The following is an excerpt from an article in Smithsonian magazine called Ten Myths about the Brain.
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. It was a relief to see this one put to rest, presumably by those in the know. [I bought the silly book with that title about 10 years ago. I'm no scientist, but I thought the observations were based on stereotypes.] The entire article is worth reading. I was absurdly happy to learn that, contrary to popular belief, we do not use only 10% of our brains. And that the brain is not like a computer, or the Internet, or a social network. Sometimes a brain is only a brain.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
Some of the sloppiest, shoddiest, most biased, least reproducible, worst designed and most overinterpreted research in the history of science purports to provide biological explanations for differences between men and women. Eminent neuroscientists once claimed that head size, spinal ganglia or brain stem structures were responsible for women’s inability to think creatively, vote logically or practice medicine. Today the theories are a bit more sophisticated: men supposedly have more specialized brain hemispheres, women more elaborate emotion circuits. Though there are some differences (minor and uncorrelated with any particular ability) between male and female brains, the main problem with looking for correlations with behavior is that sex differences in cognition are massively exaggerated.
Women are thought to outperform men on tests of empathy. They do—unless test subjects are told that men are particularly good at the test, in which case men perform as well as or better than women. The same pattern holds in reverse for tests of spatial reasoning. Whenever stereotypes are brought to mind, even by something as simple as asking test subjects to check a box next to their gender, sex differences are exaggerated. Women college students told that a test is something women usually do poorly on, do poorly. Women college students told that a test is something college students usually do well on, do well. Across countries—and across time—the more prevalent the belief is that men are better than women in math, the greater the difference in girls’ and boys’ math scores. And that’s not because girls in Iceland have more specialized brain hemispheres than do girls in Italy.
Certain sex differences are enormously important to us when we’re looking for a mate, but when it comes to most of what our brains do most of the time—perceive the world, direct attention, learn new skills, encode memories, communicate (no, women don’t speak more than men do), judge other people’s emotions (no, men aren’t inept at this)—men and women have almost entirely overlapping and fully Earth-bound abilities.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Top-Ten-Myths-About-the-Brain.html#ixzz1NoXTvdlD
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
On flying, risks, and the end of the world: May 21, 2011
I am on the penultimate flight of my trip home from Quito. I am headed to Miami, and after a 3 hour layover, I will fly to Boston. I can’t sleep on the plane despite only 3.5 hours of sleep last night. I had to catch a 6:40 a.m. flight, and when I got to the airport at 4:45 there was a huge line of people waiting to check in. Things moved excruciatingly slowly, but I finally got past customs and onto the plane just under the wire!
I have just watched The Tourist, an Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp vehicle which is the onboard movie. A predictable story, but just watching the two handsomest actors in the movie business is soothing to me and keeps my mind off my fear of heights and being in planes at 30,000 feet. It’s not a paralyzing fear. I have convinced myself on an intellectual level that flying is safer than driving or any other means of transportation, but on a visceral level, I don’t believe it. I hate being in a cramped and uncomfortable seat with my ears popping and occasionally painful from rapid ascents and descents. It feels like some kind of punishment. I have already read the SkyMall catalog, wondering who actually buys this stuff, and the airline magazine (which is boring enough to put me to sleep but doesn’t) so I whip out my travel diary and begin writing to distract myself from the discomfort.
If Ecuador were any less wonderful, it would not have been worth the 15+ hours of travel time each way that are required. You have to devote a whole day of your vacation to getting there and another to getting home. Seeing Ecuador and my son did make it all worthwhile, but I think I’m done flying for a while. Some people say that getting there is half the fun, but every time I travel by plane I thank God not only that I made it to solid ground alive but also that I don’t have a job (like my friend Barbara) which requires a lot of air travel. It’s exhausting, irritating, maddeningly inefficient, dehydrating, deep-vein thrombosis-inducing, and most of all, IT TAKES FOREVER. OK, I’m done complaining now. The one compensation that air travel offers apart from seeing the world and one’s family is spectacular views from up in the clouds. Coming into and flying out of Quito, you see some of the most beautiful sights in nature, and they are only
visible at 10,000 feet and above. A sea of cumulus clouds. Volcanic peaks 14,000 ft. high and covered with snow. Sunlight glinting on the metal roofs of buildings when you get a little lower. Patchwork of greens and browns. Even the seacoast line of Miami alongside tall buildings is magnificent to behold.
There are just some things in life that require trust and faith even if you are a nonbeliever. The anesthesiologist, the heart or brain surgeon who operates on you or a loved one, for example. You put your life in their hands because you know they have been trained long and hard NOT TO MAKE A FATAL MISTAKE. The odds of waking up/surviving the surgery are in your favor except with some emergency life-saving procedures. I’m told that the pilots who fly in and out of Quito are the best in the business because it is exceedingly difficult to land on the very short landing strip. This gives me a certain degree of reassurance. And of course it has been proven that flying is infinitely safer than driving or riding in a car. The act of driving especially gives you a false sense of being in control. You have to have this delusion or you would never drive anywhere. Sort of like hiking through the Ecuadoran jungle and fearlessly not expecting a 25 foot long boa constrictor to drop on you from a tree or slither stealthily up behind you. You can’t afford to have these kinds of fears if you ever expect to have exciting jungle adventures (which more often than not don’t involve dangerous snakes.) And when you are being slowly lifted in a cable car on a ski lift type cable which is taking you up the side of a very tall mountain, you have to have faith that those cables (which look very thick and strong) are not going to snap. (I’m referring to the Teleferico in Quito, which took me up Pichincha, a 14,000 foot peak. Once it let me off, there was still quite a distance to hike if you wanted to reach the summit and see the volcano. I chose to do the easiest hike, since the air was thin and I was gasping for breath.) And speaking of volcanoes: This one hasn’t erupted in a very long time, but there are active vocanoes in Ecuador which my fearless son has viewed from what I consider to be an unsafe distance. But it must be safe or they wouldn’t let tourists go there! Or would they?
Getting back to air travel: what about the threat of terrorism? My answer: after the grueling inspections I went through in both airport security and customs (Quito officials searched everyone’s carryons a second time after they had gone through the X-ray scanner) I can say with confidence that it is virtually impossible for anyone to get on board an aircraft with a gun, blade, poison, or bomb. Now that Obama and the Seals have taken out bin Laden, there is supposedly the threat of terrorist retaliation, but if there is an incident, it won’t be on board a plane unless they are able to pull off an inside job involving an evil pilot and copilot. Not likely.
So: I have effectively argued against irrational fears of heights, flying, riding in a cable car up the side of a mountain, and hiking through the jungle. WHAT ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD?
No less a source than the New York Times had an article yesterday about a fanatical Christian group which prophesied the end of the world on May 21, 2011. It’s not clear where this information came from, but apparently not from Jesus. I’m wondering why they didn’t give us more notice—say six months—so we could all get our affairs in order, at least wash the car and get someone to feed the cat, and in general do whatever is necessary to guarantee inclusion in the Rapture. Because we all know what happens to the people who aren’t Raptured. I haven’t viewed all those great Last Judgment Renaissance paintings for nothing. Wailing and gnashing of teeth, and burning forever in the lake of fire. (See James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for further details.) The word is that if you do not turn over your soul completely to Jesus, you will not be Raptured. Instead you will be condemned to eternal damnation.
There’s apparently a cover your ass clause in the doomsayers’ prediction: if, as has thus far been my experience (though the day isn’t over yet!) there are no clear signs of the world coming to an end, this simply means that the world HAS BEGUN to come to an end, presumably in ways too tricky, sinister, and subtle to be recognized until it’s too late. Like a panther pouncing on you after following you a mile or so through the forest while you whistled a happy tune. [Update! When the world failed to end as scheduled, the leader of the sect said that God in His mercy had postponed the end of the world until Oct. 21. Whew.] Oh, and lest we forget: it's all the fault of gay people. God decided to destroy the world because gay sex is proliferating! Not because of evil corporations that destroy people's lives and the environment. Not because of murderers, skinheads, fascists, and bigots. Gay people, who dare to love each other.
I would argue that for many of us—-survivors and victims of 9/11, the Haitian earthquake, hurricane Katrina, the tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan, monster tornadoes in the southern U.S., and the many wars which still rage pointlessly in the world today—-the world has already come to an end. In some cases, ten years ago or more. I could also argue that we humans are the architects of our own destruction in our continued foolhardy and desperate search for oil and other non-sustainable fossil fuels. We’re causing wildfires, floods, killer tornadoes the likes of which the world has never seen, deforestation and the resultant extinction and endangerment of animal and plant species. We’re melting the polar ice caps and creating a greenhouse of CO2 instead of an atmosphere. This is more than 40 years after scientists warned us about this. If we had begun work on solar power in 1970 there would be no need for nuclear power today. And to those who say that nuclear power plants are safe, this is my retort:
1) Three Mile Island [contaminated]
2) Chernobyl [contaminated and uninhabitable for decades to come]
3) Reactors in Fukushima, Japan [damaged by a tsunami which destroyed the cooling system, with the result of cores overheating and the release of radioactive isotopes like cesium into ground water and being dumped into the ocean in an attempt to cool down the cores and avoid meltdown] Traces of radiation being detected in vegetables and milk. After two months, cores are still overheated. Scary.
