Camping

Camping was fun. The INPA campground was more developed than we expected; it had decent bathrooms, and a big shelter that we could hold meetings under, and even had chairs and tables. They had told us that they had foam pads of some kind; we expected some kind of foam camping pads such as one might take backpacking, but they turned out to be two-inch-thick gymnasium-style pads; I slept on one of those, with a mosquito net hung over me. I got bitten up a lot at Juma Lodge, mostly, I think, on the canoe rides around dusk; I should've tucked my pants into my socks. So I'm trying to be more careful now. Everybody has lots of bites, and nobody in the group has gotten a tropical disease yet, so I think the risk is low at present. Mostly we're just all very itchy.
The campground was right on a beach that had a little sand above water even now, at the high water mark; I gather it has stunning expanses of white sand at low water. It was pretty scenic, but not nearly as remote as we expected; there was a local village a stone's throw away across a small side river, and we heard music from them until fairly late at night; boats were also putt-putting by all through the evening and the next morning. It was sort of catered camping, as it turned out. Dr. Ouverney had arranged for food to be delivered to us for lunch and dinner, so we had barbecued chicken, rice, fish (your choice of head or tail, I had one of each), and so forth. Simple food, but tasty, and much easier than trying to cook for twenty people. I did only a little birdwatching; kiskadees and tropical kingbirds, but mostly amazing numbers of vultures, traveling in flocks (as in the picture at right, but I don´t know how visible they are) or sitting hunchbacked in trees. We all wondered where there is enough carrion to sustain such a huge population of vultures!
The morning of the 10th we went for a fairly long hike through rainforest a short boat ride away from the campsite. We started more or less in somebody's back yard, and the land was almost completely cleared; then we reached the forest edge, and were in thick, dense secondary forest (you can see how crowded it is in the photo, and how all the trees are thin and young; primary forest is not like that). We hiked perhaps a mile or so to a small waterfall in a pretty little natural clearing, and hiked back on the same trail. It was one of the nicer hikes I've done in the Amazon, actually; it was a good trail, and there was lots to see. Strange fungi were everywhere, in all sorts of colors and sizes and shapes. Beautiful butterflies flitted about, almost never landing for more than an instant. A completely bizarre spider, whose body was flattened like a big tick, managed a complex web next to the trail. A large weevil stood motionless on a tree trunk.

A strange spiky pupa case hung from a thread, waving in the little breezes. Life is simply everywhere in the rain forest; if you're walking, it just looks like green vegetation everywhere, but if you stop and take a minute or two, you start to see things everywhere you look. Tiny spiders spin webs inside the curling ends of climbing vines. Ants are everywhere, busily transporting things and defending their territories. We saw jaguar scat on the trail, full of fur from some animal it had eaten. Birds call all around you, and you occasionally see flashes of motion in the corner of your eye as they flit from branch to branch. But the life is all either tiny or hidden; you have to look carefully to see it.
Later that day we went to visit an indigenous group near the campsite. We were quite skeptical about it at first; we got there by walking around a trail past shanties with TV antennas playing American music. But it turned out to be quite a remarkable experience. They performed perhaps four or five traditional dances for us, playing a wide variety of traditional instruments (generally one instrument per dance, which seemed to be their custom; the instrument is associated with the dance, it appeared). It was, of course, a performance for tourists, but it also seemed important to them. The women danced with their children on their hips, and the older children were playing instruments and participating; they were being raised within their traditional culture, and they clearly knew the songs well and enjoyed performing them. So it was, of course, motivated by a desire for tourist money (they took donations and sold various handmade products at the end of the performance), but at the same time it felt surprisingly genuine and authentic -- much more so than the indigenous visit we had done through Juma Lodge, although that was neat in its way too.
I've been reading a book my mother lent me, One River by Wade Davis, and this visit was interesting from that perspective. The leader of the group said that they were closely related to indigenous groups from Colombia, and had migrated southward in recent times, so they may be similar to the Colombian groups discussed by Davis. The men all had a spray of leaves tied around their waists; I wonder whether those might be connected, in a historical sense, to a tradition of coca-chewing. I don't think they were coca leaves, and I saw no evidence of chewing in this group, but perhaps its symbolic of a past tradition, who knows. Wild speculation. Dr. Ouverney, who has spent a lot of time living with indigenous groups and once took ayahuasca, said that he thought one of the dances they performed for us might have been connected to a traditional ayahuasca ceremony. Many of the other things the chief said reminded me of things I had just read in Davis's book; it was really fascinating.
I took some video of the dances, but the files are much too large to upload from here; the internet connection here is about modem speed. I'll do something with them once I'm back home; watch this blog even after I'm back, as I may post some miscellaneous extras like that.

