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Peru's Manu is one of the most biologically diverse places on earth. Home to over 1,000 species of birds, 300 species of trees, and countless other life forms, Manu showcases life at its most prolific. But deep within Manu's rain forest also lie stories and histories of Indians and foreign explorers of centuries past. Though their footprints have disappeared over time, these inhabitants and travelers have made deep impressions that have shaped Manu into what it is today.
Home to numerous indigenous Indian tribes, the Peruvian rain forest's most recognized Indian inhabitants were the Incas whose capital was in the Andes but whose empire extended into the cloud forest. With their large empire, the Incas had many contacts with the jungle Indians of Manu. At its height, the Inca empire spanned 3,000 miles (4,800 km) across South America. Inca territory was divided into quarters, with Cuzco, the city where the Inca Sun King resided, at the center. Communication between cities was facilitated by "chaskis," couriers who ran between locations to send information.
During the 1500s, the Inca's hold on the region began to wane. Spurred by discoveries in the new world, Spanish conquistadors began exploring South America and claiming these newly-found areas for Spain. By 1532, Peru was conquered by Spaniard Francisco Pizarro, and in 1567, Alvarez Maldonado claimed the Manu river and surrounding regions for Spain.
Even though the Spanish ruled the territory, they knew little of the rain forest's natural resources and waterways. Renewed interest in exploring Manu developed after the rubber boom. In 1839, Charles Goodyear heated rubber sap with sulfur, producing the first commercially viable, heat-resistant rubber. After this discovery, demand for rubber trees ran high, and Manu, with its rich bounty of rubber trees, became the perfect source for satisfying this need.
Also crucial to Manu's rubber trade was baron Carlos Fitzgerald's ("Fitzcarraldo") crossing of a divide between the Upper Mishagua and Upper Manu. This divide, eventually called the "Fitzgerald Pass," provided an accessible travel route to the Madre de Dios River. In 1880, approximately 8,000 tons of rubber were exported from Peru, but by 1900, the number of exports climbed to an amazing 27,000 tons of rubber. In 1914, Manu's rubber trade collapsed, suffering from competition from Southeast Asian rubber suppliers and deforestation.
Manu's landscape has changed since its pristine early years, and several animal and plant species have become endangered since the rubber boom. In 1967, the Peruvian government signed an agreement with other American countries to establish national parks to promote conservation of regional flora and fauna. This agreement specified that the park "covered more than half the country... contained the greatest number of Peru's wide range of animals and birds...be in a virgin state, uninhabited and unaffected by the operations of hunters, lumbers, or colonists...[and] included every biotope from the riverside forests of the Amazon's main tributaries." In 1968, Manu was declared a National Reserve, and five years later, it was upgraded to a National Park.
Today, the entire region of Manu -- a total size of 7200 square miles (1,881,200 hectares) -- is considered a Biosphere Reserve. The Manu Biosphere Reserve is composed of three parts: the Manu National Park, a region protecting the natural flora and fauna; the Manu Reserved Zone, an area reserved for research and tourism; and the Manu Cultural Zone, a place used for human settlement. With these recent conservation efforts, life in Manu flourishes. Presently, scientists and researchers are learning more about the indigenous Indians that still inhabit Manu, as well as of the regional flora and fauna.
Click here to learn more about the conservation efforts and human history of Manu.
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal1.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal2a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal3a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal4a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal5a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal6a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal7a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal8a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal9a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal10a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal11a.html
- http://www.pbs.org/edens/manu/journal12a.html
In 1989, "The Living Edens: Manu" producer Kim MacQuarrie kept a journal while living with and researching a remote Yura (Yaminahua - Yabaishta) Indian community that lived within Manu National Park. For at least 60 years before MacQuarrie's visit, this warlike Yura tribe had kept outsiders from entering the northern boundary of Manu (in southeastern Peru).
Read two weeks of journal entries and return with Kim to 1989 and to Manu, and live his incredible exploration.
