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Deep in Peru's Amazon Jungle, Guy Crittenden Discovers All Creatures

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Deep in Peru's Amazon Jungle, Guy Crittenden Discovers All Creatures PERU SHAMANsays Deep in Peru’s Amazon jungle, Guy Crittenden discovers all creatures great, small and infinitely horrifying. Photography by Sidney Smith A pink-footed tarantula from the thatched roof of the jungle lodge. #48 get lost ISSUE #43 get in the know The 6500-kilometre-long Amazon is the second longest river in the world, after the Nile. get in the know The Amazon River pours about 227 million litres of water into the Atlantic Ocean every second. ISSUE #43 get lost #49 PERU taut mosquito net and a dusty yellow curtain are all that stand A between my head and a spider the size of a bread plate on the window a metre away. The day’s first light has created the perfect, albeit terrifying, silhouette. Is it on the inside or the outside, I wonder. Freeing the edge of my carefully tucked-in mosquito net, I slip out, move closer and ever so slowly pull back the curtain. Inside! My inner sook screams as I dive back into bed and tightly stuff the mozzie net back in. Finding myself within arm’s length of hairy, scary arachnids is something I expected when I signed on for an eight-day Amazon eco-adventure with Pulse Tours. Still, it’s one thing to conceptualise encounters with such creatures, another entirely for it to become a daily reality. When jungle guide Victor takes a large pink-footed tarantula from a thatched roof and offers it to the group, I demur while the others snap photos of it walking up their arms. Victor even lets it crawl across his face. For four days, our small group will trek into the Amazon jungle before spending the remainder of the tour at a spiritual centre participating in the region’s shamanic rituals. The route is a twenty-first century reprise of parts of the more rugged Gringo Trail blazed throughout the 1960s and 70s by seekers like brothers Terence and Dennis McKenna – psychonaut pop philosopher and leading ethnopharmacologist, respectively – and Beat Generation poets William S Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. In those days, gringo ‘seekers’ stepped off the plane into a true unknown, cultivating allies and bartering for information among mestizos (people of mixed race) and Indians from more than 50 tribes. For many of these people the Spanish language was exotic, never mind Inglés. There are just eight of us – all men, all in their twenties except for me (53 in chronological years, 23 in my mind) – accompanied by Pulse’s owner Dan Cleland and his partner Tatyana. The combination of eco- adventure and spiritual quest was the siren call for everyone in the group, which I later nickname the Ayahuasca Test Pilots, after a sign painted on a mototaxi. Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss had already been snagged by Dennis McKenna as the title for his autobiography. Our group bonded in Iquitos – first over cerveza at Al Frío y Al Fuego, a restaurant and bar floating on the Itaya River, then at the vast open- air Belén Market, where we recoiled at the oddities on display. There were pickled vipers in jars, freshly butchered tortoises with twitching limbs, and the splayed corpses of ‘jungle rats’ on the footpath. Jungle rat is nothing like you might imagine. While alive, the dog-sized guinea pigs are actually quite cute, and guilt almost stops me from trying a roasted one at a roadside barbecue. For the record, yes, it does taste like chicken. The others buy hand-rolled mapachos, the sacred tobacco used by Amazonian shamans, although there is very little sacred about the smell when you’re downwind. My eight-legged friend and I are temporary residents of a rustic lodge on the banks of the Peruvian Amazon, about a half-day by mototaxi and motorised canoe from Iquitos. Not being able to return to sleep in my new pal’s presence, I shake out my boots, pull them on and shuffle along the plank bridge to the bathroom. It’s about three metres above the ground, so I concentrate on not falling. Today’s plans include a morning, afternoon and night jungle trek and I need both ankles intact. Over the coming days I discover that, unlike the African veldt, where the creatures are big and impressive, the Amazon’s wildlife is small and unexpected. It’s a mural versus scrimshaw kind of thing. Sure, jaguars, Jungle guide Victor cools his heels. #50 get lost ISSUE #43 get in the know The piraíba catfish found in the Amazon can grow to about 3.5 metres long and weigh 270 kilograms. get in the know The Amazon widens by about two metres each year due to waves from boats breaking against its