A dangerous place

One of the students on the trip, Jonathan, got mugged on Friday, while I was at Juma with Bill and Vida. He had been going to the internet cafe with his laptop regularly, and apparently two young men there noticed that and decided to waylay him, at gunpoint, soon after he came out onto the street. The people at the internet cafe noticed the commotion, rounded up a car, went after the bandits, pretended to be the police, and got them to drop Jonathan's backpack with his laptop in it. It all ended without bloodshed, and Jonathan got his laptop back; but apparently shots got fired at one point, in the midst of the commotion, and it has got everybody frightened. We have been staying in this neighborhood for a long time now, and keeping a pretty high profile, and Dr. Ouverney thinks we have just called too much attention to ourselves and have become targets. We need to be more careful.
We leave today at 3:15 PM -- quite late! -- to camp at the INPA campsite on the Rio Negro. I'm glad for the late departure time; this morning I need to go to the internet cafe and sign up for my fall classes! I'll be taking physics 52 (thermodynamics and optics), botany 165 (plant communities of California), biology 124 (mammalian physiology) and biology 126 (mammalian physiology lab), I think. My next-to-last semester!

Sorry about the avalanche

Well, that´s it for now. Sorry about all those posts at once! They´re probably quite boring, too, unless you´re a birdwatcher (or maybe even if you are a birdwatcher :->). Anyhow, tomorrow morning the group is supposed to go camping on the Rio Negro for one or two nights, so I´ll probably post another avalanche later in the week. Right now I´m heading back to the pousada to relax before dinner, maybe do some laundry, maybe go to the supermarket...

Back in Manaus

Back at the pousada in Manaus. The drive back had some lovely birdwatching. Among various birds I had seen before, I saw some new ones: a male anhinga (like a cormorant) spreading its wings on a bare branch, a great egret that caught a large fish and flew off with it in its bill as we watched, two capped herons (I think, but I didn't get a really good look at either), several cocoi herons, a rufescent tiger-heron, and a roadside hawk (that's its name, and it was indeed by the roadside). If we had taken the road at a slower pace, I'm pretty sure I would have seen another dozen species or more. The birding here is really amazing; I've never been an avid birder, but it's hard not to get pulled into it in a place like this! Sorry I didn't get any bird photos for the blog, but you can look them all up on Google anyway. :->
Anyhow, now I'm in my room with the air conditioning running, which is lovely. I'm looking forward to taking a shower this evening and coming out into a cool, dry room instead of the steam bath that was the Juma area. I've felt pretty physically comfortable this whole trip; it hasn't been as hot as I expected it to be. But it was starting to wear me down at Juma.
Now I just need to get my act together, and then I'll go off to the internet cafe and spend a couple of hours posting all this babbling so you can all read it!

