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Published: September 8th 2007
Jungle Massive
You may wonder what we did in the jungle for all this time. Well, let me tell you..."There are 200 species of snake in our jungle, 4 of them are deadly. We don´t stock any anti venom in our lodge and if you are bitten by a bushmaster you have 4 hours to get it administered. I have to warn you now, that you won´t get it in time and you will most probably die." You gotta love these introductionary pep talks! Nothing like putting the mind at rest. Yes, we are in the jungle baby, and as Axl Rose once howled "we´re gonna die!" OK so melodramatics over, there is actually no (known) history of anyone being killed by a deadly snake in this part of the forest, so we were in relatively safe hands.
This part of the adventure finds us in the Tambopata Reserve in the Peruvian section of the Amazon Basin Rainforest. To get a bit of a break from the norm, we have come to the Picoflor Research Lodge to help out for a week and experience what it is like to live deep in the jungle. Picoflor have been granted a concession of 24 square km of rainforest by the Peruvian government, and in return they protect it from the threats
of illegal loggers and provide kms of trails to allow guests to explore. Rather than stay as a tourist would, guests visit for between a week and 10 days and give up three hours of their time every day to help out in the lodge or the concession itself. Our daily tasks mainly involved using machetes and I have to say we were both dab hands with them by the end of the week. We demonstrated this in style, by totally clearing a small patch of forest to create a place for the Picaflor chickens to run around in. Yes kids, knife wielding IS fun!
Life in the rainforest really was an experience. The nearest town, Puerto Maldonado, is 75km away ... by boat, a boat that takes about 8 hours. There is no landline and no cellular reception, in fact the only means of communication with anything is either shouting or a VHF radio. Usually about as effective as each other. Occasionally a poor radio controller´s voice would be heard screaming "Picoflor, Picoflor!" over the crackly airwaves as someone from the city tried to establish contact, but mainly it was just us alone in the jungle. Picoflor also
We weilded machetes and saws
And wore our socks outside of our trousers has no electricity or running water. There are solar panels that provide enough for a few lights to run after dark and all water to drink, cook and wash with is hand pumped from a natural well 25 meters underground. Yes, hand pumped. Everyday at 4pm, Pico, the man of the house would summon all guests to the water pump and it was 50 pumps each on rotation until we had filled the tank. After 4 goes of 50 it started getting pretty tough. The daily water pumping is probably the only part we were pleased to see the back of! Although it did make you think a lot about how much water you used, as for every drop wasted it would be us sweating to replace it the next day.
Spending that much time living in the jungle was a truly incredible experience. The wealth of wildlife that we encountered was fantastic. You really can´t get enough of seeing
Macaws fly over head. Everyday we were given the opportunity to walk one of the many jungle trails and doing this we saw all sorts. This included the
King Vulture,
Parakeets, a Red-Necked Woodpecker,
Hummingbirds,
Agoutis,
Capuchin Monkeys,
Tamarin Monkeys, a family
We pumped water
And still wore our socks outside of our trousers of Tarantulas and plenty of weird and wonderful critters. I did also get a sighting of a Toucanet, which is part of the Toucan family. There were five of them high in the trees, and as good as they looked, I want a proper Toco Toucan and a photo of it!
It wasn´t just what we saw, it was also what we heard. Waking in the morning to the the sounds of the birds and going to sleep listening to the sounds of the frogs is a memory that will stay with us for a long while. Sometimes you could walk and see nothing, but the sheer volume of noise told you that there was plenty out there hiding. Particular favourites were the droplet sounding
Oropendola, the beetle that sounded like it was sharpening a pair of knives, and at night, the noisy bamboo rat.
Last and by no means least a special mention must go to Ron, Picoflor´s semi adopted
Capybara. Capybaras are the worlds largest rodent. They are kind of like a giant rat with webbed feet and can grow to be up to 65kgs - yes that is one heavy rat! Ron was found abandoned
by his parents 3 months ago and Lauren and Pico helped rear him. He still spends most of his time in the wild playing on his Atari (you would know what I mean if you heard him) but does like to pop into the house toward the end of the day to munch on some watermelon and say hi to the guests. Ron was pretty big for 3 months old, and you definately noticed him when he decided to jump into the hammock with you. He also still liked a suckle, so you would find yourself with a finger inside his mouth for a prolonged period of time as he nodded out with the sheer bliss.
Spanish Word of the Week: Ronsoco - Spanish for Capybara and the reason for our new friend Ron´s very English name
This Week Likes: *Being so far from a town you have to rely on yourselves for some baking. This meant fresh baked bread daily and homemade cakes (make with eggs from the chickens).
*The education we received from Lauren (the lady of the house) was first class, she taught us all sorts about the jungle. Particular favourite is
the tree, which after years of having vines grow all over it, evolved to shed its bark to get rid of them.
*The 25k walk to survey the concession boundary and check for logging activity. After the Inka trail it felt like a walk in the park!
This Weeks Dislikes: *Being so close to nature has it´s downside and that is the bugs. We aren´t just talking mosquitoes here, but pesky sandflies that suck blood, wasps and bees that are attracted to sweat (and there is a fair bit about in these temperatures) and bullet ants that bite, very hard. In fact, they are so called because a bite is supposed to feel like being shot. Having being bitten by one twice as it fell off a leaf and down my tshirt I have to say that that description is a little over the top, but it was ridiculously painful. We finished the week covered in the results of these little blighters, although as usual, M got it far worse than I did.
* For the first part of the week Lauren had some family staying at the lodge and that included 3 teenage boys. As nice
We made lemonade
We randomly found a lemon tree in the jungle! as they all were, it did mean at times the peace of the jungle was ruined by constant bickering caused by the oldest of the three picking on his two brothers! This also lead to some amusing moments during dinner when Mum was heard telling the boys to get their elbows off the table, and Marissa and I would surreptitiously slide ours off too.
* The jungle is not a great place for taking pictures. It´s not just that the animals are up in the tree tops and don´t hang around for long, but due to the thick canopy, the light is terrible. As a result, we didn´t get much of chance to top up the wildlife section of our album.
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anonymous
non-member comment
Machetes!
You lucky gits, our guide didn't let us near the machetes. I don't think he trusted us not to cut off our own legs.