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In December 1997, I drove my little car across the country from Florida to my new home in California. A couple of weeks after that, I was at a meeting of the now-defunct Southern California Cichlid Association. I was looking forward to meeting Jim Herman, a fellow cichlid keeper whom I’d met at ACA’97 convention in Chicago. Soon after we met up, he shoved a few stapled pages in my face and said, “We’re going to Peru. Here are the details. Wanna go? There are only one or two seats left and they’re going fast!”

Having been to the Brazilian Amazon in 1997 and thoroughly enjoyed myself, I felt a strong calling to go back. The Amazon has a certain brutish charm that I find very hard to resist. The lush green growth and the buzzing fauna reminds me of the way life on this planet probably was or should be. It is certainly not as comfortable as living near the California coast. I remember moments of a particular long trek (dubbed Death March by super trooper Wanda Jacobson) in the jungle when we had to abandon our boat due to low water levels and hike up to a Cocha (lake) and each step was steamier and muddier than the previous one. Stuck in thigh-deep clay, surrounded by saw grass and an occasional Fer-de-lance (venomous snake) was unnerving but there is nothing else in the world that shuffles my priorities into order than just a trip. For some people, children, family or faith is a source of mental reprioritization, but for me, it's always been nature. I don’t know how but I have built a strong bond with the Amazon jungle. It is as far away from my place of birth as possible but I feel a stronger connection to the Amazon than to the places of my youth.

It took me about two minutes to decide to go. I accepted Jim’s offer. Stan Sung of Mission Viejo, California was organizing the trip; I had met him about 5 years ago. Stan is uncharacteristically fashionable for an explorer. A charming and friendly fellow, he leads frequent expeditions to the jungles of Central America. Although a seasoned traveler, he was a bit nervous about leading 15 people to South America.

The trip was still 8 months away but we had all started to gather survival and collecting items. Other fellow travelers were Lee Newman and Lisa Scott from Vancouver, Wayne Leibel, Jim Herman, John Niemans, Wanda Jacobson, Mark Young, Rich Kerrill, Nathan Okawa, Stans Sung and Cabotaje, Johnny Sexton, and Bill and Tessa Cain. The day finally arrived and we all flew out of Los Angeles to Lima, Peru. Excited, we chatted throughout the 8-hour flight. Lima is a coastal city on the Pacific Ocean. It is where the Anchovies on your pizza most likely originated. The cool water of the Pacific keeps this equatorial city chilly and foggy. We arrived at Lima at 1 am and had to get in line for our connecting flight to Cuzco at 3 am!

The interesting twist about this trip was out detour to the Andes mountain range and the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu. Sleepy yet giddy, we were headed to the Andean city of Cuzco at almost 12,000 feet elevation. A little nervous about altitude sickness, we took Diamox, suggested by Bill Cain. This medication works but it is a diuretic and provided ample opportunity to practice Espanol picked up at the last minute – Donde esta el bano?

Having spent a lot of time in the tropics, I found it strange to see snow near the equator on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and once again, we were seeing not just snow-capped peaks from the airplane window but glaciers high up in the Andes. These are the only two places on the equator where this occurs.

The plane turned sharply and there it was, The Sacred Valley. Cuzco from the air is brown and treeless, except for the Eucalyptus imported form Australia. Heavily dependent on tourism, this small city of 350,000 has sacrificed a large portion of its habitable area to the airport and its unusually long runways required for take-offs in the thin air. We were barely off the plane but we were taking pictures. Tourists!

A bus took us to our hotel and we were immediately offered Coca-leaf tea to prevent altitude sickness. It was interesting to see the raw material for Cocaine. Importation of Coca leaves is prohibited into the U.S., but one firm, under heavy DEA scrutiny is permitted to do so for manufacturing cocaine-free coca leaf essence for addition into Cola drinks. Like Diamox, this tea helped us feel a little better but carrying my suitcase up a flight of stairs was unusually challenging. Effects of altitude were evident in items other than our physiques – a bag of trail mix in Jim’s suitcase was puffed out and ready to explode from the low atmospheric pressure. My toothpaste automatically squirted itself onto my toothbrush without squeezing as I opened its cap.

