Jungle Boogie Capuchin monkey style!

The week has finally arived. The Pitt family are re-united and Life in Peru (the name of the blog) can finally actually start. However, before we get into that, there is the small detail of Tambopata to talk about. Tambopata, for those of you not in the know, is the Peruvian rainforest about 2 hours flight East of Lima.
The flight was an early one and so after moaning about teachers' moaning in the last blog, I have to admit that getting up at 4 o'clock on the first day of holiday did magically transform me into one of those moaning teachers. This moaning did quickly fade once I glanced at the magnifiscent mountain scenery over Cusco and faded into obscurity once I was gazing over the meandering Tombopata river as we approached landing.
The airport we landed in was little more than a glorified shed. For those of you that have had the pleasure of visiting the late, great Coventry airport - this made Coventry look like Heathrow and JFK combined! we were met by our guide for the week (Carolina) and we were quickly transferred to a bus and driven down dirt roads lined with the poorest Peruvian people I had seen since my arrival. I was again in real Peru and what a breathtaking experience it is.
The bus was followed by a boat trip down the river that we had spied from the plane. We passed farmers in their boats, people seiving gold in the river, people using long sticks to push their boats along, children in tattered clothes staring at the rich people travelling past with ipods on, cameras out and a whole world that has been taken forgranted. It was also made very clear that this river was the only way to reach our destination. Even the town we had landed in only had one dirt road connecting it to Cusco and that would take 12 hours. We were in total isolation and any thoughts of British risk assessments were rapidly cast aside knowing that this trip is more important than that for the pupils. This is about being remote, not being in the pampered, protected world of Miraflores but in the absolute wilderness with killer snakes, killer spiders and killer diseases. I was finally fully immune from these diseases but only after a visit to a perverted nurse (push your sleeve higher - no higher - no higher - oh actually can you take your shirt off please!). But thankfully I had recovered from this sexual exploitation by the time I was on the boat down the river. The kids however, were not so re-assured by their injections and insect spray. One particular pupil was terrified after watching an episode of House where a person died of a strange mosquito induced disease and thanks to the glory of Wikipedia he has also researched into this more and found that the disease was indeed to be found in the Peruvian rainforest. After much calming words or rather taking the mick out of somebody basing their medical knowledge on House, we managed to get him onto the boat to go to our first destination - Posada.
The whole area is managed by a group called Rainforest. They are a preservation and travel company that offer Eco-tourist trips and help to sustain the local community and protect the rainforest. There is only electricity for 4 hours a day in their lodges, there is no hot water and you can only use bio-degradable shampoo and soap. The showers are therefore cold- freezing cold- and the soap feels like it has been made from the floor sweepings of a branch of Lush. However that was not the worst part of the showers; the worst part was that there was no lock on the door (thank you Mr German man for walking in on me ((and it was a very cold shower by the way)) and also the wooden wall at the back had large gaps in it that faced onto the girl's rooms. This meant tactically timed showers before the kids were awake (I hope anyway).
The activities were also eco-tourist based and were hugely impressive. We walked up a canopy tower to view over the rainforest and the soaring vultures, went on a night walk to see Aligators, tree frogs and tarantulas, went to a clay lick (Culpa) and saw hunders of Makaws arriving to feed (another 4am start for that one) and we went on a boat trip to see Giant otters. This trip was yet again a 4am start but also ending in no giant otters beind seen (maybe thats because Otters are too sensible to get up at 4 in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!!). I did however endanger the Piranha population of Peru. We were given the chance to fish in the river as long as we returned the fish to the ox-bow lake. I fished away and after about 5 minutes I had a bite. I wrestled with the 5cm long beast and managed to get the piranha out of the water only for the little bugger to fly off the hook and slide across the boat and down a gap in the floor. Never mind, I thought, he will just have plopped back in the water.
I have got to go and mark and wash some clothes and baby bed sheets. I will finish this post tomorrow.
..... continued........
the next stage of the journey into The Heart of Darkness saw us have to travel 6 hours by boat via 2 checkpoints and to TRC (Tombopata, Research Centre). 7 of the pupils had already been staying there for a week on Biology trip and thanks to the extreme discipline of their stay, they were wild, loud, excitable and blue!!! On leaving school, we had be warned about the infamous Huito fruit. It is an inocuous looking fruit that when mixed with pure alcohol (in a bowl not via ingestion) turns your skin blue once applied. We had been asked not to let the kids use it on their skin but the Biology group clearly had and it looked as though we had entered the set of Avatar 2. The look of shock on some of the tourists faces as they disembarked from the boat and came face to face with the Markham Savages was hilarious.