Boto and caimans

Woke up early to pack before breakfast, but the generator is off, so I have no light. So I'll write up what we did yesterday afternoon, instead. We went out in the "canoe" for more than five hours, from a little after three until almost 8:30. By the time we got back, our rear ends were protesting loudly about the wooden seats!
We started out by going to a spot good for seeing boto, the pink Amazon river dolphins. Last time had been unsuccessful, but this time was a roaring success. First we found a mother with a baby, and watched them surface a few times, but they soon vanished on us; probably the mother didn't like people being so close. Then we found a spot where two different groups of boto were swimming, and we saw them surface repeatedly. They were in a playful mood; they blew bubbles under our boat several times, and they surfaced in formation and in rapid succession, letting us see them well. This is somewhat unusual behavior for the usually secretive boto, although by no means unheard of. We all got a good look at their color, which is unusual and hard to describe. Vida called it a "dusty rose," but I think they are redder and darker than that. Perhaps similar to the color of the inside of a guava. They were quite beautiful.
Then we tooled around looking for wildlife, and mostly found only birds. We saw a paradise jacamar again, much more clearly than the first time; they are quite beautiful, with a very long tail and a white collar on green, blue and brown plumage. Both yellow-billed terns and large-billed terns were flying in large numbers, occasionally plunging into the water at high speed to catch things. Egrets were flying in formation in large numbers, but it was difficult to identify which species; from that behavior alone, most likely they were cattle egrets again, but it looked like they had black legs. Who knows. We saw several snail kites near nightfall, both flying and perched, and a yellow-headed caracara, a type of falcon, in a high tree at the water's edge. I managed to pin down the dove/pigeon we've been seeing as a ruddy pigeon, having finally gotten a really good look at one. We saw our first greater ani fly and land, which was quite exciting -- they are very large, almost half a meter long, with dark iridescent green and blue plumage. A couple of black birds seen in silhouette were confidently identified as black-fronted nunbirds by our guide, who was incredibly good; he quickly identified everything we saw without the use of binoculars, often by call as well as appearance, and he was never wrong in all the instances where I was able to check him. Still, perhaps I won't count the nunbirds, since I wouldn't have been able to identify them from what I saw of them. We saw a pair of toucans fly across the river again, but again, they vanished before we could even get binoculars on them. They're incredibly hard to get a good look at. Finally, several tropical kingbirds were in trees near the water.
After the sun set over the water, which was beautiful to watch as always, we went looking for caimans. Our guide stood at the front of the boat and rapidly passed his flashlight along the shoreline, watching for the reflection of the light from a caiman's eyes. He found several that wisely scooted away when our boat approached, so we would plunge into the reeds near the shore and have to laboriously back out into the open water again. The reeds in some places had little glow-worms phosphorescing near the water's surface, which was interesting to see. At one point I saw the flashlight's reflection from a caiman's eyes, at another, a flash of motion as a cayman dove into the water to evade capture. Finally our guide was successful in catching a small caiman, a baby perhaps a half a meter long, by lying down in the front of the boat and scooping up the caiman as the boat plunged into the reeds next to it. It didn't struggle at all, interestingly, but just hung limply in his hand, seemingly patiently awaiting its release ("oh, god, this guy again"). The skin on its belly was very soft and pliable, while its back was very hard and armored. After a couple of minutes he released it back into the water. It hung motionless for just a moment, then disappeared with a flick of its tail.
The boat ride back was an adventure in itself. It was quite dark, with only a crescent moon faintly illuminating the landscape, and we traveled for more than an hour to get back to the lodge. As far as any of us could tell, it all looked the same in every direction: moonlit water followed by dark trees. But our guide unhesitatingly directed the boat, silently flicking his flashlight this way and that to tell the fellow at the back of the boat which way to steer. Sometimes we were out on open water, sometimes passing through narrow channels, sometimes brushing under overhanging trees. I asked our guide how he knew where to go, and he just replied that he has never been lost in his life. He said that in the high water season, all the rivers south of the Solimoes and the Amazon are connected; if we went off course, he said, we would end up one another river. Only when the water is low do they differentiate into truly distinct rivers. People take advantage of these shortcuts; in high water season you can catch a water taxi from Manaus to the Juma lake area that takes about twelve hours via shortcuts, but in low water season the same water taxi takes two days. By the time we got back we were all quite ready for dinner. Dessert was the lime mousse again, very yummy.
Difficult bird-watching this morning; lots of small, flitty, drab birds that I'm not good enough to identify before they disappear. The only one I think I got a handle on at all was a euphonia, but I don't know what species. A flock of what looked like geese flew overhead, but my guidebook lists no geese at all, so that's a mystery. I glimpsed the woodcreeper for a moment when I cam out my door, but it didn't want to be seen, and flew off instantly. I think I hear dolphins blowing in the water right in front of my cabin; I heard howler monkeys earlier. This really is an amazing place.

