2016-12-23 Jungle Cruise through the Amazon

Thursday, December 22, 2016 – LAX

The Quiroz family plans our vacations crazy far in advance, this one was no exception.  Just shortly after I started for VG in late February, my sister was already asking me when I would be available for our family Christmas trip.  “Uhhhh, I have no idea what this job will be like, so let’s just book it and I’ll deal with it.”  And that’s exactly how it went down; luckily I completed a significant milestone at work on Tuesday, two days before I was going to take off for vacation. Success!  Better yet, I have no idea how we ended up doing an Amazon River boat cruise.  My guess that my sister gave me 3 suggestions based on, “I’d like to do more South America vacations” and I jumped at the chance to do an Amazon trip.  I’m happy that my family plans so well because I basically forgot about the trip until I had to start packing for it; I didn’t know that we were going to Peru not Argentina until 2 days before, I didn’t realize that my parents were on the same flight as me until the day before, and I didn’t remember that I booked a flight on a 787 until I was at the airport.  Yeay surprises!  However at that moment, I also remembered that I booked 2 awful 11 hour layovers on the return flight just so I can fly a 787 back home.  For those of you that didn’t know,  I was part of the 787 design team during my time with Boeing so I was super psyched to be on the newest and most advanced commercial transport airplane in the skies today.  I told the little boy next to me on the plane that I helped design the plane we flying on and even he was super excited!  (Or I made that up in my head.)

Friday, December 23, 2016 – Lima, Peru

3 movies, 9 hours, and no sleep later, we arrive at our connection in Lima International Airport.  The airport is jam packed, lines are incredibly long, and it’s stupid humid.  Luckily, we meet up with my sister and her family, Alex, Bryson, and Scarlet, and Alex’s mom, Jill.  Playing with the kids easily kills our layover and before we know it, we’re boarding the plane.  I instantly pass out as soon as the plane starts moving.  Looks like I should have slept on the first leg of this trip.  I’m jarred awake sometime later by the stopping motion of the plane.  I’m surprised and happy that I slept through the whole flight but as I sit there and wait for the all anticipated ‘ding’ that signals that everyone can race to unbuckle their seat belts and stand awkwardly in the aisle looking at each other, it never comes.  I look around and no one is getting up and the people next to me don’t speak English and my spanish is muy malo.  Eventually, a stewardess comes onto the PA and gives a 30 second announcement which I can’t follow but ends with “Cincuenta minutos” which is quickly followed by a plane wide groan.  The English announcement is about 10 seconds and mentions nothing about 50 minutes but does say that we were forced to return to the gate due to a medical emergency.  I was so confused; so much for time travelling via my nap. 

Iquitos, Peru

The pictures are coming people, I promise.  Our naturalist, tour guide, and translator meets us at the airport and piles us into a van.  We tour downtown Iquitos which has a population of 0.5M.  First stop on the tour is a fairly touristy restaurant, but it did have large local beers and a Lomo Saltado; I’m happy.  Usually I like a walk after a meal, especially when I’m exploring a new city, but humidity is at 85%, and my jeans are a poor choice of clothing.  I’m reminded that I never bought the pair of lightweight long pants that I swore I would by after the Galapagos.  I struggle through the rest of the walking tour until its back on the air conditioned haven of the tour bus.  As we drive through town towards the port, we can see that all the houses and buildings on the low land near the river are all built on stilts.  Since Iquitos is on the bank of the Nay river that is fed by the Amazon River, the water lever can raise substantially during the year.  At the port, we pile onto our skiff and get to see the city from the river before arriving at our destination, The Cattleya, which the name of an Orchid and the name of our boat.

A floating gas station!

Every room has floor to ceiling windows

Hearts of palm salad.  I must find this at home.

Saturday, December 24, 2016 – The Amazon River, Peru

During the night, the Cattleya changes locations and my baller ass ceiling to floor windowed bedroom shows me water and plant-life as far as the eye can see.  After a very relaxed breakfast, playing with the kids, and a brief spray down of mosquito repellent, we board our skiff for our first animal spotting boat ride.  However, the first thing we notice is that on the main part of the Amazon River, there are a lot of the local people in various types of boats or canoes all powered by a lawnmower engine the directly drives a tiny 6 inch propeller.  There are many villages along the banks of the Amazon River and the river itself is the locals’ main method of transportation. 

One of the very few ways that the locals make money is to make charcoal.  They gather trees that have already fallen down, bury them under clay and dirt, and somehow burn the trees in a way that creates charcoal without burning the tree completely away. It must be some Amazonian Voodoo Magic, or some combination of organic chemistry, thermodynamics, and material science; I’m going Voodoo Magic. 