Thankfully the savage period lasted for only an hour and the Biology group quickly transformed into mild and gentile Geographers within no time (however, Mr House was slowly turning into an extra from Lord of The Flies as the worry of killer insects and killer spiders became slowly more and more a reality).
The first killer spider that we saw was on a web about 50 metres from the lodge. It was pointed out by the guide who then started poking the web and asking the kids to come closer for photos. I can clearly remember the words "more poisonous that the black widow" and "yes we have the anti-body, but that just buys you time" being uttered by the guide. Buys you time, I thought, how does buys you time help when we are 8 hours by boat from the nearest twon and from the look of it, that town is not exactly the sort of place that top medics would be choosing to stay. Although who knows, maybe top doctors like living in shacks, riding in rickshaws and going to the impressivley named 'sexy car wash'.
The kids also told me that they had saved one of the teachers from death last week as he took them on a midnight hunt for mini-alligators. They were wading through a swamp in the pitch black when one of them spotted moevement in the water, turned their torch to see what it was and discovered the most poisonous snake in the Peruvian rainforest. The snake was heading towards the teacher and if the kid had not have spotted it, said teacher could have been "buying time" and hoping the 8 hours and shoddy hospital saves him!
Then came the actual work. After a couple of days of travelling and looking at the nice wildlife, it was time to actually study the rainforest and the kids excelled. Having to hack a transect through the actual rainforest was very different although I couldn't help thinking that the machete may have been more useful on the transects we did in Morecambe and Middlesbrough!
got to go again - its a tough life this being a dad thing! The jungle adventure continues soon! with the capuchin monkey comment explained along with much more....
The transect study was completed in a separate part of the rainforest located next to a very impressive beach that had been made by the river deposits. The view of the sun setting as we sat on the beach was breathtaking and was so beautiful that all the kids could think about was "MUDFIGHT!". One hour later the kids were no longer blue, they were now head to toe in brown mud and every last one of them had a huge smile on their face. They came to the rainforest to see amazing wildlife, incredible animals and have a once in a lifetime experience but almost half of them put 'mudfight' down as their favourite activity in the lodge survey. Kids will be kids whether they are in Birmingham, Bogota or one hour from Bolivia.
Now to explain the capuchin monkey comment. I was walking along with my group in the jungle when fruit started to fall from the trees around us. Looking up, we saw a troop of 7 monkeys looking down at us from the canopy layer. The boys started giggling and said "at least its not capuchin monkeys sir. We are safe for a while". I ignored the comment and we walked on. About 10 minutes later we heard more monkeys and this time, they were capuchin monkeys. "Watch out sir!" "Don't drop the soap". I had to know more. The story of the capuchin monkey is a strange but apparently true one. The capuchin monkey is a strong monkey that can easily grab fruit from trees but the Squirrel monkey is much weaker and so has to rely on picking up leftovers from other monkeys. They are therefore known to follow the capuchin monkeys around picking up bits and pieces oif fruit - so far so good. Unfortunately, if the squirrel monkey gets too close to the capuchin then it will grab it, beat it and in extreme cases....... rape it! The capuchin monkey has been seen sexually atacking smaller monkeys and it does not matter whether they are male of female, the capuchin is not a picky beast. So there you have it, the unpleasnant story of the capuchin monkey and the reason why the week was scattered with capuchin monkey jokes and comments - again kids will be kids whether they are in blah blah blah!
The final day saw us transferred to Refugio Amazona and back up towards the airport. This location was picturesque and looks a lot more like an exclusive hotel than the other two locations. The place had an impressive restaurant, massage room, bike hire centre and hammocks hung from the beautiufl rafters upstairs. It was packed with tourists but by this time the Markham Savages were tame and they sat an played chess from the hammocks as the sun set, with barely an inch of blue left on their tired looking faces. By half 9 as the electicity cut out for the last time, the kids had already taken themselves off to bed and were asleep ready for their boat trip and flight home the next day. No need for teacher patrols, no need to tell kids off, just a very pleasant group of kids shattered after a very tiring week in the jungle.
Thankfully there are no volcanoes spewing ash along the way back and so our flight was on time and everyone arrived safely; even Mr House had managed not to get biten by any killer bugs and thankfully none of the other passengers understood the capuchin monkey jokes being stated in the queue for bags.

A evry exciting week which is currently being followed by another very exciting week in Lima as Clare and Tilly arrive in the Peruvian capital to experience in reality what I have just been waffling on about in this blog for the past 3 months.