4) NUCLEAR WASTE. Just what are we supposed to do with lethally poisonous by-products of nuclear fission, some of which will remain radioactive for tens and maybe hundreds of years? BURY IT IN THE DESERT? YEAH, RIGHT. NOT AN OPTION. NOR IS SENDING PLUTONIUM INTO SPACE (WHAT GENIUS CAME UP WITH THAT PLAN?) WHEN ONE TINY PARTICLE CAN CAUSE LUNG CANCER.
These are the things that we should be afraid of, people. They are the end of the world.
But it seems that greed is a more powerful motivator than fear or even caution.
The ancient Siona shaman I met in Cuyabeno said that in the sixty-plus years he has lived on a certain reservation on the river, he has seen animals dwindle in number and disappear. Some of this is from over-hunting and fishing but the biggest problem is oil companies deforesting the jungle. Our jungle guide, Hugo, showed us a patch of “young” forest which is what grew after oil companies slashed and burned the forest more than 25 years ago. THE TREES WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. And no one stopped the oil companies, who just did whatever they wanted because they could. Today they are more restricted in their depredation, but it continues. The road to Cuyabeno is lined with huge storage tanks and oil fires burning off impurities. Insidiously, the companies offer the poor local people low-paying jobs. The people continue to live in the hundreds of wretched shacks that also line the road to Cuyabeno.
This will be one of the many environmental/humanitarian battles that my son and his generation will have to fight. My generation has utterly failed. We have either joined the ranks of the enemy, or we ignored at our peril the dead canary in the mineshaft. Seduced by consumer goods and technological toys, we continue to be in denial about the future of this planet. Al Gore, an expert on this subject, has warned us that we may already have reached the tipping point. We may have irreparably destroyed the climate of the earth that our children and grandchildren will inherit. It is to be hoped that they will clean up the mess we self-absorbed postwar babies have made.
WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
I have just watched The Tourist, an Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp vehicle which is the onboard movie. A predictable story, but just watching the two handsomest actors in the movie business is soothing to me and keeps my mind off my fear of heights and being in planes at 30,000 feet. It’s not a paralyzing fear. I have convinced myself on an intellectual level that flying is safer than driving or any other means of transportation, but on a visceral level, I don’t believe it. I hate being in a cramped and uncomfortable seat with my ears popping and occasionally painful from rapid ascents and descents. It feels like some kind of punishment. I have already read the SkyMall catalog, wondering who actually buys this stuff, and the airline magazine (which is boring enough to put me to sleep but doesn’t) so I whip out my travel diary and begin writing to distract myself from the discomfort.
If Ecuador were any less wonderful, it would not have been worth the 15+ hours of travel time each way that are required. You have to devote a whole day of your vacation to getting there and another to getting home. Seeing Ecuador and my son did make it all worthwhile, but I think I’m done flying for a while. Some people say that getting there is half the fun, but every time I travel by plane I thank God not only that I made it to solid ground alive but also that I don’t have a job (like my friend Barbara) which requires a lot of air travel. It’s exhausting, irritating, maddeningly inefficient, dehydrating, deep-vein thrombosis-inducing, and most of all, IT TAKES FOREVER. OK, I’m done complaining now. The one compensation that air travel offers apart from seeing the world and one’s family is spectacular views from up in the clouds. Coming into and flying out of Quito, you see some of the most beautiful sights in nature, and they are only
visible at 10,000 feet and above. A sea of cumulus clouds. Volcanic peaks 14,000 ft. high and covered with snow. Sunlight glinting on the metal roofs of buildings when you get a little lower. Patchwork of greens and browns. Even the seacoast line of Miami alongside tall buildings is magnificent to behold.
There are just some things in life that require trust and faith even if you are a nonbeliever. The anesthesiologist, the heart or brain surgeon who operates on you or a loved one, for example. You put your life in their hands because you know they have been trained long and hard NOT TO MAKE A FATAL MISTAKE. The odds of waking up/surviving the surgery are in your favor except with some emergency life-saving procedures. I’m told that the pilots who fly in and out of Quito are the best in the business because it is exceedingly difficult to land on the very short landing strip. This gives me a certain degree of reassurance. And of course it has been proven that flying is infinitely safer than driving or riding in a car. The act of driving especially gives you a false sense of being in control. You have to have this delusion or you would never drive anywhere. Sort of like hiking through the Ecuadoran jungle and fearlessly not expecting a 25 foot long boa constrictor to drop on you from a tree or slither stealthily up behind you. You can’t afford to have these kinds of fears if you ever expect to have exciting jungle adventures (which more often than not don’t involve dangerous snakes.) And when you are being slowly lifted in a cable car on a ski lift type cable which is taking you up the side of a very tall mountain, you have to have faith that those cables (which look very thick and strong) are not going to snap. (I’m referring to the Teleferico in Quito, which took me up Pichincha, a 14,000 foot peak. Once it let me off, there was still quite a distance to hike if you wanted to reach the summit and see the volcano. I chose to do the easiest hike, since the air was thin and I was gasping for breath.) And speaking of volcanoes: This one hasn’t erupted in a very long time, but there are active vocanoes in Ecuador which my fearless son has viewed from what I consider to be an unsafe distance. But it must be safe or they wouldn’t let tourists go there! Or would they?
Getting back to air travel: what about the threat of terrorism? My answer: after the grueling inspections I went through in both airport security and customs (Quito officials searched everyone’s carryons a second time after they had gone through the X-ray scanner) I can say with confidence that it is virtually impossible for anyone to get on board an aircraft with a gun, blade, poison, or bomb. Now that Obama and the Seals have taken out bin Laden, there is supposedly the threat of terrorist retaliation, but if there is an incident, it won’t be on board a plane unless they are able to pull off an inside job involving an evil pilot and copilot. Not likely.
So: I have effectively argued against irrational fears of heights, flying, riding in a cable car up the side of a mountain, and hiking through the jungle. WHAT ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD?
No less a source than the New York Times had an article yesterday about a fanatical Christian group which prophesied the end of the world on May 21, 2011. It’s not clear where this information came from, but apparently not from Jesus. I’m wondering why they didn’t give us more notice—say six months—so we could all get our affairs in order, at least wash the car and get someone to feed the cat, and in general do whatever is necessary to guarantee inclusion in the Rapture. Because we all know what happens to the people who aren’t Raptured. I haven’t viewed all those great Last Judgment Renaissance paintings for nothing. Wailing and gnashing of teeth, and burning forever in the lake of fire. (See James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for further details.) The word is that if you do not turn over your soul completely to Jesus, you will not be Raptured. Instead you will be condemned to eternal damnation.
There’s apparently a cover your ass clause in the doomsayers’ prediction: if, as has thus far been my experience (though the day isn’t over yet!) there are no clear signs of the world coming to an end, this simply means that the world HAS BEGUN to come to an end, presumably in ways too tricky, sinister, and subtle to be recognized until it’s too late. Like a panther pouncing on you after following you a mile or so through the forest while you whistled a happy tune. [Update! When the world failed to end as scheduled, the leader of the sect said that God in His mercy had postponed the end of the world until Oct. 21. Whew.] Oh, and lest we forget: it's all the fault of gay people. God decided to destroy the world because gay sex is proliferating! Not because of evil corporations that destroy people's lives and the environment. Not because of murderers, skinheads, fascists, and bigots. Gay people, who dare to love each other.
I would argue that for many of us—-survivors and victims of 9/11, the Haitian earthquake, hurricane Katrina, the tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan, monster tornadoes in the southern U.S., and the many wars which still rage pointlessly in the world today—-the world has already come to an end. In some cases, ten years ago or more. I could also argue that we humans are the architects of our own destruction in our continued foolhardy and desperate search for oil and other non-sustainable fossil fuels. We’re causing wildfires, floods, killer tornadoes the likes of which the world has never seen, deforestation and the resultant extinction and endangerment of animal and plant species. We’re melting the polar ice caps and creating a greenhouse of CO2 instead of an atmosphere. This is more than 40 years after scientists warned us about this. If we had begun work on solar power in 1970 there would be no need for nuclear power today. And to those who say that nuclear power plants are safe, this is my retort:
1) Three Mile Island [contaminated]
2) Chernobyl [contaminated and uninhabitable for decades to come]
3) Reactors in Fukushima, Japan [damaged by a tsunami which destroyed the cooling system, with the result of cores overheating and the release of radioactive isotopes like cesium into ground water and being dumped into the ocean in an attempt to cool down the cores and avoid meltdown] Traces of radiation being detected in vegetables and milk. After two months, cores are still overheated. Scary.
