From the Andes to the Rainforest, journey into the heart of Peru

I asked him: «Are you ready to catch a snake and bite it in half? Without missing a beat, he said yes, and we were over with this question

Werner Herzog, Interview with Fabio Fazio – “Che tempo che fa” (Rai 3, January 19, 2008)

“The settlers destroyed the jungle and constructed that masterpiece of civilized man: the desert.”

Luis Sepúlveda, “The old man who read Love Stories”, 1989 (Italian Edition: Guanda, 1993)

Farmer in Cuzco

Text and photos: Christian Patrick Ricci-Fabio Liverani

Once upon a time, in the early twentieth century, in the Amazon forest, a crazy Irish man who had an unpronounceable name for the natives: Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald. He was named after Fitzcarraldo and he dreamt of bringing here, in the Peruvian Amazon forest, Enrico Caruso and building an opera house. Fitzcarraldo dreamt of building a railway across the Amazon forest and an enterprise to carry the rubber. To get his goal, he moved even a ship from a river to another, crossing a mountain.

This is – shortly – the plot of the greatest movie shot in the Amazon forest, directed by Werner Herzog in 1982. The troupe worked for four years and it was one of the most expensive movies of the period. The film does not sum up just Fitzcarraldo and natives’ dreams: it contains even the dreams of the director. He had to face a lot of environmental and social difficulties, a lot of hardships and worries, but when somebody asked him why he did not give up, he answered that he did not want to live without dreams, and that movie was one of his biggest dreams.

Here, in this area of the Amazon forest our story begins, from Cusco across the Andes, going down and crossing the cloud forest of the mountain, as far as Atalaya (a small village with a little harbor on the river) running the Alto Rio Madre de Dios and then sailing the Rio Manu, in the heart of the rain forest.

We leave from Cusco with a great goal: crossing the Andes driving the carretera Cusco-Pilcopata. More than 200 kilometers that we think we can cover in about six-eight hours: a narrow and twisting dirt road which crosses, first of all, a dry and high territory. This is the kingdom of the condors and of the peasants who are able to cultivate wonderful agricultural products even if the ground is so hard and unfriendly. These peasants make this upland rich, with their wooden animal drawn plows, by the sweat of their brow, despite the sleeping sickness and thanks to the mate de coca: a hard life, just to conquer potatoes and corn even at high altitude, but always keeping on smiling.

The carretera has been built in the 60s by Sven Ericson. He faced a lot of problems but today this road is a very important communication route from the historical capital of Peru – Cusco – to the Amazonian territory of the Madre de Dios and of the Rio Manu. Old trucks vroom carrying agricultural products and goods, fording and facing landslides. If a truck meets another one that comes from the opposite direction, it has to stop at a lay-by to allow the other truck to pass over. Neither two 4×4 jeeps can meet without stopping. Usually the car that is going uphill or that is further from the lay-by has the right to pass.

The road climbs up to 4.200 meters above sea level, crossing some pueblos, such as the nice Paucartamo, where we have a very pleasant break. The road climbs again, another pass and then the clouds. This is a sort of precise border: suddenly we find a different climate. In fact, from thispoint, the Andes push away the blanket of fog and clouds. The western slope is characterized by a dry and mountainous climate, and it leaves the penetrating humidity to the eastern side. Who crosses the pass has the wonderful feeling to experience a sudden climatic change and an instantaneous environmental revolution.

We are entering the kingdom of rain and fog, and we are glad to go in the cloudy forest of the mountain: humming birds welcome us. We can even meet the so rare Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus), the mythical quetzals, insects who have the shape of spines (Homopthera) and primitive landscapes. We spend here two days and it rains almost ever: the forest offers us different imagines of itself.

