Peru Vol. 3

8/6/09 6:33 pm: Comunidad Cosquenos

            Tonight marks our second night here at our new home stay in the Comunidad Cosquenos. It’s a small community consisting mostly of recent immigrants from Cusco that have come to try their hand at farming. Like before, our accommodations consist of an empty shack on a family farm, though this time the roof is thatched and the livestock of choice here is pigs instead of sheep, which are fortunately much less noisy at night. Unfortunately though the nearby quebrata isn’t nearly as deep as it was before making bathing much more of a hassle—though it still contains fish large enough to nibble at one’s toes, as I found out this afternoon. Larry did a nice job building us a makeshift bathing platform though, as well as some shade structures out of palm fronds, which helps a lot with the recent heat. We also still have Delicia’s delicious cuisine and the generator, which gives us luxuries such as watching Never Back Down last night, which, for those of you who haven’t seen it, is basically a cross between Fight Club and High School Musical.

            Today we cut our initial transects into the various forested areas near us. Our proficiency with machetes is steadily rising, though it still takes about two hours to cut a 700 m transect. I’ve decided I’d prefer never to permanently live somewhere with such a high density of life. In some capacity, I find almost all forms of live beautiful and possessing some intrinsic worth—like the dwarf caiman we saw this evening—but when everything, the vegetation, the bugs, etc., is this dense, I see the competition for space and the need to constantly address all the various forms of life around you in one way or another to be more taxing than the additional beauty is worth. There’s the humidity that lends itself to mold, the myriad of wasps encroaching on your food at every meal, and the smorgasbord of blood, intestinal and epidermal parasites that have to constantly be avoided. However, I am quite pleased I get to visit for as long as I do.

8/8/09 4:29 pm: Rain

            It rained for a while this afternoon, and we were pleased to find the roof didn’t leak. We’re ahead of schedule so we had the afternoon off and could all just sit inside, read and listen to an audio book of The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Hemmingway. I’ve been a big Hemmingway fan since I read A Farewell to Arms in high school, which is still a favorite of mine, but I’ve never read his short stories, and this one is particularly incredible. Joel says it’s probably his favorite short story—and certainly the one that’s made him think the most. I also finished Raymond Carver’s collection of short stories, Cathedral, today. He’s another great writer with a style similar to Hemmingway, but with a more everyday flavor. The story “Cathedral” itself has been a favorite of mine since I read it for a creative fiction class, and I would certainly say it’s one of better ways a person could spend half an hour.

            Once the sun came back out everything looked particularly beautiful still wet from the rain—except from the pigs, which more or less look just as bad, and smell substantially worse. I took some pictures, though I doubt my point-and-shoot will do it justice. You get spoiled hanging out with friends who all have nice SLRs.

            The interviews have had some obstacles lately. Caritas, the local NGO we worked with to help set up our current set of interviews hasn’t introduced us and set up our meetings as planned, and now there is a rumor going around that Alex is just the latest gringo trying to come in and buy up, or tax them out of their land. Alex has also said that once the farmers know in advance that they’re getting paid, they see the interview much more as a chore, and treat him more like some bigwig from a wealthy NGO, which is then reflected in the data we get from them. In contrast, the farmers Alex previously flagged down on the side of the road, interviewed over a coke and some plantains, and then paid at the end, have been much friendlier and given much better responses for the study. The bio-inventorying has been going fairly well though. The humidity is inescapable, but it’s so much cooler in the forest it’s hardly any more draining cutting transects and doing gentry plots than just lounging around our shed. When we were out today, I saw some people actually actively clearing trees for the first time on the trip. It was impressive watching the trees fall, but it was also sad seeing the recently cleared land, and it certainly added a sense of urgency to the project.

8/10/09 5:57 pm:

            The last couple of days have definitely been some of the most beautiful. Last night the sunset was gorgeous. The sun here sets in the northwest—which still throws off my internal compass—and last night the cloud cover hung perfectly to reflect the fiery glow of the sunset down on us. It reminded me a lot of how everything looked during the Topanga fire when I was about 7, but this time I had a lot more time to enjoy it since I wasn’t being evacuated. It cast the entire setting in some of the richest warm tones I have ever seen, while yet also making the lush trees and clear sky even more vivid by comparison. By now some of you may have realized this might not mean much coming from someone who is colorblind, but I promise everyone else found it equally beautiful.

