Adventures in the Amazon Rainforest

[MichelleCarmen]

Looks amazing there! Glad you had a great time.

I didn't realize Piranha are edible! Guess I pictured them eating US rather than vice versa!

lol

 

[door knob solitaire]

Ok that was the Amazon river...woman...did you know your life was hanging in the balance at all times? Everything was watching you for their next dinner! Whew! So glad you made it home with pictures for us to enjoy!

That piranha thing is a tad freaky. Tasty? You mean like chicken? That catfish...from what threat does it need armor? And was it really armor or just regular scales? How was it prepared when offered for dinner? I loved the sloth. That was my favorite image. Grainy but bless his slow little heart! Or hers.

Your hubby, will he bring back that recipe for the cure of what ails you in three days...to his practice? Is there anything he did derive from their meeting? That would be interesting to learn. Obviously, there is much your hubby could have imparted. But tradition out weighs it.

Thanks and do share more of your experience...that is one trip I will refer to national geographic for. I am not manly enough to venture there. Kudos to you and your adventurous life!! Really cool.

DKS

there was an opossum on my driveway last night...it was touch and go for a second or two.

 

[Matata]

Date: 11/17/2007 1:05:42 AM
Author: door knob solitaire
Ok that was the Amazon river...woman...did you know your life was hanging in the balance at all times?

Absolutely! The leading causes of death among the Ribereno people are snakebite and poisonous inset bites. During one night hike in the jungle, we ran into an armored millipede, a rosy spider, and several black scorpions whose stings can cause serious illness. Yellow fever is common in the area we visited but malaria is not. I really wanted to see the commonest poisonous snakes in the area -- the fer de lance & the bushmaster -- but we never spotted a single snake. For every hike we had to wear thick leather shin guards.

That piranha thing is a tad freaky. Tasty? You mean like chicken? That catfish...from what threat does it need armor? And was it really armor or just regular scales? How was it prepared when offered for dinner? I loved the sloth. That was my favorite image. Grainy but bless his slow little heart! Or hers.

Piranha flesh is very sweet, not like chicken, it''s difficult to describe. The armor on the catfish was real armor; maybe to protect it from piranha? The catfish are capable of walking short distances on land so perhaps the armor is an adaptation to protect them from exposure to air and land predators.

Your hubby, will he bring back that recipe for the cure of what ails you in three days...to his practice? Is there anything he did derive from their meeting? That would be interesting to learn. Obviously, there is much your hubby could have imparted. But tradition out weighs it.

He''s a pediatrician so I think the rum concoction would have to be confined to the parents of his clients...many of whom appear to need it

The shaman was not interested in western medicine. He uses a mixture of plants & superstition, which is deeply ingrained in the river people, to treat his patients. It''s a very interesting mix, because we met some villagers who have traveled into Iquitos for medical care. Their preference, however, seemed to be for the traditional healer. Eighty percent of our medicinal products have come from the Amazon and a good deal of the knowledge about those plants has come from the river & tribal people and their shamans.


Thanks and do share more of your experience...that is one trip I will refer to national geographic for. I am not manly enough to venture there. Kudos to you and your adventurous life!! Really cool.


DKS


there was an opossum on my driveway last night...it was touch and go for a second or two.

LOL, you better be careful, their best defense is to play dead & ooze smelly green stuff from their bodily orifices.

 

[Matata]

Ok, so I managed to bold my replies in the previous post as well as DKS quote. Sorry. Pic above is the armored millipede. Here''s the rosy spider. It''s butt end was as big as a golf ball and had tiny hairs on it that the spider shoots at potential predators.

 

[Independent Gal]

WOW Matata! What amazing pics. And I''m so jealous that you got to see a baby sloth.

I''m about 100 times more excited now for my upcoming trip to Peru!

About the mosquitos, I''ve had great success with wearing a bug jacket. It''s light and totally breathable, and has netting that zips around your face and hands. When dengue and malaria are in the cards from a bite, it''s worth looking dorky for a few hours at dusk.

 

[lumpkin]

Matata, what a trip of a lifetime. Thank you for the photos and sharing your trip.

 

[sera]

Amazing pictures!!! TY for sharing them... I would love to take that trip some time... but I would sooooo not look forward to the bugs!

And an armed-and-dangerous-rosy-golf-ball-butt spider?! Yikes!

The sloth and bat were cute... love the birds. I hadn''t heard of anyone eating piranha- weird that it''s sweet. Did it have a fishy taste as well? Or taste kinda muddy like catfish does (at least to me... not that I know what mud tastes like, but yanno).

Do you plan on another trip to the Amazon?

 

[Matata]

Date: 11/18/2007 10:43:33 PM
Author: sera

The sloth and bat were cute... love the birds. I hadn''t heard of anyone eating piranha- weird that it''s sweet. Did it have a fishy taste as well? Or taste kinda muddy like catfish does (at least to me... not that I know what mud tastes like, but yanno).

Do you plan on another trip to the Amazon?

The closest I can describe the piranha is perhaps dover sole prepared in a champagne sauce. I''m not sure about the piranha that we caught, but some piranha eat strictly fruit & vegetation. Not all are carnivores.

We would like to visit Brazil''s Pantanal where we''d have a better chance of seeing the capybara, jaguar, and some other critters that we didn''t spot on this last trip. Galapagos is also on our list. I want to go to Africa but hubby doesn''t so I guess I''ll make that trip by myself.

When you go to the Amazon, you have to make a choice between cruising the rivers w/short hikes in the jungle, or navigating by boat with longer hikes in the jungle and trips to reserves/resorts where you can walk on elevated walkways in the canopy. On the cruises during the rainy season you get to go deeper into areas not normally visited by tourists and your chances of seeing extraordinary numbers of wildlife increase. On the ground, you don''t see as much because most of the life resides in the canopy. If we go back, I''d like to do the trip where we spend more time on our feet and I definitely want to visit the reserves/resorts that have elevated walkways in the canopy.