Rurrenabaque : A few days in Carmen
Florida.
Lunes 19 de noviembre – jueves 22 de
noviembre.
S 14º 27’ W 67º 32’ Elev: 235 m
Guillaume and I both get rides on the back of motorcycles to our hostal
(Santa Anna), a beautiful place with several open air courtyards including one
with hammocks (where one afternoon we interrupt
the peaceful rest of a bat which is hanging from the thatched roof above
the hammocks). A number of geckos roam
the walls of the courtyards and the communal bathrooms, keeping the local
insect population at bay.
The town of Rurrenabaque is a town of maybe 10 000 people, on the banks
of the Rio Beni, with rugged low mountains behind it and upriver from it. It is
a commercial centre for all the villages in the area but has become something
of a tourist centre in recent years. There are a lot of hostals, restaurants,
tour operators, a few bars, and a very good French bakery. The bakery always
has a lot of foreign customers in the morning including me until they sell out,
usually around 11 AM. It is a clean, peaceful town.
The reason that Rurrenabaque has become such a tourist destination
started 25 years ago when a group of 4 men made a trip on the Beni River. They
had a major wipeout on a rapid, lost everything and got separated. Two
disappeared and are presumed dead, one was found by locals and the fourth, an
Israeli, spent almost a month before being found by a search party led by a
Rurrenabaque local. The Israeli wrote a book about his experiences which became
well known and led to a lot of people coming here wanting to experience the
Amazon. This man started up the first tour company here (there are probably at least
20 now). The story is told to me by his
daughter so I assume that there is a lot of truth to it. (I end up doing two
tours with them.)
There is a military installation in town. There is an adobe wall around
the compound and on it is written: ‘El mar nos partenece por derecho; por recuperarlo es un deber’. (The sea
belongs to us by rights; to get it back is our duty.) This refers to the
invasion by Chile in 1879 of the western coastal part of what was then Bolivia,
precipitating the ‘War of the Pacific’ 1879-83 with Bolivia and Peru. Since then, Chile has had ownership of the
western part of Bolivia including all of its Pacific coastline. Bolivia
therefore has had no access to the sea and has been trying to get it back ever
since. A few weeks later, when I am in Cochabamba, the newspapers report on an
International Court proceeding between Chile and Peru where Peru is attempting
to take ownership of an area of ocean currently under Chilean control. Bolivia
has observers there attempting to figure out their chances with the
International Court. This issue will not die.
There is something big coming up in Bolivia that is causing everyone in
the country to adjust their plans. Bolivia’s Census Day is Wednesday, which
happens once every decade or so. Most businesses,
offices, and services in the country will be shutting down (by law) and travel
is severely restricted. People are expected to be at home to receive census
takers and their questionnaires. (In rural areas, it will last two days.) So if
we are to organize anything over Wednesday, we need to be off the roads on that
day.
I visit a number of travel agencies and find out what tours they have
into the reserves in this area. I also talk to a government agent, Leo, at the
local Tourist Agency. When I explain what I am interested in, he suggests a
visit with a family homestead in the forest community of Carmen Florida, which
is a few kilometers upriver on the Rio Beni and then the Rio Tuichi. I decide
to go, and Guillaume is also interested.
We are supposed to be leaving at 8:30 AM, but it is closer to 10:30. Leo
is late as he is one of the local organizers for Wednesday’s census. Using some
of the money we are paying (about $120
each) Leo buys some rice, toilet paper, gasoline, meat, crackers, bottled
water. We bring that and some bedding.
Boating up the Rio Beni
Carmen Florida residents are of the Takana tribe. Each family has been
allocated a plot of land, a 200 m wide strip, which goes from the river back
several kilometers to the mountains where they are piping in water (gravity
feed). This is a new experiment that this family is trying this year, to host
visitors. The family of 10 children, ages about 20-40, half of which are still
living at home, and most of the others live nearby. One of the younger girls is
single with a really cute three year old. They have a thatched roof hut for a
bedroom for everybody, and another hut for cooking and eating. They cook over a
clay fireplace on a table with metal rods across part of it as a grill. The two
ends of the thatched roof are partly open and the fire seems to draft well and
there is no smoke.
Cutest member of the family
Sleeping
quarters
This community and indeed the whole area including the town of
Rurrenabaque was hit last January with a flood.
