The Amazing Amazon II!

Part two

We spent the afternoon learning about jungle medicine from two Shamans, one was well educated, spoke two or three indigenous languages as well as Spanish and English, the second fellow did not have any English. They have jungle medicine for just about everything from stomach problems, ulcers, diabetes, heart problems, parasites, you name it and they have a cure for it. Most of the medicines are made from the native roots, bark or leaves of various plants, trees and vines. They were so convincing I bought some Dragons Blood for insect bites and some Una de Gato for sore joints! Loreen, skeptical Loreen, sat through a cleansing session to have all her negative energy removed. The Shaman first blew some kind of smoke all over her and then went through a long chant process were he beat her on the head a few times with a rattle made from leaves. She took it a lot better than I thought, we'll see how the results turn out, but she still has the odd bit of negative energy towards me at times, so hope it works soon!

Loreen gets Shaminized!

We visited the indigenous Yuaga tribe, a group of hunter/gatherers that have not really adapted to the agricultural way of life along the river. They seem to have adapted well to the tourist trade as the "village" we visited was pretty staged, a large central teepee style area where they performed tribal dances for us, one Loreen and I even got to take part in, Loreen with an elder gentleman, no teeth, tee-hee, I with a winsome lass.

Yuaga Dancing

The rest of the village consisted of several little booths where the villages sold homemade trinkets, bracelets, baskets etc. We did not actually see any homes but we're assured that the elders in the village still only dress in the traditional grass type skirt.

Two of the men did do a blowgun demonstration, very accurate, shooting at a four inch post with a painted target from about 100 feet, they both hit the target, I however missed the post.

The not so great blowgun hunter!

One young lady had a pet baby sloth in her booth, which Loreen wanted to adopt and bring home, couldn't get the deal done though.

Loreen and her baby sloth

After you crash a boat through the trees and weeds to get to a few lakes only accessible during high flood water we were fortunate to be able to see the world's largest lily pads, the Victoria Regia.

How is that for a lily pad?

Then, one of the guides took us to his uncle's rum distillery, wow equipment from the 1880's and still working. The rum is made out of cane sugar juice that is left to ferment for 24 hours and then into an old still. The alcohol content is only about 18% but the sediment content from the Amazon is about 10%. He makes four vintages, a white, a mix with some fruits, one with ginger and then the kicker, seven herbs or jungle Viagra. We had a taste of them all, but did not buy any as the sediment in the bottom of the bottles was pretty wild. Although most of the people in our group bought bottles!

The Still

The product, jungle viagra on the right!

As part of the original river boat tour we were to visit a family home and as this was not scheduled by the lodge Loreen had a small chat with our group leader and voilà we suddenly had a home to visit the next morning.

It was a very basic home, built on stilts, with wooden floors (many of the homes built on the ground have only dirt floors), it consisted of a kitchen with a cooking fire on the floor, a social or living room and two bedrooms. The lady of the house who was twenty five and her three children were home and answered the guides questions. A herd of children showed up to see all the gringos, including an 18 year old girl with her two little ones (3 and 1). Now I really had a problem with Loreen as she made friends with the girl and then thought that we should try to bring her and the little ones home with us. I managed to talk her out of it! I mean we have no home now, so I said I didn't think our housing budget was large enough for us, three new people and a sloth. That get her attention! And besides the river people appear to be perfectly happy with their life.

Loreen wanted to bring this family home

The home owner and her three little ones

Then off to the village kindergarten and primary school, the herd of children beat us there along with a few more (a large crowd considering they are on summer vacation and school does not start until March). Both were one room schools where the teachers taught all grades and subjects. The children were very enthusiastic and interested in where we all came from and told us what they wanted to be when they grow up, most want to be teachers. The school and the study material seemed just like the country schools we used to have in Canada, maps on the wall, the alphabet, etc.

Students in their classroom

Coming home from another non catch fishing trip, off in the distance we could see this guy standing up in his boat holding something, showing it off. I thought it was a big catfish, but as we got closer the guide recognized it as a caiman. Sure enough there he was, in his dugout canoe, wife and two little ones, with a nine foot caiman or alligator. The wife was calmly doing her laundry (like her husband catching caimans is an everyday occurrence), while he showed off his caiman.

Jungle Loreen, caiman wrestler!

Our last night at the lodge a group of enthusiastic high school students entertained us with local indigenous dancing. The last dance was about Anaconda Women, who snuck into a village after all the people had passed out from some bad air and revived them with her anaconda. Sure enough out comes this sixteen year old girl with an eight foot anaconda and dances through the tourists draping it over their shoulders, I picked that point of the evening to disappear for a while!

Anaconda Woman!

Our group was thrust on Explorarama at the last minute and they, especially Cesar and Willy the tour guides, showed us an excellent time. I'm not sure how the boat cruise would have turned out, but I would recommend this group of lodges.

Cesar and Willy, showing us how to drink jungle rum