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Published: August 10th 2008
They´re waiting...
I think vultures are the national bird. They´re not, but they are everywhere. You can just see the mounds of trash everywhere.I´ll put this out in installments since I don´t seem to have time to sit down and write it all out at once... Written yesterday but published today:
What an interesting 4 days... Just got back today to Iquitos -- still in the Amazon, but it´s a pretty developed city (especially compared to what we just came from). At my last writing, I was sitting in an internet cafe much like this one (a little seedier and without air conditioning) on the other side of town. I met the guys out for some drinks and had a nice relaxing night in the square by the river. The next morning we took a bus about 2 hours outside the "city" to Nauta -- the farthest major city that you can drive to towards where we were going. Up until very recently there was no road, and even that would not have been possible. Thanks to probably the oil companies (humanitarian projects in exchange for mining the rainforest for recently-discovered oil). It was a decent ride out through the hills to the town. We were running late so no time for lunch, just tasty sweet bread bought on the streets. We
The market
At the beginning of the day, when we were nice and clean and dry. boarded the little boats there and took off up the river about 2 hours (down-river) to the next main village we would call home for a few days, Jenaro Herrera. That´s where the fun began. We were a group of about 30 by that point, with lots of supplies. We had 3 little boats just barely out of the water (wait until you see pictures...). Not a bad ride though for what it was. Unfortunately, on all of our trips, we never made it to the Amazon river. Just tributaries. Out there, the river is a pretty big deal. There are no roads. The river is the only source of transportation. Many local people carve canoes out of trees, some even stick a motor on the back of that! We began the trek downriver, I on the slowest of the boats. About 30-60minutes away from our destination, we ran out of gas. Can you believe it?! It was already starting to get dark, and being on the river at night is dangerous because there is a lot of stuff floating in the river that will mess up a boat engine for sure (mostly sticks and logs and stuff, not as
Mystery Meat
I can´t believe anyone would want to eat some of this stuff... I tried to make a nice composition of a disgusting picture. haha much trash). Fortunately, we happened to stop by someone who had a boat with some gas. However, instead of selling us some gas, he insisted on towing us (so he could charge more) which meant we were going at a snail´s pace. He wanted to charge us 200 soles (about $75) but since that was ridiculous, our local guide (who works for the Navy research station and was invaluable!) talked him to 100 soles, which is still about a month´s wages out there. So about an hour into our ridiculously slow trip, one of the other boats finally came back for us (they had gotten there, unloaded the stuff, and sat around long enough to wonder where we were). There are cell phones in Iquitos, but past that not much works without a satellite. Once the other boat caught us we transferred some gas and off we went. The one thing I will say though, is that I have never seen the sky so clearly. Out on the river, completely away from ANYTHING, I could see a million stars, and even the Milky Way (or some dust cloud -- I was never that good with astronomy). Even saw some shooting
The village
You can see the river in the background, and the little rickety wooden walkway. I wish I had a better shot of the sewer running by, but everyone´s probably grateful that I don´t. :) stars. Really incredible!
That night we had a late dinner of fried fish and rice, and found our lodging. It was very much like summer camp. The cabins were screened in, but still filled with mosquitos (ours not as bad as others). Some of the others had cockroaches and beetles the size of small animals. Really gross... Never think you have it bad until you have cockroaches like that running across your bed. (About now I´m sure my cousin Meem is screaming and about to throw up....) None of the bathrooms had toilet seats (weird) and each smelled faintly of stale river water (and by morning, of worse). It´s another of those places that you can´t flush the toilet paper, so it collects in the little trashcan... from 6 people. For anyone who hasn´t travelled to a developing country, you´d be surprised at the little things that do not yet have infrastructure. The sewage goes into a septic tank under the buildings and can´t accommodate toilet paper (some places it just runs out into the water). The water for the shower and sinks comes from a water tower, but definitely not clean. It was freezing cold and sometimes was
The village
I wish this came out a little less blurry. The houses on stilts. a little sandy. ew... Now that I´ve described the summer camp, on to that fateful first night.