Educated in France, the United States, and Peru, MacQuarrie is an Emmy-winning writer/director/producer who has lived for more than four years in Peru. Part of that time was spent living with the Yura (Yaminahua) Indians, a small group of recently-contacted Amazonian natives now living just outside of Manu National Park. MacQuarrie is the author of Peru's Amazonian Eden: Manu National Park and Biosphere Reserve, and has made two previous films on Manu: "Spirits of the Rainforest" and "The Spirit Hunters." For further information on Mr. MacQuarrie's films, send e-mail to: [email protected].
AUGUST 3rd, 1989
Day one of trip to Manu. Great weather, some groups of macaws, egrets, and even a small group of 50 lb. rodents called capybaras that got the Yura (Yabaishta) Indians quite excited. They wanted to go hunt them, but as we already have food and are starting late anyway, we kept going on. Late in the day, Jose got out his throw net, and after a single toss in a blue-green pool, we had more fish than we knew what to do with. The best are the palomettas, a fish that is silver and round and seems to melt in your mouth. While Jose was boiling the fish, Dishpopediba showed up with a lizard and wanted to put the lizard into the pot to boil it. Jose wouldn't let him, and Dishpopediba looked at him like he was crazy. TheYura brought hot peppers and yuca (manioc root) with them, which is great. The idea is to travel two to three days up the Mishagua River until this boat can't go any further, then to hide the boat and walk two days over the Fitzcarrald Pass and down into Manu. The objective is the Yura village on the Cashpajali River, the only one that I haven't visited yet. The Yura tell me that there are all kinds of old rubber boom camps dating from the last century on top of the pass. They say that there are still old bottles and bricks and pieces of metal from these camps.
Have spent a long week getting this expedition together -- the Yura keep changing their minds every time we figure out who will be going. Last week it was Pandikon, Dishpopediba, Juan and about three others. The next day it was an entirely different group, and so on until this morning. Every day they change their minds -- enough to drive an airline reservation desk crazy --but I'm used to it. Fortunately, the chief (who calls me "ersto," or "little brother") is here, as is my good friend, Yabidawa. So is our boatman Jose, a Peruvian married to the daughter of a Yaminahua shaman. The motor is a 9.5 horsepower "peque-peque," whose long shaft and propeller can be elevated, allowing us to get through the shallowest water. I'm hoping that the river doesn't start to fall, so that we can get up it as far as possible. The Yura said that tomorrow or the next day, they will show me where they were first contacted and where they raided a woodcutters' camp.
AUGUST 4th, 1989
Day two on the Mishagua River. The Yura showed me a spot where they used to ambush woodcutters before their contact. It was a great place: a high bluff where the river switched back on itself. From the bluff, they could fire their arrows from a blind, then run across the switchback and shoot at woodcutters again from the other side. The Yura told me that Pandikon shot a woodcutter through the neck right here with one of their six-foot paspis, or jagged war arrows. Just a few days ago, I was interviewing Dishpopediba and several other Yura about their attacks on the Machiguenga, a pacific tribe that inhabits the same area. They gave me these blow-by-blow accounts of how they would surround a Machiguenga hamlet early in the morning, then launch a surprise attack. Dishpopediba told me that one time, a Machiguenga shouted, "Look out -- the Yura are attacking!" So I asked him if he spoke Machiguenga.
"No," he assured me, he didn't.
"So how did you know that the Machiguenga was saying that the Yura were attacking?" I asked.
"Because that's what he said," the chief told me, nodding confidently and surprised that I would question him on this point.
Unfortunately for the Machiguenga man, the Yura chased him through the forest and riddled him with so many arrows that he looked like a huicungo, a native palm that has a trunk covered in long black spines. After telling me about all of these innumerable attacks, I asked them if the Machiguenga ever attacked one of their villages. "Baaa," ("No") they all said solemnly, shaking their heads. The Machiguenga never attacked.
Tomorrow, the chief said, they'd show me where they had their first contact with white people, or dawa.
