Third Day at Otorongo Lodge ~ Dec. 24, 2010

Christmas Eve
I was getting behind on my sketching and painting, so I was up at dawn on this Christmas Eve day to work (play, actually!) in my sketchbook. Quietly, quietly I tiptoed to the hammock room in the gathering morning light and settled down into a hammock. I needed to paint (with watercolor pencils) the drawing of the children in the boat which I'd penned the day before, and I also wanted to finish some other pages that had no color yet.

Later one of the other guests came in, and after looking over my journal she took a photo of me sketching in the hammock. Throughout my eight-day stay, everyone was so curious about my progress in the journal that I got into the habit of just passing it around every now and then (OMG, that sounds egotistic!)(oh well, that's what I did, anyway...)

You can see how peaceful the hammock room is. Behind me in the photo is someone's towel drying outside on the line strung all the way around the building. Most of the guests used it every day in an effort to keep fresh. After every hike, clothes were hung on the line outside our rooms to dry and air.

Right after breakfast Osmar and I and a boatman from Oran village took a motor boat across the Amazon to find a place where we could see hoatzins, amazing birds that live along the rivers and swampy areas of the Amazon.

We tied the boat up below the bank and walked through a forest that is usually underwater ~ you could see the waterline about 12 feet up on the trunks of the trees. I kept marveling at the thought. The earth was muddy but covered with leaves, sticks, and detritus, and there were gorgeous white, grey and red mushrooms all along the trail. I had to be careful not to brush against the spiny palms that flanked the trail.

Soon the forest opened out upon an emerald green swamp covered with water-lettuce. The boatman, now our machete-wielder, pointed out the tall fig trees at the far end that often serve as a gathering place for hoatzins. We skirted the swamp and followed the shoreline through the woods, gradually becoming aware of raucous shrieks and crackling twigs from the jostling of large bodies in the tops of the fig trees.

Osmar motioned for me to move quietly, and we crept up under the fig trees. The hoatzins overhead were difficult to see in the foliage, but I could see large shapes, an occasional accusing red eye in a blue face peering down at us, and the messy, "bad-hair-day" topknots of the suspicious birds. It was pointless to take a picture, but through the binoculars I got lots of good looks at parts of hoatzins, and I was delighted. I'd been curious about them ever since I'd had to research and illustrate one for a book many years ago.

The jostling increased, wings flapping, branches creaking and twigs breaking, then the chicken-sized birds crashed noisily out of the tops of the fig trees and were off to a nearby grove well out of sight. I burst out laughing at the great to-do and wished we could follow them, but we'd probably not get a better sight of them now that they'd gotten the wind up, so we started back. As we left their fig tree grove, I was ecstatic to find a pair of hoatzin feathers, one of the black tail feathers and a cinnamon-red wing feather. What sketching treasures!

Stopping to photograph a trail of leafcutter ants on a tree, my camera batteries pooped out on me ~ they were rechargeable, but I'd not thought to give them to Anthony for recharging. Since Otorongo doesn't use electricity, they must be sent to Oran Village overnight to plug into the village generator, which only runs for four hours each evening. You have to plan ahead. Fortunately, I had the extra batteries I'd bought in Iquitos as back-up, so after I returned to the lodge I could bring my camera back to life.

After lunch I explored around the lodge, sketching Penelope the Spix's Guan (see the journal page) and the tarantula in the top of the pineapple plant, then settling down in a hammock to color the guan, journal the morning's adventures and draw the hoatzins' fig tree.

Then, as the afternoon cooled, Osmar and I went down to the Otorongo dock and climbed into the dugout canoe to explore up the Oran River which runs past the lodge.

The Oran River at this time of year is slow and lazy, more like a deep creek than a river, and it was easy for us to paddle upstream to do some quiet birdwatching. Osmar has been up the Oran many times, and pointed out hawks, vultures, and smaller birds I had to look up in the bird guide we'd brought along (A Field Guide to the Birds of Peru). My best sighting was a Black-tailed Tityra, Tityra cayana, which is about the size of a robin, a pure white bird with black wings and tail, a black cap and bill tip, and a red eye-ring and base of bill. A VERY striking bird. We also watched an overnbird building its nest, although we thought it might be picking termites out of a termite nest as it poked and prodded at the edge of the muddy perimeter. I looked it up when we got back.

I really enjoyed the silence of the dugout, and paddling with the graceful, pointed paddle (see the picture). At one point we approached three submerged tree limbs poking up out of the water. Just as we passed, a cloud of bats emerged from the hollow ends and fluttered past our faces. It was extraordinary to feel the flutter of their wings past our cheeks (later I tried to draw my impression in the journal).

