Punta Sal / Tumbes Mangroves

Punta Sal is a beach a couple of hours south of the border with Ecuador, over 1 hour south of a town called Tumbes and over 3 hours north of Mariza's hometown of Piura.






The house house we rented sits right on the beach, with basic, airy rooms around an open terrace facing the Pacific. In the morning, the sky is filled with frigate birds coming in from the sea (perhaps using the giant cel tower up on the hill as a landmark?). The waves are skimmed by flocks of pelicans and the sand is alive with hockey-puck sized red crabs that skitter around, rolling the sand into thousands of little balls the size of peas. When approached, the crabs dart down into holes they have tunneled in the sand. The water in front of the house is rocky, but 5 minutes up the beach is nice area. The water is warm and pleasing and, unlike the many other tropical beaches, here are actually waves, perfectly calibrated to be fun but not threatening to our kids. This part of the beach is in front of the Punta Sal Hotel where they seem unconcerned that we might be sitting at one of their umbrellas or coming in to the bar or restaurant.



Carter and Julito immediately jumped into their frenetic, happy beach relationship. Keeping them immersed in enough sun block was a struggle for they seemed to have no limits to how long they could roll in the waves. There was sand to build with, snails to dig up, once a dead puffer fish even washed up. Julio found a plastic bottle at the water line that was an ecosystem unto itself, with barnacles, anemones, even a small crab. The house has a "jacuzzi" (not technically, having no heater and no need for one); so the boys had plenty of options for water play. By evening, slightly burnt and with puffy eyes, the two would dwindle down like candles until someone would take pity on them and put them to bed.


Juanita's services come with the house, she sweeps away the unrelenting sand and helped Mariza with meals. Juanita was tense the first couple days as we dealt with the owners because the refrigerator wasn't functioning properly. I think she thought she would be blamed; but it all worked out in the end…though we did lose a few sensitive items to spoilage before the new fridge showed up. There is not internet, so we went over to the hotel a few times for the wireless. Jen was also ringleader a couple of times, leading the kids to the hotel pool. Time on the terraza is relaxing, with games of Bananagrams or Mexican Train. Jennifer, Julio, Maureen and Julito all left on Monday, returning to Lima.

As they left, Farnaz, Paul, Carter and I departed in the other direction, taking a taxi 1.5 hours north through Tumbes to the mangrove swamps. The ecosystem is remarkable as two large rivers flow into the Gulf of Guayaquil, pouring fresh water on either side of the mouth of the mangrove area. The tides push and pull the waters, creating an 80% salt water mix for the mangrove area. We arranged for a boat at Puerto Pizzaro (so named because it is this area that Pizzaro used as his landing point for the conquest of Peru). While boarding our boat, a man on the dock made a point of telling us, even illustrating with a pen on his hand, that we had chosen well, arriving just in time for highest tide of the year. The boat motored out past some little shacks set up to serve families that come to spend the day, though the tide meant there was very little left of the usual sandy beach. We saw a couple of birds on the way (e.g. a very colorful kingfisher), but we didn't go far before reaching a patch of mangrove that thousands of birds agree upon as the place to nest. The boat sidled right up to the branches as the sound and smell washed over us. Pelicans in the hundreds, frigate birds in the hundreds, but also several other types. It was not just Farnaz, the true bird lover of the group, who was impressed. There were ibises, which the boatman called "crabbers" (and indeed, their long curved bills would be perfect for pulling little red crabs out of their sand holes). There were several kinds of heron (striated, tri-colored, little blue, yellow-crowned), none showing any fear of our proximity. We could have stolen little green or blue eggs if we wanted to. We had paid a little bit extra to also see the crocodiles, not really knowing what to expect. We pulled up at a landing and feared the worst; it appeared to be a horrible little zoo cynically set up for tourists. But no, it's actually a breeding program that rears and releases crocodiles into the river Tumbes. Carter and Paul took turns holding a juvenile, while Farnaz was more interested in the fact that off to the side was a new bird to add to her life list. The sun was setting and we had a pretty little ride back to the dock where our taxi man was waiting.





