Wild in the Amazon - photos— and some amateur anthropology

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A recent trip to Ecuador included a five-day adventure at the Kapawi Ecolodge in the Amazon basin. I'm still digesting the experience. I feel somehow shifted.

PK and I have traveled to many developing countries and have seen poverty. The indigenous people in the Kapawi area of Ecuador have little, if any, money. But they're not poor.  Photos below demonstrate some of the richness of the flora and fauna of the unique environment into which they're totally integrated.

Maybe that's what touched me: Being in a diverse and eco-rich environment—the Amazon rainforest—where people are part of the scene, not taming or conquering it, but living as one with it.

To a large degree, I think that's what many of us - people who live in urban or rural neighborhoods in developed countries try to do when we escape to the mountains and rivers to hike, camp or sit by the water watching insects skim and birds fly.

We long to be part of the natural world. Some people already are. 

It was a good thing to see.

B I R D S

The hoatzin, AKA stinky turkey, has a disagreeable manure-like odor because of aromatic compounds in the leaves it consumes and the resulting bacterial fermentation in a ruminant-type pouch. It is hunted by humans only in times of dire need, according to Wikipedia. It's common, large, noisy with a show-off Mohawk top notch and is featured on the Kapawi logo.

Aww, the toucan! Much sought by camera carriers. Bonus that this one was about to eat a nut. The Kapawi area was thick with birds. All photos were shot within a few miles of the lodge.

Seems like wherever we are on the planet, we see birds that look like great blue herons. This is actually a cocoi heron, common throughout much of South America and closely related to the grey and great blue herons of North America, Central America, the Caribbean and the Galapagos Islands. (Wikipedia.)

   Horned screamers, large heavy birds, occupied space around the lodge and screamed often. Rude at night. 

Laurie Gerloff and moi. Also large and
 heavy, hanging around the lodge
screaming and were rude at night.
 Not to be mistaken for birds.

Masked crimson tanager. These tanagers feed in groups near water, and we saw plenty of crimson crowds from our cabins-on-stilts on the small Kapawi lagoon.  

Old blue eyes with white bill, AKA yellow rumped cacique, a regular at the lodge lagoon.


C R A W L Y  T H I N G S 

a

.My favorite caterpillar. What's with the white strip down its back? The fronds at each end? And the blue wiring? 

This one apparently got into some Styrofoam.

Ordinary spider but unusual circumstances on a night walk through the rainforest.

Tiny termites used by the Achuar as insect repellent. We joined our guide in smearing the termites onto our upper extremities. They had a pleasant cedar-like aroma. Regardless, mosquitoes were mostly no-shows.

A stick, walking.

                             F U N G I

Our guide was encyclopedic, but unless a fungi was medicinal, he didn't necessarily know its name. Case in point, this hooded monk with a curly black beard and a crocheted shawl, dancing in rotting leaves on the rainforest floor. Hmmm. Could have phallic implications. 

The black fungi fingers sticking out of sticks are medicinal. 

Guide Diego explaining that black fungi to us during our medicinal plants hike.

With a stiff wind I believe these ultra light shrooms would flutter.

Grains of rice stuck atop black wires?

Miniature marshmallows. But don't taste!

    R A N D O M  S T U F F

Red monkey spotted during our canoe ride into the Kapawi Ecolodge our first day in the Amazon. Monkeys are often present but are difficult to see, unless, of course, you're an Achuar man with a blowgun and poison dart, precision eyesight and dead-eye aim. Stores don't exist in this remote part of the Amazon, and monkeys are on the menu. (Not at the Kapawi lodge.)

A walking palm with colorful legs.

Twenty-foot tall tree ferns almost get lost in
 the rainforest's awesomeness.

But here's the most splendid tree of all. The giant kapok rivals the California redwoods, and is sacred to the indigenous people. Our Achuar guide Diego, pictured, has one foot rooted in the rainforest near this tree where he came of age in a three-day ceremony, and the modern world, which is encroaching.