AUGUST 5th, 1989
Camped somewhere at the base of the Fitzcarrald Pass. Today we ditched the boat when we couldn't pull or lift it any further upstream.We took the motor off, wrapped it in plastic, then buried it. We then covered the boat in branches and leaves, just in case someone should come along and decide to take it. Then Jose and I set off after our two Yura guides, each of us carrying a heavy pack and wearing shorts and tile sandals (ojotas) so that we can wade through the water. The Yura have less to carry, just their bows and arrows, a small sack slung over their shoulders, and a machete. There's lots of fish here and the Yura have an amazing ability to strike fish with the machete, quickly assembling a quantity of fish with a line strung through the fishes' gills and carrying it behind them in the water. Lot of howler monkeys this morning, and a glimpse of spider monkeys as well -- what the Yura like most to eat. Came across an old "rubber camp" today as we were making shortcuts between this winding tributary. You could tell that the area was second growth forest, and we found an avocado tree --obviously imported -- banana trees too, and even a red brick that had "Fabrique en France" imprinted on it (brought here all the way from France!). This is part of the path that the Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald blazed in 1897, when he dragged a steamship -- the first steamship to descend the Manu River -- near here over the pass, killing Indians in the Manu as he went.
This morning, the chief showed me where the first group of Yura made contact with a group of woodcutters on the upper Mishagua. The Yura had first raided a woodcutter camp that was deserted because the woodcutters were off cutting wood. After setting fire to the camp and stealing radios and other supplies, the four Yura fled. Two days later, the woodcutters found them at dawn, sleeping on a beach, and fired a shotgun at them. The Yura leapt up and dashed off into the forest, leaving their bows and arrows and everything else behind. A day later, hungry and weaponless, one of the Yura surprisingly hailed the woodcutter boat, and peaceful contact, for the first time in at least 80 years, was made. The Yura were given gifts and taken to the nearest town, the mission town of Sepahua at the junction of the Urubamba and Mishagua Rivers. According to what the Yura told me, they thought that they had been taken to the land of the dead; their idea of where they go when they die is a place where people have lighter skins and where there are all kinds of strange smells -- smells like the fumes from the boats in the area. They thought that they, too, were dead, and would never return to their villages. Sad to say, they would soon return, and take a lot of death with them.
AUGUST 6th, 1989
Second day on the Fitzcarrald Pass. Exhausted from carrying this pack, slogging through the water, and trying to keep up with the two Yura, who are hardly carrying anything at all. Plus, they know the area so well that one minute, they are walking thigh-deep in the river, and the next they have cut into the jungle and are crossing over to another bend of the river. How they know all of these bends and shortcuts is beyond me. What they consider paths can scarcely be discerned by the outsider. I tried to explain to them that I don't know the way, but it just doesn't seem to register. They seem to think that all of these shortcuts are as obvious as streets in a town or city. At one point in the afternoon, I was lagging quite a ways behind, following them as best I could through the jungle on a shortcut (no obvious trail). I came out of the jungle, onto the small tributary again, and I stopped and listened, hoping to hear them talking. I didn't hear a sound. Then I began to walk up and down the river, looking for a footprint. I found none. Finally, I took a chance and headed left, and about a half an hour later, I saw a footprint. I found them around a bend; they were threading fish that they had just got done killing in a pool with a machete, and looked at me as if it were the most natural thing in the world that I should show up. Makes you wonder what would happen if you got lost around here. It would probably take a week to hike out again before hitting the Mishagua River, and then you'd have to make a raft and float another week downriver.
Funny thing about these Yura. As tough as they are and as fierce and deserved a reputation as they have, if they have the slightest splinter in their foot or an ingrown toe nail, they'll come up to you, and then, in a stereotypically whiny voice, say, "Eeseeneekee eechapa kowaye" ("It really hurts"). Then they'll point at this tiny thorn or splinter that they have picked up. And then you must say (or risk being very impolite), "Uh huh, mee eesseeneekee eechapa mun?" ("It really hurts you, doesn't it?") in the most sympathetic fashion possible. This from these tough, well-muscled warriors who used to skewer woodcutters through the neck with their six-foot-long paspis! I understand that you can cut the foot off of an Amahuaca Indian (another tribe in the area) and they'll scarcely bat an eye.
Had a good dinner of boca chico fish, roasted yuca (manioc root), peppers and small bananas. The Yura shot a howler monkey this morning and roasted it on a wooden spit, burning off all of the hairs until it looked like a small human. I passed, and stuck to the fish. Jose and the two Yura polished off the monkey and Jose said it was quite good. I don't like to eat howler.
