Wednesday was the coolest simply because I knew what the heck I was doing, and yet it wasn’t the last day. We had water in the morning, which was fantastic. I dared to wear a long-sleeve (with my Otavalo pants, which are pretty much the coolest pants on the planet) and NO bug spray so I could touch the animalitos. Valiente, no? We had an egg and ham sandwich for breakfast, and I also had a huge bowl of cereal because I had been HUNGRY before lunch yesterday, plus I hadn’t eaten cereal in FOREVER. This morning (same group, same Jose) we went on a different trail named Harpia, after the eagle. Well, kind of. It was a longer trail, and sometimes I swear that if Jose had been going any faster, he would have been running. Falls were almost common; I did so twice without injury to my still-finicky knee. We saw a balsa tree, which had a weird sound when you banged on it, plus it had a little sentimental value because I remember making a model bridge out of balsa when I was a sophomore in Science Olympiad. I’m not sure how Jose spotted this, but there’s this ant (there’s a lot of ants, in case you haven’t noticed)that uses a leaf as a roof, then make their house underneath, attached to the leaf. We also walked over this stream that was just so perfect and beautiful, it looked like Disney had constructed it, complete with soundtrack. We also passed these weird things that were popping out of the ground; I thought they were termites. They weren’t! Cicada larvae go build this clay tube, then pop out of the top once they’ve grown up. It was super cool because the inside was super smooth, like a potter had designed it. We also saw a woodpecker with a super red head, although I didn’t get to see it at work. Next Jose took us to this clearing. Whenever there’s a clearing in the rainforest, you know something’s up because competition is so fierce between the trees that they fill up empty space ridiculously fast. This time there was a clearing because the ants had destroyed the trees. About these ants: they’re lemon flavored. We each got a stick and ate some (Brenden has a really great video, on Margoh’s camera) and they were legitimately sour-tasting. Fun stuff. We also passed through about two of the camera traps; they have a special method to go through so you don’t end up taking a picture of yourself, which sounds cute but it’s really bad because it takes up time and money. We kept going, and there were these sweet little purple flowers on the ground; I took a picture for Beth. Next we came across this tubular plant with a yellow spider hiding inside. It was dangerous, and could probably kill a 12-year-old. Sorry, Will. I took a picture of a couple of cool looking stink bugs, then we crossed another bridge and Jose spotted an electric eel. It was thicker than my palm, but it was only medium-size. It looked slimy, like a worm. Brenden or Dan asked Jose how he knew that the eels were really electric, and apparently Jose had been standing in the water once, felt a shock, looked around, felt it again, saw the eel, and apparently the current was so strong that he was shaking for a couple of hours afterward. So yeah, myth confirmed. We kept on for a little bit, then Jose saw some monkeys so we followed them. We fell off the trail and we close to another saltlick, so we when down into it. It was pretty gross, smelled bad, and I was in serious danger of losing my boots to the mud (it would swallow my foot whole). We kept on, and climbing out wasn’t exactly easy; I needed Brenden’s help once and fell once, getting a little nervous about my disjointed knee. We finally made it out to another picturesque stream, where we had an at least 10-minute conversation on the carnero, or penis fish. What happens is it gets attracted to urine, then it goes all up in there and kind of explodes, and the only way to fix it is to get it surgically removed. Daniel said he’s gone swimming in the river 100 times and has peed 50 times, and he’s still intact; same with Jose except times 10. The only instance Jose could recall happened to his (female) cousin; she had it removed the indigenous way. It was mostly Brenden who argued about whether or not you should wear a speedo, etc, and we carried on for quite some time. We finally continued on, and Jose saw some more monkeys. By this time I was super hot (long sleeve, remember?) and a little crabby, but I am SO glad we stopped for these monkeys. They were capuchin, super cute, and came super close. I even managed pictures. By the time we realized what time it was, it was almost lunch and Jose led us on an almost-run through what I’m pretty sure wasn’t a real path. I had NEVER been happier to get out of my clothes and into a tank top, and my sandals (the boots are amazingly waterproof, but at the price of comfort). We had stir-fry for lunch, and on the way back we saw that a bunch of ants had infested the trail and were attacking a tarantula-looking thing. I stayed to watch a little, and saw them attack a millipede AND I saw a scorpion cross the path. Pretty exciting. I went over to the hammocks to read until 3, then got into my bathing suit as it started to rain. We were going for a river run. The boat took us out, out, out, they gave us life jackets, and we jumped. We spent most of the time messing around, kicking the skittish girls in the legs to make them think there was something in the water (other than piranhas, anacondas, caimans, and penis fish). So mature. I marveled at the speed of the current and the pink-flowered trees that had fallen into the river; they were called Juan Sanchez. We were allowed to slip off our life jackets and push them down like a diaper, to leave our arms free. I liked to float and look at the sky. The current was interesting; depending on how close you were to the middle, you could go different speeds. We got a little cold during the end, but before we knew it we were coming up on Tiputini. The current was really strong, and you really had to fight it AND use your brain in order to get to the dock. I made it, but some of the kids didn’t and kept floating on down toward Peru; the motorboat picked them up. I had a nice, still-shampooless shower and ate chili for dinner. We played cards for a little bit, then we all headed over to the library for a primate talk. These two girls (one from Madrid, on from the US) talked about their respective projects, with the ultimate goal (Andrew asked) of conserving the species. It was pretty cool to hear about the monkeys; some are monogamous and some hold tails like people hold hands. It was also interesting to hear about these researchers’ schedules: The get up at 5:30, in the field at 6, watch monkeys and record data sets (every 5 minutes all day or every 2 minutes for 20 minutes) generally off trail until the monkeys fall asleep at 6, go back for dinner, spend about four hours in the lab, then go to sleep to do it all over again; I don’t think they even have weekends. I can sit and study Arabic for 6 hours if I REALLY need to, but I don’t think I have any desire to be a monkey researcher. After the talk we went to bed. By now, the forest was really starting to grow on me. At first I had almost hated it; it was so enclosed and quiet and noisy and uncomfortable, but its simplicity and complexity really got to me. Maybe things would be different if I had actual work (although I know at least of one the researchers had time to read a novel) because I’d have less time to think about being bored and lonely, but I liked having natural noise, the trees, and the small surprises, like the huge hummingbird I saw while reading during break.
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