Our trip to the Amazon basin opened to me a different reality. Simple yet complex. Raw. Exquisite.

I saw with my own eyes, and learned on a heart level, that people who look as if they've stepped from a National Geographic page are intelligent, resourceful, intuitive, skilled, creative, spiritual, and intrinsically wired into their natural world. Tourism, technology, missionaries and a hungry oil industry threaten their way of life, and together those threats create pathways to inevitable change.

Oil is Ecuador's number one economic driver. Tourism is second, and as tourists arrive with fancy phones and demands for hot water and wifi, and exotic cocktails with ice, we create little bumps of cultural distress that may one day become upheavals.

The oil industry has already engineered upheavals in numerous Amazon locations, and many more are in transition. But the Kapawi preserve area is, so far, mostly protected. Encroachment, I believe, is mostly in the form of big white people wearing khaki and carrying expensive cameras.

We're accommodated by Achuar guides who know and love the forest and river creatures and can imitate hundreds of bird and animal sounds. They make poison darts and blowguns from forest materials, and after felling a monkey or wild boar, can whip up a sharp "knife" from a slice of wood to dress out the prey and carry it home. 

Diego has made for us fishing line in about five minutes from fibers in a palm leaf. None of us could snap it.

Many others also possess these skills, he says. And I believe him. We didn't see even one store in five days because there aren't any. We did see a small market canoe that motors over from nearby Peru on the Pastaza River and stops at villages along the way. I regret we didn't go aboard.

Hunting. Communal gardens. If you want something, make it. Self sufficiency to the max.

But Diego also has a cell phone and a Facebook account and uses the lodge's feeble wifi to dawdle online. He's fluent in Spanish, and after a year of study, speaks competent English. He's studied in naturalist programs to be a guide, and he's excellent.

Kapawi Ecolodge reviewers on Trip Advisor rave about the guides. 

Most of all, he knows the language of the forest and draws wisdom from a tribal life we can only imagine. I wonder what he thought of us. I'm not sure I want to know.


 Note: PK read this post and calls me a romantic. True. My opinions and feelings are based on just five blissful days. I'm an amateur dabbling in anthropology, and an optimist who seeks and sees the positive. Nothing scientific here. I don't know enough about the status of women and children, for example, or education or healthcare beyond what the shamans provide with rainforest medicines. All I know for sure is that I was touched by a place and its people.

EARLIER POSTS ABOUT THE AMAZON

Amazon Adventure - Kapawi Ecolodge  - All about tramping around in the rainforest, gaining insights into Achuar culture, and seeing how various rainforest plants are used for just about everything from housing construction to medicine to spiritual enlightenment.

Off to a shaky start at Kapawi Ecolodge   But it was all good, even the fishtailing bush plane and the drink made from manioc and spit.

The day the FBI came calling

Chris Korbulic shot this self portrait along the Apaporis River in the Columbian Amazon in April this year. The five-person expedition planned to paddle 700 miles, but something unexpected interrupted their plans. 

Hardly a week goes by without someone asking about our son, Chris, 30, who's sort of a local celebrity with tales of his kayaking adventures often making their way online and into newspapers, magazines, films, and, occasionally, TV.

It hasn't been uncommon for photos such as this, documenting Chris enjoying waterfall moments around the world to show up on media. This was in Brazil.

So I wasn't surprised in a hardware store in Grants Pass, OR, when a man behind me at check-out inquired, "What's your son up to these days?"

A store employee swung around and joined the conversation. "Yeah," she said. "Where's Chris?

I thought I'd have some fun with them.

"Oh, he's fine," I said.

"The FBI was at our house for three hours last week alerting us that he and four other kayakers had been held hostage by guerrillas on a river in the Amazon jungle. But no worries. They were released after a few days, and he's back in the USA."

I told the tale as if being held hostage by guerrillas in the jungle was no big deal, happens all the time.

Astonished looks all around.

"Sheesh!" blurted the clerk. "I'm sure glad he's not my son! How can you sleep at night?"

How many times have PK and I heard that?