I am thoroughly fascinated by the people during my first few days in a new country – their customs, habits, body language, and mores are unique and interesting. It is great to learn about new people, mostly because it offers you a mirror to view yourself against. The way it is done back home is suddenly not the norm or correct any longer. Actually, I don’t have to travel far to see different cultures. While people watching in a trendy West Hollywood café, my friend noticed that most of the women wore black and I pointed out the most the men were holding hands. I swear I heard them hum “ I love my body and my hair, my home has mirrors everywhere…” Of course, all drivers of sport utility vehicles were on their cell-phones. On a related subject, I recently learned form a friend who returned from Santiago, Chile that the local laws of that city prohibit the use of cellular phones while driving an automobile. Apparently, 40% of those pulled over by the police for infraction of the law were speaking into dummy, plastic phones!

It takes an open mind to accept diferent values in a non-judgemental way. Many homes outside Cuzco had Guinea pigs scurrying around the floors. Guinea pigs are a delicacy in the Andes…while they make a tiny meal, it should be viewed as a scarce source of protein in this barren land rather than a systematic butchering of our furry pets. Travel to other countries becomes so much more meaningful if we are able to view their activities objectively, instead of seeing things our traditional way.

The Los Andes Hotel was surprisingly comfortable. Having gone almost 40 hours without sleep, we were all eyeing our beds and the tour bus with equal lust. Should we take a nap or should we go out and see the country? Being very fond of sleep, I thought it would be a tough choice but we all decided to get in the tour bus we had previously arranged to take us around. Our first trip out of Cuzco was to the market at Pisac, a place where the local farmers lug their produce once a week to sell or barter. Cuzco, being in a valley, suffered from a uniquely (I thought) Los Angeleian malady – smog. Diesel engines vomited their noxious fumes everywhere and as the bus drove up and out of the valley, the air became much clearer, but also noticeably thinner. I noticed the magnificence of the mountains. Living in California, one is accustomed to mountains but the Andes are very dramatic and exagerated in sheer size, shape and dimension. Big. Bold. Impressive.

Being so far away from home and its responsibilities, it is so easy to form a sentimental bond with far away beautiful places but the mundane harshness of actually living up in the Andes was slowly becoming apparent. Many of the locals wore tattered clothes and shoes, carrying heavy loads on their backs much like their accompanying mules. Some of the cragged faces and forlorn eyes reflected a lifetime of difficulty. I wondered what the locals thought of us…comfortable in our warm clothes and shoes, eating snacks and clicking at everything with our Nikons and Canons. Perhaps it was the altitude or the punchy humor from sleeplessness, but when we saw a man walking with his hefty mule in the middle of the road, typical Yankee Road-rageisms were being thrown out “Get yer ass off the road!”, “Nice Ass!”. There is something inherently nostalgic about seeing a man walk his mule.

Soon, we saw Llamas (pronounced Yah-mah) grazing on the roadsides – these animals look like sheep trying their best to be camels. They are domesticated for their fur and the other usual by-products. Like most mammals, their young are adorable.

Our bus kept going higher and higher up the mountain side, with my best guess of altitude being about 15,000 feet before we started descending again. Then all of a sudden, we came up on a valley that I immediately recognized. I noticed Stan did too. I had seen a picture of the Rio Vilcanota in a book on Corydoras by Werner Seuss. This breathtaking valley had a river running at the bottom. It was a tributary of the Rio Urubamba. Rio Apurimac and Urubamba form the headwaters of the mighty Amazon River. This valley was the type locality of Corydoras weitzmanii! What is a warm water tropical fish doing so high up in the mountains, in chilly water. For us fishheads, this was thoroughly fascinating. We regretted not having any collecting equipment on hand but the presence of some Terns and Gulls confirmed that there was certainly something swimming down there in the snow melt.

We were at a scenic outlook photographing and enjoying the scenery. This was also a perfect opportunity for local entrepreneurs to peddle their wares – some of the sellers were quite persistent. Not wanting to bargain, since each one of us probably earned enough American money to purchase half their village, I usually offered them what they demanded for the items (knowing quite well that not bargaining often causes severe imbalances in the structure of local economies). Trinkets, wooden erotic art and phallic symbols were pillars of their inventories – I wondered if all the phallic art was genuine local craft or a response to the fancies of drunk tourists. Never judge a society by what is served up to the tourists! In the meantime, it was hard not to treat some of the colorfully clothed locals as part of the scenery. The little children and their colorful hats and outfits and the women in their bright sweaters and tall hats were culturally unique and I wanted to Fujichromically remember them. I wanted their photos but also did not want to treat them like objects.

