Return to the Selva

At the beginning of November I finally took advantage of my 2 weeks of vacation time and I went to Lima and Puerto Maldonado with my friends and fellow ETAs, Isis and Eliza. Back in May or sometime around there, I found out that one of my favorite artists, Young Miko, would be touring in Lima in November, so the three of us traveled to Lima first for the weekend to see her perform. We stayed in Barranco, a very beautiful neighborhood in Lima right next to Miraflores, and had such an amazing time! Chalhuanca, for all its wonderful aspects, does not have very many fun things to do, so I took full advantage of exploring Barranco–visiting cute cafes and brunch spots, going out to discotecas, walking around looking at the architecture, and buying many trinkets. One day, Eliza and I took a walk around Barranco and stumbled across the loveliest little street by the Puente de Suspiros (Bridge of Sighs) where we found super cool art shops, cozy and colorful librerías, steps leading down to the oceanfront, and even an outdoor thrift market. I ate my heart out in Barranco, both literally and metaphorically, soaking up culture, art, treats and trinkets, and relishing the summer weather and walkable city streets. It was such a perfect break for me mentally and emotionally. On our second night, the three of us got all dressed up and smeared glitter on our eyelids and cheeks to prepare to see Young Miko. She was performing in a venue called Costa 21, which is just a huge turf field placed smack-dab between the sea and the highway. It was standing-room only, and though I had to spend most of the concert on my tiptoes to see past the towering woman in front of me, it was magical and we had so much fun belting the lyrics the whole time. 

After our brief weekend in Lima, Isis, Eliza, and I flew together to Puerto Maldonado, where the two of them are stationed for their second semester of teaching. Puerto Maldonado is a mid-sized city in the heart of the selva of southern Peru, about 3 hours from the border with Brazil. If I had wanted to, I could have taken a bus 8 hours to the nearest big city in Brazil, Rio Branco, from Puerto. But who wants to go to Brazil when you have the Peruvian jungle to explore?? (me, but that’s not relevant to this post). Puerto Maldonado is, in a word, muggy. Even though I spent last semester in Oxapampa, which is considered part of the selva, nothing could have prepared me for the heat and humidity I would feel in Puerto. Fortunately for me, especially since I forgot to take any malaria pills, it wasn’t very buggy as long as you had plenty of repellent on. We landed in Puerto on Monday, and I stayed about a week in Isis and Eliza’s apartment. If our Lima weekend was our time to go crazy and do all the things, Puerto was a nice reset of just hanging out together and relaxing. Also, we’ve officially reached the rainy season, so most days we were stuck in the house anyways because of the downpours. Between the rain and the heat, it was hard to get up the energy to do anything but lay in front of the fan and wait for Eliza to bake us yummy treats.

Our first few days we went out for dinner, walked the city, and I got to see Eliza and Isis’ daily routine up close, from buying fruit and vegetables at the huge market, to stopping for juguitos or bocaditos at their favorite cafes. On Tuesday, which was election night, the three of us sat and played card games all night while I made chocolate chip cookies instead of focusing on election results, and it was a heavenly experience. Nothing like a good girls night to distract you from the horrifying reality of the future of your country! 

On Wednesday, our friend and fellow ETA Nohelya landed and spent the rest of the week with us. This was great, because Isis is a huge homebody and Eliza had already done a lot of the tours in Puerto already, so Nohelya and I were able to explore Puerto a bit on our own. One of the first things we did was sign up for a piranha-fishing tour at sunset, which was an excellent decision that I would highly recommend. We ended up driving a short ways with a small group to a little swamp, where we piled onto a very skinny canoe-like boat. Our guide rowed us slowly through the murky water, providing us with running commentary on the wildlife we heard or saw. The first creature we saw spying on us from between the green lilypads was a baby caiman, which is like a small alligator. Only its bulbous eyes and smooth snout were visible atop the water, and he blinked at us curiously as we all exclaimed and raced to take pictures. He looked like a very large lizard, and he soon became bored with our attention, and turned his back on us before slinking away through the reeds. 