AUGUST 7th, 1989
Yura village, Cashpajali River, Manu National Park. Have probably been in Manu for a day or two. Finally arrived at the Cashpajali village late in the afternoon, just as evening was setting in. This is probably the most isolated area that I have ever been in. Strange arrival, too. As usual, I was lagging behind, slogging back and forth across the river (flowing downward now, as we passed the "divortium aquarium" sometime yesterday). Early in the morning I had asked the Yura when would we arrive, and as usual, they pointed at a spot on the horizon and said, "When the sun gets there." The only trouble was, they had been saying that since yesterday. The sun had already gotten there and then gone away, and then the moon had come up and then the sun again. We passed another rubber camp this morning, as well as an old Yura village that still had stumps where their houses had rested on stilts. The Yura really seem to know this area well, and their pace has quickened. In the afternoon, we finally came across what they called the Cashpajali river. I knew then that no matter what happened, if I just followed this river, the Indian village lay at its base, where the Cashpajali joined the Manu River. For most of the afternoon, I walked by myself -- the Yura were long gone and were eagerly looking forward to the food that was sure to be offered in the village. Funny how relative everything is. Jose and I were so thirsty at one point yesterday that we were dreaming of entering a Yura village and being given big gourds of masato, a fermented manioc gruel made by women who masticate the root, then spit it out into a pot. It's actually a pretty good drink, and Jose and I must have drunk three or four gourdfuls when we finally got to the village today.
In any case, hour after hour I kept walking, not bothering to try and find the jungle "short cuts," but simply following the river around its winding bends. The sun sank lower and lower, and still, no sign of a village, footprints or any sign of life. Finally, as dusk was arriving and it was getting hard to see, I looked ahead and saw an Indian sitting in a canoe and looking at me over his shoulder. An Indian whom I had never seen before.
I walked up and stopped, and the Indian said the standard greeting, "Ma mee oowee mun?" ("You have come?").
I replied, "Yes, I have come," and then I put my pack in the canoe and we pushed off. So strange! About a half an hour later, we arrived at the village, which was set high up on the river bank. I noticed a band of people waiting there up on the bluff, silently watching. Feeling nervous and not knowing where the others were, I walked up, noticing that there were only men and that the women and children were nowhere to be seen. (They were hiding.) I walked up to the group of men, and there was an old man with red achiote paste in his hair, and a string of white beads through his nose and hanging on each side of his cheeks back to his ears.
The men looked at me silently. I knew that they had seen white people before, but certainly never one who showed up on a canoe coming down the Cashpajali River. I said simply, "Mer oowee" ("I've come"), and the old man said, "You have come, yes?" Just at that moment, someone threw a gourd of water from one of the houses on stilts so that it splashed to the ground. Knowing that they had had problems with diarrhea since their contact, I quickly said, "Cheesoo, ichapa mun!?" ("Boy, there's a lot of diarrhea around here!?")
The old man looked at me, as did the other men, then looked at me some more, then finally said very slowly, "Cheesoo ichapa mun?" and began to laugh. The old man said the phrase again and laughed some more, then the whole group began laughing and repeating the absurd comment over and over.
So that was it. A weak scattological joke and I became an instant hit. Billy Crystal couldn't have done it any better. In a heartbeat, I was offered a hammock, a gourd of fermented masato (delicious), and a plate of boiled wacawa (a 100-lb. catfish). The one thing that I will say for the Yura is that they love a good laugh -- even from a stranger who comes out of the middle of nowhere.
AUGUST 10th, 1989
Third day in the Yura village, Manu National Park. Sitting in a hammock along with Jose and the other two Yura guests. It's great being a Yura guest, and the other two Yura know it. All you have to do is lie around in a hammock and you are fed constantly -- fish, masato, roasted monkey, even some fairly rotten tapir meat that must have been laying around for some time. It really stank, so I passed, but the Yura really seemed to like it. Only 32 people here, and like the other Yura communities, these are the ones who survived after the epidemics that followed the first contact. After the first four Yura were taken to the mission village, they were loaded up with gifts and then given a ride up the Mishagua River and released. The Yura hiked for two days, each with a large sack of pots and pans, sugar, machetes, metal cups, etc. -- the same things that the outside world has been using to lure Indians out of the bush since Columbus arrived. They hiked for two days and arrived in their village on the Fitzcarrald Pass at night. People blew armadillo-tail "trumpets" to gather the villagers and by the light of a campfire, the four Yura told the shocked villagers their story. They had been taken by a boatload of dawa (outsiders/enemies) to a huge village where innumerable dawa lived, like in the land of the dead, of how they saw huge metal birds land from the sky (helicopters), how they saw tiny dead spirits (on a television set), and how they had been given all of these gifts, and then let go.
