Visiting The Siona People.

Part of our Amazon adventure was a visit to the Siona people, one of the indigenous groups that live in the Cuyabeno Reserve.

Before our second granddaughter was born, her parents, Teresa and Matthew, were looking for names on the internet. They ran across an article about the Siona people and really liked the name. They changed the spelling to Syona and the name stuck.

So when we found that visiting Syona's namesakes was on the itinerary, we were very curious to see them.

Our visit began with a session with the group's shaman, Tomas. We met him and one of his daughters at his house. He was dressed in his traditional grab for our visit.

The marks on his face represent the three animals that rule the air, the jungle, and the river. On his forehead, the harpy eagle, on his cheeks, the jaguar’s spots, and on his chin, the anaconda’s snout.

He performed a short ceremony for us. O volunteered to be the subject. For a real ceremony, he would drink the ayahuasca in the bottle by his feet and visit the spirit world to determine what was ailing his patient.

Afterwards, two of Tomas' daugthers showed us his cacao orchard, which has unfortunately become infected with the witches' broom fungus that is devastating chocolate production all over South America. They managed to find a few pods that were unaffected to show us. I didn't know that the pulp around the seeds is edible. In fact, it is sweet and delicious, tasting much like a custard apple. The girls saved the seeds for processing after we ate the pulp.

 Next, it was time to make bread. Really from scratch. We started by pulling up manioc roots.

 Once we had harvested enough roots, Gardenia, one of the villagers, showed us how to peel them.

 O got her technique down.

  Cassava bread is like a large flatbread or tortilla, cooked on a large iron pan over a wood fire.

 O helped Gardenia wash any remaining dirt off the manioc roots.

 And then grate them.

 Once the roots were grated, Gardenia rolled them into a squeezer woven from palm leaves.

 Wringing all the water out of the grated manioc. The water is saved and used for cooking.

 O helps sift the resulting flour.

 Gardenia spreads the flour on the hot pan.
 

 Once the bread is crispy on one side, she expertly flips it over.

 Then finishes cooking the bread.



 O enjoys the finished bread. With a little salt, it was quite good.

About 250 people live in this village. Conditions are fairly primitive by our standards, but there were a couple of satellite dishes and a school. Our guide told us that the government has put money into developing infrastructure here, but poor planning and lack of expertise have caused most of the projects to fail.

Two girls do the laundry in the river. The only transportation here is by motorized canoe. These have proliferated to the point that the pollution they produce is becoming a problem. The government is trying to get people to adopt less-polluting four-stroke outboards, but most people can't afford them.

 When we left the village, Tomas was there to wave goodbye. He'd changed for his shaman regalia to his everyday clothes.

P.

Jungle Fever!

Our visit to the Ecuadorean Amazon started with a flight from Quito over the Andes mountains to the beginnings of the Amazon river in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve.

This river is just one of hundreds of rivers that start in the Andes and combine to form the Amazon, which flows all the way across South America to the Atlantic Ocean, 4,000 miles away.

We landed at an airport in the jungle, then drove for two hours to the very end of the road. After that the only way to go further is by boat. The river is narrow at first, but as more and more rivers join, it gets bigger and wider, until it is almost 150 miles wide when it reaches the ocean.

Here’s where we stayed, at the Tapir Lodge. We were surprised that, contrary to our expectations, it was rather cool here, though humid. At night, we were able to sleep comfortably without even a fan. Also surprisingly, there were very few mosquitoes. According to the map, Cuyabeno is in a malarial area, but our guide assured us that in his 38 years in the reserve he had never seen a case. We each got two or three bites. Nothing compared to the many bites we got in the Galapagos. Everything here , even the walkways are built on stilts because it rains so much, about 120 inches a year.

Partly because of all that rainfall, the Cuyabeno Reserve has the highest amount of biodiversity in the world. There are more types of plants and animals here than anyplace else—more than 500 species of birds and ten species of monkeys. We saw six of the ten species while we were there, including big wooly monkeys, red howler monkeys, little squirrel monkeys, and clever capuchin monkeys like this one. His whole family is in that tree with him, but they’re really hard to see.

And speaking of hard to see, can you spot the two monkeys in this photo?

They’re in the hole in the tree. They’re night monkeys resting during the day so they can go out at night to find insects to eat. There was a baby in their nest with them.

We also saw bats, like these long-nosed fruit-eating ones sleeping on a dead tree. In the evening, we saw fisher bats skimming the river to catch fish.

We saw a lot of these “stinky turkeys.” They are hoatzins, also known as stink birds because they smell so bad. We could smell them from 25 feet away and they were stinky indeed. But their stink is a good thing for them, because no one wants to eat them. I know I wouldn’t, and I’m a pretty adventurous eater. The reason they stink is their unusual digestive system. They have an enlarged crop that they use to ferment vegetable matter prior to digestion. This cud is also regurgitated to feed their young. It smells very bad.

We saw several pods of pink river dolphins, too, but they were too fast for us to get any good pictures of them. Here’s the best shots we got.

Later we went on a hike through the jungle at night when many creatures that sleep through the day are out hunting for food. We saw this huge tarantula.

And this tiny frog. He looked so much like a leaf that we almost missed him.

