Why was I swimming in a lake with caiman, electric eels, anacondas, piranhas and arapaima, ginormous 200 pound, 9 feet long fish?
The Final Stretch
Because Matt wanted to do it and, if he was going to do it, I wasn’t going to chicken out. The plight of the youngest child.
Rodrigo assured me that it was safe and that all of the aforementioned animals were “shy” and wouldn’t want to eat me. I was skeptical and the fact that I had seen another tourist catch a piranha off the very pier we were swimming to made me question my decision. Matt and I negotiated where we would jump in – Matt wanted to swim half of the lake and I wanted to swim about 10 strokes. Negotiations completed with a mid-point, Matt and I each slid off opposite sides of the canoe and I started swimming like crazy, all the while yelling at Matt to hurry up. I noticed that Rodrigo had an anxious look on his face when we first got in the water, but I just swam faster. Matt apparently thought that I was lagging behind and was swimming leisurely until our friends informed him that I was way ahead and it was a race. We arrived at the pier in a photo finish. I asked Rodrigo why he looked nervous and he said that as I got in the lake one of the arapaima had jumped right in front of me and he was afraid I would panic if I had seen it. How right he was!
The next day we took a picture of where we had started our swim. Pretty impressive distance, I think.
Swim Distance
Earlier in the day, our excursion was to an indigenous Kichwa community, Sani Isla. I approached the tour with some trepidation because I worry that these types of tours make a spectacle of people, as if they are zoo animals to be observed and oohed over. Matt and I talked about it and he pointed out that his school is now part of such tours and that he and the other teachers and students welcome the tours. That made me feel better.
The women of the community established a cooperative to better their lives and are part of a larger organization that is designed to improve the lives of indigenous women and allow them to continue their traditional way of life. They make jewelry and other trinkets, give tours of their community area and prepare some traditional food for the tourists to enjoy. The cooperative is run by the woman through an elected board. The women rotate the duties at the community area, which can be a couple of hours walk from their homes. When we visited, there was a meeting occurring so there were many woman and children at the site. The site also contains the local elementary school that was even less resourced than Tomas de Berlanga. I wished we had known so we could have brought some books or other items.
We walked around the grounds and saw the plants they raised: papaya, pineapple, yucca, plantain, cocoa, coffee and more. These are the typical plants that each family would have around its house. Rodrigo was intent on showing his indigenous skills and shimmied up the tree to pick us a papaya. While I normally do not like papaya, this one was delicious.
After our papaya snack, we went to the cooking area to see the traditional cooking style and taste some food. Rodrigo explained the various items on the grill: fish with palm hearts cooked in leaves, grilled nut of some kind, plantains and grubs on a stick. Yes, Grubs. He showed us the fat, squirming live grubs
Live Grubs
Ripped one in two,
Ready to Share a Grub
And challenged, er, invited, one of us to share the now-oozing, bloody grub with him. We stood there, aghast, each hoping someone else would be a sport and just when Rodrigo’s eyes lit upon Matt, Sally volunteered. Talk about taking one for the team! I gagged the entire time as I watched her fabulous expressions as she chewed and chewed and finally swallowed the grub.
Sally Taking One for the Team
“I was okay until I got to the bum, which was squishy,” was Sally’s verdict. After that, I felt I would have been a poor sport not to eat a grilled grub, so I quickly grabbed the smallest one on the skewer. Truth be told, it did not taste bad and had a smoky, bacon flavor, but it was hard to get particularly after I had just seen a raw one eaten.
The rest of the food was fine. While Matt and I have grown accustomed to being served fish with its head still attached, we still are squeamish about it. Rodrigo happily ate seconds and thirds of everything we didn’t want, and with more gusto than he ate at any of our meals at the lodge, which confirmed that this was an authentic meal and probably one he preferred over the Western-style food the lodge served.
Our last activity at the community center was a shake down to adopt some turtles and release them into the river. I am not entirely convinced that these same turtles aren’t caught every week to be adopted by some other tourists, but played along all the same. I named my turtle “Wisconsin,” Matt named his “Ky” and Arturo named his “Kerry,” which I chose to see as a compliment regardless of whether it was! Stephen was traumatized when his turtle kept going the wrong way and almost got run over by our boat. Not sure that one is going to make it.
The grub wasn’t the only interesting insect we were offered to eat. The next morning, when Matt and I were the only two in our group until the new tourists arrived, Rodrigo was excited to find these flying ants and encouraged us to pop off the abdomen (back part) and eat it. We declined and he ate them with relish.
Tasty Snack?
We did, however, try the teeny-tiny lemon ants, nicknamed because they taste like lemon. I had eaten ants before when my 9th grade biology teacher, Mr. Alvarez, had a day when we ate ants, worms, bullheads and cattails to show us that what we consider food is subjective. At least I think that was the point. And how to survive if you were lost in the wilderness, I suppose. I thought the ants were delicious and went back for seconds, meaning I walked over to the tree they lived on and waiting for some more to crawl on me before licking them off my arm. When in Rome…
Enjoying Lemon Ants
The other highlights of the trip included the cool mushrooms:
The search for sloths, which Sally was on a hunt to see. We saw both 2 and 3 toed sloths from a great distances:
Sloth from a Distance
Cool insects, which we did not eat:
Neat frogs:
And my favorite, the stinky turkey. It’s real name is the hoatzin and its key features are that it is stinky, tastes like a bad turkey, and makes a noise like a labrador retriever panting on a hot day. That said, it is really quite pretty.
The last night this fellow made an appearance in the stockroom under the lodge.
I didn’t sleep very well that night. I had noticed that the pillar holding up our cottage, which was also part of the bed frame, was open around it and all night I imagined a boa constrictor slithering up besides me. While I half-wanted to see an anaconda on the trip, I think the boa constrictor was sufficient.
All in all, a nice getaway from the island. I’m glad we went and had a great time, but once in the Amazon is probably enough for me. Next time, that caiman might just get me!
Kerry On! 