I hate beyotches but love turtles!

May 5, 2012:  After a bus and few boat transfers, my friend Jason and I made it to the worn house of a man we arranged to take us to beaches of Matapica on the Atlantic Ocean – the endangered leatherback sea turtle delivery room.  Dropping into his unstable feeling boat that seemed to have a weight capacity of 3 anorexic men, we powered and pushed the boat through the swamps to our campsite.

While taking a extended walk along the beach, I saw many poorly filled turtle delivery craters, hoping that later in the evening we would be lucky enough to spot leatherbacks.  I have never seen one 3-dimensionally – not even at a zoo or watching cartoons, only in photos. According to National Geographic, these turtles are the largest turtles in the world at a length up to 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) and a weighing in around 2,050 pounds (916 kilograms).  Please note that a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle automobile comes in at a mere 1,900 pounds (861 kilograms).

At dusk the wind had eventually come to complete stop and so did everything else.  No more waves breaking on the beach, no more movement of the plants or trees…every became extremely, quiet.  Then it came…buzz, buzz.  Buzzzzzzzz, buzz - buuuuuzz, buzz.  Buzz buzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz buzz, buuuuzz buzz and a buzzzzzzzzzz – we were being attacked!  The initial strike by a squadron of female mosquitoes hit us hard…they  stormed the beach in greater numbers than the entire Chinese army.

As I retreated toward our boat, I began to quickly fight back, bathing myself with poisonous chemicals.  Carnage built up on my skin and clothing of the mosquitoes who were too slow to dodge my mammoth hands.  While powering into the heart of the Mosquito army, I tried to keep every inch of skin covered, sitting there wearing my hooded rain jacket and pants on as I was taking a forced piercing whenever the tiniest piece of skin would exposed itself.  I shouldn’t be whining since my friend sat miserably in his shorts and short sleeve shirt slapping the beewillickers out of himself as Ed Norton did in the film Fight Club. He might have been classified as mentally insane by an inexperienced psychologist, but Jason was not crazy…it was more so just a case of poor packing fueled by his hated for women mosquitoes.

With our current objective to locate caiman, though it didn’t matter to me if we saw any caiman – I have seen enough caiman over these past few years. Anyhow, I was more into paddling around the swamp in almost total darkness and sadly hoping to being an eye-witness to a nonlife threatening caiman catching mishap. 

The mosquitoes did not let up and continued to be unbelievably aggressive the entire night.   After almost 3 years of lugging around a head net for facial protection against mosquitoes and with today being perhaps the only day in which I would not have felt not stupid wearing it…can you guess on which day didn’t I have it?

By the end of the night, I saw a leatherback turtle stuck in the mud and even a green turtle laying some eggs.  The green turtles are smaller than the leatherback turtle but still really large.  They can grow up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) long and weigh up to 690 pounds (315 kilograms).  Standing above her, I wonder how they would taste if you fried one of her freshly laid eggs that she was burying?  Are they even edible?  With a less than one percent survival rate to reach adulthood…what is one measly scrambled green turtle egg?  It makes me curious that if supposedly almost everything tastes like chicken…would a green turtle egg also taste like chicken?

In morning I was tired after a night of buzzing mosquitoes sounding as if they were all inside my hammock, feeling as if my entire backside of the hammock can now be effectively used as a strainer from all the micro sized holes that were created from the monster beyotches who stabbed me in the back with their girly parts – scientifically these girly parts are called her mandibles and the maxillae - not boobies.  Where could all of the blood sucking vampires have gone to hide this morning?  Like the once world famous magician David Copperfield, they all seemed to somehow magically disappear.  As Brownsberg National Reserve provided me with the best sighting of insects, Matapica has  by far has been the best place to spot the most aggressive mosquitoes in South America. 

What I do to see zoo quality wildlife amazes me.  It is extremely rewarding, but the mosquitoes this trip reminded me that there is more behind a photo than that of the subject itself.  It is the uncapturable moments and feeling that swirl inside of me that an electronic device can not record.  Last night those mosquitoes tested my mental strength and I can truthfully say that, they won.

I hate beyotches but love turtles!

Two White Men and a Funeral

April 30, 2012:  An evening while staying along the Suriname River we were invited to a party for a corpse  we never met, nor did man who invited us – in short…we were funeral crashers.  It took over an hour to get to this village, traveling somewhere on a long boat, hiking somewhere and then transferring to another boat going somewhere.  I am glad I didn’t lose the group I went with since I would have had the most difficult time asking someone for directions to, somewhere. 

While sitting at an extended picnic like table in some sort of logged community center that served beer from a small opening in the wall, a random man from Guyana came over to talk to me.  Sitting awkwardly close, he would finish every sentence with “Man” and every other sentence making this “pff pff pff” noise such as Hannibal Lector made in film “Silence of the Lambs” when he said “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”  It sort of freaked me out as did my friend, Jason - as he so conveniently excluded himself from our conversation. 

The music started at 2am…only a mere 3 hours behind schedule.  I was sadly exhausted and ready to go back to the lodge before midnight.  Standing outside around all of the table clothed wearing woman, I felt as if I was drugged and could barely stay horizontal from exhaustion. 
The music did not encourage the typical mourning dancing (is there even a designated mourning dance?) or even the chaperoned catholic school sort of dancing…it was wining (aka dry humping while vertical).  A strange act to pull off while in public around kids, ancient aging adults and those in actually in mourning.  Learning how to do it while in Trinidad visiting a friend of mine for Carnival, I had a little experience practicing on her Mom, Aunt and her.  Standing around, fighting to stay awake, a few girls crept closer in their table cloth-like clothing, backing up into me for me to hump them – I mean to wine them like a South American street dog.  Wining tip:  While wining, make sure your pockets are empty.  I so awkwardly had a head lamp in my front pocket – so awkward...

Leaving to go back to the village at 4:16am our drunken group included a drunken boat driver suffering from impaired vision.   He had no need for that headlamp I carried around all night or any light for that matter – he did a great job going down the foggy dark river.  He wasn’t concerned since I am quite sure they don’t have breathalyzers in this part of the Amazon.

The next day we headed farther up the Suriname River racking up some more kilometers.  The deeper we powered up the Suriname River on the local super stretched long boat, the more interesting the people watching became.  Women were getting a little National Geographic-like as they began to lose their tops exposing their gargantuan utters that almost touched their ankles while the younger people seemed to not see the purpose to wear anything.  On the stairs of the river banks, the women were busy washing piles upon piles of dishes and what minimal clothes they might have had.  They perfected the skills of balancing big plastic buckets with dishes stacked so high it was as if I was watching a street show without the need to toss change in some sort of cup or dirty receptacle.

By the end of our brief exploration up the Suriname River and its communities, I counted 52 bites on my legs plus 1 on my frankfurter.  Perhaps a bath in DEET is necessary for future explorations. 

To...Somewhere

April 30, 2012:  When standing  on the side of the road with Jason in a small unpopulated area, I waved down anything with 4 wheels going in our direction.  From one vehicle to the next, we hopscotched to the  end of the road at the riverbank of the Suriname River.  

On our journey here, very few people spoke English.  If I knew Dutch or one of the many other indigenous languages that flooded this region, it would have been easier, but not as...interesting.  The plan was to go up to the Suriname River for a few days, spending the night wherever we could - preferably in a small Amerindian or Moroon villages.  Tossing our bags onto a riverboat, off we went to...somewhere.