I got a charge out of the stunned reactions. Now everyone within earshot was leaning in.

It was easy to be glib and milk the moment, but the actual day that the FBI showed up at our house, and the ensuing 24 hours—that was a different story.

For us it began Friday, April 21, 2017.  (For Chris and the expedition team, it began April 18 when they first encountered their captors.)

 I 'd left the house for a bike ride and saw PK talking in our driveway with two men in suits and a nattily dressed woman. I pegged them as purveyors of the Watchtower and prepared to bolt, head down, eyes averted.

"It's the FBI," Paul mouthed as I approached with my bike.
They'd already shown their IDs to PK and stated their purpose, but I was clueless.

The FBI? Is something going on in the neighborhood? I thought.  It did not occur to me that their visit had to do with Chris .

We'd received a text message from Chris within the past few days, or had it been a FB post?  Or was it four days ago? On Instagram? I lose track.

Whatever. His expedition team of five traveled with their best friend, a Garmin InReach satellite device, which enables them to send texts anywhere from anywhere. Hence, they're able to placate parents and other people who care with frequent communications.  Almost daily communicating created a sense of security. False, it turns out.

One of few rapids on a 700-mile expedition, unlike previous expeditions that have been rife with roaring falls, canyons, and cataracts.

In addition, through InReach, a friend in California was updating the team's location though the Amazon wilderness. The map link was available online to anyone interested. We'd seen it  but weren't checking every day, so we were unaware that InReach reports had stopped

Just stopped. The screen had gone blank. Big trouble.

Well, isn't that the perfect definition of "ignorance is bliss"? We would have been emotional wrecks, had we been paying attention. But after enduring 10 years of our son doing seemingly impossible feats and taking unacceptable (to us) risks, we've become calloused to his living on the edge.

He's strong, smart, humble, skilled, and somehow happily enmeshed in a culture that puts him amongst an elite group of modern-day explorers and adventurers. He continues to amaze and delight us as we live his adventures vicariously.

Not a photo a mom can enjoy. Chris on the first

descent of Toketee Falls on Oregon's North

Umpqua River in 2011.

I removed my bike helmet and PK and I and three FBI agents took seats in our living room. PK and I exchanged glances. What the hell's going on?

"It's about your son, Chris," said the lead agent, who introduced himself as a hostage negotiator.

Hostage negotiator?

The other male agent was an FBI special investigator, the woman was a victim specialist.

Victim specialist!

PK and I exchanged glances, and I know we're in the same boat, so to speak, of shock and disbelief. This can't be happening!

The reason for the FBI's visit unfolded.

Out of what the lead guy described as an "abundance of caution," we were told that Chris and his expedition team in Colombia's Amazon Basin appeared to have been detained by FARC, a rebel guerrilla group. FARC had been mostly disarmed in 2016, after 50+ years of conflict. But holdouts exist.

Some of the FARC holdouts were apparently holding hostage all five members of the expedition.

Team members Ben Stookesberry, Jessie Rice, Aniol Serrasoles, Jules Domine, and Chris Korbulic. Ben was allowed to take the photo above, the only one during their captivity. Actually, on that very day, April 21, perhaps around the same time we were hanging on every word uttered by the FBI agents, the armed group was telling the detainees that they would be released the next morning. Although the FARC rebels confiscated cameras, electronic devices and memory cards, camera lenses were returned and the rebels did not take thousands of dollars from their captives. Chris managed to hide five memory cards, losing only the one that remained in his camera.

The seven FARC members, led by a woman, didn't realize that Ben managed to hold onto an InReach device and had been surreptitiously communicating with a contact in Columbia and another in California.  Chris also had a GPS unit that was signaling the group's location.

Chris told us the only time he was afraid, and planning  an escape into the jungle with his GPS, was the night before they were to be released. He was in his hammock when Colombian military planes began flying over the encampment. The FARC went ballistic.

