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Liesl Graz. Geneva
Into the Amazon
| I wouldn't say that getting to the Amazon is half the fun -- it isn't, but it does get you into the spirit. We were able to spend a few days in Kapawi, the ecotourism project in the southern Euatorian Amazon, in the territory of the Ashouar They used to be called Jivaros (which means savages) and were best known (if the word applies) for being the notorious head-shrinkers. The Kapawi project is not only in their territory, but associates the people in its running; the plan is that the whole project will be turned over to the Ashouar in 2011, fifteen years after its inception. | To arrive in this remote area near the Peruvian border, you begin with a 19-passenger plane over the eastern range of the Andes to a place called Montavi, a God-forsaken military outpost. There you transfer to, or wait for a 5-passenger plane for a 30-minute shuttle flight, at about 400 m altitude, a sort of tree-top hovercraft, to a mud airstrip on the banks of the Pastaza River. Both of the flights depend heavily on the weather and we were stuck in Montavi long enough -- both ways -- to feel very sorry for the bored soldiers who spend months of their lives there. It was all quite beautiful, if -- especially over the mountains -- rather hair-raising. You are constantly on stand-by, because whether you fly or not depends on the weather -- at that minute. Radio conection has obviously changed conditions considerably. The final 1 1/2 hours is in a motorized canoe, with a nice quiet ecological motor which we would get to know as well as the birds along the river who don't seem to mind it at all. Kapawi, the lodge which takes its name from the nearest settlement, is remarkably well designed and well run. The four common buildings and the cabins are all in the local style -- very high-roofed, built of bamboo, palm and ironwood without the use of nails, and on stilts to avoid flooding when the river is in spate. The basic comforts are there: showers with water heated by the sun, which makes for rather brisk morning showers), and, bless them, real toilets. The first activity when you arrive is the issue of rubber boots. These are no luxury -- in fact there were few people who didn't slip and fall flat in the mud at least once -- and this was the drier season. The cabins and the main lodge are connected by a wooden walkway, which cotinues down to the river landing, but otherwise it's dirt and mud trails. The nearest road-head is 12 days' walking away; communication flows along the rivers. |
| The food was wonderful, much of
it grown locally, but not too folkloric. No snakes or lizards
so far as I know -- in fact very little meat : but yucca in
many forms, maize, vegetables and excellent fruit in quantity.
The Ashouar are the most primitive people I have ever come across -- my bedouin friends in the desert are the height of sophistication in comparison. They are hunter-gatherers -- hunting mostly with blow-guns, but recently some ancient fire-arms have made an appearance. Ammunition is one of the reasons they now want to have some money: others are metal cooking pots -- which are replacing earthenware -- and rubber boots. All the men have them; women are still barefoot. Peruvian traders come around occasionally with those necessities, as well as clothing that looks as though it came, two or three trades earlier, out of Oxfam left-overs. Only the feather crowns of the shamans and chiefs and the face-painting are authentic . I was looking forward to a lecture-demonstration of face-painting on my last morning in Kapawi, but then the word came that we would have to leave earlier than expected because of the weather conditions. As it happened, we had to wait almost two hours in Montavi; too bad the Aschuar guide didn't come to give his lesson. Kapawi is really in the Amazon -- although the rivers are tributaries of tributaries which only reach the main river about a thousand kilometres further on. It has the climate and it has the trees. The forest is virtually untouched. No you don't climb up fancy cradles into the tree-tops, you walk a trail -- not nexcessarily an easy hike, 2 - 3 hours at a time. You look and learn to look at trees and plants and any animal life you come across with the excellent guides. They work in teams, an Ashouar who does the real looking and knows his stuff, and a university-trained naturalist who speaks Spanish or sometimes English for relatively scientific explanations. The Ashouar is the leader. There are also visits to Ashouar villages -- I went on two, one was very interesting, we were only four people and the guides ; on the other, which was specially organised for our group and planned for a whole day, we were too many. That was also the muddiest of all our forays. The villages are set on high ground, at this season a good ten-minute scramble up the steep banks from the river. Seeing the women -- of course -- go down to fetch water, carrying babies and/or the family laundry, was a chastening sight: we barely managed to move ourselves. The day begins early in Kapawi, with the first excursions before breakfast : dawn on the river to watch birds. (me, watching birds, at six in the morning!) or upriver to one of the few mineral objects in the overwhelming vegetal landscape. Parrots, hundreds of them, flock to a single vertical clay slab each morning to pick out the pellets they need to digest their diet of otherwise poisonous berries and leaves. Swooping down, hanging on, pecking away. Breakfast (for humans) back at the lodge, then back on with the rubber boots for the morning's excursion -- sometimes an all-day one -- into the forest or to one of the villages. A first I was somewhat ambivalent about the village visits,, especially the one I did with an American guide named Kerry . She was probably very knowlegeable about the forest, but ridiculously p.c. and goody-goody about the "contacts with the community". A veritable scientologist of the environment. We had a long lecture about exactly how to behave: say nothing if you are not asked directly, hold your bowl of chicha in both hands and at least pretend to drink, don't squirm , Chicha is a drink that is both ceremonial and commonplace, a slightly alcoholic decoction prepared by the women who chew up manioc and then spit it out into the pot, adding enough river water to make a drink. Saliva helps with the fermentation . while adding river water. By the time you get your quite beautiful bowl of it, your hostess will have mixed it all with her own hand, and there may well be a little meat added in the form of an insect or two. The chief, or shaman who is acting as host, gets a bigger bowl, which is constantly refilled and as the time went by, I had the distinct feeling that the alcoholic content -- I have no idea how strong the stuff is -- was taking effect. The no squirming stricture was difficult to follow seated on low, narrow and very hard benches. Thank goodness, I did not get the end of the bench underneath which some glowing coals had been deposited. It seemed like a deliberate act of torture, but so conditioned were we by the deportment lectures that no one dared complain. Conversation -- via the Aschouar guide -- was very limited, except for a ritual round where each visitor was expected to introduce himself with name, occupation, place of residence, family situation and age. If you left out a single detail you were called to order. Long speeches of welcome -- and even longer silences. No smiles and no laughter -- an enormous difference with the bedouin . A long litany, by the chief, of their determination to foil attemps of the oil companies to take root in this part of the Amazon. Some of the younger men have done military servie (usually as trackers in the forest ) and the connection with Kapawi provides a little money -- not much, but for the moment they don't need much. There has been sporadic contact with missionaries -- in the larger settlements there is usually a Catholic church, and a priest comes around once or twice a year, between the river floods. The American evangelical sects who have made such inroads elsewhere in South America seem to have pretty much abandoned this part of the forest; they did do one useful service in building the mud airstrips. Night in the forest is surprisingly noisy, but without a single man-made noise. Loudest are the booming frogs, with a background sonic tapestry of crickets, bats, owls and other mysterious noises that I could not identify. Nothing frightening in our screened cabins and mosquito-netted beds. Siesta time in a hammock on the wide porch is heaven . Just as it is heavenly to spend a week in this extraordinary place where the only outside influence is a small library -- no electronics at all, no radio, telephone, fax, email. But not much longer. I think I would dissolve into a piece of ectoplasm. |