The swamp itself was gorgeous, with smooth waters, lush vegetation peppered throughout, and the towering castaña and aguaje trees that are signature to Puerto Maldonado. Castaña is Brazil nut, and aguaje is an oval-shaped, burgundy-colored fruit that looks almost scaly from the outside and has a bright yellow interior. I could not for the life of me describe its taste or texture, because it’s like nothing I’ve ever had before, but it’s delicious and really good mixed into drinks or smoothies. Aguaje fruit is rich in estrogen, so there’s a local legend that any woman who eats the fruit will become “sexier,” to use the words of our guide. Conversely, men who eat the fruit will supposedly “turn gay,” which I think is a very interesting superstition to have. Nohelya and I had fun joking around what would happen if we ate the fruit, seeing as how we’re already sexy—and gay. I can only assume we’d become sexier and gayer, so cheers to that! 

Finally, after navigating through some narrower passages, we steered our way into the middle of the swamp where there was more open water, and our guide moored the boat so the real fun could begin: piranha fishing. Apparently everything from piranhas to electric eels to manta rays live in the swamp, so a few of us felt a little apprehensive about getting close to the edge of the boat. Two of the tourists on our tour were these extremely obnoxious women from Spain, who provided running commentary on everything they were dissatisfied with, from the rain to the size of the canoe and the piranha fishing in general. When our guide started handing out our fishing poles (thin wooden rods with hooks attached to clear fishing line) and the raw meat we’d use as bait, the Spanish women were quick to loudly worry about whether the fish could jump out of the water and eat them. “Don’t worry,” our guide replied with a smile. “The piranhas don’t eat humans. Except for Spaniards, of course.” That shut them up pretty quickly and made the rest of us laugh. 

I’ll be honest. Did I love hooking pungent bits of raw rotted beef to my pole? No. As a vegetarian, I felt a twinge of guilt that I was even fishing at all, even though I’ve become a pescatarian this year in order to survive eating out in Peru. However, it was really fun watching the fish expertly maneuver around the hooks to eat our bait, leaving us frustrated and catch-less. Meanwhile, all the other boats around us piped up with cries and exclamations of success every two or three mintues. I was determined to be the first to catch a piranha on our boat, but the first fish to really bite slipped off the line before I could haul it into the boat. This happened twice more before I eventually gave up on my dreams. But a few other people in our group, including Nohelya, were able to catch the fish, which was exciting. Nohelya’s catch was the funniest, since I was sitting right next to them and got to see the wide range of emotions they experienced while the piranha wiggled on the hook in vain. They were a combination of excited and absolutely terrified of the fish they were holding, especially when the guide tried to get them to kiss it. While the guide extracted the fish from the rod, Nohelya hyperventilated with excitement and nerves. The coolest part was when the guide gently peeled back the piranha’s lips to show off its teeny tiny but razor-sharp serrated teeth. 

The sky was pretty overcast and it sprinkled a bit during our tour, so we were worried we wouldn’t get to see the promised sunset over the swamp. But as soon as the piranha-fishing experience started to lose its shine, the rain cleared and beautiful oranges and pinks began to peek through the gray clouds, throwing the aguaje and palm trees into dark silhouettes against the brilliantly-streaked sky. It was so lovely, and Nohelya and I agreed we were very glad we had chosen to try this out. 

The rest of our time in Puerto was pretty relaxed. We visited the COAR where Eliza and Isis work, and got to meet their favorite students, who were very curious to see us. On our penultimate day, the four of us did a tour of Lake Sandoval, which is a lake found within the Tambopata National Reserve in Madre de Dios. It’s home to a diverse variety of flora and fauna, so we were very excited about the possibility of seeing some monkeys, caimans, and lobos del río, which are like giant otters. Unfortunately, the minute we left the house at 7 am to walk to the plaza to start the tour, it began pouring down rain. It rained as we took a mototaxi to the plaza, it rained as we walked to the port where a long motorized boat was waiting for us, and it rained during the 45-minute boat ride down the river to the outpost closest to the lake.