4) NUCLEAR WASTE. Just what are we supposed to do with lethally poisonous by-products of nuclear fission, some of which will remain radioactive for tens and maybe hundreds of years? BURY IT IN THE DESERT? YEAH, RIGHT. NOT AN OPTION. NOR IS SENDING PLUTONIUM INTO SPACE (WHAT GENIUS CAME UP WITH THAT PLAN?) WHEN ONE TINY PARTICLE CAN CAUSE LUNG CANCER.
These are the things that we should be afraid of, people. They are the end of the world.
But it seems that greed is a more powerful motivator than fear or even caution.
The ancient Siona shaman I met in Cuyabeno said that in the sixty-plus years he has lived on a certain reservation on the river, he has seen animals dwindle in number and disappear. Some of this is from over-hunting and fishing but the biggest problem is oil companies deforesting the jungle. Our jungle guide, Hugo, showed us a patch of “young” forest which is what grew after oil companies slashed and burned the forest more than 25 years ago. THE TREES WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. And no one stopped the oil companies, who just did whatever they wanted because they could. Today they are more restricted in their depredation, but it continues. The road to Cuyabeno is lined with huge storage tanks and oil fires burning off impurities. Insidiously, the companies offer the poor local people low-paying jobs. The people continue to live in the hundreds of wretched shacks that also line the road to Cuyabeno.
This will be one of the many environmental/humanitarian battles that my son and his generation will have to fight. My generation has utterly failed. We have either joined the ranks of the enemy, or we ignored at our peril the dead canary in the mineshaft. Seduced by consumer goods and technological toys, we continue to be in denial about the future of this planet. Al Gore, an expert on this subject, has warned us that we may already have reached the tipping point. We may have irreparably destroyed the climate of the earth that our children and grandchildren will inherit. It is to be hoped that they will clean up the mess we self-absorbed postwar babies have made.
WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Rainforest Part III: Mowgli, cacao, and piranha fishing
It seems that the collective attention span collapsed after my first installment, but I will continue to write as if people were still reading this blog.
More stories of the lodge at Cuyabeno:
The owners of the lodge adopted a boy who was abandoned by his mother as a baby. He is a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, beautiful child whose real name is John but whose nickname is Mowgli after the hero of Kipling's The Jungle Book.
Mowgli is eight years old, and like most eight year old boys (and I am an expert on them) is a constantly running, jumping, spinning ball of energy. He hung from the rafters at least 6 feet from the floor and dropped to the floor without sustaining any injury. He scurried up several flights of steps to the roof of the hut where there were hammocks for resting and enjoying the view. He wasn't supervised, and I feared that he might somehow fall over the railing, but he was careful enough not to. He is an affectionate child, greeting me by throwing his arms around me and attempting to teach me Spanish. He would get impatient with me if I didn't grasp what he was saying immediately, but I was surprised to find that I was actually learning some words and phrases from him. One evening I was more or less in the role of baby sitter because I was too exhausted to go for a night ride in the canoe, having hiked all day. His parents were occupied with chores and Mowgli had no one to play with. He brought me books from the pile intended for perusal by tourists. One book had beautiful color pictures of the various animals of the jungle. We looked at it together and he commented on each photo. Another book was a history of indigenous people in the area, written by an archaeologist. Mowgli directed my attention to the fact that the people in the drawings were naked (this reminded me of the scene in Catcher in the Rye where Holden Caulfield goes to the Museum of Natural History and is relieved to see that things haven't changed: the figures of the Indian women were still naked above the waist.) He insisted that we search for "las cucarachas" in the dining room, which unfortunately were not a figment of his imagination. His mother eventually called him into the kitchen to eat dinner, but not before he brought a couple of 6 packs of Oreos from the kitchen to me and insisted that I eat them.
Speaking of eating, I tasted for the first time the fruit of the cacao tree, the source of chocolate. The pendulous fruits have a hard outer shell which is red when they are unripe and banana-yellow when ripe. Mike and I split one open to reveal many large seeds which were covered with a clear gooey gel-like substance. You suck the gel off the seed and dispose of the hard nut-like interior. The gel, while deliciously sweet, does not in the least taste like chocolate. When chocolate is made, the seeds are dried in the sun, fermented, and roasted, then ground up into cocoa powder. There are further steps in the process depending on whether sugar is added and whether it is to be made into bars or liquid. I tasted an Ecuadoran chocolate
bar, which was 70% cacao and very good.
One of the scheduled activities was fishing for piranhas. When asked if I wanted to do it, I initially said no because I have mixed feelings about fishing. It seems cruel to catch a fish on a hook and then let it flop around until it suffocates. Then again, I eat fish and seafood. Also, my son and I spent many hours fishing on the lake we vacationed near on Cape Cod when Mike was the age Mowgli is now, and I could tell that Mike wanted to re-live those experiences. So I agreed to go.
Hugo, Mike and I set out in the canoe and reached a small cove where the water was relatively still. Armed with crude fishing poles which were sticks with fishing line and a hook attached (no reel, flies or lures) we took our places in the canoe, baited our hooks with pieces of raw meat, and churned up the water with our poles as instructed by Hugo so that the fish would be fooled into thinking the bait was live prey. Well, piranhas are not easily fooled. They are brilliant at removing the bait from the hook, and no matter how many times I re-baited, they would always steal it.
Hugo caught one, but it was too small and he threw it back. Then Mike caught one. It was on the small side but large enough to cook and eat. I was glad that there were no large piranhas in this part of the river for obvious reasons. Fishing is a patient sport (if it can be called a sport when you don't need skill to land the fish, only to hook it.) I am not good at things that require me to sit and wait for long periods of time. And I was getting irritated at the fish for stealing the bait. Eventually we returned with only the one fish that Mike caught. The cook fried it for dinner. Mike ate it and I had only a bite. I have to admit that piranha is a good-tasting mild white fish similar to trout, flounder, or the dourade Curtiss and I used to eat at the Blue Ribbon bistro in Brooklyn.
The next installment will be a whiny piece about my Quito adventures. Stay tuned.
More stories of the lodge at Cuyabeno:
The owners of the lodge adopted a boy who was abandoned by his mother as a baby. He is a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, beautiful child whose real name is John but whose nickname is Mowgli after the hero of Kipling's The Jungle Book.
Mowgli is eight years old, and like most eight year old boys (and I am an expert on them) is a constantly running, jumping, spinning ball of energy. He hung from the rafters at least 6 feet from the floor and dropped to the floor without sustaining any injury. He scurried up several flights of steps to the roof of the hut where there were hammocks for resting and enjoying the view. He wasn't supervised, and I feared that he might somehow fall over the railing, but he was careful enough not to. He is an affectionate child, greeting me by throwing his arms around me and attempting to teach me Spanish. He would get impatient with me if I didn't grasp what he was saying immediately, but I was surprised to find that I was actually learning some words and phrases from him. One evening I was more or less in the role of baby sitter because I was too exhausted to go for a night ride in the canoe, having hiked all day. His parents were occupied with chores and Mowgli had no one to play with. He brought me books from the pile intended for perusal by tourists. One book had beautiful color pictures of the various animals of the jungle. We looked at it together and he commented on each photo. Another book was a history of indigenous people in the area, written by an archaeologist. Mowgli directed my attention to the fact that the people in the drawings were naked (this reminded me of the scene in Catcher in the Rye where Holden Caulfield goes to the Museum of Natural History and is relieved to see that things haven't changed: the figures of the Indian women were still naked above the waist.) He insisted that we search for "las cucarachas" in the dining room, which unfortunately were not a figment of his imagination. His mother eventually called him into the kitchen to eat dinner, but not before he brought a couple of 6 packs of Oreos from the kitchen to me and insisted that I eat them.
Speaking of eating, I tasted for the first time the fruit of the cacao tree, the source of chocolate. The pendulous fruits have a hard outer shell which is red when they are unripe and banana-yellow when ripe. Mike and I split one open to reveal many large seeds which were covered with a clear gooey gel-like substance. You suck the gel off the seed and dispose of the hard nut-like interior. The gel, while deliciously sweet, does not in the least taste like chocolate. When chocolate is made, the seeds are dried in the sun, fermented, and roasted, then ground up into cocoa powder. There are further steps in the process depending on whether sugar is added and whether it is to be made into bars or liquid. I tasted an Ecuadoran chocolate
bar, which was 70% cacao and very good.