"They were running around, yelling, asking where is the GPS? Who has it?" Chris had hidden one on his body. The planes left. Things calmed down. The next morning, the team was released and paddled four miles downstream to catch a bush plane to a tiny airport in a tiny town. There, much to their amazement, they were met by representatives of the Colombian military and the FBI.

The greeting party was but a small contingent of the agents and agencies in Columbia and the USA interested in the case.

A brief account of the hostage situation is here:  Outside Online -  How 5 kayakers were taken hostage in the Amazon. It's a series of photos with longish captions outlining the basics of what happened.  The photos, all but one by Chris, provide a sense of the ethereal Amazon. A more in-depth print article about the episode is in the works by the Men's Journal.

I don't want to repeat what you can read on Outside Online, but PK and I  have some thoughts about the US government's response.

We are grateful. 

We were impressed that three FBI agents came to our home, and others to the families of two other US citizens on the expedition. Chris' girlfriend, then in Hawaii, was also contacted by an FBI agent who offered assistance.

We learned that when US citizens are held against their will in foreign lands, it's a no-holds-barred commitment to get them out safely. 

What I've described was a small part of what was going on. The agents informed us that representatives of various US government agencies cooperate in hostage situations involving US citizens.  The agents didn't mention the  FBI-led Hostage Rescue Team, but I looked it up and understood that had the kayaking team been held for ransom, or even detained for a longer time, their captors could have been subject to measures similar to what Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT ) teams do. Drop in, rescue hostages, take no prisoners.

Impressive. Check it out here.

What was the FBI's purpose in visiting us?

Learn about Chris 
They asked multiple  questions about Chris, most designed to determine how he might handle being held hostage.  Does he have medical issues? What kind of person is he? How does he handle stress? How might he react to being pressured?(tortured or threatened)

Admiring parents as we are, we described Chris as a "real nice guy." Humble, quiet, thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent, strong, and centered. Because of what he does for a living, we know that he's able to focus on the moment, shut out negative thoughts and maintain a calm center. We think he'd avoid stupid moves or emotional or angry displays.


Educate us about how to respond to ransom demands

A large part of the visit had to do with "proof of life, requiring the captors, should they call us, to provide evidence that our son was still alive. 

And on it went, all the way through the mechanics of "how to get you your money,"to responding to threats that the hostage will be harmed or killed. I was beginning to disconnect.

It was surreal. Absolutely unbelievable. If this was really happening, our lives could be changing forever, right here, right now.

The hostage negotiator said that if we got a ransom call, he would be moving into our house. As it was, he left us with a recording device should we receive a ransom call. If we were contacted by a captor, we were instructed to call the hostage negotiator any time, night or day.

We didn't have to. Thank you, Universe.

Instead, we learned the next day that the team had been released and flown by a US military plane based in Columbia to Bogota, site of the US Embassy. All were debriefed by FBI and Columbia officials, lodged in a hotel, provided meals and offered air transportation to anywhere they wanted to go. The US citizens were asked to stay three days to satisfy intelligence needs.

The Extreme Kayaking Athlete Moms' Club

One more thing. Chris K. and expedition leader Ben Stookesberry have been frequent kayaking partners for going on 10 years, covering thousands of miles around the world and sharing both magnificent and horrendous experiences. The worst, of course, was in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010 when a monster crocodile rose out of the Lukuga River and snatched from his kayak their good friend and trip leader, Hendri Coatzee.

Hendri's death was international news and a deep personal tragedy to Ben and Chris. Both had been within feet of the crocodile attack and were profoundly affected. Ben created an award-winning film, Kadoma, about Hendri and their expedition and tragedy, still available on iTunes.

 The 40-minute film is gut wrenching and beautiful at the same time. Hendri Coatzee was an extraordinary human being and a gifted writer. He wrote a book that was edited and published following his demise,  Living the Best Day Ever. 

PK and I were in Costa Rica when this tragedy occurred. We were pursued by media, and so was Ben's mom, Bette Campbell. During this blurred tragic time, we began communicating with Bette.

