Buenos Dias from the Amazon! I am staying in CICRA, a research station on the Los Amigos river in Peru. To get here I took several flights to arrive at Puerto Maldonado in southern Peru . Then I took a taxi to Laborinto an hour drive up the river. There I met up with a couple of researchers also catching the boat to CICRA. The ride was five hours in a large motorized canoe with a wooded canopy. Directly to the north of us is a preserved area for uncontacted indigenous people. To the south are gold miners living in huts along the river, mostly new to the area and from the Andes.
The station itself consists of a clearing with several wooden huts and main buildings for the dining hall, library and laboratories. I have a small wooden cabin with a thatched roof without water or electricity. I need to use candles at night and the bathroom is in another building down the path. I found the first couple of days that the cabin was too dark to paint in when it was cloudy so I took over another cabin to be my art studio. The studio has electricity and overlooks the river. In addition to the studio space, I have a desk in the library for using my computer.
There are about 20 people at the station, mostly visiting researchers and station staff. Two are American and some of the Peruvians speak enough English for me to get by with my rusty Spanish. Luckily, one of the Americans is someone working here during her first year out of college. She has been super helpful and a huge source of advice. Very comforting. After being here for a couple of days, the station feels less remote. I researcher told me that there is another station three days boat ride up the river where large cats sun themselves on the shores of the river and the forest is dense with monkeys. He said I should go there next time. (Next time?!) We eat communal meals and luckily for me most of the food is Andean, meaning rice, meat and potatoes, very little flour to avoid.
There are animals everywhere. I wake up in the morning to the sound of monkeys playing around my cabin. Around the station and out in the field, I see monkeys, wild boars, lizards, butterflies, and animals that have names I cant remember or pronounce. There are also insects everywhere. After the second day I had so many bug bites that I’m just not that aware of them anymore!
Today was partly cloudy but it rained for the past two days almost non-stop. Before it starts to rain, you can hear the downpour coming from a distance. It sounds like a roar as it hits the trees. During those days, I spent some time hiking and an afternoon working in the field with a few researchers. They are working on a project that tracks whether plants survive best far from the parent plant. We had to tag trees, mark their location and measure their height and diameter. It is slow going and pretty punishing work in a downpour.
Now that the rain as stopped, I’ve been able to do a little bit more painting outdoors (YAY!) Its been a challenge to work without full supplies and trying to outwit the quickly changing weather. But I’ve done a couple of small paintings that I enjoyed. Hopefully the next two weeks will be equally productive!
I feel so lucky to be here!