            Now, before I go on, I want you to try to imagine how a pineapple grows. Many of you may know already, but I didn’t until this trip, which also made me realize I had never even wondered. If someone had asked me, I would have guessed it was a hanging fruit, but in fact it grows much like an artichoke on the central stalk of an agave like cactus (which, like aloe, Alex has pointed out to me, is not in fact a cactus). Today I also learned that the young pineapple plants, before they are mature enough to fruit, begin with an initial, vibrant coloring of light orange, fading to yellow, and finally a hint of lime green, almost in a psychedelic way. Today we walked through an entire field of these younger plants, and it was was quite stunning.

            We’ve also taken to snacking on sugar cane over the last couple days. Larry cut a few large stalks for us and showed us how to peel it with a machete. It tastes sweet, more or less how you would imagine, but it does have a more refreshing quality than you would expect from something so sweet. Larry is also making Joel, Alex and I hammocks. He makes them professionally and can crank one out it about 2-3 days. We’ve been using one of his throughout our trip, and it’s quite nice. Plus, he’s going to stitch each of our names into our respective hammocks. Fortunately we diagramed it out with him though because he was originally going to spell my name “Netd,” –though perhaps it would have made for a better story that way.

8/18/09 4:49 pm:

            Well, we’ve been back in Puerto for about a week, but there hasn’t been a whole lot happening. We were scheduled for another home stay through the NGO we were working with, Caritas, but after the difficulties we experienced with them we’ve decided to change our plans. We also discovered our data was being distorted by the fact that they were only showing us (and may only be supporting for religious reasons) the wealthiest farmers in the area. So right now we’re doing more menial things like budgeting and data entry while we’re trying to rework our last few weeks to be as productive as possible despite probably staying chiefly in Puerto Maldonado.

            While we’ve been here though, I have gotten the chance to meet a lot of the other non-Stanford volunteers working with Fauna Forever. The herpetology team comprised of three guys from England and South Africa have been particularly fun to hang out with. We’re about to have a BBQ tonight as a send off for one of them. We’ve also been hanging out with Iona again, the Yale PhD student, who is back for a few days. Last night we also blended our own drinks made from Maracuyá (passionfruit), Cachaça, a local liquor made from sugar cane that’s hard to describe, but something like tequila, sugar, and with an egg white thrown in for a frothy texture. It was pretty good for a first try, though your last sip was always full of seed fragments. We’ll have to find a strainer. 

Peru Vol. 2

7/25/09 6:10 pm: Friaje Continues

            Things stayed pretty cold today and all we’ve seen so far is some bats and a family of spider monkeys, which for one of the most highly regarded ecotourism lodges in the world is definitely subpar. One of the long time locals here predicts it should break in a day or two though. I feel bad for the tourists paying several hundred dollars to come here for a few days who might not get to see virtually anything.

            Due to the lack of fauna, we instead played volleyball for a couple hours this afternoon with the staff. With the wet weather the court was something more akin to a clay slip-n-slide than a sand volleyball court, which combined with some of our members’ complete lack of experience made for a comically abysmal spectacle. We did have the support of one of the staff member’s daughters though who would shout “Vamos Stamnfourd!”, and flagrantly cheat in our favor while keeping score—and we’d still lose. After a few rounds though we got our chops up and had some pretty good games at the end.

            The plan now is to head back out after dinner and see if night brings any better luck with sighting animals. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for a jaguar. 

7/27/09 5:00 pm:

            Unfortunately things have only started warming up just now, and tomorrow is our last day before we leave early on the 29^th. We did see a razor billed curassow though, which is a quite rare, large, black, ground dwelling bird with a vibrant red bill. There is also a great vista overlooking the nearby Madre de Dios River where we saw several beautiful macaws. There have also been some sightings of a few species of monkeys and frogs, as well as peccaries and tapir, but all in all it’s been on the lackluster side for such a highly regarded area.  When it gets warm enough though you can hear the howler monkeys which are quite spectacular. They sound a bit like when a strong wind blows through a cave, and they’re loud enough that you can hear them over a kilometer away.

            Life here has been pretty steady: lots of volleyball and walks. Meals are kind of like a game where you spread your food as thinly as you can over your rice to maximize your caloric intake while still keeping everything palatable. Despite the food though, the lodge itself is very nice. The whole lodge is stilted about four feet off the ground and has a very high thatched roof which, combined with the almost entirely open air design and bamboo walls, creates an atmosphere of breezy grandeur. At night the whole lodge is lit by kerosene lanterns, which gives the whole place a lovely warm glow.   