On this family’s land, the water
rose 4 m above the ground, itself 4 or 5 m above the river level when we
visited. This family lost everything including livestock, their buildings,
tools, everything. They spent two nights sleeping in the trees, and there were
4 deaths here and 40 in Rurrenabaque. International aid agencies brought in
food for several months. In 10 months they have done a nice job of re-building,
replanting.
The first night we help make supper. Plantain has been cut up and fried
until very dry. We take it and put it into a very large wooden mortar and
pestle and pulverize it into a coarse powder, adding vegetable oil and some
powdered cheese. It is good although pretty dry, and is a common food they use
when on the move. It reminds me of an Ojibway dish, where northern pike is
slowly cooked in frying pan while breaking it up finally it makes dry fish
flakes with a similar texture.
That night, I notice a large male tarantula on the outside of their
kitchen hut. Nilo tells me that it has been living there for months, coming out
every night to hunt. They do not bother it and visa versa. I ask Nilo to hold
my watch near it so that I can have some scale in my photo. He gets a little
too close and the spider makes a sudden move toward his hand but he pulls his
hand back faster.
Male Tarantula
Like all rural homes in South America, there are a couple dozen chickens
running around. They are always interesting to watch. There are two roosters:
one looks healthy and beautiful, while the other looks like it gets beat up
regularly, and when it mounts a hen it usually gets chased away. One of the
hens has a troop of a dozen chicks that she is leading around. At night, the
chickens roost in the trees except the ones with chicks, that stay with them on
the ground. The second day, there is a Belgian couple, Piter and Elena, that
arrive, who were the first tourists here a few weeks ago and are back. Piter
walks out of the cooking hut and accidentally steps on a hen, after which she
flops around and promptly dies.
The family practices slash and burn agriculture: 3 years on and 4 years
fallow. They grow rice, corn, peanuts, sugar cane, yucca, and plantain. They
have a hole in the ground under which is an underground firepit. They put a large pot in the hole, and light a
fire under to boil sugar cane juice into molasses. They use the neighbour’s
cane press to extract the juice. It is all made of wood and requires a horse to
operate the press by walking around it in a circle while attached to its lever.
On their homestead, there are many kinds of fruit trees including
Coconut, Orange, Lemon, Coffee, Mango, Avocado, Cacao, Banana, Coffee,
Camaruru, Achacheru, Maarfil, and Motacu. Camaruru has a spiky, yellow, small
fruit with 3 large seeds surrounded by edible pulp which is tangy sour.
Achacheru is larger, but similar to Camaruru. Marfil is a palm related to
coconut with a one large very hard mass of small fruit close to the ground.
Each section is hollow filled with liquid and gelly that tastes like coconut.
The mass is all one large entity and very hard. Motacu is another coconut relative. Its leaves are used for
thatching and its fruit is in a bunch near the top, looking like a huge bunch
of tiny coconuts. They have yellow juicy meat inside the husk but outside the
nut. Inside the 6 cm long nut are 3 cylinders of white coconut meat. When they
fall to the ground, a kind of beetle lays eggs on then and its grubs grow
inside (up to 3 per fruit). They are commonly used for fish bait and several of
us spend hours extracting the grubs (and eating the pieces of coconut meat) to
use to fish with.
Cacao fruit
Flat river stones (quartzite) are wetted
and used for sharpening knives and machetes. Everyone walks around with
a machete in their hand. I asked Manuel about whether people hurt themselves
with their machetes. Sure enough, Manuel showed me a big scar on his calf where
he stabbed himself deeply with his, and had a painful and bloody time walking
home.
Originally our plan was to camp out on the second night of a three day
trip, but due to the census, and the fact that it rained a lot the second day,
we stayed at the homestead. We mostly slept on blankets on the dirt floor, a
couple of crude wooden beds were also used, all with mosquito nets. I asked Manuel
what did before netting. Said built very well sealed thatched structures:
worked against bugs but were hot.
There are a couple of adult dogs, one in good condition, the other
recovering from a parasitic disease. He is super skinny, a lot of his fur has
fallen out, and his paws are red and clearly uncomfortable. Apparently he is
doing much better than a week previously. There are also three tiny white
puppies about 6 weeks old, that came from a neighbor. Guillaume and I are sharing
a mosquito net and at night, the three puppies work their way in and snuggle up
to me or to him, and get up from time to time to squirm or fight with each
other. At some point, they want out and I let them out. A half hour they want
back in. This is repeated the second night except that one of them stays in the
kitchen under the still warm, fireplace.
