Stay in San Alejandro

So, here I am in Iquitos, once again. It´s been almost a month and a half since Nate and I first landed here, and said good-bye to our other passengers. We had stocked up on supplies and left Iquitos, headed back up Rio Napo with the idea of staying with a community for a  bit of time. We realized after a day of travel, that going upstream would be expensive with gas, and obviously slow. So we turned around, and headed back toward Iquitos and Rio Amazonas. Sometime before night-fall that day we decided to stop in a small town. We were greeted by a thirty something year-old man named Ananias, along with some other adults and a flock of children. We chatted for a bit and found out that we were in San Alejandro, and got the O.K. to camp there. The sun had gone down, and the chorus of frogs began. Our new friend invited us in to eat, but we had to decline. We were tired from traveling and were used to sleeping with the setting and rising of the sun. We did accept his invitation to eat lunch the next day though. We met his family, and ate fish with yucca. That lunch turned into a long afternoon of conversation. He told us about his childhood, and his adolescence spent in Iquitos. And as a teen his parents moved him and his four sisters to San Alejandro, which is a six hour canoe ride away. Being the only boy among his siblings, he takes great joy in spending time with his two boys. His wife’s name is Jova, and the kids are as follows. The oldest, Giovanni, is ten years old, Axel is seven, Yajaira is five, and Keiko is two. He takes the boys to his family´s farmland, or chakra, to learn how to grow and harvest food for the family, and on his hunting trips where he passes on the skills of hunting and fishing that his dad gave to him. He told us a story about one of the many hunting trips he took with his dad, when he was younger. Ananias’ dad took him along on a trip where he was to record his dad and hunting buddies when they catch a jungle animal. They made Ananias carry a huge audio recorder as they hiked. They wanted to capture the moment of chase and attack. What they really wanted was a video recorder, but that wasn´t quite possible at the time. So he hiked along with this recorder and waited for the signal to push the button. They finally tracked down a Huangana, or a white-lipped peccary. It looks like a pig, and is distantly related, but it´s not classified as a pig. Ananias pressed the button and continued to chase after the hunters. That night the men camped, and listened to the sounds of the recording. They heard running, and tree branches breaking under their feet, the hunting dogs barking, then shots fired and squeals. They got their animal, and their recording. Just as his father gave him the skills to hunt, fish, and farm the family land, he will do the same for his own sons.

Nate and I really enjoyed the lunch, conversation, and meeting Ananias’ family. That afternoon he invited us to stay inside the house for the night to avoid the approaching rainstorm. This time we accepted the invitation, and it turned out to be a good choice. Without trying we had stumbled into the community that we had first sought out. We realized that the next day when he took us to visit his chakra or farm land. To get there we took a small channel off Rio Napo, which was just above his house. We cruised for about twenty minutes through the beautiful jungle. The channel twisted and turned, and went under fallen trees. Birds and butterflies flew around as we passed by. We also passed a couple canoes of people that we had met in town. They were on their way to work their own land. The chakra was a patch of land in the jungle right off the water. We helped harvest some yucca to take for the family, but before heading back, we all went for a swim in the cool water of the channel. We went back to the house and ate a dinner of fish and yucca. I´m such a sucker for a simple; home-cooked meal. We were definitely being welcomed into the house.

        

After that trip to the chakra, he suggested we go on a hunting trip with his son and brother in-law, Galby. We would hunt, fish, and hike for a few days. What a great opportunity to explore the jungle. We agreed to go, and set out the next morning. Our main camp was going to take a day and a half to get to. The first day we walked at a decent pace, and got rained on the last half hour of hiking. We arrived at the half-way camp, and spent the rest of the day hanging out and hiding from the rain under a palm-thatched shelter. It wasn´t the most exciting night at camp, but the clouds cleared and left a beautiful sky, and we found a dull, abandoned machete there. The next day’s hiking, although a little muddy was pretty fun. I got to use the machete we found. At first I practiced cutting sapling trees that grew on the trail, and then I worked my way up to cutting down a tree. That same day on the trail, Ananias noticed some animal tracks.  The dad wanted to catch it, so him and his buddy set off while Giovanni walked with us to camp.  It seemed like an hour and a half when they had caught up to us, with the huangana stuffed into an old rice sack.  The guy had made straps by cutting a notch in a particular tree and peeling a strip off the flexible wood under the bark.  He carried it all the way up to camp and started to prepare the animal.  He skinned it and gutted it, then made a rib stew with yucca and smoked the rest of the meat.  Yes, I did try it, and it was delicious.  My clothes still smell like smoke.  This second camp was our home base and we did several hikes over the next two days.  It was like the Cadillac of jungle camps.  There were two platform shelters, a big fire pit, and a great part of the river to swim in.  There I became an expert at “tightrope walking” on a tree as wide as my boot, walking in mud almost up to my knees, not touching spiky plants, and swinging on vines.