Alas! Our first bird sighting!  It’s a black headed vulture.  Apparently, vultures eat decaying corpses because their beaks and claws aren’t strong enough to capture and eat live prey.  My cartoons definitely left that fact out of their depiction of vultures; I figured they just liked gross things.  Want another fun fact?  That tumor on the tree trunk is a termite nest.  Parakeets and other birds poke a hole in those nests and put their eggs inside the nest.  The termite nests reach temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius.  30 times 9/5 plus 32, add ice, shake, strain into a frosted lowball glass gives you 86 degrees Fahrenheit.  The nest provides the safety and heat for the eggs in place of the bird parents.  These eggs are called lock and key eggs because both bird parents have to work full time jobs to generate enough income to send the hatchlings to and Amazonian Ivy League school, which can cost a lot. 

Black headed vulture

Yellow Headed Caracara

Termite Nest

Yellow Headed Vulture

Yellow Headed Caracara

As we continue down the main part of the Amazon River, I pelt our guide and naturalist, Chico, with questions. 

R: How long is the Amazon? 

C: From its source in the Andes to its exit in the Atlantic Ocean, it is about 7,000 kilometers

R: Does the River get wider than this?

C: The Amazon gets as wide as 4 kilometers

R: What’s the hardest animal to find in the Amazon?

C: Panthers and Anacondas; they are scared of humans

R: What’s the deal with airplane peanuts?

C: I’ve never heard of this ‘Seinfeld’

R: Why are there so many dead trees on the banks and trees in the River?

C: When the water level rises, the trees that aren’t big enough and don’t have a way to get oxygen so they die and fall into the water; as the water level continues to rise, all the trees that have died in the low season get washed into the river.

3 out of 4 Chico, that’s a C; gonna have to do better than that to compete with all the latch and key parakeet hatchlings. 

Bryson's Ninjaqu Legos

Lunch back at the boat is fantastic and I make a note to steal this recipe and presentation to use at home.  After an hour or two of downtime, we head back out to the skiff for more animal spotting.  Along the way we see another village and some locals who are selling souvenirs as another source of income.  They tell us that they are saving up by going to an Amazon Junior College for 2 years before transferring to a 4 year Amazon College.  I refer them to some online S.A.T. courses that will greatly increase their chances of getting in to UCLA (University of California in Las Amazonia).  Is this still funny?

Yellow Billed Ternce

Three Toe Sloth

Smooth Billed Ani

White Winged Parakeets

Sand Colored Night Hawks

On the next picture, the tall white tree shows where the water level is during the high season.  That’s a good 15 feet from the current waterline!  On our way home, we see a waterfront lodge which is one of several that we encounter.  I wonder who decides to stay at these types of places because all of them seemed to be completely unoccupied by any guests.  At any rate, the boat ride back gives us a first row seats to one of the many insanely gorgeous sunsets that Peru has to offer. 

Back at the boat, its Christmas eve and we’ve decided to do presents tonight so that Bryson can use his super cool binoculars which is a present from my mom.  This year, the family is trying out a Secret Santa gift format.  The requirements are a gift under $20, a homemade card, and a ‘presentation’ about the recipient.  My sister goes first to set the example, since she organized the gift exchange, and goes over and beyond with 3 gifts and a 5 minute presentation.  Ummm, I was unaware that this was a Rockstar Secret Santa gift exchange.  All I have are some stupid jokes.  Anyhow, Ate gets mom, who gets Jill, who gets me, who gets Alex, who gets dad, who gets Ate; then everyone gets presents for Bryson and Scarlet.  All in all, it took under an hour and was pretty engaging, which is great compared to the awkward gift giving of all previous years.  Plus, there’s no way I’m fitting 7 gifts on my carry-on bag along with the 2 binoculars, scope, and tri-pod, oh and clothes.  So great job Ate!  I say we do it again next year!

