Moar jungle-posting en route to a cloudy Lima

Whew! Paolo, Raul's son, is in charge of all tour-based Internet stuff as well as general coordination and logistics, which typically includes airport transfers. His English is good and he's cute, too. Unfortunately, he's not particularly punctual, which has been a little stressful in terms of making our flights. This morning was no exception, but he stayed with us up to security to make sure we made it. All is well, in other words, and we are en route to Lima.

I'm not sure whether it's better to catch us up on previous adventures or to write about recent things...oh well. Let's return to The Jungle.

Emily has given you an idea about what our jungle days were like. Animals are SMART and thus less active in the heat of the day, so we would arise EXTREMELY EARLY for the more intense daily activity, relax during the hottest part of the day, and then venture out again in the afternoon/evening. Day 1, our whole group napped after lunch; we were all wiped from our 5-hour trip to the lake.

We actually started that morning by climbing an observation tower that rose about to the top of most of the trees, from which we could see toucans flying around, among several other birds. I wish I remembered exactly how tall it was, besides "extremely"; one of our group bailed halfway up. I'm *really* glad we did that first, before it really heated up, because the top was in full glare of the sun and it would have been pretty brutal.

Anyway, you've seen pictures of some of what we saw over the course of the day. Tarantulas are actually nocturnal; Pedro teased a couple out of their dens with a long piece of grass. Side note: once you notice the tarantula dens, you also start noticing all sorts of other holes in the ground/trees/whatever. WTF KIND OF HORRIBLE THING LIVES IN THEM?

I also enjoyed learning about some of the palm trees, like the "walking palm" so-called because it sprouts roots that grow down towards the ground and can actually move several feet over the course of its lifetime (seeking the sun through the canopy), and the "bisexual palm" which has a big hump in the middle when it's mature (like a pregnant woman) but whose growing roots look EXACTLY LIKE PENISES when it's young.

Somehow, penises came up a lot.

Pedro also covered medicinal uses of various plants, which really means he covered various horrible tropical diseases, like a form of mosquito-borne leprosy (dhshsbfnedjsblaargh). One exception was a plant that the local shamans use to treat impotence, which involved a leaf-based demonstration that I captured on video, that I will post in the states. It's worth the wait, I promise.

Speaking of horrible diseases: my faith in the future of humanity was strongly buttressed by two extremely adorable British children (maybe 8 and 10?) who had stayed (with their parents obvs) at the Tambopata Research Center farther up the river for some time before stopping at our lodge on the way back. They were dutifully journaling their stay, including and especially all the different animals they saw, and introduced themselves to our group by enthusiastically and thoroughly describing to the British woman in our group (the one who was Not Really Into the jungle) all the different and horrible parasites one can contract in the Amazon.

They were very cute.

In the afternoon of day 1, we took a quick trip across the Tambopata river (stopping for a well-deserved swim. The heat was tolerable, but I definitely sweat my sensor clear off over the course of our stay) to a local fruit farm, where Emily figured out the tomato thing and Pedro tricked various members of our party into consuming chiles of increasing hotness. I demurred, mostly because while in Pisac I *licked* a garnish that looked for all the world like a benign red pepper and which numbed my lips for like a half-hour. We did *not* try a chile called "monkey's penis", which is hotter than the ones at the farm, but which I bring up because it includes the word "penis." The most interesting fruit we encountered was something that smelled *exactly* like very very very frankly unpleasantly smelly French cheese.

That evening, while Emily went to bed early, I went on a caiman-spotting expedition with my group (you find them by shining a flashlight from a boat and looking for their red eyes reflecting back). I learned that THE AMAZON AT NIGHT IS TERRIFYING. Example horrible nighttime animals include: scorpions, at least three types of which WE SAW; spiders of varying degrees of toxicity, at least three types of which WE SAW, some of which were CARRYING BABY SPIDERS ON THEIR BACKS; and ants, the lethality of which was never specified explicitly but which includes at least one variety (THAT WE SAW) that we were ABSOLUTELY not to step on despite being much much larger than they. We saw similar ants the next day (that we had to jump over) but as they were smaller than the nighttime ants and present during the day this can only mean that there are at least two types of horrible swarming death-inducing ants in the jungle, and likely many more. I did like the leaf-carrying ants, which were busy carrying leaves in a long line across and then along the walking path and up a vine over the hill, with another line just to the right returning for more.

In addition to several caimans (the ostensible purpose of our nighttime journey) we also saw a deer, which was by far the most benign creature we've encountered in Peru so far. Additionally, and pleasantly, while we were busy examining a horrible spider, Pedro noticed some droppings, and looked up with his flashlight to reveal two very fat and colorful birds, orange and blue maybe, asleep not 8 feet above us, who seemed a bit grumpy at the disturbance of the light. Seemed legitimate to me.

The only creatures missing after day one were macaws (which we only saw flying at a distance overhead), monkeys, and snakes. We never saw any snakes, which is good, given how Em feels about them, but the next day was full of macaws and monkeys. We got up early to trek to a macaw clay lick, as shown in the pictures we posted yesterday. That was possibly the highlight of our stay for me. The monkeys were spotted while on the way to various other places; I was delighted. I spent the free time in the afternoon trying to catch the oropendulas in flight; they make these funny hanging nests, and had colonized the trees in front of the lodge. They're pretty when they fly because you can see the yellow under feathers, or whatever they're called. Brady would know. I'm not sure I succeeded with the action shots, being a somewhat spastic photographer. I did get to see them quite close, however, and watch the males tip over when they make their funny calls, which sound like water dropping into a bucket.

(they are also noisy in the morning, like the parrots and HOLY HELL THE HOWLER MONKEY which sounds like a low-grade jet engine, roughly.)

We didn't see much at the mammal clay lick besides a bit of a scuffle between a raptor and several wild turkeys (the turkeys won. They should give tips to the macaws), except that all of a sudden Pedro ran into the blind from where he had been scanning the jungle below, grabbed the telescope, and took off like a shot, whispering with some urgency "everyone come quietly now!" He had spotted a harpy eagle, the second largest eagle in the world, which is apparently a less common sight in that part of the jungle than a jaguar. Harpies have giant claws that they use to snatch large prey (caimans, monkeys), carry them to great heights, and then DROP them. They then fly down to eat them. Very morbid. Anyway Pedro was delighted, geeked out super hard, and expressed hope that this was a nesting female, meaning he might see her again in the future. On the way back into the lodge he definitely received props from other guides for his sighting, which he described to us as "very very lucky and special and beautiful."

The next day we hopped back on the boat to go back to Puerto Maldonado, promising to share pictures with the rest of the group, and headed back to the airport. It was overcast and thus comfy for boat travel, with a slight pause in the middle to rescue a hat that blew off a passenger's head into the river (we applauded our boat driver's skill). The ride back is much quicker anyway, since it goes downstream instead of up. We were sad to leave and I'd love to go back and stay longer. Next year, maybe? :-)

See, one short internal flight and I'm almost caught up, short of pictures/video! Sorry for the length, mostly I've just been killing time on the flight...