On Monday we left from Cuzco at 6 am to embark on a 12-hour bumpy bus ride, which ended up taking 14 hours because on the way there we were delayed by a landslide which had caused a huge pile of mud to be blocking the road. We were stuck for two hours while at first a bunch of guys tried to dig it out, and when that didn´t work, cut down a bunch of small tree trunks to cover the mud. Our bus made it over fine, but the big truck that went after us didn´t have so much luck, and got stuck in the mud. We didn´t stick around to see its fate. The ride was long and bumpy, but beautiful; as we descended from Cuzco we watched the landscape change from mountains to the “clouded forest” to the jungle highlands, which includes Manu. At around 8:00 at night we finally arrived in a very strange little town that hardly even look like a town; more like a really wide stretch of dirt with some buildings and a market sprinkled around haphazardly. From there we loaded all our stuff on a small boat and crossed the Amazon River to our campsite.
The next morning we woke up bright and early to go trekking through the jungle with rubber boots that they lent us, which were a really good idea. We walked right through a river and also through something that I would call quicksand if I hadn´t made it out alive (that doesn´t make much sense, does it). The best way to describe this place is that it is very green, very wet, and very big, and all of the creatures that live here are also very big. Here is a brief description of some of the more interesting plant life our guide told us about: a vine that grows along the ground like a snake, and is the same color as a certain venomous snake, but also coincidentally is used as an antidote when someone gets bitten by that same snake. A plant that recoils instantly when you touch it. A certain type of caterpillar that is incredibly poisonous, and which were completely covering the trunk of a tree, camoflauged to look like the tree. And a tree whose trunk was at least 10 or 15 feet in diameter, and apparently was a small example of this species. I’ve decided I´m more of a mountain person than a jungle person (I don´t like the humidity and am not crazy about the bugs) but I’m sure if I actually knew more about all the creatures that live here (the great majority of which have not yet been studied), I would be in heaven.
Wednesday was the day when all hell broke loose. I woke up feeling really nauseous and having bad stomach cramps, and could tell it was something sinister. Luckily, the bus ride to the next town with a health center was only a half hour, and I made it almost all the way there before getting out and puking all over the place. The doctor told me I had some kind of bacteria, and they took some blood to do a study to see what type it was. My academic director checked me into a hostel so I could lie down, and she waited to get the results from the doctor while the rest of my group continued on toward the next campsite. It turned out I had salmonelitis, which is something very similar to salmonella. The doctor said it was probably in incubation 7 days, which means I got it in Cuzco, and the only thing I can think of that I could have eaten in Cuzco is maybe a fried egg that wasn’t cooked enough (man, couldn’t that happen in the United States just as easily as the middle of the Amazon jungle?). So I took some Cipro, which is a really strong, magical anti-biotic, ate a little bit of bread, felt a little better, and decided to try to come along with Irma (the academic director) to the next town where the rest of my group already was. But as soon as I breathed in the hot, humid air and started getting bumped around in this truck that was from sometime in the 17th century, I started feeling sick again, and vomited twice within the first 10 minutes. So we went with plan B, which was that Irma would leave me in the hotel with a bathroom and lots of water, continue on to Huacaria (the campsite) because the 17th-century truck was also carrying all the food for lunch for the rest of our group, and send another group leader back to spend the night with me. I was pretty much fine just lying there for the rest of the afternoon, and found that as long as I didn’t move from my bed I wouldn’t have to vomit. By 5:00 the Cipro had started working wonders and I felt almost perfectly normal; I got up and spent two hours in the internet café in the hostel. My other group leader, Christina, finally showed up at 7:00, and told me that the reason she was so late was because the truck that Irma had been traveling had gotten stuck in a ditch on the way to Huacaria, and they had had to walk the rest of the way to the town to get help, so they didn’t actually arrive there until 5:00 and no one in my group had any food for lunch until then. She also told me that Irma hadn’t been able to talk to the doctor that much about my own illness because the same day, someone had gotten bitten by a very poisonous snake and the doctor had had to attend to him urgently. What a day.
The next day, Chris and I caught a ride to Huacaria in a truck that was slightly more recent (maybe 18th century). By this time I was feeling totally fine. Huacaria is a small, remote town with a group of indigenous people called Huacari that speak their own indigenous language in addition to Quechua and a little bit of Spanish. Unlike some other indigenous groups in the jungle, the Huacari people have chosen not to completely isolate themselves from the outside world. When we arrived at the campsite I was greeted by friends shouting, “You’re alive!” It was a warm welcome. That morning we had a little tour around in the jungle with a curandero (medicine man), who showed us various medicinal plants including Ayahuasca, which is kind of considered a spiritual cure-all. Before lunch we went swimming in a beautiful river right by the campsite, and the water was a perfect, refreshing temperature. After lunch we walked up to the village (about 5 minutes from our campsite) and played soccer with some of the men and one woman in the village. The woman was surprisingly good; as in Huilloq, they have actually organized a women’s soccer team there. After the game, we went into the school in the village (school for the kids hasn’t started yet, even though it was supposed to start at the beginning of March) and one of the elders in the village came to tell us a Huacari myth, which the curandero recorded and then translated for us into Spanish. Even though I understood most of the words he was saying in Spanish, the myth was so long and complex and so completely removed from anything resembling western culture that I was pretty much lost the entire time. My favorite part that I did understand, however, was that the tree of life grew out of a woman's vagina, and all of the animals in the world grew from that tree. How cool is that?
The last day, we walked about two and a half hours through the jungle back to the town where I had been staying while I was sick--a beautiful walk in which I gave up trying not to get my socks wet, and was absolutely exhausted by the end. I had a little bit or a scare when I saw a yellow and black snake in the middle of the road--and after staring at it for awhile in terror, then creeping towards it slowly, I realized that it had been run over by a car and was good and dead. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful with our 12-hour bus ride back to Cuzco, where we finally arrived at 10:00 at night--and then, of course, I went out dancing. :)
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