Day 61 09.09.15
We woke up to a beautiful sunrise. To be fair, I woke up, but decided to roll over and let the sun just touch my face from the open door. We headed down to breakfast, which was green plantain, tomato and some fried egg, a delicious but hearty meal. I think however, it was the best way to prepare us for the hike through the jungle that was to come.
First we hopped on to the motorised canoe to be shipped to where we were to take the hike.
We passed several families searching for gold along the riverbed. They were washing the rocks and gravel hoping to find a gram of gold, which apparently currently sells at about 40$.
When we hopped off the canoe we saw our first bit of wildlife. I don’t know how it got there and what it was doing next to another canoe, but we saw this type of white and black worm.
We headed up some stairs to where the jungle would begin. We got to a opening and saw several workers building up a lodge. It was a strange sight, seeing as we had expected the jungle straight away. After the workers, we headed upward through the secondary jungle, walking through a plantation of cocoa. It was a bit of a climb to the top, but here some pineapple plants greeted us. I had only ever seen them in Cuba, and so I thought I would provide you with a picture.
After the secondary jungle we kept on walking and eventually hit the primary jungle. Here we got to see different kinds of spiders and moths. Some better camouflaged than others.
We also saw different flora, for example the avocado flower (or at least that’s what I remember it as).
A most interesting specimen is the walking tree. Every year it moves between 5 and 7 cm. It does this by growing new roots in the direction it wants to grow or “walk” to, and lets the ones that are holding him back at the other side die off. That way he is able to compete for the most sunlight on the jungle floor and canopy. The wood too, is very generous for the indigenous people. It is very strong and so weapons can be produced and it can also be used for housing material.
On our way we saw several strangling figs. These are also quite cool, as they first grow around an existing tree, to then take away its nutrients (as soon as the roots hit the floor because the tree grows from the top to the bottom) and then grows around the primary tree, eventually strangling it and causing it to die. Hello, survival of the fittest!
Another of these competitions is that between the termites and any tree for that matter. As soon as termites colonize a tree and start building their nest on it, the tree becomes lopsided and might even have branches falling off, or the entire stem breaking in two, taking the termites nest with it when it falls.
We were lucky to have such a hawk-eyed guide with us, since he managed to keep us from stepping on poisonous (big!) spiders that were crawling around the jungle floor.
Our guide also showed us different techniques in the jungle; for example how to make lemonade from water, a bit of honey and some ants that taste of lemon, or how to climb a tree, using liana as support.
He also showed us the ancient way of communication using mushrooms as paper. To show us how efficient this was, we all were able to write our names on this little message to the jungle.
We also saw other insects such as stick insects that had perfectly camouflaged itself to its environment and had only been spotted by another group member.
Along our way we saw rare species of frogs, such as this little fellow sitting on the leaf.
We saw some beautiful butterflies, that were very hard to capture (on film of course!).
Something else we were taught by our guide was how the indigenous used to make clothing out of the materials they found in the jungle. For example combining leaves and liana together to make skirts, “bras”, little bags and even headpieces like crowns. Luckily I was the volunteer for this and instantly turned into the queen of the jungle.
I even received some “war paint” from the bottom of a creek, and continued to wear this attire for the rest of the day.
We headed back to the community for lunch, and again were surprised by the rich flavour.
As an appetizer we had some beans with crisps and as our main we had some great rice with tomatoes.
After lunch we were introduced to some more customs of the Shiripuno community. We learned how to make the alcohol drink that is used for their celebrations made from the yucca plant. The yucca plant is boiled, and then pounded by a wooden hammer.
This is done on ones knees to exert the most power onto the yucca. Back in the early days, people used to then stick some of that paste or mass into their mouths and start the fermentation process, spitting it back out again to continue using it. This is no longer done through the saliva of the family members, for obvious hygienic reasons, but now a root is used that helps to start the fermentation process off. The mass is then rapped up in a leaf and placed in a shady not too hot area for 2 to 5 days, depending on how alcoholic the mixture is supposed to be. When you want to consume it, you then take some of the mass and mix it with the water used to boil the yucca to transform it into a drink.
