01-23-2019, 03:03 PM
12/31/2018: Part 4 -- Alcohol
To recap, this has already been a hugely eventful day. A tapir sighting, a lengthy exploration of that ghastly illegal logging site (and the vine-climb), the idyllic inlet where we ate and JJ fished but caught nothing, then rafting (or just swimming) on the river, and I even forgot (LC has since corrected me) that it was this morning that we went to the "blind" across the river to watch the scarlet macaws on the clay lick. So it's been a full day of activities, and now we're back at the ecolodge, dusk has settled, the howlers are calling us to dinner.
Dinners in this jungle setting are always interesting affairs. We sit on benches at three adjoined picnic tables on the deck and eat by candlelight, as it's invariably dark by dinnertime. We're mostly away from critters, but not entirely; and we sometimes pause in our eating to pick flying bugs out of our food. Being eternally sweaty, we draw sweat bees, which land undetected on the forearms and then migrate down to the elbows where sweat accumulates. Everyone, being ill-mannered, eventually puts their elbows on the table, at which point they sting. This happens repeatedly until you wonder why you never learn. Then there's the tiny ants crawling on the tables, which bite. Likewise, bigger ants on the floor that bite your bare feet if you step on them. Some of these bigger ants find their way to the tabletop where, for whatever reason, they make for the candles. You see them now and then scaling upward through wax and heat to reach for the fiery apex in a smoking death spasm.
Our chef, Roy, is highly regarded, and the food is always excellent. Tonight promises to be over-the-top. It is, after all, New Year's eve, and Roy is preparing something special.
I'm late going to dinner, still in my room as the others are starting. If I recall, I'm trying to find clothes that don't stink too badly. That's been a problem and is getting worse by the day. We don't have facilities to wash clothes, so we hang them over the railing outside our room to dry, only they don't dry, or if they do, very slowly. Even special fast-dry shirts, pants, and underwear that LC and I bought for the trip often stay damp. Sometimes we wear clothes into the shower, hoping to clean them in that way, only we're supposed to conserve water, just rinse off, so the clothes just get more wet.
While fussing, I hear cheers and clapping from the dining area. LC later fills me in that Roy just received a sustainable cooking award from the government. Finally I join the others. LC has saved me a spot. But first I go into the kitchen to get a plate and food.
The ecolodge staff tend to gather in the kitchen. They mostly eat separate from us, and only after we've had our fill. On this occasion, two are sitting before a monitor viewing camera-trap footage. They jump in amazement at something they see and give a cheer. I look over their shoulders as they replay it. Two giant anteaters pass along the trail, one with a baby anteater riding on top. It's amazing footage, and I watch it several times as they replay it. Then I go get my food. Roy had intended to prepare a duck dish he's famous for in the region. But alas, duck isn't available, so he has prepared a merely excellent chicken dish. There's also chutney, which is Mohsin's special recipe (he owns and operates a food truck on the East Coast where he lives), and other stuff, all delicious as always. Likewise, there's fruit juice of one kind or another coming from local trees or plants. But tonight there's another choice of potable: Pilsner. Large bottles of Pilsner. I'd noticed them being lugged up from the boat on our arrival days ago, but figured they were for the staff and guides. Now I see that it's for us on this special occasion.
I grab a Pilsner, someone uncaps it for me, and I join the others.
Dinner is always a sociable occasion; the lot of us get along surprisingly well. And tonight it's helped along even more by alcohol. As those who know me well can attest, alcohol puts me in a good mood, makes me more talkative, more outgoing. I suppose that's true of most people. Of late I've noticed that even one beer will start slurring my speech. I attribute it to the aging process. Anyway, we all eat and chat and have a wonderful candlelit dinner; one could hardly ask for a better way to end 2018. Mohsin and JJ eventually go off to tend to things, LC heads off to our room, likewise Paula goes to hers. The rest of us -- Magnus and Olaf, Ian and Mina, Stuart, Sarad, and I -- linger and talk.
