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Published: September 18th 2011
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When I went to the jungle for a week, I hit right in the middle of the “love” season. It was the wet season and therefor reproduction time. I guess that is why I did not see too many animals, as public displays are prohibited by law and even the animals respect that 😉
I stayed in a simple lodge by a river. Rivers here are the roads of the jungle. My hut was open to all sides of the forest and at night it was pitchblach and the sounds of the Amazon were overwhelming! You just lie under your mosquito net and listen to the sounds and try to figure out if they were love calls or cries of life and death…but in the end, even I had a dream of being pregnant, it really gets to you…
Fortunately I shared my hut just with cockroaches, although 2 beautiful black snakes tried to make it to my room. And who sais that cockroaches are filthy??? Most of mine were in the bathroom and there their favorite spot was my soap box!!!
Every day we made long boat trips through the thick jungle. One day we swam in a giant lagoon
just to learn that very night what was actually swimming below us: Caimans, Anacondas and Piranhas!!! But at this time there is no real danger, for the jungle was “in love” and much too preoccupied with other things than to mess around with tourists. Actually I searched a whole day for an Anaconda love game which must be spectacular. A female gets up to 12 meters long and up to 800 kg heavy. A male just measures 10 meters. So the female Anaconda truly is the queen of the Amazon! When she mates, she connects with no less than 6 males at the same time and stays like that for several days. This picture of a huge ball of snakes with 7 heads served as monster picture for those men who were the first to venture into the Amazon. Anacondas get 80 babies which are born alive and fully ready to leave the nest immediately. Unfortunately most of them do not make it…I was not lucky that day to see the big ball of love 😞 We also did tours on foot through the jungle and saw monkeys, plenty of butterflies, lots of insects and many birds such as the
tucan and the colibri. We even did night trips in boats to watch out for animals: red eyes = caiman, orange = snake, yellow = spider 😊
The lodge was run by a sweet old lady who takes care of many young men and gives them opportunities to work. Among them was a boy of about 6 years old. We called him Mogli because he just fit the environment so perfectly. We would run around in his white underpants (which did not stay white long) and just jump into the river, climb on trees or flirt with the lady tourists, as he very well knew how enchanted they were of him. It was interesting to see how creative he was in finding pass time activities, for he had no other kids to play with. The jungle offers ample resources of entertainment. Once I observed him how he created a picture in the mud, drawing lines with a stick and ornamenting the whole work of art with little stones and leaves. He worked with such patience that it made me wonder about the world I was coming from. Our kids are glued to the computer or TV and totally forgot about
creativity and many times how to socialize. I also talked a lot to our guide Diego who originates from a tribe in the jungle, from the Yasuni area, close to the border to Peru. It was fascinating to learn about his people and that while growing up they go on journeys for days. Sometimes they would just sit and watch and listen. They can straight away tell you from the sounds, which bird, monkey or even insect it is. Diego told me that he was sent away from his tribe by authorities when he was a kid. He was sent to school, to function later on as a spokesperson for his people. Of corse he was bullied a lot: “hey jungle boy, where is your fruit belt?”. The tribes in the jungle do not wear clothes and even today Diego finds it uncomfortable to wear them. The worst time for the Yasuni national park has come now. As a the biggest oil reserve has been found there. It is incredible that we are experiencing something now that we have just seen in the movie theaters: Avatar. Diego has to explain to his people the dangers that may come in the
future…but they just don´t know about oil…Actually the Ecuadorian government is proposing other countries to buy up sections of the forest in order to preserve it and the Ecuador does not need to exploit that region for economical purposes.
The Amazon was a fascinating experience. “Cruel beauty” I call it now. For it is all a fight for survival. Even the plants strangle themselves fighting for water, air and a way to the sun. Everything grows on top of everything and the ground is sprayed with dead corpses. I saw a snake catching a frog. It was caught head first in the fangs of the snake. And even though it pulled with all its might at the throat of the snake with its hands and feet, it slowly but surely disappeared within minutes…
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