One of the scheduled activities was fishing for piranhas. When asked if I wanted to do it, I initially said no because I have mixed feelings about fishing. It seems cruel to catch a fish on a hook and then let it flop around until it suffocates. Then again, I eat fish and seafood. Also, my son and I spent many hours fishing on the lake we vacationed near on Cape Cod when Mike was the age Mowgli is now, and I could tell that Mike wanted to re-live those experiences. So I agreed to go.
Hugo, Mike and I set out in the canoe and reached a small cove where the water was relatively still. Armed with crude fishing poles which were sticks with fishing line and a hook attached (no reel, flies or lures) we took our places in the canoe, baited our hooks with pieces of raw meat, and churned up the water with our poles as instructed by Hugo so that the fish would be fooled into thinking the bait was live prey. Well, piranhas are not easily fooled. They are brilliant at removing the bait from the hook, and no matter how many times I re-baited, they would always steal it.
Hugo caught one, but it was too small and he threw it back. Then Mike caught one. It was on the small side but large enough to cook and eat. I was glad that there were no large piranhas in this part of the river for obvious reasons. Fishing is a patient sport (if it can be called a sport when you don't need skill to land the fish, only to hook it.) I am not good at things that require me to sit and wait for long periods of time. And I was getting irritated at the fish for stealing the bait. Eventually we returned with only the one fish that Mike caught. The cook fried it for dinner. Mike ate it and I had only a bite. I have to admit that piranha is a good-tasting mild white fish similar to trout, flounder, or the dourade Curtiss and I used to eat at the Blue Ribbon bistro in Brooklyn.
The next installment will be a whiny piece about my Quito adventures. Stay tuned.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Rain Forest Part II: The trip to Cuyabeno, jungle life with monkeys, birds, and boa constrictors
We arrived at Cuyabeno at ten o’clock at night after a hair-raising day full of travel snafus: our flight to Lago Agria was cancelled because the plane needed maintenance,
so we had to take the only remaining flight to another town. From there, a cab took us to Coca, from which we were supposed to take the 6:30 bus (the last bus!) which turned out to have left at 6:00 (the tour agency told us it was leaving at 6:30) When we asked how much it would cost for the cab driver to take us to Cuyabeno, he wanted $60.
It was still a good 2.5 hour drive away, so the fee was not unreasonable, especially since he had to drive right back to Coca. Luckily, there was a cash machine in Coca, and Mike was able to withdraw the cash. The cab driver drove like a racing car driver in the dark taking hairpin turns at terrifying speeds, but somehow always knowing where the speed bumps were in the road and slowing down to accommodate them. (There are no speed limits or police, and we soon discovered that all cab drivers in Ecuador drive this way.) We went through several small towns, and by small I mean 3 or 4 blocks and then you’re on the main road again. The driver had never driven as far as Cuyabeno and was not sure of the route. The signage was unhelpful and infrequent, and when we finally came to a rotary I was convinced we were going the wrong way. But as fate would have it, we eventually ended up at a junction by the river where the guide and the cook were waiting to take us by motorized canoe to the lodge at Cuyabeno, a 10 minute canoe trip away.
We tried to convince the cab driver to leave his cab at the junction and stay at the lodge with us, but he refused, insisting he had to drive back to Coca that night. He had been driving us since that afternoon and not a drop of coffee had crossed his lips. He said he never drank it and didn’t get sleepy while driving, which is a good thing because the road between Coca and Cuyabeno does not have any 24 hour McDonald’s serving bad coffee.* So we gratefully said goodbye to him and started the next leg of our journey.
A canoe trip at night on a dark, slow-moving river—-you could barely see any current, and I was relieved at the absence of rapids—-is a mystical experience, and even more so if the river runs through an Amazon rain forest. Vines like small ropes hung from the trees and brushed the water. The sound of thousands of insects and frogs filled the air that would have otherwise been silent except for the quiet low-power motor. There was the thrilling, anxiety-inducing possibility of the appearance of an anaconda or an alligator. (None appeared.) Soon we were at the slimy wooden steps leading up to a wooden terrace which led to the main lodge dining room, which was a large hut with a palm-frond thatched roof and a kitchen in back. There were maybe ten tables. Our table was neatly set and our dinner was soon served. The food was very tasty. I think our first meal was composed of fried piranha (the dreaded flesh-eating fish of the Amazon), fried plantains, and rice, followed by a delicious tropical fruit compote. In Ecuador, you’ve got all your basic starch food groups covered, plus your basic fried food groups. Throw in a little meat, corn, and some fruit for dessert, and you’ve got a meal. Green vegetables, while not unknown, are not commonly served. I had asked for vegetarian food, and they complied nicely by sautéing some green beans and giving me beans and rice with the fish (I agreed to eat seafood). At each meal we were served a juice made from a different fruit. Many of these fruits are not exported to the U.S. and are delicious.
* You can get KFC in Quito, though. Mike says they use the locally raised chickens, which are much tastier than factory-farmed birds, and when combined with that secret mix of herbs and spices with some empanadas on the side, you've got yourself a treat!
We chatted with Hugo, our guide, about plans for our hike the next day, and then walked down a long elevated board “sidewalk” (every structure was on stilts, perhaps because of flooding) to our cabanas.
Mike and I each had our own hut. The huts are like hotel rooms—-some have twin beds, others have a double bed and two twins, more like a suite. There is a private bath with a toilet, sink, and shower, but no hot water. There are shelves and tables for clothes and other items. I was surprised to see that there were no screens or glass on the windows—they were just rectangular openings in the board walls. To protect the occupant from deadly mosquitoes, spiders, and vampire bats, a pink mosquito net was draped above each bed, to be pulled down around one’s body while sleeping. I liked the mosquito net—it felt like being in a little tent without the claustrophobia.
Everything reminded me of summer camp, except that it was a lot better because there were toilets instead of latrines, and we didn’t have to play tetherball or capture the flag. The dampness was amazing—nothing ever really dried out completely, and I kept my clothing in plastic bags to protect it from the damp. Amazingly, the bedclothes stayed dry. I soon found that the “quick-dry” hiking pants, jacket, and socks that I bought at REI were not quick to dry. In fact, they never got dry at all, so every day my clothes were a little damp. I had brought two swimsuits expecting to plunge gleefully into the river at the end of every day, but in fact I only went in the water twice. I don’t like swimming anywhere I can’t see the bottom, and the thought of electric eels and piranhas nibbling at my ankles was discouraging. Mike insisted that I jump in, so I did, and what I thought was a feeble current began to drag me downriver! It took all my strength to swim against it and return to the boat dock. I washed my hair with biodegradable soap and then got out.
I had to get over my city girl high-maintenance beauty regimen. To begin with, it was absurd that I was in the jungle with magenta nail polish on my nails, and it was even more absurd that I thought I might actually style my hair with a hairdryer since there was an outlet handy. No matter what I did, my hair returned to its natural state of wavy frizz within minutes because that’s what humidity does to hair like mine! So I took to wearing it in a long braid with my bangs slicked down to one side and fastened with bobby pins. With my blue glasses and my cloth sunhat, I looked like geek of the week, but it wasn’t a goddamn beauty pageant anyway!
The next day a bird with a foolish-sounding call awoke me at 6 a.m. (I had slept so soundly that I had not been awakened by the eerie distant roar of the howler monkeys which awakened Mike.) We were going on a hike after breakfast. In preparation, I slathered every inch of exposed skin with sunblock and mosquito repellent. Then I put on my long-sleeved jacket and my trail pants. Since the jungle was wet, the lodge provided us with knee-high rubber boots which proved useful for trekking through streams (although they leaked). I put my sun hat on, and we were off: Hugo leading, Mike next, and me usually at the rear. We stopped frequently to marvel at insects, birds, monkeys, armadillo holes, termite nests and tall anthills. Hugo also showed us rainforest trees which were used by indigenous people like drums—the sound produced by striking the buttresses of the trunk were said to be heard for long distances. We also saw a fallen tree which was the source of a psychedelic drug: the bark was boiled with various other ingredients until the resulting liquid was deemed potent enough. Then, after you drank it, you would vomit (there is nothing in the world that I would rather avoid than vomiting, except maybe a 25-foot boa constrictor) but after the vomiting, you would experience an excellent high. And this is no joke: the tour agency we used actually offered hallucinogenic tours during which this beverage would be consumed. If it hadn’t been for the vomiting, I would have been tempted. Just as well—-I have already destroyed a large number of badly needed brain cells from using drugs in the 70s and 80s.
