Pipintuwasi: House of the Butterflies (-Jess)

On our second day in Iquitos (we spent most of the first day cowering in our hostel room, staring at the whirly ceiling fan, reflecting on whose fault it was that we were here, wherever here was, and speculating on how long we would last), we decided to be more extroverted and call one of the ladies that the Fulbright folks in Lima had said to contact if we had questions. This was a good move, although it led to a crazy day so full of wild things to take in that it led to spending our third day mildly in shock and again mostly meditating on the ceiling fan. Ceiling-fan thoughts can go in another, more philosophical post, so for now I’ll write about the adventures of Day Two in Iquitos.

We conquered the public phone long enough to arrange a morning coffee date with Raquel Moscoso, a Peruvian woman who had recently been a Spanish teacher in Oregon as part of the Fulbright exchange program. She spoke perfect English, and she brought two other ladies (Rocio and Karina) who spoke perfect (British) English who are applying for similar Fulbright exchange positions in the U.S. Their super-friendliness and English answers to our already long list of questions could not have been more welcome. They took us to an authentic (joke) Iquitos restaurant “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, so that we could talk over glasses of delicious fresh-squeezed juice. I am crazy about the juice here by the way. So far, it is one of the best things about this city. These were pretty hilarious ladies actually, and we really enjoyed talking with them, so things began to look brighter. They took us to some cell phone stores and explained about models and plans and whatnot, and showed us which bank we could use for turning big bills into smaller usable ones, and all sorts of useful stuff like that. They offered to check on the possibility of Andrew teaching English in exchange for Spanish lessons at the Language Center where they work, asked if we would like to sit as “jurors” on an English talent show in their class, and they offered to take me to the gym and teach me how to dance. Pretty cool, huh? I hope that at least some of that pans out. But even more immediately, they offered to go with us to a butterfly sanctuary and jungle-animal-rescue-operation a little ways out of town that very afternoon since it was apparently a holiday.

So, we had our first ride on a mototaxi (we thought we were going to die) to get to a crowded muddy port, where we were swarmed by a horde of men trying to get us to take their various boats to various places, followed Raquel and Karina into whatever canoe they got in, and rode under gathering ominous clouds up the muddy Nanay river to the village of Padrecocha. They were selling plates piled high with turtle eggs at the port. No wonder the river turtle populations are crashing. It was a little like the state fair. (Worm-on-a-stick anyone?) When we got to the village, all four of us, plus the driver and his toddler daughter, plus the kid hanging off the back, got onto this half-motorcycle half-golfcart and drove extremely quickly on a semi-paved track through the village that reminded me of some of the roller coasters at Cedar Point (we really thought we were going to die) to get to the home of an Austrian woman who runs an animal orphanage and butterfly sanctuary. Because she happened to also work for Raquel Moscoso in Iquitos, she let us in off-hours and gave us a private tour. She met us with an endangered red-faced uakari monkey clinging to the back of her head. She explained that it was afraid because ever since they’d gotten the new baby howler monkey the two older howler monkeys had become jealous and were taking it out on this one because he was the weak one. I was instantly fascinated. She walked us around and showed us first the butterfly sanctuary where she cultivated all sorts of lepidopterans, collected their eggs, hatched them into wild looking caterpillars (see the picture link), and set them loose to chew each other up (I bet you didn’t know that butterflies could be vicious). Then she showed us her pet JAGUAR, Pedro, who had enormous paws with which he liked to fish and eat chicken. Then there was a tapir named Lucas that you could feed pineapples to, agoutis running around all over the place, caimans in the little lake, macaws in the trees, and a fluffy giant anteater that was using its really long tongue to lap up a plate of milk. These are all animals that you would be varying degrees of very lucky to even get a glimpse of in the wild, so it was pretty durn cool to be able to get so close to them. However, my favorite part was definitely when it started to pour and we went under a little pavilion, and a howler monkey came and sat down right next to me and put her hand on my knee while she howled away (apparently she had just learned how to). I spent several weeks while studying abroad in Ecuador walking around in the jungle just hoping to hear a howler monkey, much less see one, much less see it close enough to see its facial expressions, much less have it treat me like just another monkey. Then a capuchin crawled in my lap and started playing with my watch Velcro, and an uakari came over and very carefully checked my hair for anything tasty. I began to think that maybe it was not such a big mistake to come to Iquitos after all.  But the ride back through the village reminded me that there was a lot more to this than playing with monkeys, because the lifestyle gap is almost unfathomably large, and the animals are all there because they were really sick or their parents were killed and eaten, but the people in the villages have to kill and eat the animals because that is how they feed themselves, meanwhile I live in a bubble, and it is all very confusing and thought-provoking. So, things are getting more and more interesting here. Check out the videos of the monkeys and enjoy the state fair!