Back to Basics

We had an excellent night’s sleep under the mosquito net last night. The field station had prepared a packed lunch for us, which we took with us on our next journey. We were sad to leave Iwokrama as we really enjoyed our stay there. We left Iwokrama by boat, the favoured mode of transport in these parts and made the short journey back to the river crossing. There we were met by Georgio, who would drive us a couple of hours out of the jungle to an Amerindian savannah village called Surama. On the way we detoured to the jungle canopy walkway. We had been told the day before that walkway was closed for safety reasons, but we thought maybe we were going to get to visit the walkway after all. What we hadn’t appreciated was that villages coordinated together to make the most out of any road transportation. Our little detour now was to deliver some fuel tanks to the staff at the canopy walkway and to pick up some papers for another village.

Surama is an Amerindian village with a population of approximately 250 people. The accommodation was more basic than Iwokrama, with no electricity but was still nice. Sarah was a bit concerned about the hornets’ nest on the wall!

It was interesting to see a different landscape. We had a tour of the community and learnt about what they do to harvest and use cassava. We were shown the painstaking and time-consuming process involving grating the cassava and weaving a basket to extract the poisonous liquid before it can be baked. We really liked visiting the school (55 children aged from 5 to 13 taught by 3 teachers). The kids were really sweet and very well behaved. The village buildings were spread over a wide area and we got very hot walking in the sun. We were just a few hundred yards from our benab (a type of hut) when the rains came again and we got drenched.

Back at the lodge near our benab, our guide showed us a boa constrictor that had made a home in between some planks of wood about 50 yards away from our benab. Sarah was not happy! In the afternoon we walked 3 miles through the jungle and got onto a small canoe and paddled down the Burro Burro River. Within a minute, we got a brief glimpse of a giant river otter. The river was much narrower than the river yesterday. There were deep banks with kingfisher holes. We felt very adventurous – just the 4 of us in a small canoe. We heard lots of monkeys and saw an eagle as well as smaller birds again. We managed to shower by torch light and then dinner. We were in bed before 8pm as it was pitch black everywhere and we were all alone. We played cards by torchlight in bed for a couple of hours and then tried to sleep, whilst listening to some bats in the rafters.