by Paul Rosolie
Munn rallied the support of local people and indigenous organizations. He spent years cataloging the biological and ethnographical nuances of the proposed protected zone, showing how they would benefit the Peruvian economy. Munn knew that creating a park was not enough; he had to find a way for it to make sense in the minds of Peruvian officials who viewed the jungle as an economic opportunity, and he saw ecotourism as the answer. The park’s creation was linked directly to the idea that local people would benefit from the intact ecosystem through tourism. Along the way he received many threats and was once nearly imprisoned by a corrupt forest minister. He was doing so much so fast that the people who saw the forest as a big dollar sign saw Munn as a menace. Years later he’d flee Peru to escape threats to his life.
Munn remained undeterred while creating his dream park. After he and hundreds of community leaders and conservation experts spent years cataloging biological and ethnographical data and completing exhaustive economic studies, and after uncountable hours of local, regional, and national meetings, the government approved the mega-park. Simultaneously, however, the Peruvian government granted an oil-exploration concession to Exxon Mobil smack in the middle of the proposed sanctuary. With this development came Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori’s decision to cut the park’s proposed area by almost 50 percent.
The land granted to Exxon contained almost the entire Candamo River. This was the most pristine watercourse of them all. The crown jewel at the center of the plan, the most important part, was suddenly in the hands of an oil giant. Along with the guaranteed roads and human activity that would follow was the looming threat of an oil spill; a leak in the Candamo would destroy the valley and leach oil throughout the entire rest of the Amazon.
In response to this tragedy waiting to happen, Argentinian conservationist Daniel Winitzky put together a team and began filming. The resulting documentary received overwhelming public support, and suddenly journalists from all over the world flocked to the planet’s last Eden. When Candamo, la ultima selva sin hombres, or The Last Forest Without Man aired in Peru and abroad, the film ignited a frenzy of public interest. With locals, scientists, journalists, and the citizenry of Peru up in arms, everyone was watching for what happened next.
In the end Exxon Mobil must not have found substantial oil within the valley, because they backed down. On September 5, 2000, President Fujimori responded to the public storm by doubling the size of the park. The new protected area covered 3.7 million acres, or five thousand square miles, of rainforest. The area is located between the Tambopata and Heath Rivers, which in the native dialect of the region were respectively the Bahuaja and Sonene. Hence, Bahuaja-Sonene National Park came into existence.
In celebration, Munn wrote, “I have just finished checking with the world’s experts on tropical forests and have concluded that without doubt the watershed of the Candamo River and the immediately surrounding areas of tropical forest in the Tambopata-Candamo Reserved Zone are the largest completely uninhabited, un-hunted tropical habitats on Earth.”
9
Anaconderos
Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.
—JOSEPH CONRAD, HEART OF DARKNESS
The current pushed our canoe like a leaf as we dodged boulders and whirlpools, bending tightly upriver. The La Torre was a smaller river than Las Piedras. It was often no more than fifty feet wide, with long beaches on the shallow inside of each bend. Framing the beaches were tall stands of bamboo and river cane, behind which the jungle rose uncompromisingly large, decorated in places by flower tapestries that hung from the canopy. The intimate tunnel of green was alive with basking caiman and lapwings on the banks, jabirus, sunbitterns, and horned screamers. Just in the first hour we passed a pair of gold-striped tegus, lizards more than three feet in length; a large weasel-like tayra devouring a fish; and a harpy eagle that cruised over the river like a Harrier jet.
Pico leaned back, piloting the canoe in a tight sweep, and as we came around, a flock of blue-and-yellow macaws flamed out from the canopy into the air above us. Their emergence rained a cascade of leaves onto us, as over seventy of the massive birds flaunted plumage of radiant gold below and iridescent tanzanite blue above. We were engulfed in a vortex of color and sound that was difficult to accept as real. We all cheered and whistled along to the din of the magnificent birds. As they flew off I wondered what dullard had decided to name them “blue-and-yellow macaws.” What an injustice to beauty; they were breathtaking. It was the first time I had seen them in real life, and at the sight of such a wondrous creature, the name blue-and-yellow macaws seemed almost offensively boring. As we chugged upriver I decided that using the Spanish word for gold, oro, joined with cerulean, would make a far better name for these otherworldly birds: oro-ceruleans.
