Chazuta Chazuta!

The motorboat provided no cover. It was a two-hour boat ride on the Huallaga to visit the cocoa farms in Nuevo Paraiso. I wondered if it's called that because it was a real mess before. Cold, cutting wind and occasional showers were the travel standard here. Tiny, sharp-winged birds with silver-white bellies flicked the river surface, diving for fish. 
On the way to the farm, we trekked along a muddy path where I was enchanted by a flower called the “Licorna,” resembling a braid of red and yellow bird beaks. After our meeting with the farmers, we were stuck in Chazuta for awhile. The odd thing about this tiny, dirt-covered town is that its one and only road is closed for construction from 6am to 6pm every single day. To kill time, we asked the municipal building to unlock the small houses in the plaza for us. These held archeological digs of ancient funerary urns. The clay jars looked too small for a human body, it’s possible that some of them were luggage to take into the underworld. We tried to visit the historical "museum" in the municipal building but they couldn't find the keys even as a young man tried a ring of about fifty of them. Circling around town, I discovered bite-sized children holding hands on the way home from school, playing inside a cardboard box better than any car, ones with vacant stares who hung onto doorframes. A pharmacy offered its menu in big red letters painted on the front wall: Cures! Injections! Instant pregrancy tests!

I was offered some fresh guaba, and unlike guava is about half my size. It's a curious fruit whose outside looks like a plump vine while the inside is similar to cocoa, white flesh over large stones. I snacked on it happily from the back of our truck until I discovered further up the fruit's long stem a brothel of maggots. They reassured me that these were "natural" maggots that very often live inside the fruits and that the rest of the guaba was fine. I still prefered not to eat any more after seeing all those flesh-colored things squirming inside. The road seemed to have opened again and we headed back to Tarapoto in the dark of evening.

Field Rats Taste Like Pork

In addition to gorgeous mountain views, La Collpa restaurant in Tarapoto offers meats that you prefer not to think about when chewing and sighing with happiness. From left to right: palm salad, picuro (a wild field rat), ribs, friend tilapia, chorizo and venison. The field rat was like pork with a kick of extra flavor: crispy on the outside, tender on the inside and as fatty as bacon. Subway monster-rats in NYC probably aren't as tasty.

The Saucy Lagoon

 The Blue Lagoon in El Sauce felt like a giant, private swimming pool surrounded by overlapping mountains and palm trees. Paddling on my back, I had the sky to myself like the inside of a big blue bowl with swirls of white: steam from a home-cooked soup. I could up eat up every bit of it with a spoon.

What a slice of silence is Sauce compared to the sweaty, pulsing chaos of Tarapoto. We circled the lagoon by boat where the guide pointed out the 50 foot-high platform jutting out of a cliff for brave souls to jump off of. One of the other volunteers was the only one from our tour group brave enough to attempt it. I climbed up to the platform with him for moral support. From up there, the smallness of the boat in the distance and the dizziness from looking down, as if from a five-story building, was enough to kill any of my adventuring tendencies. When he jumped off, I was the one who screamed.

The lake is overseen by a barren volcano that no longer erupts but once in awhile, releases sulfur into the lake which kills all the fish. Returning from the boat ride, we found our eccentric tour guide "P." A shady-looking Santa Claus, he traveled through the Peruvian jungle for 15 years as a missionary before working in tourism. Rumor has it he once got lost in the jungle for months and survived on nothing but grubs and wits. That night, we stayed in a quiet, riverside bungalow and sat by the water drinking coffee "coctels" or liqueurs.
The next day we woke up at 5:15am to catch the sunrise: only it was bright as day already and the roosters had been crowing since 3am. So instead we went hiking and stumbled upon a beautiful riverfront property with elaborate gardens - turns out it belongs to Don Pollo, the chicken kingpin of Peru. The friendly old gardener told us any other time he would let us walk through the gardens but Don Pollo himself was coming by that day. I imagined a cigar-smoking mob boss leaning back in a leather armchair, stroking a chicken made of solid gold.

Heading back to Tarapoto, our colectivo got stopped by a military checkpoint. Soldiers with huge rifles marched over to the car and demanded to see our ID's. We didn't have our passport with us and just as I was having flashes of me sprawled on the floor of Peruvian prison, he acquitted us because of our American tourist status, though not before asking me if I was Korean. One of the guys in the colectivo didn’t have his ID and he got taken out of the car to be questioned. I caught a glimpse of the soldier unbuttoning his shirt, poking him in the chest, searching him. They searched all the bags in the trunk. After what seemed like an eternity, the guy was released to come back to the car.

Cocoa Groves in Juanjui

 Thanks to Willy Wonka, I always believed that chocolate came flowing in rivers with Oompa Loompas paddling down in canoes. Not so. The cocoa farms where it all begins are far more beautiful. I was visiting a cocoa farm in Juanjui. To get to this far-out farm, we had to ferry across the Huallaga river in a ferry.  And by ferry I mean someone took three long canoes, tied them together and slapped a bunch of wooden planks on top. That was the ferry. A lone captain with an oversized stick steers it back and forth along that narrow piece of river. 

