I’m back home after about three weeks in the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru, where i was a volunteer at the Wasai Tambopata Lodge. I did the volunteer thing because it was $30 a day instead of $80, and i’ve had good experiences doing it in the past. I would call the trip moderately successful as far as photography goes, because i got some good ones but nothing that knocks my socks off. The “working conditions” were pretty difficult, with the high heat and humidity, clouds of mosquitos, and initially inadequate food, not to mention having to spray DEET on my face 3 times a day. But before you start feeling sorry for me, it was a jungle paradise. I didn’t see any poisonous snakes, and the major dangers i faced were getting malaria, which was present there and which i was not taking medication for, and falling branches and fruit that would leave a small crater in the ground when they fell from 150 feet up in the canopy. One heavy, hard fruit landed about three feet from me, and i was pretty sure the monkeys were trying to get rid of me.
Other interesting experiences were being neck deep in the amazon on a moonlit night trying to keep a boat from sinking and trying not to think about the caimans in the water that the guides were just showing the tourists, and eating a dead Agouti that Wicho recovered after he flushed a jaguar off it’s carcass near the lodge. It was the best meat i’ve ever had.
It was a wonderful experience, but i think that the cost of these trips, both financially and in terms of the harm they do to my relationship, is too great. There are plenty of worthy subjects here in Oregon, or perhaps in Utah or Arizona. I do enjoy interacting with the insects and amphibians of the forest, but i’m sure i can devote some time in the summer to them. I mean i’m busy during the fire season but not that busy. I’ll put up a post soon explaining the methods used for some of the Peru photographs.