We encountered a baby boa constrictor which was about 3 feet long when extended. I like snakes when the startle factor is removed, as it was in this case because Hugo was the first to encounter it. Snakes are always at their worst when you encounter one unexpectedly. But this one was well-behaved and regarded us calmly and motionlessly (it was probably terrified) because we were obviously too large to be its prey. Its markings were beautiful and we took pictures before we treaded delicately around it and continued on our way. (The next night, the cook appeared after dinner with another baby boa which he had found in one of the empty cabanas. It was even smaller than the one we saw, and not dangerous-looking at all. It coiled itself around Mike’s arm. The thought that immediately sprang to mind was, Two baby boas! The mother must not be too far away! One of them was found in a cabana! What if the mother is waiting to get me in my cabana?) However, I was assured by the guide that a) mother boas are not nurturing and abandon their spawn soon after birth to return to the deep jungle and b) full-grown boas generally live deep in the jungle. They can grow to be anywhere between 15-25 feet long, can climb trees and swim, so there is no escaping them. A well-aimed slash with the big mean-looking machete that Hugo carried might save us. Maybe. But you can’t have these fears if you expect to have exciting jungle adventures, most of which do not involve dangerous snakes.
That first day also provided my first glimpse of monkeys in their natural habitat.
A family of little squirrel monkeys is hard to see because they inhabit the tops of very tall, very leafy trees which are usually at some distance away. Moving branches are a clue that they are there. I was very glad to have binoculars because otherwise they would have been impossible to see. They really are cute—-unfortunately, no other word describes them accurately, unless that word is “mischievous.” My childhood friend Annie had a squirrel monkey as a pet (she also had a horse and I longed to switch parents with her.) It had very unsanitary habits—-refused to be toilet trained and would leap onto the kitchen table and make tracks through the butter. Mike told me that monkeys will drop poop on you, so I kept my distance. We could hear their high-pitched chatter punctuated by the patter of fruit peels dropping to the ground as they ate.
In the next chapter: Mowgli, cacao seeds, and fishing for piranhas
so we had to take the only remaining flight to another town. From there, a cab took us to Coca, from which we were supposed to take the 6:30 bus (the last bus!) which turned out to have left at 6:00 (the tour agency told us it was leaving at 6:30) When we asked how much it would cost for the cab driver to take us to Cuyabeno, he wanted $60.
It was still a good 2.5 hour drive away, so the fee was not unreasonable, especially since he had to drive right back to Coca. Luckily, there was a cash machine in Coca, and Mike was able to withdraw the cash. The cab driver drove like a racing car driver in the dark taking hairpin turns at terrifying speeds, but somehow always knowing where the speed bumps were in the road and slowing down to accommodate them. (There are no speed limits or police, and we soon discovered that all cab drivers in Ecuador drive this way.) We went through several small towns, and by small I mean 3 or 4 blocks and then you’re on the main road again. The driver had never driven as far as Cuyabeno and was not sure of the route. The signage was unhelpful and infrequent, and when we finally came to a rotary I was convinced we were going the wrong way. But as fate would have it, we eventually ended up at a junction by the river where the guide and the cook were waiting to take us by motorized canoe to the lodge at Cuyabeno, a 10 minute canoe trip away.
We tried to convince the cab driver to leave his cab at the junction and stay at the lodge with us, but he refused, insisting he had to drive back to Coca that night. He had been driving us since that afternoon and not a drop of coffee had crossed his lips. He said he never drank it and didn’t get sleepy while driving, which is a good thing because the road between Coca and Cuyabeno does not have any 24 hour McDonald’s serving bad coffee.* So we gratefully said goodbye to him and started the next leg of our journey.
A canoe trip at night on a dark, slow-moving river—-you could barely see any current, and I was relieved at the absence of rapids—-is a mystical experience, and even more so if the river runs through an Amazon rain forest. Vines like small ropes hung from the trees and brushed the water. The sound of thousands of insects and frogs filled the air that would have otherwise been silent except for the quiet low-power motor. There was the thrilling, anxiety-inducing possibility of the appearance of an anaconda or an alligator. (None appeared.) Soon we were at the slimy wooden steps leading up to a wooden terrace which led to the main lodge dining room, which was a large hut with a palm-frond thatched roof and a kitchen in back. There were maybe ten tables. Our table was neatly set and our dinner was soon served. The food was very tasty. I think our first meal was composed of fried piranha (the dreaded flesh-eating fish of the Amazon), fried plantains, and rice, followed by a delicious tropical fruit compote. In Ecuador, you’ve got all your basic starch food groups covered, plus your basic fried food groups. Throw in a little meat, corn, and some fruit for dessert, and you’ve got a meal. Green vegetables, while not unknown, are not commonly served. I had asked for vegetarian food, and they complied nicely by sautéing some green beans and giving me beans and rice with the fish (I agreed to eat seafood). At each meal we were served a juice made from a different fruit. Many of these fruits are not exported to the U.S. and are delicious.
* You can get KFC in Quito, though. Mike says they use the locally raised chickens, which are much tastier than factory-farmed birds, and when combined with that secret mix of herbs and spices with some empanadas on the side, you've got yourself a treat!
We chatted with Hugo, our guide, about plans for our hike the next day, and then walked down a long elevated board “sidewalk” (every structure was on stilts, perhaps because of flooding) to our cabanas.
Mike and I each had our own hut. The huts are like hotel rooms—-some have twin beds, others have a double bed and two twins, more like a suite. There is a private bath with a toilet, sink, and shower, but no hot water. There are shelves and tables for clothes and other items. I was surprised to see that there were no screens or glass on the windows—they were just rectangular openings in the board walls. To protect the occupant from deadly mosquitoes, spiders, and vampire bats, a pink mosquito net was draped above each bed, to be pulled down around one’s body while sleeping. I liked the mosquito net—it felt like being in a little tent without the claustrophobia.
Everything reminded me of summer camp, except that it was a lot better because there were toilets instead of latrines, and we didn’t have to play tetherball or capture the flag. The dampness was amazing—nothing ever really dried out completely, and I kept my clothing in plastic bags to protect it from the damp. Amazingly, the bedclothes stayed dry. I soon found that the “quick-dry” hiking pants, jacket, and socks that I bought at REI were not quick to dry. In fact, they never got dry at all, so every day my clothes were a little damp. I had brought two swimsuits expecting to plunge gleefully into the river at the end of every day, but in fact I only went in the water twice. I don’t like swimming anywhere I can’t see the bottom, and the thought of electric eels and piranhas nibbling at my ankles was discouraging. Mike insisted that I jump in, so I did, and what I thought was a feeble current began to drag me downriver! It took all my strength to swim against it and return to the boat dock. I washed my hair with biodegradable soap and then got out.
I had to get over my city girl high-maintenance beauty regimen. To begin with, it was absurd that I was in the jungle with magenta nail polish on my nails, and it was even more absurd that I thought I might actually style my hair with a hairdryer since there was an outlet handy. No matter what I did, my hair returned to its natural state of wavy frizz within minutes because that’s what humidity does to hair like mine! So I took to wearing it in a long braid with my bangs slicked down to one side and fastened with bobby pins. With my blue glasses and my cloth sunhat, I looked like geek of the week, but it wasn’t a goddamn beauty pageant anyway!
The next day a bird with a foolish-sounding call awoke me at 6 a.m. (I had slept so soundly that I had not been awakened by the eerie distant roar of the howler monkeys which awakened Mike.) We were going on a hike after breakfast. In preparation, I slathered every inch of exposed skin with sunblock and mosquito repellent. Then I put on my long-sleeved jacket and my trail pants. Since the jungle was wet, the lodge provided us with knee-high rubber boots which proved useful for trekking through streams (although they leaked). I put my sun hat on, and we were off: Hugo leading, Mike next, and me usually at the rear. We stopped frequently to marvel at insects, birds, monkeys, armadillo holes, termite nests and tall anthills. Hugo also showed us rainforest trees which were used by indigenous people like drums—the sound produced by striking the buttresses of the trunk were said to be heard for long distances. We also saw a fallen tree which was the source of a psychedelic drug: the bark was boiled with various other ingredients until the resulting liquid was deemed potent enough. Then, after you drank it, you would vomit (there is nothing in the world that I would rather avoid than vomiting, except maybe a 25-foot boa constrictor) but after the vomiting, you would experience an excellent high. And this is no joke: the tour agency we used actually offered hallucinogenic tours during which this beverage would be consumed. If it hadn’t been for the vomiting, I would have been tempted. Just as well—-I have already destroyed a large number of badly needed brain cells from using drugs in the 70s and 80s.