Christmas Eve dinner is this super awesome tiger catfish with a curry sauce, tomatoes and onions, served with a side of yucca and rice.  I’d made a habit of asking our host and bartender, Pedro, what everything was that we were being served.  Most of it was all local foods.  When he told me that it was tiger catfish, I immediately replied with the unique “No Way!!”  For some reason I had been looking at tiger catfish the previous week.  I, and most Filipinos, are big fans of broiled catfish.  Of course the south has cornmeal crusted and deep fried catfish, which is tremendous.  If you’ve never had either, stop reading, text me, schedule a dinner, and I will make you both.  I’m not kidding.  It my mom’s favorite fish, and my third favorite behind yellowfin tuna, and Alaskan black cod.  What makes this tiger fish unique to normal catfish is that its skin is a brilliant silver and has black tiger stripes down its body and are giant!  They can grow up to 5 feet long!  As I try to explain why it’s so cool that we have Tiger Catfish for dinner, Pedro goes, “Do you want to see the head?”  “You have the head??”  “Yes, it’s in the kitchen, I’ll bring it out.”  Check the photo.  That thing ain’t small.  In fact, this one fish fed the meat eating portion of our family for the rest of the week. 

Tiger Catfish as food

Tiger Catfish as just a head

Pear boiled with red wine, sugar and cinnamon sticks

Sunday, December 25, 2016, Christmas Day – Nauta, Peru

I wake up to some knocking on my door followed with, “Rob, there are dolphins right next to the boat!”  Chico had told us that there were two species of dolphins in the Amazon River, Grey and Pink.  “Wait, there are pink dolphins?  Isn’t this freshwater?  There are freshwater dolphins?”  Yes, yes, and yes.  The grey dolphins are much smaller than the bottlenose dolphis we are used to seeing and their dorsal fin is very small.  The pink dolphin is crazy looking with a dorsal fin that is short and very long.  The pink skin kinda makes it look like one of those hairless dogs; a bit unnerving.  I didn’t get a picture of the pink one unfortunately.  But check this link for a pic.

After a morning of breakfast and dolphins, we take a short skiff ride to a village that has giant water lilies.  They are exactly what you’d expect but when you see them in person, they are pretty impressive.  Not like giant tortoise impressive, more like, “Hey this documentary didn’t suck, I actually really liked it.” 

Lunch was Lomo Saltado, as requested by me, since I love having the local’s food, and Peruvian food is pretty much the shiznit.  Here’s a little known secret, at the 710 and the 91 is El Pollo Imperial; hands down the best Peruvian food in SoCal.  It’s totally my style of restaurant, so don’t drive your nice car, expect an 'A' health rating, or hope to hear a lot of English, but the food is unbeatable. 

With lunch complete, we are back on the hunt for more animals.  When we went to see the polar bears, our guide had a spotting scope that gave really great views of the polar bears.  So I did my research and chose a scope do the same thing.  I even got the adapters to connect a camera phone to it to make it easy for everyone to see what was in the lens and the adapter to connect my camera to the scope.  I’m all set!  One problem, it’s really hard to aim a scope even on a tri-pod, and pretty much impossible on a moving skiff!!!  Scope fail. 

Yellow Headed Caracara (Juvenile)

Common Snowy Egrits

Common Snowy Egrit

An Amazonian Riverfront Village

On an earlier skiff ride, we had explored a small offshoot of the main river.  We hadn’t got far when we ran out of water and everything was covered water plants.  With only a moment’s hesitation, the driver goes over and through the water plants like an airboat would.  Whaaaaaaaat is going on?  The whole boat cheers as we get back into open water.  However, a minute later we turn around because the plant-life is too thick.  Totally understandable.  This ride is a different story though.  The creek that we explore is covered with these water plants.  That beautiful field of plants in between the trees is actually the creek.  We boated through all of that.  CRAZY!  I would never do that in my boat.

Like this field?  There's a river under all those water plants.  We went through it.

Oropendula and their nests

Cucouy Heron

Yellow Headed Vulture

Squirrel Monkey

Cayman Lizzard

Waddle Jacana

Black Necked Hawk

Glass Tree Frog

Preying Mantis, This thing almost ate me.

Monday, December 26, 2016, Christmas Day – Nauta, Peru

We don’t travel very far overnight so that we can visit the main part of Nauta, population 40K.  We head to some sort of wildlife preserve/zoo/feeding station where we can feed bread to turtle and Paiche.  I’m really excited because wild Paiche are humongous, up to 10 feet and can break a man’s ribs just by thrashing.  (I saw them on the discovery channel show River Monsters.)  However, feeding wild animals is never a good idea, especially protected marvels like this one.  Either way, we go and have a fun time trying to entice the fish and turtles with balls of bread.  On the way out of the preserve, I do my best to try and translate the stories about the local myths which are painted as murals.  How good is your Espanol?  Please translate for me, k, thanks.