Prologue: Getting to Punta Sal (and yes, I know prologues usually go first)
The week prior to our beach vacation I managed to get all backed up on a project, forcing myself to stay up all night. I never worry too much about the 3 or 4 times per year that this happens, it seems a small price to pay for the converse privilege I enjoy…being able to mold my hours to my liking. This all-nighter, however, my eyes started to give out around 4am, literally blurring over with goop. I pushed on through, with the result being that for a week my eye gooped themselves every night, and only a week later were not glued shut upon awakening. In fact, I got a sore throat, my nose developed strange pimples, and my whole body seemed to rebel; perhaps rightfully so.

We left on Friday afternoon, needing 2 taxis to get all of us to the airport. Jen, Carter and I, Farnaz and Paul, and Mariza. Julio, Maureen and Julito were already up at the rental house in Punta Sal. The flight was uneventful, but when we arrived at the Piura airport we discovered 2 different vans waiting for us. Jennifer had misunderstood a text from Maureen, hence the double-booking. All our luggage was already up on one, so we apologized profusely to the other guys and gave them some compensation. They complained and we compensated them further. So it was not received well when one of the other guys, the chosen ones, complained that the flight was an hour later than he thought. This was all foreshadowing for the odyssey yet to come.

Piura is not the closest airport, being more than 3 hours away, but it was considerably cheaper than going through the closer town of Tumbes. We needed to buy groceries in Piura, which made our driver grumpy (even though it was part of the contract), and he refused to take Jen on a small errand while the rest of us loaded up on food and drink. It was dark, so we go none of the scenery as we drove north in the dark, arriving in Punta Sal around 12:45am. We were not yet at the house, however, and through a combination of factors, it took 45 minutes of confusion before we found the place. The driver looked at my map and said "OK" but it didn't seem right. By the end, I was sure that my grasp of where to go was better than his and I found myself giving him direct orders. Finally, after asking many people, we were on the right road and in front of the final security gate. When no vigilante came to our calls, I clambered up the embankment and the wall, yelling "Señor!" over and over into the night. A groggy guy eventually let us in; meanwhile, my voice was just about gone and my patience totally gone. The sound of rolling waves as we unloaded the van promised better things for the next day.

Epilogue: Getting Back to Piura
For Jennifer, Julio, Maureen and Julito, another bizarre taxi experience during their return to Piura. The dispatchers had made a scheduling error and were trying to have our folks switch vans midstream. Maureen, in a rage, literally sequestered the driver's cel phone so the dispatchers could not talk to him until they all reached the airport).

Yanayacu River, Amazon Jungle

This is an account of our trip out to the Amazon jungle. In Jennifer's words: "It's too long." and I have to agree. But I already am leaving out so much. I record a lot of the overall experience here, but if you are more interested in the animals we saw, scroll on down to the "The Wildlife" section below. Highlight for Carter: catching a piranha. Highlight for me: swimming with pink dolphins. Jen really loved the jungle at night with glowworms, caiman and thunder. 
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We set off midweek for our trip with Farnaz & Paul to the jungle, flying very early out of Lima (taxi pickup at 4am) in order to get to Iquitos with time to take the boat out to the lodge by lunchtime. Iquitos lies in the heart of the flat Peruvian jungle (as opposed to the mountainous jungle), right where the Amazon River coming up from the south makes its big turn eastwards towards Brazil. Muyuna Lodge is 140km south of Iquitos, following the Amazon upriver.

On the 90min flight, I sat next to an Argentinian who proclaimed himself a Jesuit fanatic. He was traveling with a friend, a local from around Iquitos, and the two seemed to share a strange mix of camaraderie and patrician inequality. The Jesuit wore what looked like pajamas but are probably comfy in the jungle, while his friend wore a sharp-edged suit while he nervously peered out the window in anticipation of coming back to his people after 3 years away. Iquitos is a relatively big town, so perhaps it is just in my perception that it is populated with the high proportion of bizarre characters as befits an outpost. The return flight 3 days later was also populated with characters: the woman in the waiting room whose arm-hair was wooly enough that it brushed my arm even though we were a couple inches apart; the first-time flyer seated next to me in the exit row who obsessively read the exit-row escape regulations and started to pull on the escape lever until I told him not to and later turned on his radio; and I am pretty sure it was a transsexual stooping into the row in front of me.