All around this grove in Juanjui stretched cocoa bushes, their arms full of the red fruits that look like elongated footballs. The ground was covered by a thick carpet of dried leaves and empty cocoa shells. The cocoa is only ripe when it starts turning yellow. One of the farmers cracked open a yellowed one with his machete, exposing the white, sticky flesh inside. It tasted much sweeter and fruitier than I expected, only that the flesh is meager compared to the seed. After the seeds are harvested they need to be fermented for 6-7 days. For chocolate they would need to ferment at least 75%. The fermented cases had the intoxicating smell of Bailey's. I think that's how a lot of chocolate liqueurs are made. Afterwards, they dry them out in the sun by laying them out on mats. All the streets were covered in drying cocoa I was afraid our truck might run over them.

After our meeting with the farmers in the grove, they were kind enough to make us lunch, which was why a poor chicken started racing around the whole plantation, trying to escape its doom. The men had their arms out, running after it, trying to corner it. That terrified mass of feathers finally ran into one of the sheds where the wife was able to tuck the chicken under her armpit and take it to the side to be killed. An hour later, we were slurping on a steaming bowl of “caldo” or chicken broth with carrots and potatoes.

There were many handshakes and hugs when we left the town. Before disappearing into the dirt roads and jungle green, the last splash of human color I saw was a little girl with a big umbrella, hiding from the ruthless sun.

Fried Ants and Caterpillars, Yum!

A wise person once said, "anything is edible once it's fried." That person might be me. The fried ants were jungle-sized with claws and wings. Crunchy and salty, not bad at all. I could see them as a kind of bar snack. They only felt funny if a bit of wing got stuck in your throat. The caterpillars though were another story. They had the texture of cardboard on the outside and mashed potatoes on the inside. It didn’t taste like very much but the texture was vomit-inducing. I had to chew and keep chewing until I could get it down. Thankfully a glass of cold beer helped me wash it down. Never again. Some fat crispy ants maybe, but not caterpillars. Even some Tarapotinos find them disgusting.

Mototaxi Roars in Tarapoto

As a dear friend informed me, Tarapoto is the hometown of the professional Quidditch team Tarapoto Tree-Skimmers! Outside of the Harry Potter world, Tarapoto is a small city overflowing with fresh jungle fruits, dirt roads mixed in with the paved, brightly-painted houses with low roofs and some of the best food I’ve ever had. The only way to get around are by mototaxis, which make you feel like a human macarena as they roar down the street.

I take these at least four times a day:

No llamas in Lamas. Just Castles.

Unlike its name, the town of Lamas has no llamas. But there are streets draped in colorful murals, some explaining the town history and others as advertisements. I saw several artists painting these beautiful murals by hand. Lamas is one of those most culturally preserved towns in the area with Quechua traditions surviving today from over 500 years ago. This shows in the brightly-colored, flower-embroidered dresses the women wear, the way they balance huge cans of water on their heads, how their houses only have slivers for windows to keep out evil spirits. The town is also cursed or blessed, depending on who you ask, with the most incongruous of sights: a brand-new Italian castle. An eccentric Italian man came to this traditional little Quechua village a few years ago and decided to build this brick monstrosity, complete with turrets and fake flags. It’s now a restaurant and quite the tourist attraction for Peruvians.
On the way back to Tarapoto from Lamas, we got into a "colectivo," one of those shared cars that shoot off to select destinations the minute the seats are filled. The first warning sign was that the right passenger door wouldn’t open and one of us had to climb in from the back. The front windows were automatic but the back were manual. It was clearly a Frankenstein car put together from many carcass bits. We had a brief moment with a big juicy rainbow but the sky quickly turned into pouring rain. Still, the driver kept speeding and passing mototaxis. All of a sudden, the car started swerving into the opposite lane and kept swerving from one end of the road to the other. Either his brakes weren't working or his wheels were as bald as Howie Mandel. It was maddening to see him press the gas pedal even as we were yelling “Mas despacio mas despacio!” I had a sinking feeling that he might just kills us all. Only after we threatened not to pay him did he pull back the certifiably insane driving. Half an hour later, I made it out alive and well enough to blog.

Battle of the Pomegranate Tree (I lost)

Bang! My eyes flew open. It sounded like a rock thrown into my wall or falling on the roof. This was my first night in Tarapoto after a weekend of ceviche and tourist sites in Lima. I looked around the room: the sound seemed to have gone away. I chalked it up to the Rio Shilcayo Hotel’s jungle atmosphere. Bang! again. This time at 2am. The next was at 3am, and so on until the brightness of morning. I got out of bed feeling as through I’d fought through a medieval siege. Only when I went outside did I find the pomegranate tree stretching its branches directly over my bungalow. And in the grass lay the big red fruits that had attacked my roof in the night. One pomegranate was cracked open, exposing its jewel-like flesh. I wanted to eat one as revenge but the car was waiting to take us to our new hotel. I solemnly vow to eat a pomegranate before leaving. That goddamn fruit cost me an entire night’s sleep. Did I somehow offend the Tarapoto tree gods with my blog?