We then continued on to see how the Shiripuno women produced chocolate. As you might know, I got to experience this process before in Panama at another indigenous community. Their processes were slightly different though to another. First as for both communities, the chocolate beans were roasted over open fire. Here the times slightly deviated, where as the Panamanian community roasted their beans for 20 – 25 minutes, the Shiripuno women only roast the beans for 5 to 10 minutes. Then instead of grinding the beans down, the Shiripuno women break the shell of the bean with their fingers, to extract the actual chocolate. (For me, the bean with the roasted shell is still the best, as it tastes so nutty and just like Toblerone). They then add the beans to the meat grinder, whereas the Panamanians, would then try and shake of the shells of the beans and then add them to the meat grinder. The result for me is just too dark of chocolate. Even if we are not talking about the 100% chocolate, 70% is still too dark for me.
We carried on our discovery of the Shiripuno community, finding out how they make their handicrafts. Using string and beads made from seeds, we learned different techniques of how to make bracelets, and I feel like my arm looks like a handicraft project now. The women also produce necklaces, little canoes and bows (bow and arrow bows), little key rings, earrings, anything you can do with string, seeds, and other natural materials.
We then quickly got changed to go tubing on the river. This was an absolute blast!
First we drove to a small strip of beach to hop onto our tubes. The river wasn’t really deep in most places, but deep enough for us to float over stones. The further we got on, the more brave we became; climbing onto our tubes, turning like mad people and trying to splash each other in order to “accidentally” push someone into the water.
It was just time for sunset and the cloud formations looked incredible!
This activity went on longer than I had expected, or at least the time passed on a lot quicker than I had expected. So when we had fished everyone back into the canoe, it was already time for dinner.
For dinner we had a Mushroom soup with popcorn as a topping. This is an amazing idea, and I will use that back at home. For our main course we had chicken in leaf with rice, avocado tomato salad, squashed plantains. The leaf actually sort of steams the protein, so that’s a really yummy and I think healthy alternative, accompanied by a nice passion fruit juice.
For desert, as one of the girls from the group was celebrating her birthday, we had some great home made cake with no icing or anything else that would mess with the flavour of a nice simple sponge cake. Additionally to this, we all had a glass of the birthday cocktail, pretty much passion fruit with alcohol. It was marvellous!
We then got ready for the last activity of the day. We went on a night hike.
Equipped with a flashlight and some bug spray, we headed out.
We started seeing a couple of moths that were attracted by our light. Quickly after that however, we got to see a large spider on the side of the walkway. No, it wasn’t a tarantula, but still a very fine specimen of a spider!
Again we saw many stick insects that were sitting on the tops of leaves.
Also some cockroaches, but in their natural habitat, they seem less “gross” or even “unusual”.
It was interesting to learn that you could distinguish the nocturnal insects as their eyes would have a silver shimmer to them if you shown your light onto them.
With the cockroaches came several grasshoppers and cicadas that were providing us with a private concert along the way.
We also got to see some of them in mid transformation, from their cocoons to the actual cicadas.
We also saw so many spiders, and especially with our lights, the webs looked quite impressive.
There were more bull spiders that we had seen during the day, sitting on their webs hunting.
We even saw some communal spider webs with several hundred spiders sitting on them, obviously finding enough food to last each spider.
We saw a spider spinning its caught prey.
We saw a spider that was laying its egg and rolling it into a perfect ball.
We saw a black widow that actually has two black dots on its large abdomen.
And finally to do with spiders we saw a large scorpion spider that was just enormous. Apparently it is harmless, but its shear size was impressive.
Apart from spiders we also saw some centipedes crawling on the jungle floor.
We were very surprised to find three sleeping butterflies hanging from a small branch.
In terms of frogs we saw this miniature buddy sitting on a leaf.
We also saw this impressive fellow of black and yellow colour, which apparently is quite rare to find.
Like the cicadas we also saw some moths in mid transformation from their cocoons to their state of being a moth.
We saw some large termite nests, and were told that they are a great insect repellent. One of our guides stuck their finger in the nest and it smelt like pine trees, quite a musky smell.
We also saw some large bullet ants, which receive their name from the pain they cause. Apparently when bite you it feels as if you have been shot by a bullet. Luckily we were spared this fate.
Here you can see how large it is in comparison to my finger…
We also saw a little clown frog along the way, named so due to its colourful skin.
Just below the frog we saw a highly poisonous spider that thankfully we managed to avoid before stepping on it.
There are quite a lot of poisonous insects hanging around, such as this little hairy caterpillar, reminding me of the procession caterpillars that I know from the pine trees back in Mallorca.
We also found some moths that looked like leaves. It was the first time we saw them in the wild, before we only managed to see them in our bathroom, where the light attracted the whole range of jungle insects.
We eventually returned and after another sip of our passion fruit cocktails headed off to bed.