There are no roads to Iquitos, arrival is by boat or plane only, so the streets teemed with motorcycle-rickshaws as the lodge's van drove us to town-center where we picked up galoshes and a couple of traveling companions. From the riverside along the defunct rubber-boom warehouses, our covered boat headed south on the Amazon. The banks are an almost unbroken line of jungle while the occasional habitations become steadily more basic as we get farther from Iquitos: cinder blocks and corrugate disappear in favor of thatch and plank homes, boats become less frequent, and people on the shore are more likely to stop and watch our passage. The one indication of modernity that seems always present, even as far upriver as our lodge, is the outboard motor. We saw many dugout canoes without them, but these motors are clearly integral to life out there. After a couple hours, we stopped for a break at the last "large" town, meaning they had some cinder-block buildings, school, clinic, and 3 or 4 floating dock shacks to tie up at. There was food to be bought, but I could not help noticing that the peehole Carter was using was hanging off the shack upriver from where the woman was washing her cookware. We stretched our legs a bit as kids followed Carter around and women unfailingly pointed out his blond curls. Days later upon our return at this same place, a group of teen girls hanging around the dock laughed and one, as Carter left, called out "Chau, mi amor!"

Eventually our boat turned off the Amazon onto a small tributary called the Yanayacu. It was hard for me to keep my bearings or get a sense of the terrain...there is just so much water and overgrown vegetation. There is a big lake out there, but to my eyes it was difficult to see the difference between lake and river. There is a maze of channels and shortcuts through swamps and consider also that the idea of "shore" is almost meaningless as the water level rises a good 15ft (?) from "dry" season to wet season. Trails become waterways, stairways become docks, etc. The locals see it differently than I, of course, and in time I could at least see some of the variation: river, lake, prickle palm swamp, water lily area, low flood-plain jungle, slightly-raised jungle.

(from Google)

We arrived at Muyuna Lodge about halfway into wet season, so the cabins were still on terra firma. The cabins and the communal area were nicely netted against mosquitoes, while at night the walkways were lit by smudge pots and each room given 3 oil lamps in lieu of electricity. The shower and toilets were murky river water, but much appreciated. Below I go into a little detail, including some of the challenges, but in no way as criticism...I put it here to underline how fabulous the trip was. We wanted to be out in the jungle far enough to see it's true wild nature. It's only natural that pampering was not part of the itinerary.

The lodge is simple and comfortable, no mojitos served poolside, or a buffet with 20 options, or even air-conditioning. They serve a small buffet usually featuring at least one unadventurous item to go along with some of the interesting local fare. Since this place is carved into the riverbank, there wasn't a ton for Carter to do. There was foosball, ping-pong and some board games, and the people there made a point of finding some crayons...but luckily Carter has started to really enjoy reading to himself. It is so hot and skeetery that no one goes outside playing frisbee. For our one trail hike, the lodge sent along a second person knowing that Carter would tire...this allowed he and I to be led back to the lodge without stopping the hike for everyone else. It is HOT out there. I packed 3-tshirts per day and ran out. The mosquitos away from the water are intense. We overdid it perhaps, with Deet, mosquito-net suits, even some heavier clothing. So we were super-hot on the hike, but I only have about 6 bites now as I type. I was able to cool off on the various boat trips.



Muyuna is a part of the community out there...not just an eco-lodge. They hire several locals. We waved at the boatman's kids up in their house. On an early-morning boat outing, we didn't eat all of the breakfast that was packed in the boat. On our way back, the guides stopped dugouts and people on shore to hand out the extras like fresh yogurt and bread (even pouring the extra juice into a family's bailing bucket). Seeing all this made our netted lodge with hammocks and lunch seem pretty darn luxurious in comparison.

So yes it's hot and there are mosquitos...two things I hate. And yet I can't tell you how much fun I had.

