04-APR-C-8

 

FROM A PRE-DAWN RAINY DAY FISHING TRIP

 FOR PIRANHA AND CATFISH,

THROUGH LECTURES AND FITZCERRALDO

TO AN AFTERNOON VISIT TO THE CABOCLO CULTURE OF ECLECTIC RIVERBANK LIFE

 

April 22, 2004

 

            We have dropped anchor off Cuxiu Muni which is CUXI = 3* 17.12 S, 64* 37.35 W, and on a rainy day, I have be3en off at dawn to go fishing.  I was the only one who caught anything, and I did that immediately and twice—catching the red bellied piranhas.  They are about the size of big bluegills, but have very sharp rows of teeth and a fierce bite with what look like dentures on their mandibles.  There is a vegetarian from of piranha called the paccu.  We were not fishing for him, however, since the kitchen crew had supplied us with steak to go out to find the piranhas with hand lines.  We also later got a small white catfish with the barbells and whiskers at least twice as long as the fish.

It was raining throughout, with a few birds flying over us in the fishing Zodiac, but not over the birders boats which had also gone out early—irony compounded many times over.  One of the bird experts here who is loaded with electronic ears and all kind s of optics is from Costa Rica and had first been hooked on birding when his father gave him the first bird book translated into Spanish, which was the birds of Venezuela, which I know well since Luis Ayala and I had first been into the Orinoco.  Much later when I went with Kurt Johnson who had obsessed over that same book with annotated references to his first sightings wherever he had made them (and after “ticking them off” never was interested in that species again) I said to David from Costa Rica, “I had been to Venezuela many times.”  He asked with whom did you go?  I said:  “With Terramar, and with the Michalangelis and with Luis Arturo Ayala.” 

AN ORINOCO DELTA COMMON LINK

            He could not believe it, since he knows all of them well. Terramar has fallen on hard times since they became identified with a political party and the party lost power, and so the Terramar, Michalangelis and all the others are very much out of influence now.  I will write to Luis Arturo, mi hermano Venezelano, and send him a note on a postcard from David from Costa Rica.

            It seems like it has slowed down, since there were the alternate groups that would go out to night to do the night run, but there was a light rain that did not atop so they canceled it.  We decamped to go through the town of San Francisco del Boca De Capybara to see the village of about 100 people with 83 children in the local school. We walked around the areas of the locally planted cacao, palms, and fruits to see what fit the local Caboclo economy.  The school was all fixed up to look at us as we were looking at them.

  The young girls were all gussied up, looking like femme fatales with lipstick and eyeshadow slipping languidly around in their sandals and tank tops and shorts; they looked like twenty four year-olds rather than the 12-year-olds they were.  We watched a volleyball game and checked out the two room schoolhouse, and then fled in front of a very dark cloud as the rain came.

We went back for the de-briefing, and then adjourned for another luxurious dinners with wines and desserts.  I have heard from quite a number of people that are looking forward to the lecture that is advertised for me to be giving tomorrow.  I am looking forward to it to, and will see whether winging it is going to be the right way to go with this group with whom we might be able to get interactive, since each seems to have an agenda of his or her own in being here.