On our way back down the Oran, we spotted this ants' nest glued to the trunk of a tree, as a huge flock of canary-winged parakeets chittered overhead to land in a tree along the river. Amazingly, once they landed they were next to invisible.

On a whim, I asked Osmar if we could go down to the mouth of the Oran to see the sunset from our dugout, and we paddled past the dock and down to the Amazon to see the sun set (after all, I HAD seen Dawn on the Amazon, so Sunset on the Amazon was practically REQUIRED).

We had to hang onto the bank to keep from drifting out into the current, but it was a nice sunset, made even more dramatic by the passing of a boat in silhouette.

I forgot to mention that on our way down to the mouth of the Oran we had passed one of the women from the lodge doing my laundry on the bank of the Oran (accompanied by Penelope the guan). Some of the people from Oran Village work with Otorongo lodge to take the guides and guests to interesting spots in the jungle, to serve as boatmen and machete wielders, and to do, among other things, the cooking, landscaping, carpentry, laundry and keep the rooms made-up. It appears to be a good situation for all concerned.

I was impressed with the care the staff took with us ~ they were always on the lookout for interesting things to show us (birds, frogs, monkeys and sloths, etc.), and as boatmen, they would slow or stop the boat if a guest flung up binoculars or a camera to get a bead on something.

The Peruvians have more of a celebration on Christmas Eve than on Christmas Day. Since guests coming to the lodge may be of various religions, the holiday is very low key. But to celebrate the event the cooks brought in loaves of panatone (a light fruitcake) and after dinner we opened a bottle of rum from the sugar cane distillery and toasted one another and our Amazon adventure with high spirits. It had been another good day at Otorongo Lodge.

Costa Rica Sketch Journal ~ July 11, 2008

Here we are on July 11. Actually, half of this day's journal page was written on the 10th, so you'll have to go back in time a day to finish yesterday off (which is actually day before yesterday because I took a TimeOut yesterday to show you the Swamp Book Cover). (I added an improved cover! Go look!)

Since I didn't have anything more to say on the journal page I was writing on the10th, and I didn't have anything in mind to draw, I just doodled in a jungle liana page divider and started the next day's entry.

Okay. July 11th was a big hiking day for me, going for the Ridge Trail. I love this trail, which wanders through deep forest inhabited by lizards; mushrooms (that lacy thing at right is a mushroom!); howler, spider, capuchin and squirrel monkeys; peccaries (forest pigs); and other amazing creatures. One always wants to keep one's nose alert on this trail. Smell something really funky? Freeze! It could be peccaries. They won't hurt you if you don't get between them and their piglets, but they travel in packs and they're pretty imposing. I've never gotten a good photo of one yet, although I've seen them from a distance a couple of times.

I had delightful encounters with agouties, a red-capped manakin, and (2!) Great Currasows. Be sure to click on the little pictures here to see bigger ones. The two female currasows were extremely nonchalant, ignoring me, and I watched them for several minutes with smothered excitement. But in comparing the photo sequence in my camera and my journal entry (which I wrote scarcely more than an hour later) I discovered that I had remembered wrong!

How could it be that I thought I looked up from photographing dung beetles to see the currasows? My photos of the currasows come BEFORE the dung beetles on the camera. Dung beetles were followed by this lovely little manglio seedling taking root on a rotten log. The human mind is an amazing thing. I'll never know what really happened now because the fake memory has totally replaced the real one. I really did those things, but not in the order I remember them. (So much for "truth in eye-witnessing!")

This photo of the currasows, by the way, was the best one I was able to get in the dim light (and it's been heavily tweaked in Photoshop to lighten it up to visibility, starting out as an almost black blob). It's a perfect example of why a journal sketch might be a better means of capturing the moment!

The Ridge Trail emerges into the open on the lip of a high bluff over the Pacific, at Bella Vista Point (see the journal page). Off to the right and way down below is the long stretch of solitudinous beach, and off to the left (not sketched) the trail plunges down at an alarming angle to that beach.

Arriving on the beach breathless but still in one piece, I meandered back toward the trail up to the lodge, admiring hermit crabs along the way. I'd hoped to have time to sketch them and the shells they had chosen this trip, but that just didn't happen. Next time, maybe. I made it back by about 2:30, worn out by my six hour hike.

Daniel had spent the day hanging out in the hammock reading Tollé and nursing his tummy, which was not giving him a lot of pleasure. I sat down in one of the lounge chairs, cheering him up with tales of my adventures, and coloring some sketches in my journal until dark, when the heavens opened again with a marvelous lightning show and downpour. Reminds me of Camelot ~ at this time of year most of the rains fall in late afternoon or overnight when you're happy to see them come.