Paiche

Our last stop in Nauta is the local market.  Fresh vegetables, rices, market restaurants, questionable medications, and giant Peruvian corn which makes Peruvian cornnuts!  I’m sure most of you know about these already, but in case you don’t, these put normal cornuts to shame.  Go to your local Trader Joes and look for a yellow plastic bag labled Peruvian Inka Cornuts.  Likely they will be sold out, because they always are, but if they aren’t, buy one for you, and buy one for me too. 

Aguaje, basically a Peruvian Potato

Sweet Peppers and Tomatoes

Premade veggies for a common Peruvian soup

Peruvian Hot Peppers, DAMN HOT.

Local Market Restuarants

Giant Peruvian Corn

Back to the boat for Tiger Catfish wrapped in leaves and Cama Cama berry chiffon.  Chino informs us that we will be out till past sunset for the afternoon skiff ride and to wear long pants and long sleeves to keep away the mosquitoes.  I am quick to jump on this as my shorts and sandals outfit has left me with several dozen mosquito bites.  If I die from malaria, someone make sure that my car and motorcycles are willed to Miles. 

This skiff ride is in a proper nature reserve, complete with a registration in a not so waterproof log book.  This creek is filled with what is called black water.  The creek is mostly stagnant water where the trees, leaves, and plant-life die and decompose in the water giving the water a black color and a mirror like quality.  It gives off awesome reflections of sky, the trees, and my face.  Of course, no skiff ride adventure wouldn’t be complete without sections of the creek being completely covered in water plants and hidden logs that we kept hitting.

Tiger Catfish steamed in leaves

Cama Cama Dessert

Preserve Ranger Station 

Cucouy Heron

Ficus Tree that the Amazonians call the Bob Marley Tree, or Chino was just messing with us.

Red Legged Cricket

Waddle Jacana,  Check out its feet!!!! It has giant feet so that it can walk on the water plants without sinking into the water.

I don't know how we made it through all these water plants

Water Hisen

Yellow Ram Casiquis build their next next to wasp nests for protection and feed the wasps in return

Paper Wasp Nest

  

As the sunset, Chino explained that we would start looking for nocturnal animals, specifically the White Belly Cayman Alligator.  What better way to look for scary animals than in the complete dark, in a boat, in the Amazon River.  No problem.  Also, it’s really hard to avoid hidden logs when its pitch black out.  Chino did have a pretty hardcore light that did double duty as a log search light and to search out the red eyes of hiding animals.  We did have enough luck to find an owl, a couple Cayman Alligators, and didn’t lose our propeller on our way home.  Call us Indiana Jones of the Amazon!

Jungle Owl

White Belly Cayman

Tuesday, December 27, 2016 – Pacaya Samira National Reserve, Peru

I am again awakened to the knock on my door and the announcement of pink dolphins outside of my window.  I gratefully do my morning meditation while watching the pink dolphins play on the rivers’ surface.  I’ll get a picture of them later… that plan didn’t quite pan out.  I did however get to watch some locals fish right outside of the boat and got a super close up view of the frog that was hanging out right outside my window. 

Chino gave us the news that today we would be kayaking in one of the creeks!  My mom is a notoriously bad kayaker, and given that we will be kayaking in the Antarctic Ocean this time next year, I suggest that she get some practice with me in the kayak.  The result?  A kayak that couldn’t go straight, but didn’t tip over.  I’ll count that as a success.  At the halfway mark, half the group went back on the skiff while my sister and Alex kayaked back along with my dad and me.  I think my dad almost threw out his back while trying to kayak laying down.  We were all pretty happy to get some kind of exercise in and to be able to tour the Amazon in almost complete silence.  Watching grey and pink dolphins from a kayak… not a bad way to spend a morning.  We were supposed to swim with the dolphins after kayaking, but a previous tour boat had radioed in that their guests were being bitten by tiger catfish.  We tried for the rest of the trip but didn’t have the opportunity.  Damn wildlife ruining my first world vacations; how rude.

Hilya Puntata

These local boys were helping us with our anchor line

It was pretty much a monsoon for about an hour during our lunch break but luckily it cleared up for an afternoon skiff ride.  On the plus side, we did get to see another sloth which have proven difficult to find and another passenger boat which apparently costs about $3 to ride.