One old Yura who had been in the village at the time told me that as he listened to this tale, that his whole body had begun to shake, so full of fear was he. These men had gone to the land of the dead and then returned! One can only imagine how much of a shock it must have been for these people -- a paradigm shift, like learning that the world was round and not flat, or hearing tales from the first travelers returning from the New World. Unfortunately, small groups of Yura began to descend the river and hail woodcutting boats. Soon, these too were taken to the mission town and showered with presents by the woodcutters. For years, the woodcutters had been kept out of the area due to arrows, and were now eager to begin logging the upper Mishagua River. About this time, an epidemic of whooping cough hit the mission town and the visiting Yura quickly became sick. When they returned to the Fitzcarrald Pass area and Manu, an epidemic broke out. Over the next year -- and I have collected terribly sad tales of old Yura dragging themselves off into the jungle to die -- approximately 30% of the Yura died, almost all of the old shamans, chiefs and the elderly.
What a price to pay for a few bags full of gifts.
A month ago, I was listening to the chief tell me this story, and his six or seven-year-old daughter was listening carefully as her father described all the gifts that the Yura received shortly after their contact.
"Erpa" ("Daddy"), she said, "why were we given all of those gifts and no one gives us anything now?"
"That's the way it is when you are first contacted," the chief said. "Everyone wants to give you things. Then they forget about you and start chopping down the trees."
AUGUST 11th, 1989
Day four in the Yura village, Manu National Park. These people are definitely the least contacted of any Yura that I have met. They are so curious that they ask questions non-stop. It's difficult for me to even get clothes out of my pack; they all want to see what is inside. I try and do it at night, when the Yura are sleeping in their hammocks. Last night didn't get much sleep as the men were taking ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic drug, quite near to where I was sleeping. In fact, a group of men has taken ayahuasca every night since I have been here. One reason is because there is plenty of ayahuasca growing in the vicinity, whereas near the mission town it has all been used up. It was probably three in the morning or so before the last of the men stopped singing and I went to sleep.
Yabidawa asked me if I wanted to join in, but with the interviews, censuses, etc., I have been pretty tired since I arrived. Besides, ayahuasca has a powerful effect. If you're tired, it's like taking a mental roller coaster without a seatbelt. I hear that adolescent Yura are afraid when they first start taking ayahuasca, and that's very understandable. The visuals are so impressive that our best IMAX theaters seem like kids' play in comparison. I noticed Yabidawa today readying a collection of ayahuasca roots to take with him when we go back.
A group of Yura whom I had never seen arrived today carrying woven baskets filled with turtle eggs. They had gone by foot and canoe down the Manu River, collecting turtle eggs from the beaches as they went. So tonight was a turtle egg feast, and everyone in the village was industriously boiling up as many of the little oily eggs as fast as they could get their hands on them. There was also a tapir shot in the forest, and some of the Yura are going out to bring it in tomorrow.
AUGUST 12th, 1989
Strange thing happened today, near dusk. Was walking along a trail in the forest just as the sun was setting, and while walkin along, I heard something hit the ground. So I stopped and waited awhile without moving. Finally, I looked up and saw an eagle (I believe a crested eagle) looking at me from halfway up a tree. When the eagle saw me looking at it, it flapped its wings and quickly flew away. I went over to the tree to investigate and was surprised to find a dead opossum (truly dead--not faking it) lying at the base of the tree. Opossums are mostly nocturnal, and begin to come out of their tree holes when the sun goes down. Evidently, this one had just gotten nailed by the crested eagle, which let it go when it saw me coming along. The opossum couldn't have been dead for more than a few minutes, so I grabbed it by the tail and took it back to the Indian village, dropping it off in front of a pot in the house where I have been staying. The Yura thought that this was really funny, the fact that I came back with a dead opossum and wanted to eat it. They really laughed. That's because the Yura don't eat carrion or dead things that they find on the ground. They have all kinds of stories about the vulture (the vulture can take them to the land of the dead and then return), none of them exactly complimentary. I guess the Yura woman felt sorry for me, or wanted a good laugh, because she skinned the opossum, roasted it on a spit, and then gave it to me. It was surprisingly delicious and quite fatty, but none of the other Yura would touch it. Oh, well. It was great eating, whether they liked the idea of eating it or not.