I've included a photo Dan took of me and Adri, sitting down to dinner. The tables are always beautifully appointed, with different napkin folds, flower arrangements, and gourmet meals every evening, served by candlelight, by friendly, efficient waiters.

Happy hour precedes dinner, from six to seven, and Maikal, José, and Gerardo (not the naturalist), make really excellent mixed drinks. My favorites were piña coladas and cocolocos. These always made me a little goofy, and since I am a bit shy in crowds, this helped me be more at ease (even thought the "crowds" were never larger than eight or nine people, many of whom I'd already met during the day!). What a hermit I am!

As we headed for La Caramba that night under our big black umbrella I had no idea Montezuma was plotting revenge on ME as well as Daniel!

My Hawaii Nature Journal ~ Day 6 (p.m.) ~ 12/23/2007

The place I came to see on this overcast but still warm and balmy day, was the Pololū Valley, a terrific overlook where the north end of the island plunges into the sea. Approaching Hawi from the west or leeward side, it was fun to watch the instantaneous greening-up of the terrain as the road turned the corner around the north end and entered the windward side from which all the rain comes.

Hawi is a funny, hip little backwater village. Hawi's buildings are mostly old, with some recycled into gift shops, galleries and restaurants for tourists, and it has a friendly feel to it. Reminds me of Ashland, Oregon, a couple of decades ago. A sidewalk concert with guitars, cello and vocalist was happening in front of the Kohala Coffee Mill gift shop when I passed through, so I sat down for a few minutes to listen. Quality music, smiling people.

Eating peculiar food is one of my pleasures. Show me something strange and different, and I'll almost ALWAYS give it a try. Chocolate ants, sashimi, seaweed salad, sure! ~ although I did balk once when my sister fried up some tomato worms for lunch... So the rambutan in the tiny farmers market booth in Hawi looked extremely interesting, and the tiny woman selling them showed me how to peel one and pop it in my mouth (the process was not intuitive). Oh, YUM! I bought six, and portioned them out slowly over the next two days. In the close-up picture, one is partially peeled, the other two are not. The fruit is pearly white.

Then onward I drove, further east, through tropical canyons and emerald leas. The road shortly dead-ended on the top of a bluff, and I parked overlooking the ocean. During twisty little rain squalls, I sat in my car and sketched and painted the historic site marker, but I sprinted out to sketch the awesome bluff and ocean whenever the rain momentarily hesitated.

After awhile, it dried out a bit and I hiked down over the edge a short way. The path was muddy and was reamed out four feet deep in places, but I was able to see the valley floor, WAY down there, and peer up toward the narrow valley's head, which was being inundated by a rain squall.

From partway down the path I had a really nice view of the bluff and surf, as well (see photo at the beginning of this day's entry). Coming back up I spied some neon-orange mushrooms I had somehow missed (while gawking at the scenery, no doubt) on the way down. I left regretfully, wishing for another week or two to explore and sketch.

On the way back to Hawi, I stopped to visit a tiny Chinese graveyard. Almost all of the inscriptions were in Chinese, and many of the stones were 2'-3' lava monoliths with deeply incised characters. You can see the characters on the stone in the photo if you take a good look. I was intrigued by the general shape of some of the stones -- they were apparently hewn to that shape intentionally.

I wanted to get home in time to sketch the banana tree in Shirley's back yard because I knew I had to leave for Hilo the next morning, so I started back on the high road to Holualoa. In many spots, the high road, 250, has Mauna Kea and The Saddle visible on the east and the ocean visible to the west -- another occasion on which the small size of the island tickled me -- I'd thought it much vaster on the map. I made it home half an hour before sunset, just enough time to hastily sketch one of the banana trees. It would be hard to go in the morning, I knew!

I've been amused, being from gigantic Oregon, at the emphasis Big Island dwellers place on The Big Island's great size. "It's BIG," they say, eyes large. "All the other islands could fit on The Big Island!" At first I was impressed, but then I missed the turnoff to Hwy 250 coming back from Hawi, and while watching for it, I ended up clear across the island at Honoka'a before I realized I must have driven by it. Gave me a good chuckle.

So, I end here with a split journal page, one side is about December 23, and the other begins December 24, but I did want to include my drawing of the rambutan in this entry. The business card honors the honu, or sea turtle; I must confess to having bought a little ceramic sea turtle to commemorate my sea turtle adventures, at one of the galleries near Hawi. So endeth December 23.