Animals do not occur homogeneously throughout their range. Oro-ceruleans (or blue-and-yellow macaws) might be shown in a field guide to inhabit “the Madre de Dios of Peru,” but they are not dispersed evenly throughout this range. Instead, they exist in communities. This is why they are found on the La Torre and not on the Las Piedras. Similarly, spider monkeys, abundant on Las Piedras, are absent on most of the La Torre. Animals require a breeding community of which they can be a part. Even though each river in the Amazon region may appear more or less the same to an observer, the species of plants and animals found can differ greatly. It was this feature of community that had prompted JJ to suggest we travel on the La Torre. This was anaconda land.
Often overshadowed by species like jaguars and giant otters in the ecologist’s imagination, anacondas affect virtually every level of the vertebrate food chain. They start off small, eating prey like frogs, birds, fish, and baby caiman. As neonates, they themselves are often prey to these same creatures. But then they grow. At mid-size—eight feet for males and twelve to fourteen for females—an anaconda gains access to a wide variety of mammals, ranging from juvenile peccary to rabbits, birds, capybara, caiman, and armadillo. Once fully grown, these snakes prey upon capybara, peccary, tapir, caiman, and even the occasional jaguar. This species is an important riparian predator that influences the behavior of dozens of other species. Their impact on the ecosystem is far-reaching. The population of anacondas determines the population of capybara, which consequently corresponds to the variety and amount of vegetation by the river’s edge, which in turn has implications for species of bird, mammal, and reptile. If you trace the thread of anacondas in the food web in the direction of caiman, now there are two predators whose lives are braided together, consequently enacting myriad influences on a number of prey species.
JJ and I sat in the middle of the boat, atop the supplies and food. Sweeping the landscape with his keen eyes, the Peruvian explained that anacondas would be found in the piles of timber lining bends in the river. Palisadas, as he called them, were the mountains of debris that the river harvested from the jungle; great trees were uprooted, carried on the current, and eventually grounded on the shallow bottom. Some piles stood thirty feet above the water, extending more than fifty feet from end to end. These palisadas were tangled masses of thorns, broken limbs, holes, and slick surfaces. I wondered how I would fare when hopping onto one of these piles, especially when in pursuit of a large snake. It didn’t take long to find out.
JJ’s arm shot forward, index finger extended: “There is! Anaconda!” I was amazed. Really? Already? Chito sprang into a ready stance and Pico positioned the boat. It took a moment for my eyes to light upon the snake, but when they did, I saw an anaconda larger than any snake I had ever seen. It was vividly olive green with large black splotches running its length. The creature was a very healthy individual about twelve feet long.
JJ and I perched in the bow, ready for when the boat would touch shore. We landed and gently disembarked onto the bank. I directed JJ to follow behind me. Thanks to Pico’s deft boatmanship, we found ourselves beside the largest snake ei
ther of us had ever attempted to catch. Coiled among the two-foot-tall grass on a sloping bank of the river, the snake seemed to be asleep. I approached with caution, ready for either a defensive attack or an unannounced bolt by the snake for the river.
The snake chose the latter, and when we were no more than three feet from his perch, it lunged toward the water. I leapt full-out, diving onto the snake’s body, joining its race toward the river. Together we slid splashing into the water. As the snake struggled to escape I gently snatched it behind the neck as JJ lifted the heavy coils.
The constrictor spellbound the three brothers and me, and despite a lifetime living in Amazonia, none of them had ever been so close to a live anaconda. Once on the beach we measured him: eleven feet, six inches. Then he was placed into a large bag and weighed. We took note of our findings as well as several photographs before returning the snake to the water. In all we troubled the snake for only five minutes before departing.
We traveled farther upriver so as not to cause any further disturbance, and JJ and I plunged into the cool water to bathe, washing the mud and snake feces from our bodies. I remember tackling JJ in celebration. An anaconda finally! We all relived the capture and laughed for a time, but not long afterward we were back on the boat, winding deeper into the heart of Bahuaja-Sonene.
