November 24, 2010

I got up at 05:15 and prepared the fishing gear, this time with the reel handle in place. I then went over to wake up Iseline and she got up immediately. She is very much like me when it comes to getting up. If she has fishing to look forward to, no problem.

At 5:30 we went over to the kitchen. The cook had promised to have some bait ready for us and he gave us a cup full of chicken and beef in chunks.

Down at the shore of the Tahuayo river we could see that the sun had just come up. We found a stick of the right size and I made a fishing pole for Iseline. She would fish close to the shore, and I could cast further out. After a few minutes I got my first bite. Damn´, the line broke! I was very surprised, since I was using a very good braid that was brand new, Oh, well, maybe the knot had been weakened by friction when I tightened it? I put on a new hook and tried again. Same thing happened, but only after I felt there was something really big on the other end. OK, time to swich the spool.

I put on a spool with thicker and better line. This time the line broke above the floater, What the? This was a very expensive braid of the finest quality. Had I been fooled into getting a line that had been lying too long in the shop? I tackled up again, and once again the same thing happened, only this time I saw that the floater was actually being attacked by fish, This is when it dawned on me. That must be piranha that is not only taking the bait, but also trying to eat the floater. They were cutting the line with their sharp teeth!

I ran up to the room to fetch my metal leaders. Holy mackerel! I had forgotten, when we left Iquitos, that I stored them separately from the rest of the fishing equipment. They were in the side pocket of my electronics filled carry-on suitcase which was, of course, stored back in Iquitos. Bummer. I was really not meant to get any fish on this voyage, I have been in the Amazon once before, 14 years ago, in the Brazillina part. I went fishing several times then, but never caught any Piranhas, something which has nagged me ever since. And here I was, with hungry Piranhas all around me, and no metal leaders. Grumble!

Iseline had also had  a couple of bites, and nearly managed to land one, but no fish. Resigned and hungry, we both gave up.

There is a great swing here, and Iseline was very happy to have it all by herself, since no one else had gotten up yet.

The swing was just too high for her to be able to get on it herself. It swings from a platform and has very long ropes attached to a tree. It really gives a trapeze artist feeling. Friction at the top must be pretty high and the swing stops after a few back and forths. I helped her get on every time and she had a ball with the swing for about an hour. There was a Canadian woman next to us in a deck chair. She had been here for 8 days already and was staying for 10. She had nothing but good things to say about her jungle experience. Together we commented on Iseline´s progress. From a very slow and timid start she asked me to pull her further back and push to give her maximum speed. Her technique for getting off was worthy of a circus artist. Possible career?

After breakfast we headed out for our first activity for the day; the canopy zipline.

On our way we spotted these snails, they are each about the size of my fist.

Weninger also pointed out an animal sticking its head out from a hole in a tree. We could barely see a black smudge far away. Again, the camera proved its worth. Not only does it zoom, but it also adjusts brightness and contrast so you can see something. With the camera we could se how cute this little creature was. Say hello to a yellow crowned brush tailed rat (got that?):

The canopy zipline is a series of 3 platforms that has been put almost at the top of some of the highest trees in the area.

Between them are cables that you can use to fly from tree to tree, a bit like Tarzan. They have something similar at the Parc de la Schappe in Briancon in France, where we spend our summers, so the kids were familiar with the concept. Once we arrived we realized that this thing was in a totally different league. The platforms were at a height of 35 meters (120 feet)!

I am more than a little afraid of heights and started to prepare myself for the fear that I knew was coming. Strange thing these instinctive fears. Anything from 5 to a few hundred meters will freak me out. Anything above that evolution has not taken into account and I am fine. I have never had a problem taking off and landing in an airplane since the plane crosses the heights I´m afraid of in a very short time. But try to make me climb down a ladder and I have to concentrate real hard to be able to move at all.

There was no elevator or crane to bring us up. Everything was muscle power based. We were given two choices to get up. There was the sissy and kiddie option where they would pull you up using a rope and a pulley. Then there was the real jungle option where you used two devices which would roll up the rope, but not down. These were attached to a rope of their own with loops for your feet. Weninger got up using the latter and was up in no time. It seemed to me that he was first and foremost using his feet and legs to push himself up, then elegantly and easily sliding the metal thingies to move them up the rope.

