This time, we were greeted by Tilman, our main contact for our work experience in Manu. He drove us to CREES offices to settle in rooms above the office for a couple of nights. Tilman led us around Cusco with our 2 fellow volunteers, Leah from Virginia, US (and all over!), and Alex from England. We stocked up on basic supplies in the San Pedro market down town with Tilman (wellie boots, mosquite repellant, clothes washing soap and all the boring stuff).
Walking around town with the boys and Justin, we saw so many beautiful Peruvian women in the native attire. I love the top hats and bowler hats, the joined double-plaits and all the colourful layered skirts - I understand the hats and skirts are unique styles for different communities, so they say a lot about the person wearing them.
My favourites where this little girl selling roasted corn on the street and a lovely lady named Paulina, from Pisco town, who was selling her handmade bracelets.
We headed off early in the morning in a van towards the rainforests. We were seated cosily, with people and stacks of eggs (yes, you read that right) and all sorts of supplies between us. In the van, we met Sue, who was coming along to video a bit of our volunteer group for CREES and also Grant, a researcher at the MLC site. We were all in the van with Henri, the driver, JuanMa, another CREES person, and Tilman, Alex and Leah.
Sue was in the back with us and we all enjoyed her energy and lots of laughter. She's from Holland but has been travelling around the world over the years and is currently based in Cusco. We discovered things you only do on a long car trip - like that Sue is 33, Justin and I are 44, Alex and Leah, 22, and Andy turning 11. So we felt blessed by the power of doubles somehow. We found we would be in need of this blessing soon enough as we began our drive down the steep, muddy, rocky, twisty mountain road that is the only route down into the cloud forest and to the Manu rainforest.
We stopped at a couple of quaint villages on the way, the first one was Pisac. We enjoyed delicious bread fresh from a wood oven and soft drinks. Once in the car, we realised again why children should not have soda. Sam went sugar-caffeine crazy and started excitedly banging his head against the back of a car seat for lack of other energetic outlets. Everyone else in the van was supportive of him by taking little videos to send to YouTube and show at his wedding.
Justin, being closest to the stacks of dozens of eggs, felt personally responsible for them. He panicked when the boys played all, started playfighting or edged near the eggs. Once Sam or twice, Sam accidentally (we think) nearly landed fully on the eggs in a great feat of yoga-gymnastic moves, but the eggs were saved at the last milli-second by one of us tackling and retrieving him.
After a white knuckle ride down some slippery mountain terrain, on a bi-directional 1 1/2 lane road, we arrived at the Cock of the Lodge in the cloud forest. Huge sighs of relief. And the lodge was lovely, consisting of rows of small wooden cabins with en-suite shower/toilets (and HOT water!). The main lodge provided a tranquil resting spot for gazing at a well-cultivated hummingbird garden. tens and tens of hummingbirds flying about at any time, gathering nectar from an assortment of hummingbird-favoured flowers.
The next day, we set off on part 2 of our journey down the mountain road. Freshly showered and full of a delicious pancake breakfast, we were ready for the ride. We had an amazing driver named Henri who managed to keep us from driving into the numerous lorries and buses that kept aiming for our van, but getting near misses instead. We were more than thankful to be told to get out and walk around a couple of waterfall topped or creek bottomed sections of the road.
Finally at the end of the ride, we transferred into a large motorised canoe. This boat took us fairly quickly down the Madre de Dios river where our MLC lodge was located. The waters in the Madre de Dios are very shallow in most parts, but with fast running currents and under-currents. Tides didn't seem to know which way to run - heading this way and that. But nothing perilous, only just curious.
Arriving at the Manu Learning Centre (MLC) Lodge, we helped to cart boxes, crates and packages up the path to the kitchen building. We were pleasantly surprised to find that only 4-5 eggs had not survived our trip.
We met all sorts of people who work full time at CREES and live in the MLC lodges. I knew it would take a few days to start sorting out the names, but it made for a great chance to practice our spanish and get to know some locals. We grew to love these guys: Karla and Thomas, our kitchen crew; Grant, Nelson and Danny, bio-researchers; Julian, our boat driver (with a colorful background having come from a local tribe originally); JuanMa, a re-located spaniard who works with CREES community projects; and Exon, Julian's 12 yearl old son, hanging out at MLC on part of his school break. Adding us volunteers, Sue and Tilman, there was never a shortage of card or chess players. Village Idiot became a popular game. But never as exciting as the nightly 5 PM footie game.
There soon became a routine that if it was not raining, there was a 5 AM trek to the clay licks to learn more about the hundreds of macaws that gather there in the early mornings. For those of us that could pull ourselves out of a warm, cosy bed, we were rewarded with the most beautiful pre-dwan rainforest mornings. We quickly became macaw nerds - getting a thrill out of learning the nuances between chestnut fronted macaws and blue headed macaws and blue headed parrots and scarlett and green macaws and white-eyed parakeets and so on, you get the picture. Squaking good fun.
Every day at 7:30 AM we found a breakfast magically appeared on the table, something different each morning. Although, Justin and I are coffee folks, we couldn't get used to powdered milk in our coffee (backwards city dwellers) and so switched to the hot chocolate on offer. Pretty much everyone there was on hot chocolate at break times.. it was so rich and tasty I didn't miss the coffee at all. Really.