           

7/29/09 7:25 pm:

            We had planned on leaving today, but some of the tourists changed their plans and since they pay an order of magnitude more than we do they get the spots on the boat. Our extra day here has actually been pretty nice though. Since it’s warmed up we saw several squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys and capuchins on our walk today, and now that it gets above 60 degrees taking a cold shower is much less daunting. We are, however, certainly not going to miss the food. The steady diet of boiled chicken backs and white rice definitely wears on you after a while, especially when you’re waking up to it for breakfast. Also the fact that the macaws eat better than we do by stealing the tourists’ food just adds insult to injury. I saw one drop half a bagel the other morning at breakfast and nearly dove over the balcony to salvage it.

            Alex gave a talk to the tourists last night about the research we’re doing. It was well received, though one tourist, a corporate lawyer from New Zealand, admitted to be working in direct opposition to what our project is striving for, and that he was just here to see the rainforest before it disappeared. It was rather disheartening, but we’re considering covering his backpack in colonizing spiders to make ourselves feel better.

7/31/09 2:56 pm: Back in Puerto

            The trip back from TRC yesterday was lovely, not to mention about a third of the travel time compared to the trip up due to the current and some lucky timing with our taxi. On the way down the water level was about five feet lower, which made for quite an impressive scene. Both shores were of course covered in lush rainforest, but after the steep drop down to the water, the river itself had a completely different character. Sticking out of the water, the dark remains of waterlogged trees would jut out at odd angles, and get lodged against the flat, shattered expanses of pockmarked rock that would create large charcoal grey islands within the river. It was absolutely striking to get to cruise through it all. We also saw a tree on the bank crash into the river which was quite a sight, and Alex informed me that due to the extremely shallow root structures of trees in tropical forests, tree fall is fairly common, and is arguably the greatest hazard to people visiting the forest.

            Back here in Puerto things have been quite nice. I finally got to meet the rest of the Stanford crew who were working in different locations from us until now, and it was great to get to catch up with them over a couple Cusqueñas, the local (and virtually only) beer here in Peru. Unfortunately, however, the hostel we’re in is under construction, and this morning I was awakened by what sounded like someone trying to simultaneously break through my wall with a reciprocating saw and a large wooden mallet. I later learned that that is, in fact, almost exactly what they’re doing in the room two doors down. I’m really hoping my earplugs are still stashed somewhere in my backpack.

8/2/09 6:24 pm:

            The weekend here has been a lot of fun. Andrea, a Canadian researcher who has become a good friend of the Stanford group and who accompanied us to TRC, introduced us to her friend Iona, a PhD candidate from Yale, and the handful of us still here in Puerto went out the last couple nights for dinner and to check out the night scene around here. Even though several of the people in our group speak Spanish quite well, ordering drinks was still a bit of a challenge. We had to haggle for about 20 minutes over an overpriced bottle of Peruvian wine, and accidentally sent our bartender across town to buy limes, but we did get to see a pretty decent Peruvian rock-cover band and hang out in some off-duty moto-taxis, which are basically colorful motorcycle rickshaws that are everywhere around here.

            Today we had somewhat of a culinary tour de force. We started with breakfast at our favorite heladeria where we got tropical fruit salads topped with coconut ice cream, followed by a great lunch of aji de gallina, a shredded chicken curry dish; authentic, Peruvian cerviche; causa, a tamale-like conglomeration of potato, onion, tomato and chicken; and of course fried platano. The real highlight though was the skewers of grilled grubs we got from a street vendor near the market. Despite them getting heavily talked up to us, they wound up tasting incredibly like olives, which are the one food I cannot stand, so combined with the rather repulsive appearance and texture, they may have just made it to the top of my least favorite foods list. 

8/4/09 9:28pm: Last Night in Puerto

            So we just saw Andrea off yesterday morning. She’s now back in Toronto finishing up her Master’s thesis on carbon markets due in October. We celebrated with a great night of festivities, but it was certainly sad to lose the best friend we had made outside the program. Our team is heading back to the field tomorrow though too. After the Ppacca Farm, I’m curious to see what our next accommodations are going to look like.

            Our time in Puerto has been fairly productive though. Alex managed to arrange a good number of interviews, and even recruited another local to help conduct interviews on the other side of the river. However, a couple of the farmers were quite confrontational, apparently due to previous bad interactions with corrupt NGOs and oil prospectors, and refuse to answer our questions because nothing we could offer would stop them from slash-and-burning all their land. Fortunately this seems to be the exception though.