We were all correctly equipped:

I have a muscle injury in both my wrists from having used the computer too much. In the geekiest period of my life, from I was 14 until I was 32, I programmed on computers whenever I had the opportunity to do so. It´s difficult to estimate, but I  would guess I  averaged 6-8 hours a day during that period. Evolutionary pressure has unfortunately not yet prepared the human body for such decade spanning hack festing. I had my first symptoms of RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) in 1992. In 1994 I was knocked out with useless wrists for abut half a year. It was very difficult to get a diagnosis at the time. One doctor treated it like a sports injury and gave me ultrasound heating treatments, probably making the wrists even worse. I used the internet to get information and was intrigued by what people were telling. It seemed the medical community in different countries was putting different labels on this phenomenon and explaining it in different ways. Almost everyone in the US was told it was Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, a disease where the nerves to the hand get pinched because of swelling in a narrow bone tunnel in the wrists. Almost everyone in Norway was told it was tendinitis, a disease where the tendons have an inflamation and swell. In the UK they used the new term RSI.

After a long search I found a doctor that seemed to have some real knowledge. He told me that this type of repeated light movements cause a number of symptoms. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and tendonitis are common, and almost always part of the disease complex. However, the most important is a type of muscle injury. When you use a muscle you press all the blood out of it. It takes about half a second for the blood to come back. In other words, if you use the same muscle more often than 2 times per second, there is no blood circulating through it. This causes byproducts of energy production in the muscle to accumulate and eventually permanently damages the muscle tissue. His advice to me was to take micro breaks and stretch my muscles. I made a program that popped a 30 second counter up on my screen every 10 minutes, so I could stretch. I got so used to it after a while that I was able to keep my flow while stretching. It made a world of difference, and my hands quickly got better to the point where I could program for long periods again.

I have now learned to live with the condition and can go for months without feeling any pain. I do have occasional “flare-ups” (the pain comes back and lasts for a few weeks), but know when they are on their way and am normally able to slow down in time. When I got hold of a 7×7 Rubik´s cube some years ago, and refused to put it down until I had solved it, I managed to induce a flare-up. It was stupid of me. It is fascinating how easy you can forget, I hadn´t had pains for almost a year and thought I was invincible. I did manage to solve the cube thuough, after about 36 hours, but the pain was pretty bad, and the domestic humiliation of having to tell Hélène even worse.

Uhm, where was I? Oh yeah, getting up to the canopy platform!

Hélène chose the real jungle option and made her way up fairly easily. Here she is on the right, while Adrian is being pulled up on the left:

Thinking that this was a leg exercise I chose the same. I didn´t have much choice, though. The two guys helping out Weninger for this activity were very polite, helpful and service minded. They also only spoke Spanish. I could clearly sense that they were not very tempted by the thought of having to pull 90 kilos of slightly overweight gringo 35 meters upwards.

They attached my harness, I grabbed the metal thingies and threw myself off the platform we were standing on, a couple of meters over ground. It took me about 5 seconds to realize I had made a major mistake. The thingummybobs were hard to push upwards and you really had to pull hard in them to get your body upwards, leg power was by far not enough, at least with my legs. I was trapped. I made a few full-hearted attempts and managed to move half a meter up or so. I felt like a fly in a spider´s web and must have looked pretty funny while energetically wriggling my way up at few centimeters at a time. Many thoughts went through my head. Getting off now was even worse than choosing the sissy option straight off the bat. I would now be seen as a sissy gringo who is unaware of his own limits and also gives up too easily. OK, Eirik, you got yourself into this mess, and you know there is only one way out of it.

I told the guys that I could not do it. My rusty Spanish is not sufficient for eloquent explaining away of things, so I simply asked bleakly: “El otro, es possible?”  (The other. Is possible?) I could sense the respect and credibility points counter spinning wildly in reverese. They pulled me in and attached me to the other one. I felt like a bag of potatoes hanging in the air as they puled me up with the pulley, one slow decimeter at a time. I had ample time to think while I was slightly swaying back and forth between each time the poor guys made a new hard effort.

At the top Weninger was waiting for me and pulled me in to the platform. RSI is difficult enough to explain to someone I meet in Oslo. How do you explain it to someone who has grown up in the jungle and whose English is a bit limited? I tried by saying I have been typing too much. He responded with a giggle while repeating my sentence with a sense of incredulity. I could just as well have told him that I have been reticulating splines too many times or that my fustasjeopphengsforkoblinger were malfunctioning. Lost cause, bonus points permanently lost, let´s move on.

