What a great day! Fantastic to get out of Iquitos for the afternoon away from the noisy motorcarros, clinic dogs & general mayhem. Just a 20 minute boat journey down the tranquil Nanay River & I’m in paradise…..Pilpintuwasi. This means ‘butterfly’s home’ in Kechua & it is a butterfly haven.
Austrian woman Gudrun Sperrer had the crazy idea of starting up a butterfly farm in the middle of the Amazon jungle & it’s an adventure in itself getting there. First I had to take a small boat called a ‘pekepeke’ (so named because of the sound the engine makes) to tranquil village Padre Cocha & then walk for 15 minutes. There’s only two roads in this village & somehow I still managed to get lost. I came across a house at the end of the road I asked a Peruvian family the way. Showing typical kindness the mum sent her 8 year old daughter Isabella along with me to show the way.
No such things as doorbells in the jungle. On arrival to Pilpintuwasi visitors are asked to beat on the manguare drum to announce their arrival. I didn’t have to beat the drum as wild monkeys came crashing through the trees to say hello & the owners knew they had a visitor. All these monkeys have been hand raised by Gudrun. Unfortunately everything that blinks gets eaten here in Iquitos & monkey is a favourite meal. The mothers are killed & then the babies are sold as pets. Gudrun usually gets the baby monkeys (& other wildlife too) when people are bored with rearing them or if they are sick. The monkeys were very funny & one ran up my leg & jumped around my neck. Cute… “but get your little mitts off my sunglasses, & hey, stop biting my earrings”. Monkeys! Rascals! A woolley monkey kept grabbing Isabella by the ankles & trying to give her a love bite. This monkey was infatuated by Isabella & no joke the monkey kept poking its tongue out at her…if only I could have got a photo it was hilarious. Of course, point the camera at the monkey, it turns away. Never work with animals or children!
The butterfly enclosure was incredible….loads of different plants & greenery. There are 42 butterfly species at the farm & each species of caterpillar & butterfly feeds on only one or two kinds of plants so all the different plant varieties have been collected from the jungle. My favourite butterfly was the large fluorescent blue morph. It was spectacular & of course difficult to get a photo. It would torment me by landing on a leaf in front of my camera & then just as I snapped it would suddenly do a back flip & fly off . At every step butterflies would surround me & brightly colored butterflies would land on my head & flit around the enclosure chasing after each other. A great place to chill & forget about the worries of the world, sick dogs, the Peruvian elections, & other ongoing dramas…..for a least a moment or two.
www.amazonanimalorphanage.org
