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Published: March 25th 2011
All ashore that's going ashore
We're packed, temporarily dry and ready to go.Sorry, this is a long one and it has almost 100 photos. The internet connection in Iquitos was killing me. We're finally in Lima and leave for the airport in about 5 hours so this will be my only post tonight. This is about the trip to Chipe. I left out the photos of Kusu Chigamai. I'll get them up next. We left Chiclayo for Iquitos Tuesday morning and then we head back to Lima Thursday afternoon. Friday morning we get the 7:00AM flight to Miami and then home to LA. I’ll catch you up on Iquitos in my next post.
Saturday – Jungle time
It’s 12:30. We were supposed to leave for Chipe this morning. About 3 hours ago Greg came in and said hurry up and finish packing we need to go. That was the last we saw of him until a few minutes ago. When you’re in the jungle you might as well throw your watch away. It started raining about 10:00 last night and it has rained most of the time since then (they call it a rain forest for a reason, it’s not just marketing). It’s going to make the boat ride to Chipe a
Imaza to Chipe
We're going to be heading downriver. It should take about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. blast. There have been a lot of kids at the compound the last few days. The district has had meetings here so Pastors and their families have been hanging out together. Kids are the same all over the world. We brought some soccer balls, Frisbees and of course candy. Except for the language you couldn’t tell the difference between these kids playing and kids in Valencia. Of course they aren’t walking around texting their friends and playing video games. We’re stuck until it quits raining. Jose drove us the short distance from New Horizons to Imaza to get to the speedboat. It had been raining off and on all day. Greg and Larry said they wanted to wait for the rain to stop before we would leave. I wondered what difference that would make since no rain now didn’t mean anything 15 minutes from now. The District Superintendant, Jorge Wampputsag, drove the speedboat for the hour and change ride to Chipe. The drive up the Marañon is beautiful. I hope the photos do justice to the scenery. It rained on us about half the way to Chipe but a 9ft length of plastic sheet Larry bought in Imaza served us
River traffic
We passed boats of several different sizes on the way downriver. well as a rain break.
Chipe (Saturday)
We pulled into Chipe around 2:00 and Larry and Greg got the rock star treatment again. The old Mission Station was a short distance from Chipe but was moved to New Horizons better than 25 years ago. The “old timers” in Chipe remember the Doctor very well. Chipe and Chigamai are the closest villages to the original Mission Station location. Larry reminded Greg of all the times they would come up to Chipe for church and the kids would bring their swim suits so they could swim/float home on the river.
All the villages on the Maranon are uphill from the river. Once you arrive you need to become part billy goat to get from the river to the village. Chipe has an exciting bridge you have to cross to get to the village. The children fly up and down the hill as if they were walking on flat land, even as they carried our luggage which weighed almost as much as them. We dropped our luggage in the building where we would sleep. They had constructed mats from bamboo that were about 2 feet off the ground. We brought mosquito
Peky peky
Not sure if I got the spelling right but this is a pecky pecky. If you could hear the engine you would understand the name. If you say peky peky over and over again, real fast you will sound like the engine nets and foam mats. While we went out to greet everyone our nets and foam mats were set up for us. The mosquito nets definitely keep the little bugs away but are mainly to keep the bats off you while you sleep. My last 2 trips I had a ton of bug bites but Steven (having done this 20 times) knows the right stuff to bring. OFF! Insect Repellant Towelettes are worth their weight in gold. I wore long pants and used OFF and didn’t get eaten alive. Greg still has Aguaruna blood so the bugs don’t seem to bother him.
We still needed to get to Kusu Chigamai so we didn’t want to stay too long but they had prepared lunch (you eat well when you travel with the Garmans) so we visited and ate heart of palm soup with chicken, bananas, and of course yuca.
After an hour or so we hopped back in the boat for a short trip up to Kusu Chigamai. Those of you that know Garmans, probably also know of their dog, Kusu. She is named for the river where Greg grew up. The old Mission Station was at the intersection of
Maranon boats
Like I said, lots of differnt kinds of boats. the Kusu and the Maranon. Kusu Chigamai is up the Kusu river 5-10 minutes. The first part of the Kusu is very still. Larry used to take the kids water skiing up and down this part of the river. He told us about the first time an Aguaruna had tried it and didn’t quite cut the turn hard enough and went flying into bushes on the river bank. Fortunately he survived with only scratches. As we got closer to Chigamai you have to run through some rapids. It makes for an exciting ride.
Chigamai is a smaller village than Chipe but they were just as happy to see us. We gathered in the church and visited and took lots of pictures. I remember one woman talking excitedly with Larry. She held on to him with one arm and kept tapping his should with the other. It was kind of like she was so happy to see him and kept tapping him to make sure he was really there. It was late afternoon so we didn’t have a lot of time to spare. You don’t want to travel the river in the dark so we left. A group of 40
Heading down the Maranon
Stream running into the river or so walked us back to the boat and waved as we sped off. They were so happy to see Larry they gave him a chicken as a gift. That poor chicken had to ride all the way back to Imaza with usLarry gave her to Jorge. I think she was happy when she became dinner.