THE WILDLIFE

In general, we would go out on the boat, puttering through channels or chugging through vast expanses of reeds or floating river cabbage. Farnaz is a birder, so the lodge had hired a local bird expert to be our guide. Edson took us around, sometimes laughing because birds we remarked on were so common, other times he matched Farnaz in excitement. We saw enough white egrets artfully posing on green swaths of vegetation that they became literally unremarkable. Clusters of parakeets would cross overhead, or the square heads of noisy parrots, and birds-of-prey of all sorts were numerous. Farnaz added well over 100 new birds to her life list. Fish would jump at the sound of the boats motor, a barracuda even slapping Ingrid the Dutch girl in the chest. A very small village was near the lodge, so we would see them at their chores or building a new canoe.

Even around the lodge we were surrounded by wildlife...Amazon vultures hanging around, very "common" hawks , etc. There was always a background symphony, like a crazy, poly-rhythmic experimental jazz band made up entirely of birds and frogs. The arrangement was always in flux, though, and locals can set their watches by some of the sounds...and lord knows the birds could wake you up in the morning.

On our one hike, we saw a couple of pygmy monkeys, as small as your hand. After Carter and I had left, Jennifer availed herself of the local natural mosquito repellant as demonstrated by the guides: she placed her hand on one of the large termite nests until the termites ran out and angrily covered her hand, then she crushed them and rubbed the citronella-smelling results on her hands.

Our day excursions by boat were rich in feathered wildlife: toucan, sharply black & yellow birds that make long pendulous nests in the trees, big goose-like birds called donkey-birds, and more small colorful guys than I can remember. But we also saw a handful of sloth, a couple of water snakes, about 10 bats looking upside down at us from the bark where they were roosting, iguanas sunning themselves on branches, and held in our hands a little treefrog. The various ecosystems are really interesting...there's the Yanayacu River itself, of course, but other environments to which the flora and fauna have adapted specifically. On the big beds of floating river cabbage is a bird with extraordinarily long feet (allowing it to walk on the plants without sinking,  "walking on water"). The giant lily pads we saw, each almost 6ft across, apparently have a specific moth to pollinate them. One area was the prickle-palm swamp, forcing us to keep our arms inside the boat in order to avoid the spines (this is where we saw a prehistoric looking bird with a mohawk called the hoatzin).

We stopped in one area to fish for piranha. It's a simple as lowering a baited hook in the water, splashing a bit, and when you feel a tug...yanking with the hope that the hook catches on the fish. Our boat was relatively unlucky, but most of us caught one and Carter was proud to have caught the biggest in the boat. Later, after our dinner that included fried piranha, the guides cleaned and dried the teeth for Carter to keep. He wants me to make a necklace out of it.

Carter and Jen decided to skip the long early-morning outing to go swim with pink dolphins. I was never swimming closer than 10 yards to them, but they surfaced frequently. Bobbing quietly in the Amazon while the "piff...piff" of pink dolphins coming up for air is something I will never forget. The water is murky, so it was especially great when one would come up out of the water far enough to really show its face or fin. It was returning from this outing that Edson and Raphael were giving out our breakfast leftovers. At one family's riverside house, the young girls were hailing us by proudly holding their day's catch up high. Their dugout was full of fish and Edson translated that the family was very happy with their bounty...plus they got a bottle of yogurt. Another family we stopped at were, he told us, farmers. Their land is not good for hunting, and they don't live near the lake with the bounty of fish out near where the lodge is. It seems that territorial politics can play out, family by family, in the jungle.

On a night excursion, we took the boat out into the reeds and thick river cabbage, looking for caiman. There was a magical moment in one area as we realized that the dark waters were punctuated by green, glowing lights...like fireflies, but glow-worms on the river plants. After sliding back into the vegetation in the dark, flashlights went on and the Dutch girl screamed...there was a pink-toed tarantula on the reed right at her shoulder! But perhaps more intense was just the sheer quantity of nocturnal bug life crowding the vegetation over the water. Katydids, spiders, ants, all living out a nightly drama out there. We saw a small yellow tree anaconda hanging out over the river. But we sighted no large caiman, though Edson and the other guide, Raphael, did catch a baby caiman for us to see. The kept making baby caiman sounds saying, "The mother must be around here someplace."