We encountered a baby boa constrictor which was about 3 feet long when extended. I like snakes when the startle factor is removed, as it was in this case because Hugo was the first to encounter it. Snakes are always at their worst when you encounter one unexpectedly. But this one was well-behaved and regarded us calmly and motionlessly (it was probably terrified) because we were obviously too large to be its prey. Its markings were beautiful and we took pictures before we treaded delicately around it and continued on our way. (The next night, the cook appeared after dinner with another baby boa which he had found in one of the empty cabanas. It was even smaller than the one we saw, and not dangerous-looking at all. It coiled itself around Mike’s arm. The thought that immediately sprang to mind was, Two baby boas! The mother must not be too far away! One of them was found in a cabana! What if the mother is waiting to get me in my cabana?) However, I was assured by the guide that a) mother boas are not nurturing and abandon their spawn soon after birth to return to the deep jungle and b) full-grown boas generally live deep in the jungle. They can grow to be anywhere between 15-25 feet long, can climb trees and swim, so there is no escaping them. A well-aimed slash with the big mean-looking machete that Hugo carried might save us. Maybe. But you can’t have these fears if you expect to have exciting jungle adventures, most of which do not involve dangerous snakes.
That first day also provided my first glimpse of monkeys in their natural habitat.
A family of little squirrel monkeys is hard to see because they inhabit the tops of very tall, very leafy trees which are usually at some distance away. Moving branches are a clue that they are there. I was very glad to have binoculars because otherwise they would have been impossible to see. They really are cute—-unfortunately, no other word describes them accurately, unless that word is “mischievous.” My childhood friend Annie had a squirrel monkey as a pet (she also had a horse and I longed to switch parents with her.) It had very unsanitary habits—-refused to be toilet trained and would leap onto the kitchen table and make tracks through the butter. Mike told me that monkeys will drop poop on you, so I kept my distance. We could hear their high-pitched chatter punctuated by the patter of fruit peels dropping to the ground as they ate.
In the next chapter: Mowgli, cacao seeds, and fishing for piranhas
Sunday, May 22, 2011
My adventures in Ecuador part I: The Rain Forest (Jungle)
The area of eastern Ecuador known as "the jungle" is tropical rainforest rich in plant and animal species. For its size, Ecuador hosts more plant and animal species than any other country. On May 17, my son Mike and I traveled to Cuyabeno, a protected wildlife reserve. If we had traveled one hour more to the north we would have been in Colombia.
We were also not far from the border of Ecuador and Peru.
Our guide's name was Hugo and he had been leading expeditions in the forest for about 25 years. I was struck and impressed by Hugo's knowledge of flora and fauna and his good eye for seeing things that were small and camoflauged or which required skill to see, such as animal trails (he showed us the trail of a wild pig and of an armadillo, which to me just looked like leaves on the forest floor.) Also impressive was Hugo's obvious love for nature and his enthusiasm for finding things to show us. One night after dinner, we took flashlights and searched for tarantulas in the empty cabanas (thatched huts which resembled tents but had board walls and no screens on the window. More on that later.) We didn't find any that night, but we eventually found one, and I was to see a few others in various places in Ecuador before I left the country! While I am on the subject of spiders: a large, scary-looking spider took up residence on the ceiling of my cabana (luckily not above my bed) and did not move once during my entire 4 day stay. I assumed it was alive but didn't want to find out, so I didn't attempt to disturb it.
Cuyabeno has been a protected area since the late 70s and since then has been a magnet for ecotourism, a thriving field in Ecuador. The mission of ecotourism is to educate tourists about the importance of protecting endangered species by providing hikes and trips in large canoes down the small river (a tributary of the Amazon) which runs alongside the main lodge and the guest cabanas. Among the endangered species are the red macaw and the jaguar. Sadly, animals are still being caught and sold for huge amounts of money on the black market--a macaw can bring as much as $10,000. Along the river are some remote communities of indigenous peoples who have been there since before the Spanish brutally conquered them in the 1500s. Some of these communities allow tourists to come and visit. We visited one which was a 4 hour canoe trip (by motorized canoe) away from the lodge. This community now has electricity, running water, plumbing, gas stoves, and a satellite dish, but for generations people lived very simply and self-sufficiently. Now they must grow crops to sell to survive. Hugo pointed out cacao and papaya trees, which were growing alongside the corn and yucca. Chickens (the real free-range kind) were ranging freely, as were some dogs and a pet woolly monkey named Nacho who insisted on wrapping his limbs and tail around whatever part of your body he could get to and nipping you like a puppy. He stopped nipping and settled down when I spoke to him gently, and he sat contentedly on my arm as we walked into the main hut. (Just call me the Monkey Whisperer.)
In the main hut we were introduced to an old woman and an old man--the relationship between them was not clear. The old woman was pounding yucca with a large pestle in a huge wooden trough. She was making a fermented beverage out of what looked like heaps of mashed potatoes--yucca is a starchy root and a staple of Ecuadoran cuisine. We were invited to taste some yucca bread, which was like a large, hard flour tortilla.
The old man was a shaman. Usually he would dress in his traditional clothing for visiting tourists, and perhaps perform some incantations--I never did find out what he did, unfortunately--he said he was feeling ill that day and he was probably tired of performing for gringo tourists. He said he was 100 years old. I doubt if birth certificates were prevalent when he was born, and if he really was 100 he looked damn good for his age. I would have guessed that he was about 75-85. He had all his teeth and hair and looked very fit. At first, he seemed somewhat distant but warmed up to us when he realized that we were in agreement with him about the importance of saving the rainforest from the depredations of oil companies which are plundering Ecuador for oil and destroying human and animal habitat in the process. He said he had lived on that particular reservation for 60 years and had seen many species of animals decline and disappear. My son translated his Spanish for me, and I tried to express my gratitude to him in the few phrases that I know. His children and grandchildren lived in the surrounding huts, and the ground was solid clay-based mud. It rains every day here and there were large barrels set out to collect the massive amounts of rain water. It rained for about 5 minutes while we were there and the barrels rose by about 3 inches. It also rained in the canoe during our journey. We wore large ponchos but got wet anyway and Mike had to bail out the canoe. On this same day trip we
saw a gray river dolphin sticking its nose out of the water, several birds including two beautiful large herons, a woolly monkey family high in the trees along the river, a family of squirrel monkeys, also in the trees, and a three toed sloth (these are very hard to see because they hang motionless from branches in very tall trees and without binoculars they are indistinguishable from the various large dark patches of leaves.) A canoe in front of us full of tourists had spotted the sloth and called out to us.
Also along the banks of the dark, slow-moving, muddy brown river we saw a white orchid in flower with large 5 petal star shaped blooms. In the Laguna (a large lake that the river fed in and out of) were many large trees growing out of the water. Each tree was the host of several hundred oncidium orchids (I know this because I am an orchid geek and recognized the leaves even though the flowers were not in bloom.) We saw large, bright azure-blue butterflies and a flock of bats that flew across the boat when we disturbed their tree branch.
I have compiled a list of all the plants and animals (including insects) that we saw in Cuyabeno. You'll find some great photos of them if you Google search; the photos Mike and I took were not that great because you really need a telephoto lens.
Here it is:
Squirrel monkeys
Woolly monkeys
Capuchin monkeys
Black tamarind monkey
Saki monkey
Howler monkey
Three toed sloth
Gray river dolphin
Toucan
Pappagallo (blue and yellow macaw)
Parrots
Blue anis
Aninga
Heron
Kingfisher
Swallows
Red tanager
Red-capped cardinal
Crested woodpecker
Trogan (a bird Mike really wanted to see)
Bats
Turtle
Tiger heron
Baby boa constrictor (we saw 2 of them)
Frogs
Grasshoppers (over an inch long with wings that looked exactly like brown leaves)
Leaf cutter ants
Conga ants (bite is poisonous and can cause temporary paralysis)
Lemon ants (tiny ants that tasted like lemon--yes, I bravely tasted them!)
Red ants (one bit me on the hand and it felt like a bee sting--not fun!)
Wasps (one stung Mike on the arm--again, not fun! luckily the whole swarm didn't come after us!)
Termites (in enormous nests)
Morfo butterfly (bright blue)
Swallowtail butterfly
Worker ants
Orapendalas (a bird with a funny cry which awakened me at 6 every morning)
Cacique (a bird that makes a nest like a bag hanging from a tree branch)
Hoatzin (a prehistoric bird, I was told)
Vultures
Piranhas (we went fishing for them and ate them--more on that later!)
Chachalaca (bird)
Some BIGASS spiders
Social spiders (a community of small spiders which spin a large tent-like web)
Tarantulas
Ghost orchid (I'm not sure--it really looked like pics I have seen of them--they are rare, though, so maybe not)
White orchid not sure what kind
Oncidium orchids
Pet wild parrot owned by lodge owners
I'm going to end this post but will write much, much more in days to come, so as Ira Glass says, "Stay with us!"