The native language, Quechua (pronounced KEH-choo-uh) is obviously pre-Columbian in origin from its sounds but Spanish was the language most heard and used in the Sacred Valley. Besides Guinea Pigs, I wasn’t sure what constituted an Andean diet. We would soon find out at lunch, when we were offered a westernized version of their food, with a few varieties of potatoes and chicken, sans de-furred pets. Those raised on the most American of beverages, Coca-Cola, were quite disappointed by the taste of the South American version of the brand’s formula. It is obviously different in its flavor and is most like the Coke I drank as a child in Africa in the early 80s and in India in the early 70s. It was a nostalgic treat but I had to limit its consumption due to its caffeine compounding the diuretic effect of Diamox that was already sending me to any available less-than-hygienic restrooms on an hourly basis.

The market at Pisac was like stepping into the pages of National Geographic. I felt my photographic skills being overwhelmed by the abundance of interesting subjects – cobble stone paths, clay building, street bakers, open market, mountains, runny-nosed children, Guinea Pigs and the list goes on. Wanda regretted not having hiking boots on, as the cobble stone paths and streets would have been murderous on unaccustomed, unprotected feet. On our way back from Pisac, we went through a uniquely named town – Sacsayhuaman, pronounced “sexy woman”! Sexy woman is known for its annual Incan festival.

The major attraction on the way back to Cuzco was the historical town of Ollyantaytambo (say Oy-yahn-tie-tambo”). This was a relatively untouched and unwesternized town filled with history and ruins. It was a cool, clean, and pleasantly under-populated town, with narrow cobble-stone streets and a fast aqueduct carrying water along the corner of the street. This is where we first saw the artisanship of the ancient Incan builders. Styles and designs of the rock building were different, depending on the intended use. As expected, religious edifices were the most ornate and exact, with political and administrative ones less dramatically so. The almost-600-years old aqueducts through the mountains and large rocks still work like they were intended when built, with fresh, clean mountain spring water rippling constantly out of drains. This source of water allowed the Incan people to survive and grow dozens of varieties of corn, including the exotic blue corn and a reputed 250 varieties of potatoes.

We were allowed to climb on one of the ruins on a mountainside. It was about 1000-feet tall and there were a few willing participants. I passed, although I had trained at my gym back home for just such an opportunity. The dearth of oxygen, two days of sleeplessness and thorough dehydration from Diamox left me in no shape for scaling a mountain. There were some hardy souls in our group who attempted – most made it up and back in one piece. On our trip back to Cuzco, we took a new higher route, through the town of Chinchero and this was our opportunity to witness a glacier at almost eye level. Once back in Cuzco, we could barely keep our eyes open. We were all well rested the next morning, except Nathan, who complained that his neighbors “Ay-ay-ayed all night” in an effort to maintain the local population; an irony since Nathan is known as the Incredible Asian Sleeping Machine.

Breakfast and Coca leaf tea was followed by a bus trip back to Ollyantaytambo. We were on our way to the famed Machu Picchu ruins. We were to catch a train from there to the ruins. I don’t know why but I had always thought of Machu Picchu as being at a higher elevation than Cuzco. The train was going to take us 3000 feet lower. Surprisingly the train was airy and comfortable, with large windows and free drinks. The train tracks are along the Rio Urubamba and the famed Inca Trail, a holy grail for many hardcore hikers. The scenery from the train was spectacular with white water gushing against huge boulders in the river and tall, snow-capped peaks, immense precipices on both sides, scattered ruins and hanging bridges. As we neared the end of the trip, the vegetation began to change from thorny scrub and Eucalyptus to lush forests and Heliconia sp., Bromeliads, and Orchids. A couple of us suffering from oxygen deprivation in Cuzco were relieved to breathe “real air”.