Guillaume does not speak much Spanish in spite of 2 years of college
Spanish, so I do most of the talking except when we meet French people. He does
seem to understand some of what goes on. He has a positive attitude, and is
enjoying this although he is clearly not into it to the same extent as I am.
The first night, Nilo takes us for a night walk. (While waiting I have
gone on one on my own. We see a lot of fireflies but not a lot else. We wqalk
by the community school and the church which are not that far. I ask Nilo if he
is not concerned about snakes when out walking at night especially as he is
only wearing sandals. He says that he can smell the snakes. This seems possible
to me although no one else I have been with in the Amazon has made this claim.
We go for a hike with Manuel the second day back to the mountains. It is very slippery
due to recent rain. He shows us how the Chumidi tree is used to obtain bark
strips dried and used for binding. The Liana Uña de gato (Cat’s claw vine) is
cut in section to obtain fresh filtered water. The inside layers of common
shrub used to make sticky bandages. We talk about the value of trees: it is
clear that if they need to use it, they have a source of wealth in their trees,
at least the species that are highly prized for lumber, mainly mahogany and
cedare. We look at peccary tracks and 2 armadillo dens and armadillo trails.
The armadillos leave a distinctive odour behind. To me, it smells like slightly
rancid butter.
The second afternoon Guillaume and I go fishing with Manuel in a small
stream. We use the grubs we have collected as bait, and tiny line and hooks. We
fish in the deeper pools where there are about three different species we
catch, none bigger than about 12 cm in length. At first, only Manuel is
catching so I go and watch closely how he does it. He is throwing out the line
and as soon as he feels a nibble he jerks hard. I try this and start to catch
too although not as well as he is. Guillaume is not a fisherman and really does
not get it.
That evening, we and the Belgians and a lot of the family go out fishing
on the river. The technique is to bury the enormous hook in one of the fish we
caught in the afternoon, attached to a 45 kg line. We throw the line out as far
as possible and wait. And wait. Four catfish are caught, the biggest one by
Guillaume. It is a pintada, extremely beautiful. I wake up at midnight and wake
up Nilo (everyone has fallen asleep) and suggest we head home and he agrees. He
tells me that he hooked a very large fish but that it broke his hook. We have
all gotten quite a few mosquito bites mostly through our clothing. The next
morning, the catfish are cut in sections and cooked over a slow fire in banana
leaves, or stuffed into sections of
bamboo with an oil and herbs poured in. After breakfast the census taker
arrives and spends about an hour interviewing family members. (I have not heard
anything about the Harper method now being used in Canada where it is now
voluntary whether to fill out the Long Form census.)
Night's catch
Fish cut in pieces, sauce added, wrapped in banana leaves or stuffed in
bamboo stem and ready for the fire
In the afternoon of the third day, Nilo takes us by boat to another
stream which we hike up and fish along the way (more bait for tonight). After we tie up the boat,
Nilo takes the contents including a bottle of gasoline and hides them in the
woods and I ask him why. He tells me things do go missing here. The hiking is
slippery and tricky, both high above the stream and in the stream itself. After
not too long I decide to hike right through the stream rather than trying to
skirt it. There are a lot of fish but they are not biting, only nibbling and we
hook very few. Eventually, Nilo takes his machete and thrashes the back of it
through schools of fish and is able to collect quite a few more. We continue
upstream until we come to a deep pool below a 10 m falls. We strip and go in
for a refreshing dip as it is very hot. I notice a hummingbird nest attached to
a root hanging over the pool. This is a classic place for a hummer nest. There
is no hummer in sight.
Swimming below the falls
We head back downstream to the river to where the boat was tied but it
is not there. This has happened twice before (and eventually he got his boat
back). We have no choice but to hike
back. We are on the edge of the several km of Carmen Florida, and we come
across a pasture and then a trail. The first homestead we come to, Nilo stops
to talk to the residents who are busy boiling down cane juice. It turns out
that this neighbor took his boat. His reasoning was that he did not know whose
boat it was. (As if one should always take things if you do not know who the
owner is.) On the way back, Nilo is almost shaking with rage.
That evening we boat back to Rurre (as the locals call it) with most of
the family. The next day (Friday 23) we get cleaned up and plan
our next expedition.
No comments:
Post a Comment