We were also not far from the border of Ecuador and Peru.
Our guide's name was Hugo and he had been leading expeditions in the forest for about 25 years. I was struck and impressed by Hugo's knowledge of flora and fauna and his good eye for seeing things that were small and camoflauged or which required skill to see, such as animal trails (he showed us the trail of a wild pig and of an armadillo, which to me just looked like leaves on the forest floor.) Also impressive was Hugo's obvious love for nature and his enthusiasm for finding things to show us. One night after dinner, we took flashlights and searched for tarantulas in the empty cabanas (thatched huts which resembled tents but had board walls and no screens on the window. More on that later.) We didn't find any that night, but we eventually found one, and I was to see a few others in various places in Ecuador before I left the country! While I am on the subject of spiders: a large, scary-looking spider took up residence on the ceiling of my cabana (luckily not above my bed) and did not move once during my entire 4 day stay. I assumed it was alive but didn't want to find out, so I didn't attempt to disturb it.
Cuyabeno has been a protected area since the late 70s and since then has been a magnet for ecotourism, a thriving field in Ecuador. The mission of ecotourism is to educate tourists about the importance of protecting endangered species by providing hikes and trips in large canoes down the small river (a tributary of the Amazon) which runs alongside the main lodge and the guest cabanas. Among the endangered species are the red macaw and the jaguar. Sadly, animals are still being caught and sold for huge amounts of money on the black market--a macaw can bring as much as $10,000. Along the river are some remote communities of indigenous peoples who have been there since before the Spanish brutally conquered them in the 1500s. Some of these communities allow tourists to come and visit. We visited one which was a 4 hour canoe trip (by motorized canoe) away from the lodge. This community now has electricity, running water, plumbing, gas stoves, and a satellite dish, but for generations people lived very simply and self-sufficiently. Now they must grow crops to sell to survive. Hugo pointed out cacao and papaya trees, which were growing alongside the corn and yucca. Chickens (the real free-range kind) were ranging freely, as were some dogs and a pet woolly monkey named Nacho who insisted on wrapping his limbs and tail around whatever part of your body he could get to and nipping you like a puppy. He stopped nipping and settled down when I spoke to him gently, and he sat contentedly on my arm as we walked into the main hut. (Just call me the Monkey Whisperer.)
In the main hut we were introduced to an old woman and an old man--the relationship between them was not clear. The old woman was pounding yucca with a large pestle in a huge wooden trough. She was making a fermented beverage out of what looked like heaps of mashed potatoes--yucca is a starchy root and a staple of Ecuadoran cuisine. We were invited to taste some yucca bread, which was like a large, hard flour tortilla.
The old man was a shaman. Usually he would dress in his traditional clothing for visiting tourists, and perhaps perform some incantations--I never did find out what he did, unfortunately--he said he was feeling ill that day and he was probably tired of performing for gringo tourists. He said he was 100 years old. I doubt if birth certificates were prevalent when he was born, and if he really was 100 he looked damn good for his age. I would have guessed that he was about 75-85. He had all his teeth and hair and looked very fit. At first, he seemed somewhat distant but warmed up to us when he realized that we were in agreement with him about the importance of saving the rainforest from the depredations of oil companies which are plundering Ecuador for oil and destroying human and animal habitat in the process. He said he had lived on that particular reservation for 60 years and had seen many species of animals decline and disappear. My son translated his Spanish for me, and I tried to express my gratitude to him in the few phrases that I know. His children and grandchildren lived in the surrounding huts, and the ground was solid clay-based mud. It rains every day here and there were large barrels set out to collect the massive amounts of rain water. It rained for about 5 minutes while we were there and the barrels rose by about 3 inches. It also rained in the canoe during our journey. We wore large ponchos but got wet anyway and Mike had to bail out the canoe. On this same day trip we
saw a gray river dolphin sticking its nose out of the water, several birds including two beautiful large herons, a woolly monkey family high in the trees along the river, a family of squirrel monkeys, also in the trees, and a three toed sloth (these are very hard to see because they hang motionless from branches in very tall trees and without binoculars they are indistinguishable from the various large dark patches of leaves.) A canoe in front of us full of tourists had spotted the sloth and called out to us.
Also along the banks of the dark, slow-moving, muddy brown river we saw a white orchid in flower with large 5 petal star shaped blooms. In the Laguna (a large lake that the river fed in and out of) were many large trees growing out of the water. Each tree was the host of several hundred oncidium orchids (I know this because I am an orchid geek and recognized the leaves even though the flowers were not in bloom.) We saw large, bright azure-blue butterflies and a flock of bats that flew across the boat when we disturbed their tree branch.
I have compiled a list of all the plants and animals (including insects) that we saw in Cuyabeno. You'll find some great photos of them if you Google search; the photos Mike and I took were not that great because you really need a telephoto lens.
Here it is:
Squirrel monkeys
Woolly monkeys
Capuchin monkeys
Black tamarind monkey
Saki monkey
Howler monkey
Three toed sloth
Gray river dolphin
Toucan
Pappagallo (blue and yellow macaw)
Parrots
Blue anis
Aninga
Heron
Kingfisher
Swallows
Red tanager
Red-capped cardinal
Crested woodpecker
Trogan (a bird Mike really wanted to see)
Bats
Turtle
Tiger heron
Baby boa constrictor (we saw 2 of them)
Frogs
Grasshoppers (over an inch long with wings that looked exactly like brown leaves)
Leaf cutter ants
Conga ants (bite is poisonous and can cause temporary paralysis)
Lemon ants (tiny ants that tasted like lemon--yes, I bravely tasted them!)
Red ants (one bit me on the hand and it felt like a bee sting--not fun!)
Wasps (one stung Mike on the arm--again, not fun! luckily the whole swarm didn't come after us!)
Termites (in enormous nests)
Morfo butterfly (bright blue)
Swallowtail butterfly
Worker ants
Orapendalas (a bird with a funny cry which awakened me at 6 every morning)
Cacique (a bird that makes a nest like a bag hanging from a tree branch)
Hoatzin (a prehistoric bird, I was told)
Vultures
Piranhas (we went fishing for them and ate them--more on that later!)
Chachalaca (bird)
Some BIGASS spiders
Social spiders (a community of small spiders which spin a large tent-like web)
Tarantulas
Ghost orchid (I'm not sure--it really looked like pics I have seen of them--they are rare, though, so maybe not)
White orchid not sure what kind
Oncidium orchids
Pet wild parrot owned by lodge owners
I'm going to end this post but will write much, much more in days to come, so as Ira Glass says, "Stay with us!"
Friday, May 6, 2011
Hey, I killed bin Laden! What more do you want?
I'm having trouble understanding how the President could have the stones to order a daring Special Ops search and destroy mission to take out Osama bin Laden--this after being the worst wimp imaginable during the health care debate and now showing signs of knuckling under to the Repigs when the budget bill is finally passed. After the constant threat of government shutdown for weeks, they apparently decided that shutting it down would not have the dramatic effect they wanted. Then, the news cycle having abandoned the fallout in Japan and the devastation of monster tornadoes in the U.S. South, it took up the increasingly annoying "why doesn't Obama produce his birth certificate" being trumpeted by Trump in his most boorish and self-aggrandizing manner.
Apparently even a President can't get hold of his "long form" birth certificate (who knew they even existed?) without a Papal dispensation. But it was finally obtained and displayed in all its glory, whereupon the Birthers all screamed that it was a fake. Everyone knows that the CIA can create any document you want! Then, a miracle occurred.
President Obama gave the order to have Osama bin Laden killed. The government knew where he was holed up and the Navy Seals were sent to do what they do best. They shot an unarmed bin Laden in the head, according to some reports in view of his wife and daughter. Four other men were killed in the raid, but not one American! This was Obama's moment of glory, and for once he milked it and took advantage of the spike in popularity that this event precipitated. 70% of the U.S. people now believe Obama walks on water. There was the solemn ceremony at Ground Zero with the 9/11 survivors at which the Master Speechmaker and Master of Gravitas did not make a speech because there are no words to describe the horror of what occurred that day almost 10 years ago. I have to admit that it was classy of him to pass up a golden opportunity to underline his recent achievement. Problem is, the wingnuts lost no time in giving the torture that occurred under GW Bush the credit for killing bin Laden, not Obama. And now we have "Deathers" (whom I suspect to be the same folks as the Birthers) who are saying that he's not really dead, and if he is, Obama can't take the credit because it was Bush's waterboarding that supplied the info. (Bush was invited to the Ground Zero ceremony but declined the invitation--the stinking little weasel knows very well that he would appear to be even more of a stinking little weasel alongside Obama.) The indisputable fact that Bush was the cause of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon seems to have gotten lost in all the fanfare. In fact, Bush is an even bigger mass murderer than bin Laden if you count the thousands who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in the course of Bush's wars which never would have been started if Bush were not in the White House. And unlike bin Laden, Bush will never be the recipient of the harsh justice he deserves because Obama lacks the political will to pursue him, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Crime Family, as Mike Malloy calls it.