We almost stepped on this bushmaster snake that was hunting right by the trail. It’s a good thing we didn’t step on it, because bushmasters are among the most venomous snakes in the world. 80% of people bitten by them die, even with anti-venom treatments. They can grow up to 12 feet long. This one was only about 3 feet.

We also walked across the equator twice in the dark, once going north and once going south!

There were quite a few tarantulas at our lodge, too. This one was lurking on the walkway to our room.

And this one was hanging out in the bar, which is aptly named La Tarantula. She lives there year-round. We never knew exactly where in the bar she would be, but that didn't stop us from having Pisco Sours and Cuba Libres in the evening.

Next, a visit to the Siona People, one of the indigenous groups that lives in the reserve.

P.

Living La Vida Local.

We had six days in Puerto Ayora, the main city in the Galapagos. As main cities go, it's pretty small, a sleepy little beach town of around, well, that depends who you talk to. Our guide said around 28,000, Wikipedia says 11,000 in 2012. It's hard to believe that the population has increased that much in three years. And the town feels closer to 11,000. That's about the population of the sleepy little beach town I lived in growing up, so I felt instantly comfortable here. Laguna Beach is is now about 23,000, and it feels way more crowded than Puerto Ayora.

Here's the main plaza on Tuesday afternoon. Interestingly almost every vehicle on the island is either a motor scooter or a white Toyota Hilux crew cab pickup. A few Mazda or Chevy pickups sneak in, but 99% of all the trucks are white. There are almost no cars. This gives the place an odd feel, like someone's secretly filming a Toyota commercial.

Puerto Ayora is a relatively new town. The first record of human habitation dates from 1905 when three sailors were shipwrecked here for a couple years, and the town was never more than a few hundred people until the late 1970s.

Almost all the signs here are hand-painted, and a lot of the businesses have fanciful or informative painting advertising their wares.

Like Laguna, Puerto Ayora has attracted a community of artists. There are many galleries featuring very interesting artworks. While we were strolling around town, we came upon this small lot filled with colorful mosaics. We thought it was a pocket park a first, but it was actually the artist's front yard. None of the pieces were for sale, he or she had simply created them to enliven the space.

We visited the local fish market, where the sea lions and pelicans beg for scraps (and get them).

On the edge of town is the Charles Darwin Research Station which was set up to study and help preserve the local wildlife.

Part of that mission is a breeding center for giant tortoises. They are kept in a huge enclosure that provides them plenty of room to roam and lots of native plants for them to eat.

Eggs are collected in the wild and brought here to be incubated. The temperature at which is egg is incubated determines the tortoise's sex: 82 degrees for male, 85 for female. This gives the researchers an easy way to control the ratio of males to females.

There are 10 different species of tortoise, each native to a particular island. The differences can be subtle, but real. For example, one species has an especially long neck because it feeds on leaves that are higher off the ground.

There used to be 14 species, but man and introduced animals like dogs and the Norwegian rat killed off four. Whalers especially found the tortoises to be a walking larder. Here was an animal that can go without food or water for a year, providing the sailors with fresh meat without consuming any of the ship's precious stores. At one point, it's thought that the tortoise population shrank to about 100 individuals.

The Darwin Center's breeding program is helping turn that around. Eggs from each island are kept together and the young raised in separate enclosures. Each tortoise is marked with a number identifying it as an individual and the island it comes from.

At two years old, The youngsters are taken out of the baby pens and allowed to wander around an enclosure of their own.

Here's the part of the breeding program everyone's really interested in. This guy was making the oddest whistling, panting groans, but I guess we all do.

Frank, is that you?

Oh, hi, George.

This marine iguana was just sunning himself on the sidewalk.

He wasn't about to move no matter how many people stepped over him.

These spectacular cactus trees are another species that are endemic to the Galapagos.

Unfortunately, the Darwin Center is going through a terrible financial crisis and will probably have to close down soon. What will become of the breeding program is anyone's guess.

While we were here, there was a large march in town. The islanders are protesting the president's plans to auction off mineral extraction, fishing, and development rights to international corporations, most likely Chinese. People here are afraid that the ecosystem and the tourist appeal of the islands will be destroyed if this is allowed to happen.

On our penultimate day in the islands, we took one last snorkeling trip to Isla Pinzon. In a shallow channel on the east side of the island we again didn't see the promised penguins, but O did see her first shark, a five foot white-tip. We also saw a tiger snake eel, lots of colorful fish, and a couple young sea lions wrestling and playing together, We were able to get within a few feet of them as the tumbled through the shallow water, turning somersaults, biting each other fins, and generally having a good time.

At the next spot, O was too cold to go in. There were dozens of sea turtles swimming about 20 to 30 feet below us. Best of all though, I got to play with a couple young sea lions. The would cruise by me, make eye contact, then I would dive down and try to match their moves, changing direction suddenly, twisting and turning with them underwater. It was so much fun.

The final spot was a lonely little outcropping out in the middle of the sea just big enough for a couple nesting boobies and resting sea lions.

The surge was fairly strong, so O wisely sat this one out. The outcropping was home to about a dozen white-tip sharks, and we got to dive among them as they prowled around the base of the rocks.

So that was our Galapagos adventure. Now we head to the little mountain town of Loja at about 5,500 feet, working our way slowly up to Quito at 9,200 feet. We hope to spend three or four days there, then head down the eastern side of the Andes to the headwaters of the Amazon for an exciting jungle adventure.

Stay tuned.

P.