Chris and Ben were being held by the dysfunctional Congolese government. It was making us crazy. That lasted about a week before they were flown out by the United Nations.

Bette and I kept talking. And later, for a few wonderful but heart-wrenching days, we were with Hendri Coatzee’s mom, Marie Nieman, when Ben’s film debuted at the Telluride Mountain Film Festival in 2011.

Bette and I talked again on April 22 this year after we were assured that our sons were safe.

Bette told me about her interview with the FBI agents, and how she described to them her remarkable son, Ben.

"He's humble," she said. "He's generous. I'm proud of him being who he chooses to be. He couldn't handle being stuck in an office, making do with what's expected. I'm glad he is who he is."

Right on, Bette. Me too. I couldn't be more proud to be Chris' mom, and as for Chris' father, PK,  he can barely contain his enthusiasm for telling Chris stories to whatever man, woman, child or dog will listen.

We know that if  Chris wasn't doing what his soul requires, we'd worry about him being depressed and downtrodden. He's fortunate to be able to pursue his passion and have the skills, courage and inner strength to do it.

Started young. Won't quit until he must. Despite
how much he sometimes scares us, gotta love him.
But please, no more FBI visits. 

Plus we could stand a bit less of this type of action.

Amazon Adventure - Kapawi Ecolodge and Reserve

In December 2016 PK and I, along with our Oregon friends Laurie Gerloff and Steve Lambros, spent 3.5 weeks in Ecuador. Our journey included eight days in the Galapagos Islands and five at the Kapawi Ecolodge and Reserve in the Amazon Basin. This is the first of several blog posts about our adventures, diving right into the heart of Kapawi - a place out of time that PK and I agree provided  over-the-top travel experiences. That means good! We've seen places that were more breathtaking but few where we were invited into an unfamiliar and fascinating culture. We caught glimpses of the rainforest and Achuar people as interpreted by our indigenous guide, Diego Callera.

Each day in Kapawi included a guided hike or two. Our guide spoke two local languages, is fluent in Spanish and competent in English. Most of all, he was fluent in the language of the rainforest, communicating reverence along with deep and ancient knowledge.

Our Achuar guide Diego at the sacred kapok tree where he was initiated into the spiritual heart of his culture. Now 30, he was a preadolescent at the time, 10 or 11 years old, and spent three days using local hallucinogenic plants, which enabled him to encounter the Achuar's spiritual guide, Arutam. According to Diego, one of Arutam's primary messages is about how to be a good person. (Later I learned that part of being "good" means showing self restraint in all things and not being lazy.) The experience may be repeated later if a person is having marriage troubles, or is having a hard time being "good." Arutam's spirit is embodied in this tree, and in many other extraordinary forms, and appears in dreams. I copied the statement below from a narrative about the Achuar in the anthropology museum in Cuenca: 

There was a time in which all living things were human, but by their good or bad behavior, Arutam converted them into different animals and plants and for this reason we consider them our brothers. 

We learned later that we could have spent time with a shaman and taken hallucinogens. It was too late for serious consideration, but I wouldn't rule it out if ever there's a next time. 

This was the trailhead the day our objective was to learn about the rainforest's medicinal plants.

A motorized canoe transported us to trailheads. Rivers are the roads in the Amazon Basin.

PK gets a hand with a mud landing. Rubber boots are essential and provided.

Diego went before us with his ever-present machete, an extension of his right arm, its edge honed to a glint.  With a flick here, a chop there, vines and  limbs fell alongside a muddy trail through Ecuador's lush rainforest.

Diego's orange-handled machete is a blur as he clears a path. 

The rainforest is mostly flat but rises sharply from rivers. We scrambled to keep up with Diego, then the going got easier.

Forest  music - birds, insects, frogs, moving water - was our soundtrack as we followed him in alternating states of fascination, disbelief, wonder, and sometimes fatigue. It's hot and humid! We stopped often as Diego signaled silence and pointed out something in a tree, in the air, on the ground, or in the river. And we, with untrained eyes, sought to see as he did. Not a chance.