The fake news media are still having a field day 5 days later. Should the grisly photo of bin Laden with his skull blown off be published for all to see? "No drama Obama" predictably decided against it, even though there are good arguments on both sides of this issue. Strangely enough, Americans don't trust their government enough to take their word for it that bin Laden is really dead. Hey, can we see those DNA test results? Supposedly certain members of Congress have been discreetly shown the photo. We are supposed to believe them, I guess. But when you realize that pics can be easily photoshopped, there would be no way of knowing if an "official" photo was really what it claimed to be.
I don't want to see it.
What gets me is that
a) the Pakistani government undoubtedly knew that bin Laden was holed up in this compound for years and never told us after receiving billions in aid from the U.S.
b) that same government is now chastising Obama for having bin Laden killed
c) al Qaeda and the Taliban have acknowledged the death of their leader and are calling him a martyr. (Isn't that as good as proof that he's dead?)
d) We are still dicking around in Afghanistan when we could be getting out of there NOW since there is no more mission there. (Actually, we have suspected for years that b.L. was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and thousands of lives have been sacrificed in the name of destroying the Taliban, which no military venture can do.)
e) And what exactly is our mission in Iraq?
I am relieved that b.L. is dead. Had he been captured, there would have been an endless circus surrounding his trial, and every crazy terrorist organization in the world would be rallying around him and grandstanding. Had he been buried on land, they would have erected a shrine at the gravesite where all the criminally insane acolytes could gather. I am against the death penalty for ordinary individuals and I do not exult in anyone's death, no matter how heinous their crimes. But I would not have hesitated to kill Hitler if I had the opportunity, and b.L. falls into the Hitler category of Individuals Extremely Dangerous to Humanity who must be put down like rabid dogs to prevent the death and suffering of thousands, even millions. A long prison sentence simply allows a worshipful cult to spring up around the monster, and there is always the possibility that the laws will change and he will be released at some time in the future. We can't take that chance.
My friend Peter Gluck saw the towers burst into flames and was physically ill and permanently traumatized by the spectacle. Others saw people jumping from the burning skyscrapers. It was bad enough to see the same shot repeated endlessly on TV for days and weeks until it burned itself into your brain. Curtiss and I went to Ground Zero in Oct. or Nov. of that year and you could still smell the mixture of plastic, chemicals, ashes, and burned flesh in the air. On the fences surrounding the footprint of the Towers were posters with names and photos of the missing loved ones who would never be found. To this day when I drive across the Manhattan Bridge and see the bare space where the Towers once stood, tears come to my eyes and a heartsick feeling overwhelms me. Yes, it was Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda's plot, but George Bush bears the responsibility for allowing it to happen. I cannot and will not forgive him.
Apparently even a President can't get hold of his "long form" birth certificate (who knew they even existed?) without a Papal dispensation. But it was finally obtained and displayed in all its glory, whereupon the Birthers all screamed that it was a fake. Everyone knows that the CIA can create any document you want! Then, a miracle occurred.
President Obama gave the order to have Osama bin Laden killed. The government knew where he was holed up and the Navy Seals were sent to do what they do best. They shot an unarmed bin Laden in the head, according to some reports in view of his wife and daughter. Four other men were killed in the raid, but not one American! This was Obama's moment of glory, and for once he milked it and took advantage of the spike in popularity that this event precipitated. 70% of the U.S. people now believe Obama walks on water. There was the solemn ceremony at Ground Zero with the 9/11 survivors at which the Master Speechmaker and Master of Gravitas did not make a speech because there are no words to describe the horror of what occurred that day almost 10 years ago. I have to admit that it was classy of him to pass up a golden opportunity to underline his recent achievement. Problem is, the wingnuts lost no time in giving the torture that occurred under GW Bush the credit for killing bin Laden, not Obama. And now we have "Deathers" (whom I suspect to be the same folks as the Birthers) who are saying that he's not really dead, and if he is, Obama can't take the credit because it was Bush's waterboarding that supplied the info. (Bush was invited to the Ground Zero ceremony but declined the invitation--the stinking little weasel knows very well that he would appear to be even more of a stinking little weasel alongside Obama.) The indisputable fact that Bush was the cause of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon seems to have gotten lost in all the fanfare. In fact, Bush is an even bigger mass murderer than bin Laden if you count the thousands who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in the course of Bush's wars which never would have been started if Bush were not in the White House. And unlike bin Laden, Bush will never be the recipient of the harsh justice he deserves because Obama lacks the political will to pursue him, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Crime Family, as Mike Malloy calls it.
The fake news media are still having a field day 5 days later. Should the grisly photo of bin Laden with his skull blown off be published for all to see? "No drama Obama" predictably decided against it, even though there are good arguments on both sides of this issue. Strangely enough, Americans don't trust their government enough to take their word for it that bin Laden is really dead. Hey, can we see those DNA test results? Supposedly certain members of Congress have been discreetly shown the photo. We are supposed to believe them, I guess. But when you realize that pics can be easily photoshopped, there would be no way of knowing if an "official" photo was really what it claimed to be.
I don't want to see it.
What gets me is that
a) the Pakistani government undoubtedly knew that bin Laden was holed up in this compound for years and never told us after receiving billions in aid from the U.S.
b) that same government is now chastising Obama for having bin Laden killed
c) al Qaeda and the Taliban have acknowledged the death of their leader and are calling him a martyr. (Isn't that as good as proof that he's dead?)
d) We are still dicking around in Afghanistan when we could be getting out of there NOW since there is no more mission there. (Actually, we have suspected for years that b.L. was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and thousands of lives have been sacrificed in the name of destroying the Taliban, which no military venture can do.)
e) And what exactly is our mission in Iraq?
I am relieved that b.L. is dead. Had he been captured, there would have been an endless circus surrounding his trial, and every crazy terrorist organization in the world would be rallying around him and grandstanding. Had he been buried on land, they would have erected a shrine at the gravesite where all the criminally insane acolytes could gather. I am against the death penalty for ordinary individuals and I do not exult in anyone's death, no matter how heinous their crimes. But I would not have hesitated to kill Hitler if I had the opportunity, and b.L. falls into the Hitler category of Individuals Extremely Dangerous to Humanity who must be put down like rabid dogs to prevent the death and suffering of thousands, even millions. A long prison sentence simply allows a worshipful cult to spring up around the monster, and there is always the possibility that the laws will change and he will be released at some time in the future. We can't take that chance.
My friend Peter Gluck saw the towers burst into flames and was physically ill and permanently traumatized by the spectacle. Others saw people jumping from the burning skyscrapers. It was bad enough to see the same shot repeated endlessly on TV for days and weeks until it burned itself into your brain. Curtiss and I went to Ground Zero in Oct. or Nov. of that year and you could still smell the mixture of plastic, chemicals, ashes, and burned flesh in the air. On the fences surrounding the footprint of the Towers were posters with names and photos of the missing loved ones who would never be found. To this day when I drive across the Manhattan Bridge and see the bare space where the Towers once stood, tears come to my eyes and a heartsick feeling overwhelms me. Yes, it was Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda's plot, but George Bush bears the responsibility for allowing it to happen. I cannot and will not forgive him.
Another post in 2011
I'm just not a blogger.
I try to be, but I can never think of anything to blog about.
Oh, I have something! I'll be going to Ecuador to visit my son on May 10.
I've never been South of the border and I only know a few words of Spanish! Eek.
It will be SuzCC's big adventure. If PeeWee can have one, I can.
It will take me 2 flights and 12 hours to get there. Longer than to Europe and you can't get a direct flight. I will be touring the jungle (is that different from the rain forest?) for several days and will have to take anti-malaria medicine before I leave. To get my money's worth, I am demanding to see at least one monkey, parrot, snake, tarantula, and wild orchid.
More later.
I try to be, but I can never think of anything to blog about.
Oh, I have something! I'll be going to Ecuador to visit my son on May 10.
I've never been South of the border and I only know a few words of Spanish! Eek.
It will be SuzCC's big adventure. If PeeWee can have one, I can.
It will take me 2 flights and 12 hours to get there. Longer than to Europe and you can't get a direct flight. I will be touring the jungle (is that different from the rain forest?) for several days and will have to take anti-malaria medicine before I leave. To get my money's worth, I am demanding to see at least one monkey, parrot, snake, tarantula, and wild orchid.
More later.
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