Wednesday May 15, 2024

It stayed dry last night. Fortunately. It’s really the rain forest here. And it’s the wet monsoon. Rainstorms build up out of nowhere and from a burning sun it changes to a terrific downpour.

During the morning we talk a lot with Sam. His parents are Indian from two different tribes. When Sam was about twelve years old he wanted to learn the traditions of his indigenous people. He went to a large gathering of Indian tribes in the jungle, with indigenous sport competitions. There he met someone who was willing to take him to a smaller gathering deeper in the jungle, where one of the tribes was willing to take him.

They took him into the jungle, took his clothes off and burned them. 

He didn’t understand their language and all happened with signs.

They told him to follow a trail and wait at the end. The trail was many miles long and the waiting was several weeks. He was naked, unarmed, twelve years old and very scared. He desperately searched for birds eggs and birds themselves. 

An insect laid eggs under his skin. The eggs hatched and a maggot grew and ate his flesh. He had about 40 of them, all over his body and especially under his hair. He finally managed to make fire. And he remembered a method from his parents to take out the maggots - using a kind of rubber to apply liquid to the hole. The maggots come out to breathe, and get stuck in the rubber. Then they can be eased out very gently.

He went to look for the kind of rubber, and when he returned to his little camp he found eight Indians waiting for him.

Apparently he had passed some kind of test, because they started to wash his body and oil it and remove the maggots and carried him for many days in a kind of hammock to the tribe. 

Many more things he told us. Too many to describe now. Maybe later.

He shows us roughly to make a blow pipe for curare darts. Preparing a real good one takes four months.

Then we head to the river, because we have to get meat. This morning we ate the last few slices of bread, and we haven’t eaten lunch lately. I start to feel hungry. 

In the flooded forest, Sam places some hooks, then we head to a small lake for fishing. But it’s hot and sweaty and we don’t catch anything.

We try several other places, and we check the hooks, but no luck, until we catch a piranha. At least we have fresh bait now.

Suddenly the frogs start croaking and within minutes a terrific downpour changes the landscape completely. There seems to be a mist over the river. The water surface is bouncing with water drops. Despite the tarp over the boat we are all completely drenched. 

But 15 minutes later it stops and we catch a few more piranha and a couple of small catfish.

Then we try an area with a counter current and Didi puts out a bait for a large catfish. The piranha catch is very slow, but suddenly Didi’s line starts to run out. The trick is not to pull in until the big fish has sucked in the bait completely. So we let it run out then pull, and Didi feels the fish slide off. 

He reels in and Sam looks at the bait - the head of a piranha with a bite taken out. ‘Turtle!’

Apparently a turtle has been hunting for Didi’s bait. Disappointed he casts again.

Time passes until the line runs out again. Excitement. Again he lets the line run out. Excruciatingly long, then he pulls and… again the fish slides off. Didi and Sam are mystified. It must have been a large fish, since it pulled out the line with a heavy weight so easily.

Later in the afternoon, Sam has a large catch. He also fishes for large catfish. But he judges he has a turtle. But by the time it reaches the surface, we see a good size stingray.

Taking it on board is not without danger, because the tail has the fearsome poisonous  barb. In fact, now I can observe it up close: it has two barbs, two sticks as long as a long match, folded onto his tail. 

When Sam touches the tail with his machete, the ray rapidly moves it forward next to his body. The tail twists upside down in that movement and he stings forward.

We return to camp and have a delicious meal of rice and stingray. We are gorging.

At night in my hammock, it rains and with my belly full, swinging slightly, I feel the happiest man on earth.