All in all, it was an amazing experience. There are things we saw that will be etched on our memories for a very long time.

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PS: Farnaz and Paul had an epic all their own after we left and they stayed on a couple days. Her blog will go into detail, I don't doubt, but in the course of tracking down an elusive sighting of the rare wattled currasow bird, they were up to their armpits in water known to be inhabited by the venomous fer-de-lance snake, which can kill you if untreated for half a day. Also, they did not see a giant anaconda, but stumbled upon a dead juvenile caiman, all squishy in the midsection from having been squeezed by one. But her sighting of the currasow was remarkable and, she says, it seemed to be really special for Edson too.

Christmas Visiting

My apologies that this post is longer than normal. There was just so much that went on over the last month that I just haven't posted.

 The weekend before our Christmas visitors arrived, Jen and Carter ran in a race over by the Lima golf club. Jen ran 8k, while Carter sprinted in the 7-9 year old group mini race.

Lois and Laurie arrived the week before Christmas, relieving Carter's incessant anticipation of their arrival. Shortly thereafter, our good friends Tonya and Chad arrived, so we had a nice full contingent here for Christmas.

Prior to the arrival of Tonya and Chad though, we did a few things with Lois and Laurie. They have a ton of pictures, but I will make do with a couple of Google images.

Carter and I took them to the gold museum on that Friday. On Saturday, we went down and wandered around the colonial heart of Lima, taking a carriage ride around the Plaza de Armas. We stumbled into a free exhibition of Nativity scenes (many homes do elaborate nativities and, of course, artists and sculptors have taken the idea to dramatic lengths)...there was even a folk-music band in the courtyard. As it got dark, we headed over to the water park which instead of water slides features artful fountains lit up to great effect. Some fountains are clearly for cooling off on a warm summer night, and the park is full of families and couples walking around, playing in the water, and watching the laser & movie projections on sheets of water. Jennifer's inner-child is never far from the surface, so of course she and Carter were squealing in the fountain. Many formally dressed girls are there to take their quinceañera photos (15yr old girls have a big coming-of-age celebrations). After the park, we sat on plastic stools behind one of the many informal street carts outside and enjoyed some tasty anticucho de pollo (grilled chicken skewers).

At 1am that night, Jen and I picked up Chad & Tonya, got a quick pisco sour into them and got to bed in time to get up on Sunday and go to Punta Sal for a cebiche lunch overlooking the palisades in Miraflores. We walked down the steps to the surf area and out on the pier, after which I took the abuelos and Carter home while Jen stayed with Chad & Tonya for a seaside drink. 
 

On the 24th, Chad and I went early to the fresh market to pick up seafood for a fabulous cioppino for dinner. While there we could not resist having some cebiche at the stand we love there, even though it was 10am. The guys working the stand laughed when we promised to come back for lunch...and laughed even more when we did, in fact, return a few hours later with Tonya and Jen. The market is packed as people shop for Christmas (actually, all Lima seems packed with shoppers) and December is notorious for an increase in theft. In fact, just the week prior, Mariza and I witnessed someone steal a backpack at that market...chased by the angry owners.

Our Christmas Eve cioppino was fabulous and sent us to bed with visions of crawdads dancing in our heads. I snuck out to buy some things for Jen's stocking, having forgotten for yet another year. The streets were deserted except for clumps of street vendors and poor kids sitting on curbs waiting for neighborhood fireworks after having worked up to the very last minute. Since Peruvians celebrate late into Christmas Eve, by midnight the neighborhood became a bombast of high-caliber fireworks. At points it looked like daylight outside, and our car alarm kept whimpering. Carter somehow slept through it all.