     This video, less than a minute long, shows Diego calling in a pygmy owl. Please turn up the sound
     and listen carefully so you can hear the owl's response. The dang owl actually relocated to be closer to Diego.

Binoculars helped. Laurie Gerloff, our own birding and nature nerd, documented more than 100 individual species of noted birds and other critters during our 3.5 weeks in Ecuador. Most she'd not seen before.  

Speaking only for  myself, I could have walked the rainforest trails for hours without an interpreter, and thought, "Wow, that was cool." But I would have missed 95 percent because I didn't know what to look  for or how to use all my senses, including a sixth one I'm not sure I possess.

I may also have been stung, bitten, stuck in mud, and for sure, lost. We were often warned not to touch certain trees as they were crawling with red ants or other mean little biters. Occasionally Diego hurried us through places where unfriendly flying insects were buzzing. Oddly enough, we were not bothered by mosquitoes. Maybe a dozen times he led us across half submerged logs, boards or makeshift bridges that kept us from sinking into mud. We saw no venomous snakes, although they're present, and the only evidence of jaguars were claw marks on a tree that Diego spotted. 

Diego's oneness with his life's landscape, his knowledge and command of it,  and his enthusiasm for showing us made the difference between a regular well informed guide and one who was forged by his environment. He wanted us to know how the Achuar, reportedly among the last of the Amazonian tribes to be contacted by outsiders, live in harmony with the forest. He never boasted, but it became clear that he knew every tree, snake, insect, mammal, fish, monkey, mushroom, bird, bird call, and everything else, including what's unseen. There are layers of reality, after all.

A few things he demonstrated or described the day that our hike centered on palm trees and their myriad uses. For starters, the Achuar construct houses entirely from palms without the use of nails. Various parts of different palms are used to make arrows, blowguns, knives, fishing line and snares. 

• 

  This tiny "knife, made on the spot from the stem of a palm frond, easily slices through
   a cotton tee shirt hem. In the absence of a "real" knife, it is used to gut animals such

   as monkeys or wild boars, which are hunted with blowguns that project arrows
   with tips sweetened by the poison-dart frog or, more likely,  the curare plant.
  
  

The only tool Diego used to craft the items mentioned above: his machete. This is impressive when he's shaping something as small as a toothpick, such as an arrow-point, or that tiny "knife" he's using to cut up his tee shirt.

He's making string, often used as high-test fishing line. It is

strong! I have a strand of it around my wrist. I expect it

will be there for years. Might outlast me. 

I was pretty much bowled over and asked Diego  if others possess the knowledge he's demonstrated. He said, "Everyone can do what I do." By "everyone" he meant the Achuar men, but the women have another set of skills critical to group survival. And both sexes meet Arutam at the sacred tree around the same age.

Not sure what he's cutting here. Maybe a gem? NO'!
It's a stem with lemon ants, which we will soon taste.

He's fashioning a palm leaf into a miniature "backpack"

to demonstrate how to make a carrying pouch for game killed

in the rainforest. 

Here's a parting shot for this post, from our first day in the Amazon. We'd arrived at Kapawi mid-afternoon and after a late lunch, Diego escorted us on a motorized canoe to the Pastaza River to watch the sunset. The river is wide here, and we're on a huge wet sandbar, which will likely be covered with water sometime soon. We learned that the rivers rise and fall, responding to daily local rain but also to what's happening in  the Andes, not far away. The Pastaza River is a tributary of the Maronoa River, a direct tributary to the Amazon, the largest artery in Earth's anatomy. They seem alive, those rivers and sands, inhaling and exhaling, swelling and shrinking, with the rain. A few days later we'd slipped into the rhythm. This photo reminds me. 

Coming soon: 

Getting to Kapawi was half the fun; the lodge and its surroundings; everyday life as a tourist at Kapawi.

Things we saw in the Amazon rainforest: photos 

What it's like to tour the Galapagos Islands on a 16-passenger yacht.

What we saw in the Galapagos Islands: photos

Diego in his element.