            Unfortunately, we were also recently blindsided by a rather scathing letter from the head researcher at TRC reprimanding our “gross misconduct” during our stay. Apparently we were guilty of many such egregious acts as talking after 10 pm, using the lounge area when tourists were present, not turning in our sheets when we left, and half a dozen others, all of which no one had informed us of during our five days there, despite the offended party living within arm’s reach of us and treating us quite amicably our entire stay.  Our hypothesis is that the true source of the conflict came more from an ongoing tension between visiting researchers and the staff, and was exacerbated by a vegetarian member of party often having to confront the chefs to receive more than plain rice for her meals. And even so, her meals often consisted of something like a small plate of shredded carrots. Once she was even just handed a tomato when she inquired about a vegetarian option for dinner. The whole experience also seems to be representative of a passive-aggressive streak that seems to run in Peruvian culture, which we have also seen at times in other settings, such as between our translator and our guide. We’re hoping a measured apology and explanation will smooth things over, and, looking at the silver lining, these life lessons in grace and communication are likely to be just as valuable as our research in the long run. 

Peru Vol. 1

7/17/09 4:45 pm: Arrival in Lima

            I just got to the hostel after a long day and night of flying. The only really interesting thing so far has been the drive from the airport. You could say the traffic laws here are more like guidelines, but that would be generous. Our taxi went wherever there was room on the road, even if that meant squeezing between a motorcycle and a semi while straddling the dividing line. We made several right hand turns from the left hand lane, ran almost every stop sign, entered intersections on red lights and came within a foot of hitting pedestrians on three separate occasions. One time I’m almost certain the taxi driver intentionally swerved towards two girls in a crosswalk, who knows why…I figure if I can survive the ride back to the airport tomorrow it’ll all be downhill from here.

7/18/09 6:40 pm: Ppacca family farm, outside Puerto Maldonado

            After an early wake up and my flight to Puerto, Alex picked me up around 12:30pm. The view as we flew over the snow-capped Andes was spectacular, as was the view of the Amazon broken up by rivers and checkered tracks of deforestation along the roads. Seeing both the Rockies and Andes for the first time in my life rather recently, I think it is very interesting how each range has such a unique character despite the similar forces that act on them.

            For those of you who don’t know exactly what we’re working on here. Alex is the US director for a NGO called Fauna Forever Tambopata that, among other things, is working to establish a series of corridors across the new Inter-Oceanica highway that is being built through Puerto Maldonado, and traversing the entire Amazon basin, fragmenting the surrounding rainforest. This highway will effectively bisect two enormous conservation areas making each less biodiverse by disrupting gene flow, creating negative edge effects along the road, and serving as a vector for disease. Additionally large tracks of land 20-30km deep are being sold along the road causing immense deforestation and introducing invasive plant species. Our aim is to identify tracks of land that can be preserved or reforested that will connect the two preserves, and then establish a payment system based on the value of the ecosystems being preserved so that the land owners will have adequate financial incentives to make the conservation areas economically viable. Our daily work consists of running transects through the potential corridors to establish viability and conducting survey work with the land owners to see how interested they are in being a part of the conservation effort.

            To put it politely, our current accommodations certainly reflect the rural nature of our work. The road out here from the Inter-Oceanica highway consisted of two dirt tracks heading straight into the jungle. After crawling along two kilometers of makeshift road through jungle and cattle pasture, we arrived at our base camp, which consists of an open-air shed that used to house chickens and sheep only two days ago. Now they all live under the shed and can be heard bleating through the floor boards. One in particular sounds just like the death-rattle of a baritone with emphysema crying out “Ne-eh-eh-eh-ed!” which I imagine may wear on my nerves by about 3 am. We do have a generator though, which provides us with such luxuries as music, computer use, lights, and of course all the bugs in a 1000 yard radius that are attracted to the latter. We are fairly well situated with bed nets and repellant, but everyone has still managed to get bitten by what are either fleas or chiggers. Only time will tell… On the bright side, there is a beautiful tributary next to our camp, which allows something resembling bathing. The biggest luxury though by far is our accompanying cook who puts the local restaurants to shame despite our conditions. This evening we had squash soup, rice with cheese and pumpkin, and a dessert of rice pudding. We can get all the fresh milk we want too, collected daily. We also have an accompanying guide and translator who are both very amiable, making a total crew of nine right now, but we will regularly meet with the other group of two Stanford students and many local volunteers. I’ll try to provide a rough bug bite estimate in the morning…

           

7/19/09 6:05 pm: First Day of Research (for me at least)

            Today we actually fared well in terms of bug bites. The permanone I had left over from Alex’s Africa trip last summer served us well apparently.  I helped cut my first transect this morning. It basically entailed hacking our way 600 meters into the jungle with machetes and marking the trail so we can monitor it over the next few days for mammals and birds, and also lay print traps. There is suppose to be a jaguar that has been praying on cattle so if we could prove it is here that would go a long way towards demonstrating this as a very functionally viable ecosystem since apex predators are often the first things to disappear once an ecosystem is compromised.