Once at the railway station, vendors trying to sell us T-shirts and trinkets immediately accosted us. They were a particularly persistent group – human mosquitoes, I considered them, but I had no equivalent spray. The most unique aspect of the railway station was the nearby mountain, which was a sheer rock face that went up vertically for almost 2000 feet and just about every inch of the mountainside was covered with bromeliads! American explorer Hiram Bingham stumbled upon Machu Picchu less than a hundred years ago during his travels. During its ‘peak’, Machu Picchu was a flourishing civilization and a very important site of Incan culture. The cultures’ collision with Spanish Conquistadors was less than pleasant and the historical accounts of Atahualpa and gradual destruction of the Incan lifestyle, which is still going on, is tragic and touching.

The ruins of Machu Picchu and the neighboring Huaynapicchu were spectacular. The quality of the labor involved in the construction is incredible. You cant help but wonder “How did those people get these large, immensely heavy pieces of rock up and down this steep precipices and align them perfectly to build this?” It is the closest thing of wonder that the New World has to the Egyptian pyramids.

The next day, we followed our itinerary and packed up and took a flight from Cuzco back to Lima. We all felt like there was so much more to see and experience in the Sacred Valley…perhaps another time. It was now time to get wet and dirty. We were off to the Amazon!

The plane from Lima to Iquitos, Peru’s largest frontier town, was an ancient Boeing 727 that was painted white – no name, no identification number. It must have been in commission in the United States some 30 years ago. Now I knew what happened to old airplanes post-retirement in the US, after being deemed unsafe. Nobody voiced it but we all hoped that the plane would get us to Iquitos in one piece. Iquitos is an island on the Rio Solimoes, which is what the Amazon is called before it joins with the Rio Negro in Brazil. Everything in Iquitos is either flown in from Lima or shipped up river from the Atlantic. It was an odd yet quaintly familiar town to anyone who has been to rural towns in developing countries. The friendly (pushy?) kids at the airport, were obviously familiar with foreigners and were looking for handouts, while an inebriated street squatter, clearly nonplussed at our presence showed his displeasure by flashing us his penis. Of course, we all assumed that the gesture was aimed at John Niemans. It made sense.

For those wanting to enjoy the Amazon without experiencing most of its inherent discomfort, there is the Amazon Camp, a 15 minute boat ride from Iquitos. The camp consists of about 20 rooms located on Rio Momon, a tributary of the Rio Nanay, with a screened-in dining area to keep bugs at bay. Both Rio Momon and Nanay were supposed to be blackwater rivers but they were fairly muddy and the banks sucked you knee deep on your first step – a sign of things to come. Typical blackwater rivers in Brazil had sandy beaches with tea-colored water…and no bugs. The pH of Rio Momon measured in at about 6.4, also unusual for a blackwater river. Rio Nanay was a more convincing 5.9 or so.

Photograph of Rio Momon, Peru by Lee Newman

Within minutes of our arrival at the camp, we descended on the river. We piled into a motored canoe and went upriver and as the sun set, we had begun our first collecting efforts in the dark. A little unsure about where to make landing, we used our cast nets. I had not improved my casting skills any, since my Brazil trip from the previous year. It didn’t matter. I was in the Amazon. Finally. And I was casting my heart out. Of course, I didn’t catch anything but Triportheus sp. Stan was the expert caster and we all waited in anticipation as he pulled up net after net of strange and bizarre knifefishes, some ribboned, some barred and one giant one almost a meter long. I assumed most of them were not scientifically described. There are five major Gymnotid families other than Electrophoridae, the family containing the Electric Eel. They are Sternopygidae, Rhamphicthyidae, Hypopomidae, Apteronotidae and Gymnotidae. Not that you care, but I couldn’t place the fish we were catching even into their respective families, let alone their genus or species.

After this excitement, Lee and I ventured up the river with a flashlight and headlamps along the banks, looking for Biotodoma cupido, Lee’s target fish for the trip. We caught one. We also caught some Satanoperca jurupari while they were asleep. I still have these fish at home. Lee didn’t want to keep the cupido from this locality since he found a prettier strain from Rio Apayacu, about 100 miles downstream from Iquitos, later in the trip.

Back at the camp, we had a finely prepared dinner of local cuisine – fish, chicken, potatoes, cucumber, and rice, while swarms of giant bugs dive-bombed the mesh curtain that kept us segregated. We shared rooms with a mate and mine was none other than Wayne Leibel! I used to read his articles in magazines 15 years earlier.

http://geocities.datacellar.net/NapaValley/5491 Latest update: 28 January 1999 Comments on this page: email me at kutty at earthlink dot net