We had been in country about 2 days so far, some of the group had been there longer. That night, the sickness began. One by one people started coming down with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and a combination of the above. I thought I would escape, but in the middle of the night I was blessed with all the above. I started feeling better by morning (as did many) and pushed on for our first day of clinic. Others, however, did not. We left 5 people behind because they were just too sick to participate. Though I was feeling better by morning, it would be short-lived. We had all eaten at the buffet the night before, and weren´t sure the culprit, but I think now we´re leaning toward a virus picked up from the buffet (as opposed to the favorite diagnosis of food poisoning or bacteria that we all like to blame it on when traveling). I still suspect the grubby kid fingers from the bread we ate at Nauta while waiting for the boat to the village.
But the fun wasn´t
Need a bathroom?
I think that´s what this was. It was like a stereotypical radioactive river in the movies. Thick goupy bubbles coming to the surface and everything. Again, it didn´t smell (though it looks like it should). Check out the chickens running around the river of sewer. Does THAT taste like chicken? I thought one was gonna drink from it and I about lost it. over yet... (to the end the suspense, suffice it to say that I´m ok now)
I forgot the whole morning of this day! This is why I should put pics in while I write I guess -- it reminds me. Anyway, when we got up, we actually did a few things before taking the bus to Nauta about noon. First, we went to Belen, a little town near Iquitos (like a suburb I think). We wandered through the market, which was almost entirely for locals, not many gringos around. It was mostly food, with the rare non-food booth sprinkled throughout. Lots of fish, some chicken, turtle eggs, exotic fruit, and some other really weird stuff. We went through a meat market building which smelled faintly of dead animals with a light cloud of flies -- and that was at 9 in the morning! I can´t even begin to imagine what that place must smell like by the end of the day, with the sun beating down. ewwww
The main point of this trip was to see how the local people lived, and to tour their hospital. The village there was very different, unlike any I had seen before.
Here fishie fishie fishie...
As gross as it seems, it´s probably the freshest fish you could have (minus the whole part of sitting on ice until you buy it...) I think this was actually the fish we had at the camp in Amazon... All of the houses were up on stilts, despite dry ground, dirt, and grass underneath. It´s near enough to the river, that during the rainy season, the water comes up to the actual floor of the houses! I can´t believe it since they´re up a good 10-12 feet. The first thing that hit us as we were walking down from the market to the housing area was the horrendous trash/sewer system. You walk down this little rickety path of wood blocks with fairly generous gutters of muck bubbling beside you on both sides, with trash, feces, and god knows what else. Really really nasty. Surprisingly, it didn´t smell very bad though. Once we got down to the houses, there were chickens running everywhere. Lots of barefoot kids and random people hanging out. Their houses are really just one room as far as I could tell. No running water. They had running water in the market, so people could get water from up there, but just as many were coming back from the river with buckets of water (a 1km walk or so during the dry season).
The hospital was an interesting visit. Lots of open windows, open air, and
Pimientos
I loved the compositions there. Markets seem to be good places to take cool pictures. When I get back I´ll probably crop this to something really cool looking. Those little ones in the foreground are probably the hottest peppers you´ll ever have in your life. I´m sure the rest aren´t far behind... warm. They had different wards, much like in the states. We started in the peds ward and saw this little kid who was brought in from outside the town with advanced tuberculosis (very common worldwide), contracted from his parents who I think are now dead. There´s no telling, but looks like it had been in his brain for a while and he was permanently brain damaged from it, not a very good prognosis in a developing country with no family. We moved to the adult ward and saw a few patients with some of the more interesting diseases we had been learning about (a big cutaneous leischmaniasis ulcer for anyone medical, in a pt with TB and HIV. Hmmmm what to treat first... believe it or not they were treating her cutaneous leish first! Crazy...) After our hospital tour, we headed out in mototaxis back to the hotel, then off to the bus.
By the way, apparently Patch Adams (the REAL Patch Adams) was in Iquitos and Belen the exact same time we were there! I didn´t see it, but others said they saw lots of kids walking around with clown props. Supposedly he goes there a lot. They
Fishies
That must have been the biggest fish you could imagine.... were painting buildings... making a difference one brick at a time.
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MEEM
non-member comment
OMG!!!!!!!!
I WAS DIEING READING THE PART WITH THE BUGS I STARTING SHIFTING AROUND IN MY SEAT, GETTING ITCHY, THEN I READ ON AND I WAS PISSING MY PANTS THAT YOU KNEW I WOULD BE DOING THAT. I COULD NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS NOR FOR A MILLION DOLLARS DO WHAT YOU DO. I AM STILL ITCHY THINKING ABOUT THOSE FLIPPING ROACHES ON THE BED.......EWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!