I could feel the rush of the height anxiety coming in waves as I stood on the platforn. I made sure to stay in the middle and/or hold on hard to something.

Here´s a photo of Weninger at the top:

The view was pretty awesome:

The first zipine was dramatic. After we were attached we had to sit on the platform with 35 meters of void under us and let ourselves fall forward. The cord was loose and we would fall for a few decimeters before really hanging by it. Scary stuff. Adrian and Viktor effortlessly zipped over. Then it was Iseline´s turn.

We had warned her and prepared her for this, and she was very certain that she wanted to try. But when she sat there, ready to push herself forward, it became too much. We tried to sweet talk her for about 15 minutes, to no avail. She still wanted to do it though, and suggested herself that she could do it with one of her parents. Weninger said that I could do it. OK. He attached us both and I had her on my lap while sitting at the edge. I had to concentrate real hard to not show her too clearly that I was scared stiff. I have done 2 bungy jumps in my life, partly to try to overcome my fear of heights. The primitive and bottomless fear of jumping was pretty close to the fear I felt when I willingly let myself fall forward with my daughter on my lap.

Once we felt the line holding us it became much easier. Iseline made a “whee” sound and smiled. Unfortunately she got her arm squeezed between the rope and me when we arrived, so she arrived crying on the other side. Luckily she got over it very fast.

On the next leg Isline went by herself and cried out ; “This is fun!”

I was very relieved when we were lowered down to the ground. I was shaking from such a long period of continuos fear. Still, it had been a very cool experience to fly through an Amazon canopy 35 meters above the ground.

After lunch siesta was observed until 3pm. A good choice of rythm, since it is unbearably hot here between noon and 3 pm.

Afterwards we took a boat and went looking for the famous pink fresh water dolphin. After only a few hundred meters we spotted two of them. We got within about 50 meters and could see the backs of these gracious animals as they touched the surface of the water.

We all jumped into the river and let the boat drift down together with us.

It was a good to cool off in the water.

The heat here coupled with the humidity is hard and unforgiving for those who dislike it. If you are cold you can always put on more clothes. If you are too hot there is only so much you can take off. I actually like hot and humid, it feels like being in a sauna all the time, which I really enjoy. I do realizes that my condition is quite uncommon and probably comes from a difficult childhood where my parents forced me to do cross country skiing in  -25 C (13 below zero F). Ooops, just kidding, mom and dad.

We spent a long time in the water. Everyone was happy to just swim around and enjoy themselves.

I had been thinking a lot during the day about our miserable fishing attempt in the morning and how amateurish ot was of me to not think about using a metal leader, not to mention actually bringing them.

I mentioned the misery to Weninger and he quickly produced a piece of metal wire and twisted it into a leader before my eyes and gave it to me. I was now well equipped and used the day to plot my revenge. When we got back was getting late, but I had around 40 minutes of daylight left to execute.

Down by the shore all by myself I found peace, took a couple of deep breaths and went to work. Since I now had abandoned using a floater my options were limited. The people here just put the bait on the hook and let it hang straight down from the rod. When the fish arrive they hope to hook it. I thought I could do better, since I had a casting rod. If the iine is not tense when the fish bite it is easier for them to get the bait inside their mouth and more of a chance to hook it. It´s all about increasing the odds of getting a fish.

First I tried a technique called jigging. I let the bait sink all the way to the bottom, pulled it hard upwards and towards me and then let it sink again. I tried for quite some time, with no luck, but had a couple of bites. After a while I noticed that all bites were at the surface.

Hm, maybe I could use a technique called “harving” in Norwegian. It basically means to drag a large bait at the surface, creating ripples that attract the attention of the fish. Then, if a fish bites, you have to let the line go completely, for a second or two, so the fish can get the bait inside its mouth, but not long enough for it to sense the hook and spit it out, before you hook. I had read an article about it, but never tried before.

I gave it a go. Bingo! After a few minutes I had a very nice pirahna on land! Man, oh man, I love it when you hit jackpot with a technique in a new place. It has only happened to me a couple of times before.

When Adrian asked if I had caught anything ten minutes later I could answer “five!”. By the time he was down at the shore I had six which he carried to the cook.

In the few minutes left of daylight I managed to land three more.

My first nine red-bellied piranhas, and they were beautiful. Best of all, the people working in the kitchen couldn´t believe their eyes. “You catch that where?”  “You great fisherman, you fishing for the entire lodge”

I slept well during the night.

Eirik

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