Cloud forest

But Atalaya and its little harbor are waiting for us. A pipante – a motorized dugout canoe – allow us to run the Alto Rio Madre de Dios and to sail the Rio Manu, the red water river that enters the rain forest up to its beating heart. Before the dawn we leave once again: our Hyundai pierces the night with its powerful head-lamps and for a moment – just a moment – it lights a tigrillo (Leopardus tigrinus) that, probably, is hunting some rodents.

We leave from Atalaya and we feel like in a Salgari’s adventure book, where the real protagonist is the rainforest, the lung and the breath of the world: beautiful, powerful and boisterous.

We go aboard our ship and we come down the Rio Alto Madre De Dios. Sometimes, the water is really low and the rapids cause some problems. It is very hard to understand where to direct the fore, even if our coxswain knows very well the river. But the Rio is alive, it changes continuously and it is never the same. The Rio can surprise even the most careful sailor. We have to find the right passages. The landscape by the riverside changes while the “bote” (the name of the ship in Spanish, the official language) is passing. The peaks disappear slowly behind our backs, and the territory shows us hills covered by tropical vegetation, cumulonimbus clouds in blue sky crossed by herons, parakeets, aras…On the banks we can often see some capybaras (the biggest rodent of the world), and it is possible to catch sight of a tapir. It is really hard but not completely impossible seeing a jaguar on a beach, the noblest feline of Amazonia: bashful and careful, he has learnt since the time before Colombo to fear man, his hand, his sear, his blowpipe and today his rifle. The Alto Rio Madre De Dios joins the Rio Manu near the Boca Manu Village, mixing its “clear” water with the red one on this river. This village is famous for building riverboats and it is inhabited by more or less 400 “souls”. They have electricity from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and some accommodations for those who what to spend there a night. It is an Amazon “Puerto Escondido”, forgotten by men and by gods, where there is not so much. We can find some fresh bier, and that’s enough!

On the road to Pilcopata

We are surprised to find a little football pitch in the same place where we found the square in Europe. It is very spruce, green and lush, and it creates a contrast which is impossible to forget…like people during the hours when they have electricity, still in front of a public television at full blast. Alas, even here a game show. But the difference between the spectators and the personages inside the television is really evident, here in Boca Manu.

Now the fore of the “bote” is sailing red and calm water, and we go up the Rio Manu. The forest is more and more breathtaking, the air becomes very hot and humid, and by the riverside we can see the white caimans and some rare specimen of black caiman. Onto the branches some curious capuchin monkeys observe us, instead of the squirrel monkeys and the spider monkeys that remain aside even if we imagine they look at us from the green blanket, too.

About 8 hours later we reach our destination, the Rio Manu Rain Forest Lodge. It is half an hour’s walk far from the Rio, and it is a little decadent but fascinating. We dock the boat and we enter the forest, following a path. Hot and humidity cause immediately a gut-wrenching sensation, mosquitos and gnats arrive quite soon to suck our bloods, but it is just a little fitting tribute to the beautiful Nature. A primordial and wild beauty. Now, where we are, we feel like nothing! We feel powerfulness and inadequate. Without a mosquito net or a camp for the night you are dead here, we know it! The chests with the equipment are carried to the camp with a wheelbarrow, a wooden structure with mosquito nets, real beds and showers: a real lux!

When we docked, a D3 s and a 300 mm lens fell off board inside the muddy water. It is a real “photographic tank”, a “last generation” full frame reflex that after a drying has started again.

A lot of insects banquets with us, without consequences, and we even try to take some photos underwater inside the Juares Lake ignoring the presence of the dangerous black caimans…the muddy water hamper a little bit our work, but the shutters of our cameras shoot more than 2.00 times, allowing us to take away our most beautiful souvenir, images of a powerful and boisterous life, images of Amazonia which were inside our mind since we were very young, thanks to Mister No’s books and Herzog’s movies…Amazonia was inside our dreams since we were children, and now that we are adults we have chosen to not exchange our dreams with reality: we have chosen our dreams and we have daydreamt and lived, for some days, the emerald green of the forest, taking away gently just photos: here they are!