So, I left the hunting up to Ananias and Galby, but I did learn how to fish with a “trampa” or net, and how to find and prepare some local foods.  One was “pijuayu”, a red fruit about the size of a tennis ball with a small pit.  It grows on a palm-like tree and the meat of the fruit was only good when cooked in water and peeled.  The fruit was kinda firm like a carrot and savory with a lot of natural oil.  It was definitely a treat by itself, but was also very good prepared as “masato”.  Masato is a starchy thickened beverage served at room temperature.  It’s usually made of yucca and can range from sweet, to sour and fermented.  Peruvians love them some masato and to some it’s a daily staple.  Less frequently it’s made with cornmeal or pijuayo.  The sweet pijuayo masato has set me on a mission to make a pijuayo ice cream, inspired by avocado ice cream which is just as rich and high in natural fat.  Another fruit I learned about was cocona.  It looks like an orange colored tomato with similar seeds and grows similarly too.  The skin is tough so it needs to be peeled and chopped or just squeezed out like a lemon.  Cocona is also sour like a lemon and makes a great salsa or ensalada. One food that surprised me was the root of a particular heliconia plant. Heliconia have leaves that look like banana leaves and they have amazing flowers that are usually red and yellow and the petals looks like a claw unfolding down a chain. Some of them flower up and some types flower downward. The root is used as a food dye. It´s orangey-yellow and looks like a ginger root. All you need is about one teaspoon of it grated or smashed to dye a pot of soup.

After the two days of hiking we spent two more days exploring the campground and nearby trails.  We had finally animated ourselves to head back into town.  What we hiked in a day and half to get out, we tried to do in one day.  We hiked briskly but were caught by night before we got there.  We hiked for about an hour in the dark then set-up camp.  We weren’t too far, but hiking at night was too difficult.  In the morning we finished the journey and were greeted by Ananias’ wife and family and a hot meal.

Back in San Alejandro we began to fall into a routine of local daily life.  Nate had been talking over plans with Ananias of building a house up the channel near the family chakra.  It would be a sort of summer house for Nate where he could receive family and friends or facilitate research of the jungle and the animals that live in it, and for Ananias and his family it would be an escape during the rainy season, when the river floods San Alejandro up above the floor level. Rio Napo will rise 15 meters on average each rainy season. With this plan being set in motion, we began our routine.  Some days we would work on the house and some we would cut firewood, and harvest yucca, or go to the nearby town of Orellana to buy supplies. One afternoon we helped pull the neighbors whole field of yucca that had to be harvested before the flood ruined the crop.

The house project that we’ve been working on is a tree house about 6x6 meters, sitting about 2 meters above the ground and is one complete floor with three half-floors.  It’s right next to a small stream and the closest neighbors are a five minute walk away. There are four trees making up the corners and a small tree going straight through the middle.  The “half-floors” are under the roof and we are preparing the land under and around the house for livestock and agriculture.  When complete the house will be a working farm with beans, corn, yucca, acai trees, and other local fruit.  There will be animals such as capybaras, peccary, buffalo, coati, ducks, chickens, and amazon parrots.

Not every day is a work day though and we get plenty of time to relax and have fun.  Saturdays and Sundays are usually work-free and rainy days are an added bonus.  Those days we usually spend reading, writing, drinking coffee, or painting inside the house.  The living room and front of the house have become one big mural done by Ananias, the kids, Nate, and myself.

Landing in San Alejandro was a stroke of fate, only possible because of a changed plan, but it worked out in an amazing way.  We became friends with Ananias and his family, we experienced the life of Peruvian ribereños, or "people of the river" living on the Rio Napo, and we got a bit of “Jungle 101”.  I’m almost surprised that I still get excited seeing all the animals I do. From amazon parrots, to frogs, to macaws, to monkeys, to herons, and river dolphins. I’m excited about the progress with the house and to be able to sleep there, but I’m also a bit sad.  This house is going to mark our departure from San Alejandro and the friends we’ve made here.