologists

 On top. And 11 people squeezed inside that 'bus' for the hour long ride back into the city. This is where we calculated that all together, that vehicle was carrying around 1 and a half metric tonnes of human and gear. The only comforting fact was that the braces inside that support the roof had, at one point, caved in far more under far greater strain. So. Technically we had nothing to fear right?
 Right.
:P

And that's it. That's all folks. Chapter 1 concluded. Believe it or not, chapter 2 begins tomorrow at noon but in the meantime it's cold cokes galore, oreos aplenty, and *hopefully* manatee watching today.

Until late September:

Pura Vida and

 Aloha!