Rio Marañon: San Isidro & Rio Yanayacu
It is interesting to think about how the world wakes up in different parts of the globe. Here, it’s a soft awakening, as we discovered this morning when we rousted ourselves at 5:30 and headed out in skiffs at 6. Light eased into the sky without much drama, and the soft horizon greened and gained detail. We ducked into a small creek coming off of the Rio Marañon, the Chambina, that led us to an oxbow lake. Along the way, we started getting a sense of what might become familiar over the coming week: cecropia trees, black-collared hawks, the enormous vitality of vines.
Breakfast gave us the energy to head out for our next adventure: a walk in the Amazonian rain forest. The trails around San Isidro wind through varzea, or seasonally flooded, forest. It’s high water now, and getting higher, so this lovely spot might soon be flooded, but we were glad to have a chance today to duck into its warm shade. It truly is a different world from the river, where vegetation slides along and the sky makes its moods clear. In the forest, it’s not necessarily quiet, but there’s a stillness.
Plants take the show in the forest, for the most part. We marveled upon the many variations upon a theme of “vine,” and learned the traditional medical and practical uses of many of the plants, from the palms that can be woven into beds and backpacks to the delicious garlic vine that can be used to treat a panoply of ailments. The forest also offered us views of the true biomass of the Amazon: insects. Leafcutter ants bustled along with their burdens, butterflies flitted through the shade, and millipedes galore clambered the trunks.
Back aboard the Delfin II, we took some time to freshen up, then began piecing together the bigger picture of the Pacaya-Samiria Reserve with an overview and map by our guide Renny. This New-Jersey-sized piece of the Amazon is incredibly rich and diverse, and what’s perhaps even more fascinating is that it isn’t a piece of land set aside and blocked from people. People live in the reserve and use its resources, and that has become part of the management. Stewardship, in a word, is how the resources and creatures of the Pacaya-Samiria are protected. Those who live near and watch over the reserve are rewarded with greater access to its rich fishes and fruits; they in turn, make sure that poachers keep their distance. There are eyes on the river.
The afternoon offered another opportunity for a skiff ride and wildlife search, and we took it. We headed up the Yanayacu, which translates as “black water.” At the entrance, with the Delfin II moored to a tree, we could see the roiling and swirling of white and dark water coming together.
One of our most profound discoveries of the afternoon was perhaps the power of weather. When we started out, it was blazing hot. A rustling in the trees and a glance overhead, however, proved that change was coming. Rain. Rain sprinkled, dropped, and then poured. This, however, did not deter us. We pulled on ponchos, watched the droplets dance, and even found a three-toed sloth taking a bath in a tree.
Back aboard, we dried off and gathered to get to know our guides a bit more before dinner. Renny, Rudy, and Adonai shared their own stories of how they came to be guides on the Amazon, many of them learning from scientific expeditions that they helped guide, many of them making a life on the river in some point in their lives. To be aware of the depth of their knowledge is a bit humbling, and we look forward to learning from them in the coming week.
