Day 14 - Jungle Treatment

Screw the NHS, I have Chiki and botanists.

I'm told that certain leaflets and sap from a special tree has healing properties. Pedro, who studies trees and plants, went out along with Hayley and Derio (an ex hunter, and jungle expert who is visiting Pie) to find some. 

Their efforts were a success and they brought back a few different plants that apparently help to reduce swelling and have some healing properties for the bone too. Chiki, one of the locals who work here also does a little Doctroring on the side, apparently. He attended to my foot and reassured me it wasn’t broken or dislocated, it was likely to be muscular; torn ligament, ripped tendon, or something of that sort. The tree sap that he had brought might not be as appropriate as it's meant to heal joints, but it will still help with the healing and swelling, he told me, so it's worth a shot. 

He brought out a large leaf and a torn up old t shirt with some powder on it, after massaging my foot for a while and trying to locate where the pain/damage was he then started to mix in the sap of a tree in with the powder before then evenly spreading it onto the rag. He then put it on my foot and instructed me to not move for 20 minutes while it dries; this stuff was seriously sticky, we didn't want to spread it all around the room, so I remained as still as I could. I will keep this on my foot until it eventually falls off, I cannot get it wet (No showers!), and I just have to leave it alone and do its thing. 

Pat seems to be enjoying me in pain. 

The treatment is almost ready to be put on.

The final steps of moulding the treatment onto the ankle

It was great to experience a treatment that has been part of the amazons history and heritage for centuries. It's also great to have the experience and knowledge of the locals to attend to my injury, they are very caring here - I cannot be more grateful to Chiki and the rest of the team here for being so wonderful. It’ll be interesting to see if it actually helps my ankle at all, the jungle is so majestic and magical that I’d love to say that it helped heal me in my time of need. 

Even though I feel very useless and disconnected to the jungle right now, I do hope that in some way this will not only help me with my recovery but also make me feel part of my surroundings again... Here's to hope.

Fx

Day 11 - Ride the Rio

So today, a new group with a different friend of Las Piedras,  now known as the "yoga people", will arrive at site. We’ve been told by one of the guys that’s helping organise their stay that we basically have to disappear. They are coming for a tranquil zen stay, so having a bunch of unsocialised scientists isn't cool. We’ve been moved to a small campsite (that the workers built just this week) not too far from the lodge. We had to be packed and out of our rooms by mid morning so that there was plenty of time to sort the place out before their arrival.  We were told “You guys can’t be here when they arrive”. So basically, fuck off and be invisible. I told him that my invisibility coat was still in the post, but I'll do my best. It hasn’t been so helpful that we’ve been given wrong/differing information from different people - again, the difficulties with communications in the jungle showing it's face again. We were packed to leave yesterday, then told we could have an extra night in the room as they weren’t arriving til mid morning. We didn't complain, as this was great - we had one last sleep in a room, but a little annoying as everything was now already packed, it was just prolonging the situation. We all enjoyed the last of the freedom we had around the lodge; making the most of tables, a roof, easy access to toilet/showers, the kitchen for tea, and a socialising area with comfy seats/hammocks that we all become so familiar with. 

The new campsite, "Platforms" pic by Marcus Rhodes

Inside the campsite, pic my Marcus Rhodes

To get away from the hustle, bustle and stress from the whole thing, me, Zoe, Tom and Harry went with one of the workers, Melo, to deliver a message for someone at Arcc. Arcc is another field site, which is about a three and a half hour boat ride up river. A few tourists made the journey a few days ago and were lucky enough to see a Jaguar on a beach on the river bank, so we were keen to go check it out and see if luck was on our side....

Melo

Looking fabulous in the Amazon

Fresh brazil nut

Digging in to the delicious brazil nut

Goofs

Goof

Julia butterfly that drinks salt from sweat, also decided to poo on me. Lovely. 

Tom

Zoe

Tom the Explorer

We fell at the first hurdle; the boat we were travelling in had a motor that sounded like a fucking chainsaw (a different boat to the one that the other tourists used the other day). It was SO loud, so unless there was a deaf big cat out there that had no idea we were coming, we weren’t likely to see one. And we didn’t. We did however see some tracks, which were most likely a big cat. We couldn’t see the tracks well enough so couldn’t make out what kind of mammal it was but it looked like it could have been a puma/jaguar track – and they were so fresh, seems like this cat was unfortunately, not deaf. What we did see what some turtles, lots of birds and a Caiman though!

An Amazonian beauty - butterflies drinking turtles tears

Once we got to arc, our butts hurt and the sun had gotten to us – today was particularly hot and being on a boat with no cover didn’t help. We were told we had half an hour to chill at Arcc and then we were off again. We had just enough time to see the lake at Arc and the accommodation there, which was fancy!