Birds and palm fronds

Borrowed a bird book from Bill and Vida this morning. It appears that we've been seeing yellow-billed terns, black-crowned night herons, cattle egrets, wattled jacanas, turkey vultures and black vultures, black-collared hawks, scarlet macaws, blue anis, amazon kingfishers (and perhaps also green kingfishers and/or green-and-rufous kingfishers, but I want to confirm those), either lineated or crimson-crested woodpeckers (I missed the key differentiating characters), and yellow-rumped caciques. Quite a few birds remain unidentified, including the toucans we've been seeing, the various swifts or swallows, and the doves or pigeons we've seen perched in trees above the water, as well as the woodcreeper I've spotted several times outside my cabin. Then there are the vast numbers of small, flitty birds up in the canopy that I never get a clear look at; it would take a better birdwatcher than I to make any progress on them. I think I saw a screaming piha, the bird that makes the wolf-whistle call, near my cabin, but it didn't call while I was watching it, and it's not a distinctive-looking bird so I'm not sure.
The hike turned out to be a long boat ride followed by a very slow machete trek through the forest. Not that I'm complaining; it was my first walk through real primary forest, and it was quite neat. Many very tall trees, including acai palms, brazil nut trees, and several species that smelled absolutely wonderful but whose names I didn't catch. Lots of insect life; dragonflies and damselflies, little fruit flies, a hive of wasps with the larvae exposed and wriggling on the surface. There were lots of small flies that liked to hover in place and that somehow made a white X from their body parts while in flight, perhaps by holding one pair of legs high and one pair of legs low; I wanted to catch one to examine it more closely, but they evaded me. The arachnids were also well represented; we saw a large harvestman with yellow spots on its body, a very large spider that lived in a hole and that our guide lured out for photographs using a stick in a way that the spider seemed to think was prey, little jumping spiders, and a tick that I found crawling up my clothes. One strange thing I saw was what appeared to be a spiky caterpillar metamorphosing into a moth without benefit of any sort of pupa. I don´t recall ever hearing of such a thing before. I put the photo here; can anyone enlighten me about this?
At one point in the hike our guides stopped to show us how the palm fronds are used; they did a quick demonstration of weaving a roof and a basket, and then made all of us little things out of the fronds. I got a star, suitable for use as a Christmas ornament; Vida, who is always everyone's favorite, got an ornate and quite realistic grasshopper made entirely of folded fronds! They don't use the mature fronds for this sort of work; instead, they cut off an inner frond that had not yet unfolded, and separate its leaves by hand. Those fronds are very clean and new, and feel very much like plastic, not like vegetable matter.
The birdwatching on the boat ride back was quite good. We saw several old favorites, plus a blue-crowned trogon and a paradise jacamar, both beautiful birds. Birdwatching in the Amazon is a bit easier than elsewhere, because so many of the species here are brilliantly and distinctively colored; even an ignoramus like me can't help noticing and identifying a blue-crowned trogon! We also saw several blue morpho butterflies that came quite close to the boat; they really are stunning, but they never seem to stop and land so that you can admire them. A huge land snail shell amazed everybody, but we never saw a live one, just the shell, in which a spider seemed to have taken up residence. A couple of capuchin monkeys were moving around in the trees far away, but nobody but the guide ever got a clear look at them; we just saw flashes of motion among the leaves.
Now it is muggy and sweltering. I'm typing in my underwear, and even that feels like too much exertion, so I'm going to go lie down and read.

Morning musings

Woke before dawn to the sound of howler monkeys in the distance, and enjoyed the slow emergence of dawn with all its sounds. One sound this morning is the sound of music playing in the distance, unfortunately; but it's soft, and doesn't completely obscure the forest sounds. Some tourist party boats went by the lodge yesterday morning and evening, playing load music and making big waves that made the buildings here sway. Amazing that even here one can't escape that sort of thing.
Breakfast is in a little less than an hour, and then we are going on a hike through the forest on Juma Lodge land. They own a lot of land here -- 160,000 hectares, if I recall correctly -- and it is all primary forest, untouched by the loggers. That's a very rare thing anywhere near Manaus! We have been enjoying seeing the big, tall trees that rise above the main canopy; many of them are brazil nut trees, which are protected now by law, but there are others, too, whose names we don't know. Many of the birds really like the tallest trees, for their high vantage point and, I presume, their relative safety from the risk of snakes and such; it is easy to see how logging out the tallest trees would cause immediate harm to the ecosystem, even when the remaining forest still appears dense and healthy. The tallest trees, when they die, also provide the snags that the vultures sit upon; and since they are different species than the lower trees, if they are logged out, those species are no longer represented in the forest at all, so all the species that are closely dependent upon them will become locally extinct.
On a different subject, four new guests arrived yesterday: a couple from Zurich, an older man from Germany, and a mid-thirties woman from Houston who rarely speaks. None of them seem particularly interested in nature, oddly; I'm mystified as to what they are doing here. A big hawk moth (a.k.a. sphinx moth) was on the netting in the dining room last night, and none of them stirred a muscle to look at it; and when we all went out in the boat yesterday, they seemed to take no interest in the birds we were seeing, and didn't want to borrow binoculars to look at them. One of the mysteries of life, I guess. The couple from Zurich was just at the Pantanal, a wetlands in the south, and perhaps the birdwatching here is just boring compared to how it was there; they said they took over 500 bird photos there in just a couple of days.
The record of amazing wildlife right outside my front door in the morning remains unbroken; within seconds of walking outside, a toucan flew by within fifteen feet of where I stood. Remarkable. It feels like being on the Truman show, like somebody somewhere is watching me and saying "He's approaching the door; cue toucan flight sequence...".
I still smell like monkey this morning.