Monkey´s, Anaconda´s, and Naked Villagers

Today we were tourists only. It is very easy to be a tourist in Peru, no exersion to speak of and didn´t really break a sweat. We started out at the monkey preserve, probably one of the few places on the planet that monkeys come and climb on you while you feed them. When you see the pictures you will be green with envy. The wolf monkeys were very sociable and were all over us while we fed them, but a red howler monkey wouldn´t come down to see us. I was able to coax him down because he didn´t like the cookies, only bananas. He sat nicely on my back for a good 10 minutes before I took him back to his tree. We saw several breeds of monkeys, the smaller monkeys will not go down past a certain height on a tree so they wouln´t actually climb on us.

Then it was time to leave the monkey preserve. As we were getting onto the boat, 2 other boats showed up with a bunch of white people speaking english. I about fell over, we had not seen westerners ANYWHERE because we had been at these remote villages and all the sudden we do tourist stuff and we are surrounded by them. It was wierd to hear people speaking english too. NONE of these people ever go to the real jungle or see real villages. If there are wood steps instead of mud or dirt coming up from the river, you are not in the jungle.

The next place we visited had sloths, snakes and prehistoric turtles. I´ve always thought that sloths would smell nasty and for some reason the thought of even petting one didn´t sound apealing. But they hung a baby sloth on me at first and it was really neat, he smelled better that I did for sure. Really cute. Then they hung his dad on me. Their fur is really course but up close they have these neat little faces. It appears to me that they move so slow because it is almost like their muscles are taught all the time. To reposition their arm is like big steel cable. They need to hang on to you, just you holding them is not comforting to them at all.

Then they took us to the snake cage. I HATE SNAKES!!! Something with the power to kill me and a brain smaller than my thumb is not a perfect package to me. They had 2 Anaconda´s in there. The first one was about 6´long and 5¨in diameter, he had been under water so he was all wet while I held him. No big deal.

The other Anaconda was GIGANTIC. The guy told us that they had just caught him this week so we he could not let us touch him becuase he could crush our hand or break other bones. That sounded like a reasonable company policy to me. Richelle, who was freaked out by ducklings and monkeys, totally lit up around the snakes. If she hadn´t taken pictures with them I wouldn´t have even considered it. Their company policy is at their whim apparentyl because soon Richelle had it around her shoulders with a guy at each end of the snake holding it up. I am gussing it was over 12 feet long and at least 12 inches in diameter. I went ahead and got it over my shoulders and took some pictures so I´ll never have to do that again in my life. They weren´t stinky and nasty at all like garter snakes up north. The monkey´s got dirt all over me, these didn´t really at all. But I had to wash the creepy off me =)

Then we went to visit the Bolo tribe, they refuse to take on western dress or any western culture. So they are buck naked most of the time. Bolo means ´men without earings´. Thier land is actually in Columbia. But another trible that wore earings, nose rings, and many other decorations thought the Bolo´s were more of a monkey so they tried to kill them at every chance. The old man speaking to us, said his father took his and 6 other family´s to where they currently live about 50 years ago to get away from the murdering tribes.

All of these places were gotten to by boats on the Amazon.

We flew into Lima today and tomorrow we will meet with the relief coordinator for Peru to discuss how to ship our things into Peru and get around some tarriffs. Then the Governor of the state we will be working in want´s too meet with us. He had been in an accident but insists that we go to the hospital to have our meeting there.

I´ll be home Friday morning and can´t wait to see my wife and beautiful daughters. I have a lot of work to do for hydro power in these villages and hopefully my brother Michael and his friend (also both engineers) can help me find a solution that works for all the villages. They have been doing a lot of work while I have been playing games in the jungle. Thanks guys!

I have meet some wonderful people in Peru and it is really hard to leave them. These are people you meet one time and it is like they are family. I can´t wait to bring a solution to my villagers and I hope they know I will be thinking about them every day until I come back.

Considering I am the saddest physical specimen and dearly enjoy being indoors with technology and Mt. Dew, I really hope everyone reading this will realize they can do it and easier than I can. There really isn´t anything else you can do that will give you more life perspective than this. Us americans have it SOOOOOOOOO easy. A small investment of our time and resources can make a giant difference in this part of the world.


Casey