banks. ISSUE #43 get lost #51 PERU On the Amazon. anacondas and croc-like caimans are impressive, but they’re also One time Alipio uses a machete to cut a branch and bring jungle rodent they can strike hard enough from four metres away stroke engines that scuttle over the river’s surface like noisy water bugs elusive. We see neither big cat nor huge snake, but find a pitiful baby a black viper to the jungle floor. Guide Victor holds it, wrapped to break your leg. Shivers. – have taken their toll. Still, on the last night, we challenge the guides to caiman immersed in a mangrove swamp during a night-time boat around his forearm. One of the highlights is a visit to La Isla de Los Monos – Monkey a game of barefoot soccer in a nearby village. Needless to say, we lose excursion. Yet there’s no disappointment – just being out in the “This snake can kill you,” he says rather casually. For the Island – where howlers, capuchin and other primates climb aboard our spectacularly, but the guides have a grand time, as do the village onlookers. wild is reward enough. first time I wonder if there’s antivenom back at the lodge. canoe, eating the fruit and necking the water we hand them. They also When it’s time to pack up early the following morning to head to When your vision narrows there’s also plenty to find. We spy The most common deadly creatures we encounter are black the shamanic centre, my spider friend has disappeared for the first an army of cutter ants carrying large bits of leaf in an endless scorpions (sometimes attached to leaves at eye level). The This aggressive serpent is so time since our introduction. This is more unsettling than actually line along the forest floor. Their domed anthill is the size of a numerous pink-footed tarantulas we spy are not as toxic, but seeing it there, splayed across the window. Thankfully my backpack baseball diamond and shoulder high. Another interesting animal they’re creepy as hell when viewed during night-time treks in poisonous there’s almost no hope of is strapped tight and my clothes and other belongings sealed in their we encounter is an anteater-like rodent called coati that can climb the light of a small headlamp. survival if you’re bitten, and if their heat own waterproof kayaking bags. No room for a hitchhiker in there. trees like their raccoon evolutionary cousins. Alipio, the assistant Now and again during day trips we stop the boat mid-river for a Nihue Rao Spiritual Centre is deep in the jungle, close to the small guide, climbs a tall tree and knocks down a giant lizard hiding up cooling dip. The deeper water away from the banks means less sensors mistake your foot for a jungle village of Llanchama along the Nanay River. It’s still quite basic, but there there. He makes the mistake of holding it by the tail to show it off; chance of encounters with the piranhas and anacondas that tend rodent they can strike hard enough from are warm showers and the spiders are on the outside of the windows. the tail falls twitching to the ground and the lizard scurries away. to hang out near the water’s edge. We spot the famous pink river Curandero Ricardo Amaringo and his assistants are the real deal, leading I get to hold a three-toed sloth and see a giant iguana up close. dolphins breaching the surface of the river and I wonder how they four metres away to break your leg. us through three shamanic ceremonies. We listen to the beautiful and At one point, I step off a boat to pee wearing only flip-flops. Big manage in the zero visibility of the brackish water. rhythmic icaros (sacred songs) late into the night after drinking small cups mistake. Punishment ants sneak between my toes and start biting. The thought of piranhas and anacondas doesn’t freak me out enough try to make off with anything shiny we mistakenly have dangling around of ayahuasca, the sacred brew that opens the mind to spirit-world visions. They are almost invisibly small, but their venom is so strong each to prevent me swimming, but Victor’s description of the bushmaster our necks or, worse, looping though our earlobes. They are as fun as a Everyone in the group will later agree that this part of the adventure is nip smarts like a bee sting. Their name comes from their punitive snake – which he talks about on night jungle walks, naturally – terrifies barrel of… well, you get the picture. the most life changing. application. They are known to have been set loose on men caught me. This aggressive serpent is so poisonous there’s almost no hope of By the time we come to the end of our jungle expedition, the three The ceremonies take place in a large, round temple-like structure called cheating by their partners, for example.
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