            After lunch we took a dip in the stream, which was divine after the heat and humidity, and I finally got a chance to bathe. We also saw an 8 year old girl help kill and skin a sheep which certainly isn’t something you see every day back home. Later in the afternoon the group split up again to cut another transect, interview some local farm owners, and Joel and I went to work on the malaria project. We sampled several streams and stagnant bodies of water for pH, turbidity, cover and the presence of mosquito larvae. Along the way we also searched for animals, discussed the more notable events I had missed from earlier in the trip, and Joel informed me of all the venomous snakes we should be wary of including the bushmaster, which, while not very aggressive unless you step on it, is pretty much one bite, one kill. I was much better about swinging my machete through the grass in front of me after that.

            The areas we were walking through were incredibly beautiful, though it was somewhat unnerving when a herd of cattle all starting moving towards us at a good clip since they were used to the people who regularly came out there bringing them salt licks. My favorite areas we saw were the lush fields dotted with young trees and covered with vibrant pink flowers that smelled pleasantly of Indian food, especially at sunset on our way back when the sun was casting warm colors across the clouds on the horizon that would then backlight the jungle ahead of us. I promise I’ll get pictures.

7/21/09, 6:32 pm: Frisbee, sheep and anacondas

            The last couple days have been pretty enjoyable. Yesterday we taught our chef, Delicia, her husband and our guide, Larry, and the grandson of the couple whose farm we’re staying at, Cesar, how to play frisbee, which has always been a staple of our travels. I also saw an approximately 8 foot anaconda (or possibly boa) swimming across the river about 40 yards downstream from our bathing spot. Cesar didn’t believe me though.

            The research has also been going well, especially the interviews. The two families so far seem very open to the possibility of conservation in return for payment or other benefits like education and infrastructure. Mostly they just want to have some degree of active interaction with their land so they have something to do with their time. Though we found out one of local farming families shot a Harpy Eagle because they thought it was eating their chickens. Considering there were only two (a couple) in the entire Tambopata region, this is pretty devastating for an already endangered species.

In other bad news, Joel sliced up three fingers on his left hand on some bamboo today while he was sampling. The cuts are deep, but it should be ok though. I was also right about the sheep. Last night wasn’t too bad, but the night before the sheep incessantly called back and forth keeping everyone awake until about 3 am. It did, however, give me a reason to look at the stars, which, like the sunsets, are absolutely incredible here.

7/22/09 6:31 pm: More hazards

            Today was an early day. We had breakfast at 5 am which required running the generator again since it was still dark. This resulted in the nest of wasps living in the non-descript piece of old farm machinery in our shed thinking it was daybreak and flooding out towards the lights. Fortunately no one was stung, but breakfasting with about 200 wasps flying a couple feet overhead was a rather unnerving experience. We’ve also seen several of the 4 inch spiders, but they’re fairly harmless. Then to add to the excitement, last night our guide Larry saw an electric eel in the river while he was bathing. Like most things here, they aren’t aggressive, but if they feel threatened they can give off a shock capable of stopping a person’s heart given the right ion concentrations in the water.

            Despite all this, however, we all admit we’re going to miss it here, once we leave tomorrow. Somehow living with nine people in a bug-ridden, open-air shed surrounded by livestock has grown on us over the week. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if our next field location is equally colorful. What I really miss the most though is real furniture. After a week of my sleeping pad being my bed, desk and chair, my back is very excited for something with lumbar support. I could also do without the fleas, but then again I wouldn’t want to start getting soft.

7/24/09 7:55pm: Tambopata Research Center

            So after a night of gorging on pizza and checking email in Puerto Maldonado after leaving the Ppacca farm, we woke up at 4 am today (a truly herculean feat for me for those of you unfamiliar with my regular sleeping habits) to catch our boat up here to TRC. As luck would have it a friaje blew in today off the Andes making the ~7 hr boat ride in the cold rain less pleasant than it could have been. At least the boat had a roof and we got to stop for coffee and hot chocolate at a lodge on the way up the river. It’s also unfortunate because TRC is one of the best natural history sites in the world (not to mention a very nice lodge), but we’re much less likely to see any mega fauna here while it’s so cold, though we did see a capybara, the world’s largest rodent, on the way up. They also have a volleyball court, which has been a pastime of Alex, Joel and mine since we were in the Stanford Australia program, and the researchers apparently really need some help in the regular game against the staff, giving us another reason to hope for sun.