Jungle Time, part III

Of all the things pointed out by Leo on our walk in the jungle, perhaps the most interesting and frightening was a small community of very large ants.  These ants are immense, ugly, smell terrible, live in small groups and have a bite that is absolutely overwhelmingly painful and lasts for a good twenty-four hours.  In fact, they do not just bite but have a hornet-like stinging on their tail end.  Leo said being stung by those ants was the second most painful thing he had ever experienced, the first being the stitching of an accidental self-inflicted machete wound on his left forearm that was done without any anesthetic.  He said that some tribes that live in the jungle use the ants as part of a wedding ceremony.  In order to win the approval of the potential bride to be, the man must put his hand into a container of these ants and leave it there for as long as possible.  The idea is that if you can withstand multiple stings from the world's most painful ant, you can put up with the ups and downs of marriage, which seems both reasonable and terrifying.  The entire lecture made me all the more uncomfortable with my decision to wear flip-flops on the excursion.

After lunch we took a boat a short ways up river and did another walk, this time starting at a small farm where the jungle had recently been cleared by the very slash-and-burn methods that are gradually diminishing the entire forest.  The ash of former trees lay on top of sandy and rather infertile soil.  Various starchy plants would soon be grown until the soil was depleted, in a couple of years.  Antonio's jungle lodge itself was built upon a failed farm.  Once the land can no longer produce, it is abandoned and the jungle creeps back in.  These tiny farms were certainly drops in the bucket in comparison to the wide-scale deforestation going on in the region, but it was hard for me to step over the charred remains of trees without being a bit troubled.

As the day drew to a close, Carl, the Swede, and I were the only remaining guests at the lodge.  Antonio and his fiance, a Dutch woman, arrived in the late afternoon and let the staff go to be with their families.  On Leo's suggestion we climbed to the top of the lodge's tallest structure and looked out at the sun as it set over the jungle.  Carl and I remained in the tower chatting about economics and astronomy as Antonio and his fiance headed down to make dinner.

When we came down from the tower, a brilliant full moon was again making its way up in the east from behind some trees.  The kitchen area was warmly illuminated by eight or ten candles arranged on the tables.  Dinner was not yet fully ready, but our hosts brought out some garlic bread and red wine, and Carl and I sat at a table and resumed a game of dominoes that we had left earlier.  Leo had left to visit his girlfriend in the village down river, but another guide, Francisco, would join us for the evening.  When dinner arrived it was roast pig with a considerable amount of fat, but cooked perfectly and absolutely delicious.  After dinner we talked some more, played a few more rounds of dominoes, and when midnight approached, filled glasses with champagne Carl had brought and toasted the new year.  When the wine was gone I strolled back the shelter where my hammock was hanging, everything clear in the brilliant moonlight.  The night was warmer and for the first time in three nights, I slept soundly until morning, dreaming peacefully.

New Years Day was a day of leaving the jungle and returning to the city.  For our last hurrah, we went on a walk, this time on an abandoned rubber farming road.  We walked through a large field of Africanized bees that hummed in an unsettling manner around our ankles.  At the edge of the field, a pair of monkeys took notice of us and dashed off into the undergrowth.  After making our way some distance up the overgrown pathway we stopped, sat down, and just peered into the trees in silence.  A small group of jungle hens crossed onto and off of the road in the distance.  Various insects and frogs chirped away, but not loudly -- an evening in a New England forest is much louder affair.  We spent half an hour in this position, just looking about, then made our way back and gathered our belongings.  After a final lunch, we hopped in a boat and were soon speeding down the river, and not long after that we were aboard a freezing-cold bus rumbling back to Manaus.