Christmas Day, after all the unwrapping, etc., Chad cooked yet again. It was a relaxing day around home, playing Apples to Apples and having fun with some of Carter's presents. Early the next morning, Laurie & Lois & Carter boarded a bus for Paracas so they could experience the fun down there, going to see all the birds and renting kayaks (see my post of our previous trip down there). Jen, Chad, Tonya & I took the opportunity to check into a old-school hotel over in San Isidro, wanting the chance to be closer to explore some of the great restaurants that Lima offers. During this time, we took them to Huaca Pucllana (click here for earlier post) and the unprotected Wari burial ground 130km south of the city (click here for earlier post). On the way back from the burial ground we stopped at Asia beach, Lima's beach destination. The little restaurant worried us when the server opened 4 bottles of warm beer and brought them over with glasses of ice...luckily, the food was very tasty and we mimicked the other patrons who went next door and bought cold beers to go. A pleasant walk on the beach afterwards featured various seabirds and even dolphins.

Restaurants visited included Pescados Capitales ("Capital Fish" or by removing the 's': "Capital Sins", a humorous fish restaurant with a theme of sin). The fire-grilled octopus was simple and amazing. Panchita, a popular restaurant of Peru's culinary superstars Astrid y Gaston, specializing in amazing grilled meat, also introduced us to the algarrobina...a cocktail made from the syrup of a Peruvian tree. One night we met up with Julio and Maureen at Huaringas, technically a bar, but in addition to their fabulous pisco sour menu, the appetizers were culinary delights as well. Friday, Lois & Laurie & Carter returned.

Saturday was pretty mellow, with a visit to our local weekly organic market. Chad & Tonya had a very late flight out of Lima, so after Carter was in bed, we took them out for one last culinary experience...amazing steak at El Hornero not far from our house.

With Tonya & Chad gone, I joined Lois and Laurie for a visit to an exhibit of the 2 decades of internal strife in Peru, put together by their truth and reconciliation committee. It was a powerful insight into those years of terror and strife, roughly 1980-2000. Pictures of mass graves, bomb sites, students disappeared forever into the trunks of police cars, peasants and community activists killed by cadres supposedly fighting for the people. It would take a dedicated blog to cover it all, so I won't even try here. The exhibit leads you around the top floor of the National Museum, with all the photos and gauze covered windows. The second-to-last room is 6 or 8 of photos of the missing, with the audio testimony from their loved ones all playing at once, creating a murmuring coalescence of loss. And then you step into the last room which simply has a bench looking out a window finally without gauze, past the large buildings and kids playing in the street and up to the slum climbing the hill to the north. Powerful.

That night, after just about everyone headed off to bed, Laurie went out for a late-night "trudge", his version of power-walking exercise. He had done this earlier, just about getting lost, but finally looping all the way around the agrarian university until people directed him to our street. In our part of town, you just can't rely on walking a loop...it's just too irregular. So on this trip he ended up on the other side of the big hill where he met a family who helped him out with directions and finally drove him home. It was one of those rare experiences in which he made a kind of contact with locals not given to most tourists. The man told Laurie he used to be a policeman, even pointing to a house not 2 blocks down our street as being the famous house that American Lori Berenson rented and was found full of MRTA revolutionaries after her arrest. Coming on the heels of seeing the exhibit of the Truth & Reconciliation Committee, it was pretty mind-blowing for Laurie.

Monday was New Years Eve, for which Jen had heard that being down on the palisades in Miraflores was a great place to watch midnight fireworks. So we headed out to the Larco Mar mall where we could go to the movies and try to stay up late enough. Even after the movies, we still had a couple hours to kill and all the cafes and restaurants seemed to be prebooked. So we waited up at the little playground where Jen and Carter gathered a crew of kids for a late night game of tag. Just before midnight, the city erupted with fireworks. They may not have been the very biggest I've ever seen, but still pretty darn big and thw quantity being shot off up and down the coast was amazing. Not only that, but one set was being shot off right next to us...exploding just a few stories above our heads. On the drive home, the whole city seemed to be one cloud of firework haze.

The rest of the week was a chance for Lois and Laurie to do several of the things that we have enjoyed. Saturday they checked into their hotel with their grand tour starting on Sunday. Right now they are up in the Machu Picchu area.