As he expertly navigated the channel for hours, Pico often spotted things that the rest of us, even JJ, had entirely overlooked. Many of the anacondas we would find in coming days, not to mention dozens of other species, were due to his sharp eye. Sometimes I’d sit in the back with him, and he’d point to the river ahead and ask, “Donde?” I would then have to guess the best route. I was almost never correct. Pico knew how to read the river with psychic accuracy: where it was shallow, where it was deep, where there would be invisible debris below that could cause a nasty collision—nothing got by him.
When Pico was only a teenager, he had been clearing land on his father’s farm when a cut tree swung on a vine and landed on his back, breaking it in multiple places. He and his father made an emergency trip to Lima, where they stayed for more than a year. Several more years of recovery followed. The ordeal depleted the entirety of the family’s savings and seemed to earn him a special place in his mother’s heart. To this day Doña Carmen takes particular care of her forty-year-old boy.
His decreased mobility restricted Pico to certain activities thereafter. When his brothers were out in the forest hunting, climbing, or playing soccer, he was honing other skills. In this way he developed an inordinate talent for river navigation. He became the best in the area. Everyone knows that if a good motorista is needed, Pico is the man to call. He navigates the Madre de Dios for assorted causes, earning a living as he goes. His reputation is one of skill and good humor. And years of piloting the bulky peque-peque motors have given him a powerful upper body, compensating for his feeble legs. Pico’s frame is small and wiry, but his entire torso is clad in tight cables of developed muscle. To see Pico’s ripped upper body, thick neck, and clean-cut jawline as he drives, you’d never know those shriveled legs were attached to the same person.
The night after the first anaconda capture, JJ, Chito, and I left Pico to hike into the jungle to fish in oxbow lakes. In less than an hour we pulled up twenty piranha, and returned to find two pots simmering over a neat fire. Pico had made a jungle stove out of two parallel logs with a bed of molten ashes between them. A bucket was dipped into the river and lemons squeezed into its contents for a fresh batch of river-water lemonade, as we called it. The piranhas went into a pot of boiling water, onions, and garlic that Pico had prepared. Although our supplies on the expedition were few, vegetables made up most of the weight. Having items like onions, garlic, and yucca supplemented wild-caught meals and took up only a small amount of space on the boat. Items like rice, lentils, and pasta are always good ideas in the jungle, as are any foods that require only the addition of water and salt. That night we feasted. In the orange light of the fire I could see liberation in JJ’s face; in the excitement of our expedition his troubles were forgotten. Here Puerto ceased to exist, as did the rest of the world; we were free.
In the morning we emerged from dew-laden tents into a frigid and overcast world. The friaje had returned with vengeance and the temperature had plummeted. Through dense fog we traveled, freezing. JJ, Chito, and I did our best to share a blanket in the narrow canoe, but nonetheless we froze. Pico was wide-eyed with concentration, at the ready each time a large beam of timber emerged from the fog to threaten our craft.
We traveled the entire second day. The fog never lifted and the cold was so miserable that there was nothing to do but make our way ever deeper into the unknown. At one o’clock the rain began. The blanket was stowed beneath a tarp, as were our packs. Our rations were light, our personal supplies even lighter; each of us carrying only a limited amount of clothing. We weathered the frigid rain mostly naked to conserve our dry clothes for the night.
For the next several days we traveled almost nonstop. Each night we retired early to our tents to escape the cold rain. Everything was damp. We caught several more anacondas similar to the first, and recorded data. None were giants, though. At night we’d have to use gasoline to start a fire on wet kindling, and would shiver and warm our naked skin while warming our soggy clothes on sticks. More than one shirt fell victim to the hungry flames. We had a good laugh over that each time.
As the cold deepened, the number of jaguar tracks notably increased. Passing dozens of beaches each day, I scanned for prints and saw indications of jaguar and tapir on almost every one. All three brothers agreed that the large cats are more active in the cold weather. Each morning we awoke to see tracks through our campsite; jaguars would come just inches from our sleeping bodies during the night. My mind strained trying to imagine it. While tending to breakfast beside a smoky fire one morning, Pico wryly theorized that it was probably the smell of fresh white gringo that was attracting them.
