Life in the Woods, Peruvian Style! Part 2

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So, with all of our supplies prepared and feelings of readiness permeating the humid air, I went back to Yarina for my final night in the city. I woke to a rap at my door at 6 in the morning. Dratted, non-functional alarm clock! I opened it to find Alejandro, and told him to wait just a moment as I gathered up the last tid-bits into my backpack.

Once we got outside, as dawn was becomming day, I felt much more tranquil and at peace about wandering off into the woods. I had sent e-mails to the folks at home as to where I would be and with whom, which were all of the details I had access to. I had prepared myself emotionally to be open to new experiences. I was ready to leave the city. In short, the wind whipping through my hair as we zipped to the port in Alejandro´s motortaxi renewed my excitiment for the new adventure and cleared away the stagnancy I had been feeling over my ALG project.

We reached the port, and thank goodness that the tíos were there, and all of the cargo had already been loaded. We were taking a collective boat from Pucallpa to Junin Pablo. This was a medium sized ¨banana boat¨, but rather than being filled with produce going to market it was filled with people and cargo going to urpriver communities. I followed my pack down the steep incline to the boats (at times I appreciate how I am not permitted to carry my own things, but only when the going is trecherous do I put aside my disdain for this practice); and climbed over luggage, people, and piles of tarp-covered cargo to find a seat next to Tío Lucho. Lucho is definitely the oddball of Alejandro´s family, but assuredly a sweetheart. We spent the better portion of our time waiting for the others and for the boat to be ready playing with the little English he knew and cracking jokes. The cargo piled high in the center of the boat, and the web of hammocks prohibited conversations over distances, so we made friends with a Limeña named Maria sitting next to us. She had a very calm nature, and, despite hitting on me in the same manner as Peruvian men, I liked her right off the bat.

Because Alejandro and Pedro decided to sit on the roof of the boat, which held even more cargo, this was my company for nearly the whole boat ride. And what a ride it was! We set out from Pucallpa, with the ear-splitting puttering of the motor and constant splashes only slightly detracting from the fascinating journey. Out in the Ucayali from Pucallpa were floating gas stations, which in appearance, like many other things from this city, seem post-apocalyptic. We continued up the Ucayali, me positively giggling at the immense width of the river. The boat was slow, and folks more accustomed to the scenery quickly took to napping in the rising heat of the day. Before noon we reached the Tamaya, and continued upriver on this less expansive, but still humbling, body of water. I was happy, had everything I could positively need, and was basking in the fact that all of this water flows to the Amazon and eventually to the sea.

The only stop we made was for lunch, at a little kitchen on the shore. How interesting (or perhaps not, to some) life must be cooking up food and hearing the news from only boteros and passengers, because the family there has no neighbors for quite some distance. The river became smaller and smaller, and eventually started winding back and forth like a snake. I climbed to the top (more awkward crawling over people, cargo, an luggage ensued) to watch the sunset. Then came the twinkles.

I have believed in faeries my whole life. Ask my parents about the endless days I spent constructing homes and soft beds for them in our garden as a child. It is perhaps the central tenent of my spirituality that everything has inherent spirit, even inanimate objects. One world that nicely fits this inherence is ¨faery¨. Anyways, even those who are not into this sort of things would come away from a night on a jungle river here as a believer. First there are the stars. In the utter darkness of night before moonrise, I witnessed not only a clearer array of the constellations of this hemisphere, but they shine in what seems to be a totally different light. Then there are the luciernagas. These are sort of like fireflies, but are incredibly bright and then fade out. They were going completely nuts, shooing around the shore and up in the trees, and I was laughing and laughing just watching their dance from the top of the boat.

What a newbie! Although no one told me specifically to stop getting high off of the faeries, I could tell that it was a novelty, especially for the crew of the boat, to not only have a foreign girl aboard but one that was so completely mistified by the sights. To them the squeeking and creaking the life in the reeds, at times almost drowning out the motor, was probably something they were used to by now. To me, it was an orchestra of insects, and almost like listening to an alien transmission or something. Well, I´m getting a little bit on the woo-woo side. I´ll get back the the story.

We made a stop in Puerto Allegre (not as happy as it sounds, just a little port) and unloaded cargo and passengers. Then I fell asleep despite the absolute ruckus of the night, only awaking to take a very shy whizz off of the side of the boat. I woke at dawn to the wavering of the motor as it pulled into the Communidad Nativa (aka native community aka CCNN) Junin Pablo. Apparently, all of the places with majority of indigenous inhabitants are identified as such, although (of course), there are mestizos who live in them and indigenas who live outside of CCNNs. I said goodbye to Maria, who was travelling onward, and walked a plank to the shore, along with the tíos and all of the Shipibos who had been on the boat. We unloaded our packs and foodstuffs on the grassy bank above (at the high-water level), and immediately were greeted by our compañearos. One teenaged boy and one skinny and slightly spooky-looking man awaited us.

I followed the lead of the tíos as we left all of the supplies and searched for breakfast. This was one of the hottest days I have ever experienced in my life, and our distance from the city and the water as we walked inland was punctuated by an immediate innundation of mosquitos. The town of Junin Pablo is fairly wide open, with houses made of basic materials, some wells, and only one general store. We eventually found a woman with a little place, and she cooked us fried eggs and friend rice. Being in Junin Pablo was a really interesting experience for me, as I was finally around Shipibas and their gorgeous textiles.

As we sat around the table, I learned that the teenage boy was Brayan, and the already-less-scary man was Ricardo (aka Pelau, his nickname) was a nephew of the tíos. We walked back to the water, munching on mangoes in the meanwhile, and encountered more workers and a peki-peki with all of the gear. The new ones were a sturdy guy with a shy smile named Carlos, and a somewhat sour and scowling type named Roger (aka Ácido, how suiting). We were going to spend the night in the house of the family of the cook, who lived accross the lake in Doce de Mayo.

The rest of the day included meeting the cook (a woman in her late twenties named Ireny), her little sister Everly, and pretty much all the men getting plastered in the night. I retreated a little early to both escape the questions of the workers (none of which had been acquainted with a female foreigner before) and the horrifying zankudos (like a mosquito but harder to spy and with a sharper sting).

The next day, we would continue our journey to the forest where I would be living for a month, and where the others would stay until the rainy season.

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