Back in Chipe we prepared for the big slide show. Larry had given me almost 400 photos from his time at the Kusu Station that we showed from my laptop to a projector we brought with. Greg added some photos from Rusty Gray and then some photos he’d taken earlier in the day. They hung a couple of bed sheets and everybody settled in for the show. It was hard to count all the people but there were easily 600 people for the show. You could hear the names called out as they saw images of their parents and grandparents when they were young. The kids enjoyed seeing themselves in the photos Greg shot earlier in the day. We didn’t have a microphone so Greg just used his laser pointer to point out people in the photos and I’d move to the next
Jungle billboards
They are close to having an election. This is a message to vote for a particular candidate slide when he gave me the signal. There are no power lines in the jungle so they brought the village generator over and we ran the projector off the generator. It worked great except for the one time it ran out of gas. It took them just a couple minutes to get it running again. Overall it was a great time and everybody left with smiles on their face.
After a wonderful nights rest in our luxurious accommodations (no bat or bug bites) we woke up the next morning with the roosters. I don’t think anybody in the jungle uses an alarm clock. The second a rooster sees the slightest bit of sunshine, they make sure everybody knows it. We had a big breakfast that included guinea pig, chicken, bananas, yuca (of course), heart of palm soup, and ants. Yes I said ants. I didn’t have to eat a grub worm this time but we had pan fried ants. Apparently there is a monster ant that only comes out once a year in late March/early April. Lucky us it was that time of year. Greg was very excited when they told him ants were on the menu. He raved
Maranon
Now THIS is the jungle about how delicious they were. I understand the secret to Greg and Leslie’s marriage, Greg doesn’t have functioning taste buds. They weren’t bad, I ate several, but they didn’t have a ton of flavor. They were crunchy. I’d like to understand the thought process that went through the person that pan fried these first.
We had a very nice service after breakfast. The Amazing Greg (got to work on his stage name) was able to stretch his 15 minutes of magic and message into 40 minutes. Made me feel like I was at home 😊 The offering was very interesting. There were some coins, a few bills (4 to be exact), an egg, some yuca, and some bananas. They don’t have a lot to give but they give generously. They also have a big board on the side wall of the church that lists every church member and how much they have tithed this year. Just a warning to you NewNaz members, Greg was very interested in that board.
Shortly after church we gathered our belongings, less some candy and soccer balls left for the kids, and headed back to the river. We had plenty of time to
Maranon
You can see there is not much river bank along the Maranon. Villages pop up where they can access the river. stop and visit in Numpatkaim as we went back uprive to Imaza. We also picked up a couple passengers. One girl needed a ride to Numpatkaim and the other girl was going all the way to Chiclayo so she would be with us until we docked back at Imaza. We had the boat packed and everybody was seated when they pulled the cord on the motor. Cough, cough. Then it started and died. Three or four attempts and then Greg and Jorge take the cover off the motor. Maybe it’s the carburetor, maybe it’s the fuel line, maybe it’s the idle…. Estaban (an old friend of Greg’s) comes down and the three of them (Greg, Jorge and Estaban) start taking the motor apart. After 15 minutes of baking in the sun Larry, Steve and I head back up the hill. Three hours later we hear the engine start up and keep running. By this time we’ve been fed again, had coconut milk from the shell (and then ate the coconut meat) and Larry had gone searching for another motor. Apparently there was another motor at the other end of the village that was going to be loaned to us. We
Maranon
We saw several villages between Imaza and Chipe all piled back in and took off. We needed to get to Bagua by 8:00 so we didn’t have a lot of time to spare. We still stopped in Numpatkaim but we stayed down at the water. 20-30 people came down to see Greg and Larry. Just before we left Numpatkaim we could see the rain coming towards us. We drove the boat through a heavy rain for a good half hour before it finally cleared up. I learned Larry hates to have wet feet. Look for the photo.
We made it back to Imaza wet but with barely enough time to hire a car to get us to Bagua before 8:00. We stopped at Jose and Miria’s house to pick up a couple bags we left with them and grabbed some sodas and water. I’m pretty sure our driver was using a rented car because he took off through the jungle. We stopped at one more village (Nazaret I think) just off the road on our way back. The driver moved us along at a good but slightly scary pace and got us back to the Emperador Hotel in Bagua at 7:45. Greg, Larry and Steve hurried to
Maranon village
Another Nazarene church. The yellow sign says who we are but the 3 crosses are the distinctive sign for Nazarene churches in this area shower and drop off bags and got to church at a little after 8:00. I moved slower than that and made it a little after nine. Larry preached what seemed like a good sermon (Spanish is not my thing) and then Greg got to dedicate a baby. I’m not sure what the mother thought as Greg carried her new baby through the crowd. She didn’t seem too nervous. The Amazing Greg made another appearance and one of his tricks was providing a little more money for their building fund. The congregation was very appreciative and even before they knew about the money made special gifts for Larry, Greg and Steve. I got a me-to gift just for hanging out with the right crowd. I also got to meet the woman Addie and Larry have tried to get me to marry. I politely declined.
The service went until just before 11:00 PM and we hadn’t eaten since about noon. Once again Manual and Hilda had us for dinner. I’m still amazed Greg was functioning at such a late hour. The next morning (Monday) we head back to Chiclayo by bus. We had a nice dinner with Ernesto Losano and his
Maranon clouds rolling in
It's never a good sign when you are riding into clouds this low. We got rain for about half the ride down. You won't see any pictures of it because nobody wanted to risk their camera for the shot. family. The dinner was at one of the houses at the seminary (the brother of Ernesto’s wife house) and afterwards looked at 3 large photo albums that had the history of the Nazarene church in Peru. They are very proud of their Nazarene heritage.
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Lois
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I like your profile photo!