I'm mostly talking to Sarad, who I've said little about up to now. He's Indian, works in Ecuador for a company that exports Cacao, and is amazingly generous, knowledgeable, and resourceful. I talk to him about White Tiger, a book that enlightened me to how a caste society could possibly persist in this day and age. He seems to agree about the merits of the book, though he might just be tolerating my ignorance. I should mention that Olaf asked if anyone wanted to share a second beer, at which point my hand shot up, so I have a beer-and-a-half in me -- actually more, as Olaf doesn't drink his full half and puts more in my glass, and these are big bottles. So I'm in a fine space at this point, and Sarad and I are hitting it off grandly, or at least to my mind.
But the thing about alcohol is that it doesn't affect everyone in the same way. And suddenly I'm hearing a voice from down the table, a voice not altogether happy. It is Stuart.
Stuart is addressing the snakers and giving them a piece of his mind. He's not happy with what they've been doing. At issue is putting the snakes in a sack overnight. To paraphrase, "You say it doesn't bother them, that they just shut down. Well, they don't! They're living creatures! They're suffering! They don't belong in a sack! They belong in the jungle! What you're doing is sick!"
He's loud, judgmental, full of disgust. The snakers, caught off guard, are contrite, at least in his presence. Then silence prevails over the gathering. Soon Ian and Mina get up and head to their room. I get up and head off to join LC in our room. I tell her what just happened, how this is probably the end of our cohesive gatherings. She asks how Mohsin reacted to Stuart's outburst, and when I say he wasn't there, she sets off to find him and fill him in.
[LC just now informed me that she also stopped in on Ian and Mina and told them that Stuart was full of shit.]
I return to the gathering area of the deck, where people still hang out, but not together. Ian and Mina appear, but they go to the staging area, put on their shoes, and head off on a night walk.
Soon LC comes back from notifying Mohsin. She tells me that Mohsin says he will work on Stuart. That's the great thing about Mohsin, as well as JJ. They are not confrontational; they affect change through gentle persuasion. They stay friends, nudge from within the relationship, changing attitudes.
Mohsin soon joins those in the gathering area. He doesn't mention the incident. He's cheerful, friendly to all. He's like a healing salve. He makes the suggestion that people ought to welcome in the New Year by stargazing. He's mentioned stargazing before, that the boat docked in the river gives the best view of the night sky and that we should all take advantage of a clear night to do this. Tonight is a clear night.
Olaf and Magnus opt out, and Ian and Mina are off on their walk. That leaves LC and I, Paula, Sarad, and Stuart. We go get our headlamps, put on shoes and socks, and head down the trail into the dark.
To recap, this has already been a hugely eventful day. A tapir sighting, a lengthy exploration of that ghastly illegal logging site (and the vine-climb), the idyllic inlet where we ate and JJ fished but caught nothing, then rafting (or just swimming) on the river, and I even forgot (LC has since corrected me) that it was this morning that we went to the "blind" across the river to watch the scarlet macaws on the clay lick. So it's been a full day of activities, and now we're back at the ecolodge, dusk has settled, the howlers are calling us to dinner.
Dinners in this jungle setting are always interesting affairs. We sit on benches at three adjoined picnic tables on the deck and eat by candlelight, as it's invariably dark by dinnertime. We're mostly away from critters, but not entirely; and we sometimes pause in our eating to pick flying bugs out of our food. Being eternally sweaty, we draw sweat bees, which land undetected on the forearms and then migrate down to the elbows where sweat accumulates. Everyone, being ill-mannered, eventually puts their elbows on the table, at which point they sting. This happens repeatedly until you wonder why you never learn. Then there's the tiny ants crawling on the tables, which bite. Likewise, bigger ants on the floor that bite your bare feet if you step on them. Some of these bigger ants find their way to the tabletop where, for whatever reason, they make for the candles. You see them now and then scaling upward through wax and heat to reach for the fiery apex in a smoking death spasm.
Our chef, Roy, is highly regarded, and the food is always excellent. Tonight promises to be over-the-top. It is, after all, New Year's eve, and Roy is preparing something special.
I'm late going to dinner, still in my room as the others are starting. If I recall, I'm trying to find clothes that don't stink too badly. That's been a problem and is getting worse by the day. We don't have facilities to wash clothes, so we hang them over the railing outside our room to dry, only they don't dry, or if they do, very slowly. Even special fast-dry shirts, pants, and underwear that LC and I bought for the trip often stay damp. Sometimes we wear clothes into the shower, hoping to clean them in that way, only we're supposed to conserve water, just rinse off, so the clothes just get more wet.