AUGUST 13th, 1989
Had some great interviews with some of the Yura here today. First I got some good descriptions of the saudawa people, whose camps the Yura used to raid. I can only guess that these are descriptions of the uncontacted Mashco Piro Indians, one of the two as yet uncontacted Indian groups in Manu National Park. I say this because their detailed descriptions of the saudawa and the saudawa's possessions seem to match what little is known of these people, and do not seem to match accounts of other groups that I have heard about. According to the Yura, the saudawa have "nothing" -- no permanent villages, no permanent homes, no agriculture, and only the rudest of materials. They make "knives" out of ronsoco teeth, use stone "axes," and have only the rudest of shelters. Basically, the saudawa are still in the stone age. When I asked the Yura why they would raid these people, they say matter-of-factly, "To steal their tapir meat," or something like that. They never seemed too interested in stealing a ronsoco-tooth knife. (From the Machiguenga, by contrast, they stole all kinds of good things -- metal tools, pots, women, kids, spools of cotton, etc.) The second thing that I found out was that a number of people from this village were involved in attacking Fernando Belaunde, the former President of Peru. Back in 1984, President Belaunde sent a couple of helicopters here, where they let workers down by rope ladders to cut a trail across the Fitzcarrald Pass and and clear helicopter landing pads. It seems that Belaunde was interested in surveying possible sites for a road across the pass, but was unaware that the uncontacted Yura were in the area. Two days later, the Yura attacked the workers at night in their camp, sending salvo after salvo of arrows at them (what one of the workers later described to me as sounding "like bats flying"). One of the workers was hit, but the group hid out until the next day. That morning, the President came in his helicopter, not knowing that his men were being attacked. As the helicopter came down, the President saw the landing area littered with long arrows, and the workers crouching behind some oil barrels in the middle of the field. Around the perimeter of the work site were naked Indians, their bodies painted red. Then the Indians began firing arrows at the helicopters!
The workers finally did escape (as did the President), and it was a group of Indians from this village who attacked them. When I asked them what the workers had been doing, the Indians said that they had obviously been making clearings to grow food for their "parents" (the helicopters). Needless to say, the road plans for the area were shelved soon after.
AUGUST 17th, 1989
Yesterday, after the two Yura took their canoe and went down river, Jose and I drifted down the Mishagua with the motor turned off, trying to conserve gas. We came to a stretch that had stone sides and round pools where the water hit a side, and then swirled around, the water the color of milk-green in these spots. Quite beautiful. Jose got a heavy piece of fish line, which he wrapped around his the palm of his left hand, put a big chunk of meat on a hook, swung the hook around and around in the air, and let it sail. The hook pulled the line from his hand and landed "plop" in the river. Sure enough, after a few tries (with myself in the rear of the boat with a paddle, keeping the boat straight), something took the bait and within a few minutes Jose had three or four, five-pound pacos (a vegetarian relative of the piranha that takes meat bait, as well as fruit) flapping in the boat. Wanting to try one more, Jose prepared another chunk of bait while I steered the boat to an upcoming pool. Swinging the bait around in the air, Jose let it fly and again and it went "plop!" and landed perfectly in the middle of the pool. Then, suddenly, all hell broke loose. Something gigantic hit the bait, then gave a great yank on the line, and the next thing I knew, Jose was over the side of the boat, and something was smashing the surface of the water with loud crashes, and the river -- which had been so quiet only minutes before -- suddenly turned into a cauldron of thrashing water. Jose finally shouted, "Wacawa!" and then got pulled underwater again, then emerged and struggled to pull the wacawa towards him. A wacawa is a giant Amazonian catfish that can reach four or five feet in length and weigh well over 100 pounds, and Jose had one pulling him below the water. I was paddling furiously to keep the boat would alongside all of this mess.
