Picaflor

Trip Start Oct 11, 2006

Trip End Apr 23, 2007

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Flag of Peru Puerto Maldonado, Peru
Saturday, February 3, 2007

From Cusco we flew up and over the white snowy peaks of the Andes and down into the great Amazon Basin. A dark green blanket of forest stretched out before us as far as the eye could see. Nothing broke the vast canopy of trees but an occasional brown river snaking it�s way through the forest. We landed in Puerto Maldonado, a frontier town dotted with palm trees, and crossed by dirt roads full of motor bikes and noisy rickshaws. Families of four bumped through the potholes, squeezed together on one bike. The town was originally founded by rubber tappers, then taken over by the timber industry, harvesting huge hardwoods. Later the gold miners came in, dredging the rivers, and digging ore from the clay soils. Only now is Puerto Maldonado making the transition from extractive use, to conservation and tourism.

Leaving the noise and dust of the town behind, we caught a boat and headed 78 km up the Tambopata River, past clay licks with 3 species of Macaws, up to Picaflor Research Station, where we volunteered for 2 weeks

"Ron" the baby capybara

. Laurel, a British zoologist, and her husband Pico, a boat captain whose family has lived on the land for 3 generations, along with their 3 year old son Picito are the stewards of a 1,300 ha conservation concession within the buffer zone of Tambopata National Park. The forests here were never covered by glaciation so diversity has flourished uninterrupted for eons. Researchers in the national park estimated 200 tree species per hectare (our most diverse forests in the United States have fewer than 20 species)! Laurel has been busy defending her young forest preserve (one of the only private reserves in Peru) from illegal loggers who have been encroaching from the North. The lawsuit looks positive for Picaflor, and will hopefully set a strong legal precendent for new conservation concessions in Peru.

There were 4 other volunteers out there with us, and we were kept busy with a variety of projects- mostly feeding baby animals and wielding machetes. One of our primary responsibilities was looking after "Ron" a baby capybara who was orphaned on the river front the week before we arrived. Capybaras are the world�s largest rodents, adults weighing about 150 pounds! Ron only weighed about 5 pounds, and the sweet little thing wanted nothing more than to suckle, so we spent many an hour with a finger in Ron�s mouth trickling warm milk down into his belly. We also fed nine orphaned baby rabbits that were so small we held them in one hand and dripped milk into their mouths with an itsy bitsy syringe

A Picaflor

. (Life and death in the jungle: keeping rabbits was an experiment, a demonstration that hunting isn�t the only way to procure meat. The rabbits were facing an epidemic, possibly due to humidity, but the other animals--chickens, turkeys, and guinea pigs--were doing fine). Another Picaflor pet--and possibly the worst pet possible--was Chik-Chik, the jungle fowl (wild chicken-type thing) who was also adopted as an orphan, freshly hatched. Chik-Chik amuses himself by terrorizing people. He hides in the rafters, or sneaks up in the bushes, then starts whining, then squawking a deep, throaty call of terror; then, in a blur of black feathers and talons, attacks, going for the head. It�s horrifying, the makings of a good horror flic. His croak haunts the shadows of the forest.

We also did lots of gardening. In the tropics, this mostly means weeding, carefully watching for hard-biting ants and sharp thorns and swatting mosquitos. We cleared vegetation from around pineapples and lemon trees, ginger, bananas, cocona, papayas...in places where the vegetation had only been growing back a few months clippers sufficed, but in the area that had grown back for eight years we felt like we were clearing jungle for the first time, taking huge swings with our machetes. We also cleared the orchid house and overgrown trails through the forests taking out bamboo, aggressive vines, and all sorts of amazing fast growing plants

Buffy & Ron

. The most involved of our work was helping with the Brazil nut harvest. Before we got to Picaflor we envisioned walking through a tidy orchard with small trimmed trees, casually gathering nuts, but it was nothing of the sort. Instead we�d head out into the conservation concession, trying to keep up with Pico over 3 or 4 km through primary forest dominated by the towering Brazil nut trees, hundreds of years old and hundreds of feet tall, passing troops of monkeys, gorgeous butterflies, walking palms, bamboo stands, bullet ants, strangler figs and toucans. The harvest started with a round of bocci ball (we were thankful for all of our recent experience!). About 20 Brazil nuts all fit together like wedges of an orange in a big heavy cask about the size and weight of a bocci ball. We�d spread out 50 m or so from the tree, and search for nuts on the ground, picking them up and launching them towards the tree�s massive trunk. We�d work our way towards the center until we ended up with a big mound of balls. Then we�d sit on the ground, nestle a cask into the soft forest floor between our legs, and start whacking away with our machetes. Buffy started out needing about 60-100 strikes to get one open, and eventually worked her way down to only 10-15 whacks. Ben picked it up too, and was sometimes matching Pico with only 5 strikes. When we�d finished the whole heap we�d load up the nuts on our backs and troop to the next tree. It was exhausting, gratifying work, and fun to be part of such an old sustainable tradition.

Everyday when we finished working we were filthy dirty and dripping with sweat. We would head straight down to the river, and jump in. The water was the color of mud, but so cool and refreshing we didn�t mind in the least. There was plenty of entertainment beyond all the work, especially from Picito the jungle boy, who can growl like a jaguar and slide in the mud like a river otter

Jungle boy

. In the mornings he ran down the walkway to our rooms to greet us "Are you happy?" and "Did you sleep?" In the afternoons when it was time to get sweaty again pumping water Picito would play in the mud with his boats just loving getting filthy. Then we�d all go swim in the river again, the low light bathing everything in a golden glow, and the river making us feel clean as new. In the evenings we relaxed in hammocks, played with Ron, and of course worked on the task of shelling the nuts. We made delicious food chopping them up and sauteeing them in butter, then roasting them with fresh vegetables, grinding them up and putting them in cakes with bananas, ginger and lime, making nut roasts, and Brazil nut sausages! We ate very well and usually went to bed by 9 o�clock exhausted. Several mornings we got up before the sun to go bird listening. We had hoped to bird watch, but in the dense rainforest we heard about 50 times more than we saw. One afternoon we were out walking with some of the other volunteers. Ben was up ahead, when we heard a strange screeching and squawking. Two big red-throated caracaras flew in dive bombing the third bird and making a similar squawk themselves. The rest of us listened to the chorus of three birds perplexed. Was one of them a baby bird? Or did one have a sore throat? Was it sick? None of the above. It was Ben, squatting on the forest floor with a blade of grass between his thumbs, learning his first words in the complex language of the jungle.