Outfitted in our rain ponchos, a group of us walked about an hour and a half from the entrance to Lake Sandoval to the small clearing where the canoes were waiting to guide us out onto the water. I’ve never felt or looked more like a wet rat, with my hair plastered to my head and my pants drenched up to the knee, but at least it was warm rain! Because of the downpour, our guide told us that we’d explore more of the flora we had passed during the walk on our way back, so we got into the canoe and started rowing our way through a narrow inlet that eventually led us out to the huge expanse that was Lake Sandoval. Despite the rain and the gray haze, the lake was gorgeous and we saw a number of different bird species, including huge ducks and herons and egrets. We even saw some more caimans lurking in the shallows by the banks as we rowed around the perimeter.

We stopped on the other side of the lake for lunch, and when we had finished eating our juanes, came back to the boat to find the sun out and thousands of tiny white butterflies flitting around the canoe. As we paddled our way back to the inlet, the butterflies followed us, alighting occasionally on our shoes, on the oars, or the boat floor. On our way back, though we still didn’t see any monkeys or otters, we saw plenty more birds with vibrant colors and our guide explained to us their names and their importance to the lake ecosystem. We tried our best to dry off while the sun was out by taking off our waterlogged shoes and socks, but even so, when we landed and got out, we were still squishing with every step.

 Walking back over the wooden planks in the rainforest, our guide gave us very thorough explanations of the different plants we were seeing, and even stopped at a few holes in the ground to try and catch a tarantula to show us. I’ve never been more shocked than watching this man poke a thin reed into this dark, gaping hole in the ground, and seeing furry legs skitter out impossibly fast, then observing our guide grab the tarantula with his bare hands to hold it out to us! He told us that the females are much larger than the males, and that their bite, while venomous, is not strong enough to kill a human, just to paralyze them painfully for a few hours until a larger animal comes around to eat them. Fun! Despite my crippling arachnophobia, I did take his offer to touch the tarantula, barely petting its furry leg before backing away as quickly as possible. Both Nohelya and I petted the spider, and both of us had a really hard time actually touching its body; our brains seemed to know better than our fingers did, and we spent a few minutes only stroking the air because we couldn’t bring ourselves to make contact with the tarantula! Our other final adventure was climbing through a huge ceiba tree that had been taken over by a ficus, or a mata palo as they’re known in Peru. The ficus is a parasitic tree that envelops other plants and feeds off of them, and ceiba trees are immense. Our guide showed us a small “tunnel” from the back side of the ceiba tree that we could climb through to get out to the front. All of us except for Isis tried climbing through, and it was a fun but claustrophobic experience. Going through, we apparently disturbed the animals living in the tree, as a host of bats flew out the minute Nohelya tried to pass through the hole. 

All in all, my trip to the selva was super fun and very interesting–not one dull moment, and it was wonderful to spend time with the other ETAs and see their daily routines. I loved the selva environment too; a little less closed off than the sierra, and of course I had missed all the fresh fruits and juices that you can’t get in the mountains. It was also my first real vacation throughout this whole grant. I took about a week and a half off of work to go to Lima and Puerto, and though I missed my kids a lot, it was kind of amazing to have some time to myself and explore a new environment without the worries of going to work the next day or constantly checking my schedule. The only bad thing is that I have only 2 weeks left of classes before the grant finally ends and we head back to Lima for our last orientation. I can’t believe time has flown by so quickly?? I’m immensely dreading having to pack everything up in Chalhuanca and say the last goodbye to my students, but I can’t lie: I’m very ready to see my people again back in the States. 

As always, lots more updates to come soon and I miss you all so much! 

xo, Chelsea