Lake at Arcc

We made it back to the port at 3pm, but Melo, who was driving, didn’t actually come back ‘til 4pm. Not knowing where he was meant we hung around near the boat waiting for him, where there were hungry sand flies and mosquitoes, so we all got bitten to shit. Sandflies are quickly becoming my #2 enemy after Mozzies. But, in return, we were travelling back through dusk, and it was so beautiful. It felt like the stress and frustration that’s been consuming us the last couple of days just disappeared along with the sunset. I’ve never seen so many colours in one sunset, purples, pinks, blues, yellows, oranges, and red. It was incredible. The sheer beauty of the rainforest never ceases to amaze me, it just reinforces the idea that we need to protect and preserve this incredible place. 

                        

                   

When we got back it was dark, and we still had to put sheets on our beds and hang up our mosquito nets at the new campsite. This was harder than it felt it should be, but in the middle of the dark jungle, bugs everywhere, flying into your face thanks to the head light, ants and other bugs all over the bed, and trying to hang nets on sticks that were definitely not designed around mosquito nets - it was a challenge, I'll give ya that. It turns out that the yoga group didn't actually arrive in the morning, but they passed our campsite at around 8pm "glad we're not staying there", we giggled as we overheard one of them. "This'll be a fun few days" said a scientist! 

It'll be interesting to see how we all sleep tonight... Let's hope no bullet ants fit through the gaps of the bed. Eeek.

Fx

Day 9 - Master of the machete

Master of the machete, slave to the mosquito. 

It feels a little unsettling at camp at the moment. Something’s in the air and I can't put my finger on it. Some of the guys went back to Puerto Maldonado today, but there was an issue with gas and they weren’t sure how far the boat would actually get. We can only assume that they managed to sort everything and they got back to Puerto in good time. There’s a big lack of communication here. Being in the jungle with no form of communication other than a radio that the staff operate - which sounds a lot more like aliens are trying to contacting us, the signal is obviously pretty dodgy - so communication between us and the real world is pretty challenging. It's like Chinese whisper, jungle style.

I was planning to go back today to sort out some flight details and to speak to family but one of the girls fell ill so she was supposed to go instead, so I mentally prepared to stay here at Pie. Then this morning she felt better, so the space was there but I had made arrangements here in the jungle and promised one of the guys that I’d help him cut a new trail for his work, so I ended up staying. 

Me, Brian, Tom and Harry set off at around Noon to meet Henry at his new trail – I was told, in hindsight, that I should have read the signs that it wasn't going to be an easy day "you were going out with 4 guys, Ffion. Go figure!" It was lucky I did all that machete/zombie training the other day, I was prepared.

It took us about 45-60 minutes to get to the trail. We knew when we hit off trail, we had to pass through so many swamps and huge tree trunks and rivers and just plain "bad" jungle, it was an effort just to find Henry. "I think Henry is secretly super mario, how does he get over this shit" said Brian, "yeah, how the hell does he do this!" I thought, as I almost lost a boot in the river. 

When we finally got to him, the hard work began. The two at the front cut the high branches and began the moulding of the trail (Brian and Henry), third back (Tom) cut waist high and formed the width of the trail, and then the two in the back (me and Harry) had to clear the whole bottom of trail and get any big tree stumps out the ground and form a more finished clean trail that was safe-ish. We were doing this for about 4 or 5 hours with just water breaks to keep us hydrated in the blazing heat. I can honestly say I have never, ever been that drenched, and I’m not talking about swamp wet here, I was sweating like tomorrow was already destroyed and all existence had ceased so every pore was excreting as much water as possible.

I was even sweating off my insect repellent, which wasn’t great when we were surrounded by swarms of hundreds if not thousands of mosquitoes. All of a sudden Harry smacked me in the face, "What the hell are you doing?!", "There was a mozzie on your nose, I got it though." Thanks Harry. (I still had a big red spot form her though, those things are sneaky!)

We were also attacked by fire ants, I now understand fully where they got their name from, my god do they burn. One fell down my top and bit my right under my boob and another behind my ear, the little shits! Harry and Tom were also attacked by them, by now the heat and vicious wildlife were starting to take their toll on us. Harry also managed to hit himself in the shin with his machete, I played mum and addressed to his wound even though he protested. Going back into a swamp with a deep fresh wound isn't something I wanted him to do. So he had no choice. Iodine and a bandage sorted it out, but his once fresh white socks, had a telling horror story now covered in blood. 

By the time we got back it was dark and almost time for dinner, a quick yoga session and a cold shower before food was very welcomed. I'll be sore tomorrow...

Fx