The frigid days were spent traveling ever onward into the wild depths. In the cold environment we saw capybara huddled on the riverbanks, always alert to danger. Spectacled and black caiman lay in places, gray and frigid in the absence of the sun, their ability to change color and shade more obvious than ever. JJ and I sat beside each other, talking at length of the jungle and life. Although unspoken, there was a feeling of celebration that our friendship had reached such heights. As we traveled he carefully imparted many things to me, pointing out species and elements of the landscape and explaining their nature.
“Looka dis,” he said pointing. “You see the tree next to the capirona? That is ohé. My dad uses it to treat any infection.” I tried to commit its image to memory, but already JJ was on to the next item. “Mira eso—look at this,” he said excitedly. At first I saw nothing, then two eloquently plumed birds appeared from the brush by the riverside. “Gray-necked wood rail.” Once again I was snapping mental photographs. Then, “Look, anhinga,” he said as a bird dived into the water and vanished, or “the juice of that fruit will turn you blue,” or “listen, dusky titis.”
When he was not telling he was asking: “What does George Bush think about Peru?” I laughed. But on seeing his face I realized he was serious. Over the next hour I did my best to indulge JJ’s curiosity about American politics before moving on to other things. “Do you have a motorcycle?” he asked. I told him I didn’t but I drove my parents’ car. “Is being in the military mandatory?”
As our boat was passing one beach, his head swiveled to meet Pico’s eye. Moments later we pushed up against the sand and JJ hopped out, walking purposefully to what seemed to be a random point, where he stooped and began digging. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Come see,” he said, and I stood beside him as his hand delicately uncovered a cache of what looked like white Ping-Pong balls: turtle eggs. I was mystified. After days and hours of travel he had seemed to know with supernatural precision exactly where the eggs were.
Pico explained that the barely
visible tracks of the mother turtle are the tip-off. They remain in the sand for a few days after the eggs have been laid, before being washed away. This, he explained, automatically ensures that a hunter of eggs would never uncover mature eggs that held baby turtles in them, for by that time the beach would have been wiped clean by wind and rain. As the trip went on he began stopping at beaches and challenging me to find the eggs. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
In this way JJ and Pico collaborated as my teachers. I learned how to make rope from balsa fibers, how to gauge when the skies would dump and when they’d hold, and how to clean a kill. The guys hunted sporadically, mostly peccary, and I learned the art of barefoot tracking during the hunts. Together we’d take turns shouldering the heavy boar on the way back to the river, where we cut fronds of river cane to keep the hogs clean from the sand while they were dressed. Unlike the poachers, the Durand brothers abided by the park rules, and more important, by the code their father had taught them: only taking enough to bring home to the family. The meat was salted and placed into buckets and bags; the skin, hooves, and guts were donated to the caiman and vultures of the river.
We roasted hog testicles over an open flame and divided up the delicacy. The heads were prepared in the same manner, but these were “for the road.” Through the long hours the boar’s singed head would lay burnt in its pot until inevitably one of us would heft it to our mouth and use our teeth to tear off a slab of meat. Then we’d pass it. Working past tusks and fur, sucking out eyeballs, ripping jowls—it was quite a meal.
We stopped often to explore palisadas. Our skin grew taut from the endless exposure to elements. Our feet had been bare for a week. One morning I awoke before the others had risen. Thick fog gripped the land as darkness slowly lifted. The air was chilled. Across the river the canopy was a host of looming giants, dark mountains emerging from the churning mist in the half-light before dawn. Somewhere within, red howler monkeys were roaring and booming their cosmic chorus to the morning. Spared by receding currents of the La Torre, tangled lianas and towering river cane bordered the edges of the large beach. In the center of the beach in a neat line lay our row of tents, minuscule and silent among the vast green expanse. Surrounding the tents was sand christened with jaguar tracks from a visit only a short time earlier.