Rambling in Peru, Days 8 and 9: Attack of the Flying Ants
By Tom Barton | November 20, 2009 | Peru
In some Savannah neighborhoods, you slowly learn the difference between the sounds of firecrackers and serious gunplay and whether to dial 911.
In the Amazon region of South America, you learn the same thing about monkeys. Except the learning curve is much faster.
About 5 a.m., which is when it starts getting light in the rain forest of southeast Peru, I heard a sound outside my room at the Posada Amazonas lodge, where our group of editors from the International Reporting Project is staying. It sounded like a cross between a tornado and the whine of a jet engine.
I later asked our guide, Gilbert Arrostio, who rises every morning at the insane hour of 4:30 a.m., to identify the sound. I figured it had to be some kind of weird anomaly, like a drug-running pilot hugging the tree tops on the way to a remote airstrip in the jungle or Yoko Ono on a comeback trail.
“Nope,” Arrostio said. “Howler monkeys. That’s how they mark their territory.”
It makes sense. What other howler monkey – or any primate, for that matter – would choose to live in the same neck of the woods as a high-decibel windbag who goes ape (sorry) before breakfast every day?
The Amazon forest is a surprisingly noisy place between sundown and sunup. Once darkness settles, it’s as if someone turned up the volume on a knob behind a rubber tree. I’ve been camping a few times, so I know the woods aren’t silent. But they aren’t cackling either. Here, it’s as if much of the rain forest becomes a giant talk show, with everyone blabbing at once like The View. There’s screeching, hooting, howling, chirping, clicking, fluttering, hissing and whistling. And that’s just from under my bed (The room I’m in has three walls; the fourth is wide open all the way to Brazil.)
One day, it rained here. Hard. That’s why they call it the rain forest. Instead of going by boat to visit the Infierno community, center of the local indigenous people who are partners in running this lodge on the Tambopata River, local officials came to visit us. We sat outside on chairs on a covered deck at the lodge, with the rain spattering around us. But the conversation quickly became a scene out of “Attack of the Flying Ants.” Actually, they were termites that looked like ants. During the session, a cloud of these winged insects enveloped us, apparently looking for soft wood to munch on. For some reason, they seemed to be attracted to my head.
The diversity of wildlife here is incredible, in part because Peru itself is a diverse country with a desert-like coast, high mountains and a lush rainforest. There are habitats here for much of the animal and plant kingdoms, except for perhaps Paris Hilton.
There’s even a species that’s similar to political advisers -- poison dart frogs.
One morning, Gilbert was leading a few of us back through the woods to the lodge when he froze. He pointed silently at a leafy spot on the ground to our right. I couldn’t see anything odd, other than a clump of wet leaves and sticks. Then we saw it – bright, neon green spots with a small black frog around them.
Call me a weenie. But I normally make it point to avoid poisonous things that spontaneously move, especially those whose skin secretions were once used by the indigenous people to coat spear points. But prudent avoidance is difficult when you can’t see what you’re supposed to steer clear of, like relatives who sell insurance.
I handed my camera to Gilbert, who snapped a photo while balancing on one leg over the frog. I gladly would have gotten the picture myself but I was too busy scratching a termite looking for lunch.
(Tom Barton is is with the Savannah Morning News and is in Peru on an IRP Gatekeeper Editors trip organized by the International Reporting Project.)
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