Peru, Part 3

11 August ... Amazon

On our third day here in the jungle, we rose early to take a hike before breakfast in search of birds and monkeys. Although howler monkeys could be heard in the distance, we saw none. And though the forest is alive with bird sounds, we saw just a handful of them. I saw a blue-cheeked jacamar, but no one else in the group (besides the guide) managed to spot it before it took off. We also saw a toucan of some sort -- it was high in the canopy and little more than a silhouette.

In two hours, we saw hardly a thing -- save for the jungle itself and the leaf cutter ants' kingdom. HUGE ant hills -- 8 or 10 yards across and about 6 feet high at the apex. Many entrances, but even the ants were sleeping and didn't let themselves be seen. We did, however, see some bullet ants, which are more than an inch in size -- quite large -- and are also quite venemous. Ucil said they will not kill a human, but will cause a lot of pain and bad fevers. So we kept a respectable distance.

We hiked for two hours, mostly in circles on paths in the jungle behind the lodge. I suppose the highlight of it was our simply watching the sunrise through the trees and bring light to the jungle floor.

After breakfast, we gave fishing a try. I got one good bite, but the fish didn't get hooked. Ucil pulled in one fish, Cleever pulled in three or four, and Nick and Arnaud each pulled in one. We women, including Jenin, pulled in NOTHING. Bummer. But, like birding, I think fishing is best in earlier hours. No one caught pirhana, and Kate would really like to pull one in. I would just like to see the nasty little buggers up close. But not too close.

We returned to the lodge, where Nick bid us adieu. Then, thankfully, we got a few hours of rest. I took a delicious nap in the hammock on the back porch of our bungalow -- very cozy and just the bit of rest I needed. Kate woke me around 2 to tell me that I had another hour to sleep (thanks!), after which we would be going in search of the hoatzin. Now, *that* is a bird I was really hoping to see -- much more than I ever wanted to see the resplendant quetzal in Panama. It's a good thing I *really* wanted to see it, too, because what we did in search of that bird exceeds anything I ever imagined doing just to go look at a bird. I gather they are more easy to find in the high water when you can reach many remote places by canoe, but we did a lot of work on foot.

We took the boat upriver about 20 or 30 minutes and disembarked at a spot marked by nothing more than the tracks of a single keel in the mud. Ucil announced that Cleever would be leading the hike, as he was familiar with a way to access a hidden lake. Cleever took off at a very quick pace, and all of us trotted along behind him through the jungle. There didn't appear to be any trail whatsoever -- just the faintest hint that someone had pushed through there ahead of us (obviously, Cleever).

Through dense jungle, over downed logs, across small ponds -- one of which I slipped into and sank in muddy, scum-covered water about to my hips -- we hiked at a quick pace for about an hour. Part of it, I'm sure, was Cleever's natural speed, but the other concern was the clearly waning sunlight. At 4:15 or so, the forest was already in deep shade. Sometime around 5, we came to the edge of the forest near the lake. It was very mushy and muddy underfoot, and the lake was overgrown with vegetation -- an Amazonian version of one of the most frustrating portages I ever made in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (something that was supposed to be a lake but was really a drying swamp full of quick sand-like stuff).

Here, the nemesis was mud -- really juicy mud -- and something I've never seen before: a palm tree whose trunk is covered thickly in thorns. Thorns are an understatement. It was heavy with something akin to porcupine quills -- long, spiny and sharp -- a *whole forest* of these nasty things growing closely together. And the ground beneath them was sodden with mud and decaying wood and palm fronds, such that was easy to lose your balance. The perimiter of this brutish environment was 20-25 yards deep, and on the other side was the swampy lake. On the other side of the swamp was another stand of these nasty trees -- and therein hid the hoatzin. We could hear it making a panting sound.

Ucil tried to find a way to the lake, while Cleever went off to make noises 30 yards away in hopes of flushing the hoatzins from their roosts. A few times, he succeeded, and for a moment or two, I saw the hoatzins in flight -- their bright blue (?) and red plumage was brilliant in the light of the setting sun. Once they landed, however, we could not see them.

Cleever called out that he had a place with better access to the open space of the swamp, and he had a hoatzin in sight. We backed through the prickly woods and muddy gook and went to him. While he was making noise, he had been cutting down small trees with his machete, and he'd laid them in the mud like a little footbridge. Well, I take that back -- it wasn't like a footbridge at all -- it was just sticks laying on top of the swampy, muddy grass. He also scraped a lot of the thorns off the side of the trees so we'd have a place to push against to balance ourselves while walking on his fresh-cut balance beams. Rather ingenious. But also rather precarious. How can one adequately describe the rush of adrenalin one gets while trying to balance atop a stick lying on muddy goop at least four feet deep while surrounded very closely by trees covered in nasty thorns?

At one point, I stepped on the edge of a fallen palm from the evil trees, and when I did, I accidentally levered some of those porcupine quills into the air. They hit me in the side of my right calf, piercing not just my pants but *my boots* and dug their awful needles into my flesh. They apparently have some kind of poison on them, as well, because I have painful red bumps where each pierced my skin.

We scooted across a slippery, muddy, decaying log once we'd accessed the swampy edge of the lake, and Ucil went about finding the bird hidden in the canopy 75 yards away.

The hoatzin is a prehistoric-looking bird with peculiar *claws on the end of its wings* as a young bird (so it can crawl up the sides of trees before it has feathers to fly). Even as an adult, it has a peculiar crest atop its head. It's also a large bird -- I'm not sure of the size, but LARGE. One sat perfectly still for a good long while -- in the waning sunlight, no less -- so that all of use could enjoy a good look at it. It appeared reddish brown, with a creamy-colored band on its tail feathers. And it had that massive crest atop its head that looked like the spiked hair of a punk's mohawk.

The bird was magnificent. But equally magnificent was its location. When we were able to get through the spiny, prickly forest into the clearing made by the swamp/lake, we were treated to a really incredible bit of scenery. Verdant grasses of the swamp were ringed with a wall of palm trees -- every shade of green imaginable was on the palette. Everything in the scene, including the bird, looked prehistoric. It was if time had forgotten this place, that man had not yet crawled out of the primordial ooze, that the wilderness was completely untouched even by us as we stood there. I have never seen such a sight -- I can only hope the photos Kate got of this scene have the faintest sense of what this place in this moment was like.

We all felt like true explorers. We all were impressed with the bird. And we all were amazed by the scenery. Even Ucil, who had never been to this spot before, was commenting on its unearthly beauty.

The walk back to the boat was even more brisk than the walk out. The sun was setting, and the jungle was growing gloomier by the moment. None of us had a flashlight, so speed was our only defense against being caught uneprepared in this home of vipers and vines and tree roots. All of use tripped up or stepped in holes on the way back; I fell on my hands and knees once when tripping over some stub of a tree. Fortunately, the forest floor is covered in so much decaying material that it's a soft landing. We all hurried back to the boat and got there just in time to avoid the darkness.

The hike was muggy and fast-paced, and we were all sweating buckets, but by its end, none of us felt especially tired. I think the destination and the hoatzin were both so spectacular that it made it impossible for us to feel tired -- it was very energizing. We all really enjoyed it. I could've done without falling down and without falling into the pond (and the *pond scum*), but then, this is the Amazon. It's not supposed to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. We are humans on Nature's territory -- not the other way around. This is the truth all the world over, but a place like the Amazon crystalizes that knowledge pretty well for you.