Male 3-toed sloth (Yellow coloring)

Roadside Hawk

An Amazonian River Water Taxi

Wednesday, December 28, 2016 – Somewhere in the Amazon River, Peru

Guess what we get to do today?!  Go fishing!!  Guess what we get to fish for?  Piranha!  I’m totally not kidding either!  I remember watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain where he goes to the Amazon and fishes for piranha.  We got to do the same thing!  The best part is that the fishing setup is totally novel.  Our rods were pretty much thin tree branches, there was about 8 feet of line on the 8 foot rod, a ¼ ounce sinker, then about 2 inches of wound steel wire that terminated at the hook.  The wire is there so that the piranha can’t bite through the line.  And what is the most appropriate bait for this carnivorous fish?  Beef Tenderloin!  How great is that?!  The fishing grounds were pretty mushy and we were all ill prepared for the muddy environment, including myself in my very typical white leather shoes.  Why do I keep doing this to myself?  Because white shoes are the best!  That’s why!  Anyhow, I settle on fishing out of a canoe that is still somewhat wedged onto solid ground.  After a successfully catching a few piranha, I switch spots with my sister so she can have a go in the canoe while I bait her hook for her.  At some point I decide that I’ll go ahead and fish right next to her.  Now since there’s a little too much weight in the canoe, it starting to take on some water, not a ton, but at least a couple inches.  It’s really hard to hook these piranhas because of their hard mouths so you end up just kinda getting the hook barely hanging on to the fish while you try to fling it onto shore.  However the fish that I was pulling up fell off the hook early and into that canoe that my sister was sitting in and since the canoe had some water in it, the freshly caught piranha could frantically swim up and down the canoe right underneath the seat my sister was sitting on.  My sister freaked out and was screaming to get rid of the fish.  Since the canoe was super unstable, she couldn’t move, and since I was super awkwardly positioned, I couldn’t move either.  She had to wait for Chino to bring over the bait cup to scoop out the piranha.  It was absolutely hilarious!  My sister got the last laugh tho, posing with it in some pictures with Bryson.  Bryson did not like being that close to it at all but tried his best to smile for the picture.  All in all, 22 piranhas, 3 of which were deep fried for dinner that night.
 
How to fish for Piranhna, use wire!

Piranha Bait, Beef Tenderloin 

Red Belly Piranha 

Bryson is so not happy

22 Piranhas!

Deep fried Piranha, kinda tough.

There was one more expedition that evening that I decided to bow out of since I was ill prepared for any kind of hiking let alone hiking in wet ass white leather sneakers with wet ass jeans on a wet ass trail.  All of that screamed 2 hours of being uncomfortable and grumpy.  Seems like I missed out though; the rest of the gang saw some awesome stuff.  The joke is on them though, cause instead of opting out of the hike to nap, I stayed up and blogged for the entire time!  Wait, that’s not exactly a day at Disneyland… dammit, I gotta buy some better travel gear.

Tree Frog

An Anaconda!

Poisonous Jungle Frog, Red = Bad

This is a bird eating tarantula, about the size of the palm of your hand!

Thursday, December 29, 2016 – Nauto, Peru

The day of departure is here! It is time to start my ridiculous series of layovers.  I get dropped off at the Iquitos airport at noon and hang out until my flight at 11pm, my flight arrives in Lima at 1 am and departs for LA at noon.  Fortunately, I booked a 5-star hotel in Lima for the night and plan to scope out the town for some late night revelers to help pass the time.  Hopefully this 5-star hotel is not a sham like the one in Panama City.  C’mon South America, step it up!

The trip back home starts with a 2 hour drive from Nauto to Iquitos where we weave through the countryside.  Iquitos has only one road in and out of the city, and it only goes to teeny tiny Nauto.  All other transportation to other parts of the country is conducted by air or by water.  This would be a good setup for a fort, or the next season of Game of Thrones. Iquitos also means ‘The Happy Red People’ after the natives that started the city who painted their bodies red.  Thank you Mr. Tour Guide!

We have one more stop in store for us before I get to the airport.  There’s a manatee rescue center just at the entrance to Iquitos.  I didn’t know what to expect, but I surely didn’t expect to find this!  Basically, the locals would try to bring in illegal animals to sell in the city, and the police would confiscate them and send them to this sanctuary.  It sucks to see these wild animals caged up, but at least here, the university takes care of them.  The manatees are protected by law, but the government has no money to take care of them, so they end up here.  The first thing we see when we enter the manatee portion of the sanctuary is a baby manatee being bottle fed by an animal keeper.  I’m so amazed, I forgot to take a picture of it before it was over.  I’ve seen manatees before, but never like this.  Good stuff man. 

Giant River Otter

Manatees!

Another great trip to South America, and a successful family vacation.  NO DRAMA!  OMG.  This is amazing. The next time I come down to South America, I’m gonna do a tour of all the Amazonian Colleges there to see how the parakeets are doing!