The sun rises at 6 a.m. in the jungles along the Tambopata River in eastern Peru. Faint whispers of light are just beginning to announce its arrival through the dark at 5:30. At 4 a.m. everything is pitch black. Beneath the trees there is neither moonlight nor starlight. In fact, there are no trees to be seen. The nightjars and potoos can find their way, to the sorrow of the moths and night-scurrying rodents but when we are wakened we can’t see our own feet. Breakfast is at 4:30 and by 5 we are on the river with our guide. Rodolfo is a 32 year old member of the Ese’eja people who have long lived on the river and in the jungles, unbothered by the Inca or, until the great rubber run from the 1880s to the 1920s, by much of modernity.
Dawn on the Tambopata
We had been with Rodolfo for 48 hours or so, from breakfast to dinner, on 8 hour walks through a mud-trailed jungle in search of birds — from the large, loud, colorful Macaws to the quiet, tiny spots of brown and gray endemic Antbirds and Creepers. I am not one who believes in shamanism, mystical powers, x-ray vision or super hearing; Rodolfo came close to changing my mind. The story begins a few days earlier.
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