Saturday 30 March 2013

Day Three - Frogs and taps

Giles Crosse - lens flare - Fauna Forever pathway

There is a very cool small frog who appears to have taken up residence in the shower...

Giles Crosse - a small visitor


Giles Crosse

Hopefully the tap should give you an idea of how pequeno this character is. Intelligently, just after this shot, he headed up inside the tap which may well be his safe haven.

Giles Crosse

He has a larger and somewhat uglier companion in the path too...

Giles Crosse

Day Three - Toads, flies, skies and taps

Today was another amazing day in the Amazon. Worked this morning, had Spaguetti al Busto in town, massive portion of wicked veg and white sauce pasta, down through Puerto Viejo to the boatbuilders and a walk in the afternoon.

Chris Kirkby, Fauna Forever Founder, draws Puerto Maldonado (not to scale:)
Spotted a beautiful fly caught in a web by the window in my room at www.faunaforever.org
 
Giles Crosse

A small thing, but all of us share the will with which we cling on to life...


Giles Crosse
Giles Crosse

Glancing at this little fellow set me thinking about the similarities all life shares and how we all ultimately inhabit the same space. At lunch we spoke about how a certain tree in the Amazon apparently has no life for a space of metres around its trunk.

It's only when you look more closely you will notice the Fire Ants.

These small fellows will be zipping up and down the trunk. Living inside the tree, they work in a symbiotic pattern, defending it against attack from all comers, and in return they receive a cosy little space in which to live.

Such symbiotic examples are mirrored throughout the natural world, yet unfortunately the use of pesticides, intensive agriculture practices and unsustainable consumption is currently setting our species at odds with the planet that gives us all the air, food, light and water we will ever need.

Equally conflicting levels of consumption between Western and less developed societies illustrate the disregard for balance we display within our own species. Perhaps more time spent watching a little fly hanging on to life could remind us of how tenuous our lives might become should we continue to abuse the resources nature supplies.

Giles Crosse




Friday 29 March 2013

Day Two - farms, chiggers and mercury

Today has been a pretty quiet day, settling in with temperatures about 35 Celsius. Had a mellow time sorting clothes out, uploading some images and generally getting used to the pace of life here which predictably enough is very mellow compared to Western ideas.

Had a beautiful lunch in the neighbouring Eco Lodge to www.faunaforever.org which did make me feel like an afternoon doze, but instead necked a quick coffee and took off on a walk...

Giles Crosse


There are some really wonderful flowers and fauna here. There are also plenty of other eyeopeners, taking a a stroll down the Carretera towards Tambopata I encountered a number of friendly cows in the middle of the road, and some less friendly perros which were deterred with a large stone...

Around the corner from here there is a chicken / pig farm. No doubt due in no small measure to the heat, the smell is literally breathtaking and makes you think twice about how and why we eat the way we do and how divorced many of us have become from the process of seeing, killing, skinning and cooking our food. I certainly have, though I did deliver to abattoirs when I was younger, which was also an eye opener.

A Tesco lasagne is something totally devoid of odour, death or the realities of sustainable consumption and is probably a marketing miracle in reality. Yet it contains just the same animals creating the odour down the road that would put anyone off their microwave dinner.

Everyone has an individual choice to eat whatever they choose and this should absolutely be respected... That said, I imagine few of us would fail to at least question what we put in our stomachs when confronted with the harsher realities of how things reach us.

This is something very fundamental when it comes to sustainability. Whether our computers are recycled in Hong Kong or China, where workers daily inhale heavy metals amid conditions that would make any UK health and safety officer run for the hills, or whether it comes to food, many people are divorced from the realities that make Western luxuries and global societies tick.

A conversation with local Peruvians at lunch revealed many won't touch local fish, because they are so full of mercury which leaches into the river from the heavy metals used in mining locally. Hence there are bespoke fish farms amid the greatest river confluence on the planet, which begs a certain irony...

There is a lot of gold here, indeed pebbles in the street can offer up a tiny bit: in Maldonado there are buyers with scales ready to carry out these transactions, in a very frontier style manner.

Ultimately all of these things illustrate how interaction and human consumption impact on biodiversity but also on human life, as what we use to exploit our resources generally returns into the ecosystem and back into our bodies, unless we realise what's happening and accept we can't even eat local fish anymore.

Giles Crosse - near the chicken/pig farm...

You have to be a little careful ambling around here, as it's possible to get chiggers. Chiggers are nothing more than young mites, specifically the parasitic larvae of mites in the genus Trombicula.

Seemingly, should you brush against chigger-infested vegetation, or worse, sit down to rest in shady grass full of chiggers, the tiny bugs will immediately crawl up your body, looking for a place to hide. Because chiggers measure just 1⁄150 inch in diameter, they're so tiny, you are unlikely to see or feel them.

Once the chiggers find a good location on your body, they pierce your skin with their mouthparts and inject you with a digestive enzyme that breaks down your body tissues. Chiggers then feed on your liquefied tissues. They don't suck your blood, like mosquitoes or ticks.

The chigger will remain attached to the host for several days, feeding on dissolved tissues. Once it has an adequate meal, it detaches and drops to the ground, where it continues its development into a nymph. For most people, however, the intense itching caused by the chigger bite leads to equally intense scratching, and the chigger is dislodged by frantic fingers before finishing its meal.

I hope none are on me. The solution is neat alcohol, which is a solution to many things come to think of it!

Giles Crosse - development
There are some cool little bridges around here, and it's a real pleasure speaking Spanish with the locals, who are amazing, and feeling your language skills returning a little. Can't wait to get the Spanish back to how it used to be...
Giles Crosse
Will add in a youtube link to these pages tomorrow for video updates...



Day Two - Flowers and Insects

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Puerto Maldonado - Day Two

Day Two

Today it's super hot, just planning out activities and some work schedules... There was a beautiful frog in the shower last night, Tarantulas are hanging out by the front door...

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

View from bedroom window - Giles Crosse

Thursday 28 March 2013

A little pathway can be a special thing...


Giles Crosse

Day One - Leaf Cutter...

Giles Crosse
Day One - Leaf Cutter Ant

Day One - Tambopata

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse

Giles Crosse
Day One - More images 
Day One

After about 20 hours flying from the UK I've arrived here in Puerto Maldonado.

The views of the Amazon Basin on the flight in from Lima are truly breathtaking, really humbling too. The expanse of forest really provides scale and a glimpse into the true importance of this part of the world. It's incredibly moving and a remarkable experience...

Giles Crosse

Puerto Maldonado airport is a very cool place too... Tiny and nestled into the jungle, it's really little more than a runway.
Giles Crosse
None of this however is really as moving as standing next to the Tambopata river. A serene and peaceful spot by the water's edge, there was something very soothing about being here. Perhaps the sense of scale and place, or relativity and the importance of things may have a different perspective here... It's a lovely thing to behold...
Giles Crosse