During the days, we trekked through the rainforest, sometimes working on a project, sometimes learning the area. Having just read Lost In the Jungle, I looked about the rainforest awed with respect for those who could survive there alone. Yes there are water sources to be found (such as in the bamboo growing all over), and ways to make shelters (vines, branches, plenty of palms) ... but in reality, the sheer energy of accomplishing anything with a machete in that hot, humid, mosquito infested area is enough to quell fantastic thoughts of swinging through the trees Tarzan style and landing in a lovely Swiss Family Robinson pad. The reality is that even maintaining the few MLC jungle tracks or 'transects' is a lot of work. As we walked through paths used regularly by the MLC folks, we regularly had to machete through newly grown vines, climb over or under newly fallen trees and maneuver across small creeks that had become high and rapid with recent rains.
The children went on some rainforest walks with us, and they enjoyed it, but found it tough to keep going. Kids nowadays aren't used to hiking through woods for hours like we did when I was small (we walked uphill through the the snow to school, both ways ;-). But, between whining to return the hot-chocolate laden lodge and claiming sever near-death injuries, they also had some serious fun climbing vines and checking out little spiders, frogs and peccary or tapir tracks. We found that when we walked the same paths on our own, we could cover in 10 minutes the distance they covered in an hour. I was impressed by Tilman and the MLC folks for their patience (I think they may have actually enjoyed having the kiddies around, but they did have the patience of saints!).
My favourite part of the Manu jungle experience was an overnight trek to the remote jungle village of Salvacion. The trip was postponed initially because gigantic-proportion rains had caused the Madre de Dios river to swell up by several meters as well as making small creeks near the town turn into impassable rivers. Amazingly, the water levels had dropped again by several meters by the next morning - everything in the rainforest changes quickly. We were able to hop into our boat to head up river and land on the Salvacion side of the Maddre de Dios.
Still the waters hadn't dropped completely - we found ourselves removing shoes once again to wade - or waddle depending on who(!) across the creeks on the other side. The currents were still pretty strong and watched trees floating past, ready to become harvested by locals as firewood or building materials.
After a 45 minute walk, we found ourselves at a small dirt road, waiting for the once a day bus into town. We all played a game that involved holding stones in a closed fist and each person guessing at the total number of stones - the loser having to disccard a stone until finally someone is 'OUT' and so on. We had a good couple hour wait.
Bananas were piled everywhere along with sacks of potatoes and other produce on the bus into Salvacion, giving us all a bus journey with the proper feel of deeply remote and native. We passed small wooden huts and and houses which soon gave way to the concrete sidewalk of a village main street. Locals sitting about smiled in a friendly manner and we looked forward to walking about.
Our little hotel was nothing that would rate a star in the cities ... but it was clean and the owners were welcoming .. and we had the bonus of chickens wandering about in groups in the rose garden courtyard. We soon made ourselves right at home.
That afternoon, we found ourselves with shovels, machetes and a wheelbarrow at a little wooden home on the outskirts of the town. It was our job to cut cane down to size, split and 'clean' exterior leaves off, dig postholes and weave a cane fence, make a garden door and till and prepare the earth. In hot, sunny weather with flies homing in. No one complained (well, not the grown-ups!) and we all just dug in and got to work. It was exhausting, sweaty business with a couple of cool coca-cola breaks to help us along. Little children in the nearby homes played marbles with ducks and chickens as witnesses.
We had to return after a night sleep to continue the work - but had been refreshed by a night out playing pool and drinking beers. And what a great feeling, a rush of pride, to see our bio-garden develop from a dirt lot into a proper, usable garden that would provide vegetables for a family for a long time to come. The lady of the home joined in to sow the first seeds and we all left Salvacion feeling we'd made both local friends and a difference to the community.
Before we left the town, we had plenty of chances to walkabout. Strollign down the main street with Leah and Tilman, I was so excited to see a capybara standing in front of a doorway, just hanging out and wathcing the world go by. As we neared, I wanted a photo and walked closer but was surprised when the capybara came closer yet to me! It just mosied right up to me and stuck its nose to my camera (um, iphone). I was so shocked I almost fell over backwards. Turns out it was a pet of the home it was in front of. Of course, we all had turns petting him and he enjoyed the attention.
Andy joined a group of local kids in a game of football. He says it was so fun learning new moves and showing them his. He was on a high from this game and that was his best experience the whole time.
Sam adopted a dog - or it adopted us, we couldn't figure out what actually happened. This dog followed us around town, to work and to dinner. When it was finally time to go, he accompanied all of us the hour or more to walk to the boat. I kept trying to get the boys to send him back, worried he would get lost. But neither he or the boys would separate, not much I could do. When we finally pushed off shore, I felt like we were in one of those Lassie movies where our faithful companion is ready to give up his life to be with us and, we, the cruel humans just wave goodbye. Oh, the guilt. The tears!!
Back at the MLC lodge, we all felt like we'd returned home. Our beds and hot chocolates were still there, awaiting us. We all returned wishing we could have spent more time in Salvacion, but enjoying washing the mud and sweat from our filthy clothes.
Our time at MLC as way too short. Although we'd done work to help with projects in the rainforest, the biogardens in Salvacion, and planting trees in AgroForest, we also had so much fun. Morning trips to the clay licks, afternoon adventures, hanging out in the hammocks near the river, playing games in the lodge. But before we knew it, we ewre waving goodbye to Leah, Alex, Grant and all the MLC staff staying behind. Time to return to Cusco.
The adventure didn't end there, but carried on as we tried out a hot sauna and went to a Peruvian tapas place (amazingly delicious!!) in Cusco with Sue. We also were invited to Tilman's home for lunch and his Peruvian-Japanese wife spoiled us rotten with a huge assortment of food. We felt so comfortable in Cusco, it seems like a place that calls for more time and exploration. Maybe one day.
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