Jungle Tour

7.11.2007

"Your back looks like trash worms," our guide told me as we took a speed boat back to the lodge.
"What?"
He spoke louder, "You´re back, it looks like trash worm."
"Oh, um, yeah. Ok."
He thought a minute, "I think you say shrimp. Your back is red like a shrimp."


Our guide had picked us up that morning incredibly hungover. His bleary eyes were bloodshot-red like trash worms. When we went on our first nature tour, he passed out in the back of the boat, sleeping so heavily that branches cut his face leaving mud and bark there. So instead of being told about Amazon wildlife, we watched the guy in the front of the boat fish with a harpoon. Which sounds exciting, except that the harpoon resembled a salad fork attached to a very long pole. And the fish he was bringing in were really small. Our guide had really just brought him along so that he could sleep.

We then returned to the lodge, where we supposed to have a quick lunch followed by fishing for pirhannas and swimming with river dolphins. Our guide proceeded to sleep. For three hours. Griff and I both tried to wake him, at one point shaking him lightly. Finally, two women from the lodge came in and woke him up.

At which point we went fishing for pirhanas. I feel that if I spell pirhanas differently each time I write it, I will eventually stumble upon the correct spelling. On the way out, our guide spotted a squirrel monkey. Squirrel monkeys are roughly the size of, you guessed it, but have human looking faces. Their ears look almost the same as ours. Our guide, Elso, began to shake the bamboo so that the monkey had to jump somewhere else. They kept shaking its every landing point so that the monkey had to leap of the tall thin trees. At one point, the monkey fell and and our driver jumped into the water chasing it. He brought back to our boat a soaked two month old squirrel monkey. The entire ride the little guy kept calling out for his mother. He even jumped out of the boat while we were fishing for pirhanas, which, in case you were wondering, is a pretty bad idea. I felt pretty bad for him.

Did I mention that the battery on our camera died?

It turns out that pirhanas only attack humans if you are bleeding. Otherwise, there is a pretty low rish of getting torn to shreds in tiny little bites. Griff caught one (even though the guy who sold us the package promised that we would catch several). It was pretty small, proving, once again, that size doesn´t matter. The motion of the ocean or what have you. Anyhow, the pirhana had really vicious looking teeth and a series underbite. I suggested braces. We did not get to fish for long. I did not mention that if we might have gotten to fish for longer if, say, our guide had not slept for three hours. We then left to swim with the dolphins.

As it turns out, it was too late to swim with the dolphins. Instead, we watched a beautiful sunset from the boat. In a nearby tree, a huge flock of egrets jockeyed for position.

What made matters worse was that there was another family at the lodge . (When I say lodge think concrete floors, really thin mattresses and mosquito nets with holes in them.) Anyhow, this family was with a different company. They kept talking about how they had caught several pirhanas (which they got to eat for dinner), had seen dolphins 5 feet away, and had all gotten to hold a caima (an alligator looking thing).

That night we took the boat out so that we too could hold a caima. They have both a vagina and a penis, and are able to mate with themselves. But its just not as much fun that way.

*Incidentally, this caima thing may be totally false, as we are finding a growing number of things our guide told us are complete bs.

Have to go, will post more details of our jungle trip later. :)