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
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
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
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
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.