Finally, Jose somehow pulled himself back into the boat, his hand blue with the circulation cut off. But he refused to cut the line or let the fish go. Instead, he shouted for me to grab the machete and attack the fish. He finally brought it alongside, heaving on the line with all his might, and shouted for me to whack this monster with the sharp edge of the machete. This I did, only to discover that the wacawa has a huge bony plate that protects its head. The machete bounced off, so Jose shouted to hit it further behind the head, and afterwhat seemed like half an hour, we were finally able to subdue the great beast, and hauled it onto the beach.
The fish was gigantic -- around five feet long -- with a huge, bony head, big whiskers, and rather white-green in color. You could see where I had whacked it behind the head, eventually stunning it.
Tomorrow, we decided, we will stay here and salt the meat, there is so much of it.
AUGUST 18th, 1989
Horrible night. Spent yesterday salting the fish -- three pacos and the giant wacawa -- which took forever and was endless work. Jose had a bag of salt and we each had a knife. We cut strips of fish, built makeshift fish racks, salted the meat, and then let it dry in the sun. Soon, the strips were covered with sweat bees, attracted to the salt. We spent all day doing this, occasionally plunging into the river to cool off. Early in the morning, Jose found a grove of wild banana trees, and returned with a long raceme of tiny delicious bananas. We were ravenous for them and stuffed ourselves, then made a banana "gruel" and seemed to drink a few gallons of that.
That night, I crawled into my tent and the weather changed. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of giant cracks of nearby lightning that illuminated everything for a few seconds, and then the rain started coming down hard. My stomach felt strangely distended (from the banana gruel, possibly from bad water), so I opened up the tent's zipper, then stepped out onto the beach as the rain came down incredibly hard and thunder blasted overhead. As I stepped out onto the beach in my bare feet, I could feel that the ground was covered with something crunchy that quickly began climbing its way up my leg and biting me. Looking down, with the lightning suddenly illuminating the beach, I saw that the ground was entirely covered with a thick carpet of black ants, millions of them! Not being able to retreat because of my stomach, I dashed over the ants, each foot crunching several hundred of them, and ran into the river; where I relieved myself so violently that it seemed I could match the storm's thunder. Then I ran back to the tent and, hopping in front of it, unzipped the zipper and leapt inside, pulling along quantities of ants with me before I was able to zip the tent fly up again.
This continued all night long -- the torrential rain, the thunder, my lousy stomach, the massive carpet of ants, every twenty minutes or so my insides forcing me to make another mad dash to the river.
When morning finally arrived, I woke up, unzipped the tent, and looked out. There was not an ant to be seen. Why they had come or where they had gone was a mystery. I looked over at Jose, who had slept like a baby. He told me that he hadn't heard a thing all night long.
AUGUST 19th, 1989
Back in the mission town of Sepahua, almost two weeks after setting out for Manu. We arrived in town this afternoon, the clapboard houses appearing in the distance, the tangle of boats at the muddy port, the kids playing in the water, diving about. I noticed the Dominican priest, Father Jose Alvarez, there at the water front, and as we pulled in, he came over and asked where we had been. When I told him "over the Fitzcarrald Pass and into Manu," he raised his eyebrows, nodding. The Father had been here since 1953 and is getting near retirement. He still appreciates a good trip when he hears of one though, and made many similar trips when he was younger. "You visited the Yura, did you?", he asked, wiping the gray stubble on his chin. "How is their health?"
"Good," I told him, as one of Jose's relatives began unloading the banana leaves of salted wacawa, the sweat bees still crawling over the flesh but a lot of them smashed. "They're a lot better. They seem to be settling down now and are working their fields again."
"I'm glad to hear that," the old priest said, "I still remember those first four, when they first came to visit us, they were so wild, so bewildered."
"Well, they thought they were in the land of the dead," I said, now helping Jose unload his slabs of giant fish. "They know different, now, and I think they want to stay away from here. For the moment they're better off in Manu. At least there they still have plenty of food to eat."