While fussing, I hear cheers and clapping from the dining area. LC later fills me in that Roy just received a sustainable cooking award from the government. Finally I join the others. LC has saved me a spot. But first I go into the kitchen to get a plate and food.
The ecolodge staff tend to gather in the kitchen. They mostly eat separate from us, and only after we've had our fill. On this occasion, two are sitting before a monitor viewing camera-trap footage. They jump in amazement at something they see and give a cheer. I look over their shoulders as they replay it. Two giant anteaters pass along the trail, one with a baby anteater riding on top. It's amazing footage, and I watch it several times as they replay it. Then I go get my food. Roy had intended to prepare a duck dish he's famous for in the region. But alas, duck isn't available, so he has prepared a merely excellent chicken dish. There's also chutney, which is Mohsin's special recipe (he owns and operates a food truck on the East Coast where he lives), and other stuff, all delicious as always. Likewise, there's fruit juice of one kind or another coming from local trees or plants. But tonight there's another choice of potable: Pilsner. Large bottles of Pilsner. I'd noticed them being lugged up from the boat on our arrival days ago, but figured they were for the staff and guides. Now I see that it's for us on this special occasion.
I grab a Pilsner, someone uncaps it for me, and I join the others.
Dinner is always a sociable occasion; the lot of us get along surprisingly well. And tonight it's helped along even more by alcohol. As those who know me well can attest, alcohol puts me in a good mood, makes me more talkative, more outgoing. I suppose that's true of most people. Of late I've noticed that even one beer will start slurring my speech. I attribute it to the aging process. Anyway, we all eat and chat and have a wonderful candlelit dinner; one could hardly ask for a better way to end 2018. Mohsin and JJ eventually go off to tend to things, LC heads off to our room, likewise Paula goes to hers. The rest of us -- Magnus and Olaf, Ian and Mina, Stuart, Sarad, and I -- linger and talk.
I'm mostly talking to Sarad, who I've said little about up to now. He's Indian, works in Ecuador for a company that exports Cacao, and is amazingly generous, knowledgeable, and resourceful. I talk to him about White Tiger, a book that enlightened me to how a caste society could possibly persist in this day and age. He seems to agree about the merits of the book, though he might just be tolerating my ignorance. I should mention that Olaf asked if anyone wanted to share a second beer, at which point my hand shot up, so I have a beer-and-a-half in me -- actually more, as Olaf doesn't drink his full half and puts more in my glass, and these are big bottles. So I'm in a fine space at this point, and Sarad and I are hitting it off grandly, or at least to my mind.
But the thing about alcohol is that it doesn't affect everyone in the same way. And suddenly I'm hearing a voice from down the table, a voice not altogether happy. It is Stuart.
Stuart is addressing the snakers and giving them a piece of his mind. He's not happy with what they've been doing. At issue is putting the snakes in a sack overnight. To paraphrase, "You say it doesn't bother them, that they just shut down. Well, they don't! They're living creatures! They're suffering! They don't belong in a sack! They belong in the jungle! What you're doing is sick!"
He's loud, judgmental, full of disgust. The snakers, caught off guard, are contrite, at least in his presence. Then silence prevails over the gathering. Soon Ian and Mina get up and head to their room. I get up and head off to join LC in our room. I tell her what just happened, how this is probably the end of our cohesive gatherings. She asks how Mohsin reacted to Stuart's outburst, and when I say he wasn't there, she sets off to find him and fill him in.
[LC just now informed me that she also stopped in on Ian and Mina and told them that Stuart was full of shit.]
I return to the gathering area of the deck, where people still hang out, but not together. Ian and Mina appear, but they go to the staging area, put on their shoes, and head off on a night walk.
Soon LC comes back from notifying Mohsin. She tells me that Mohsin says he will work on Stuart. That's the great thing about Mohsin, as well as JJ. They are not confrontational; they affect change through gentle persuasion. They stay friends, nudge from within the relationship, changing attitudes.
Mohsin soon joins those in the gathering area. He doesn't mention the incident. He's cheerful, friendly to all. He's like a healing salve. He makes the suggestion that people ought to welcome in the New Year by stargazing. He's mentioned stargazing before, that the boat docked in the river gives the best view of the night sky and that we should all take advantage of a clear night to do this. Tonight is a clear night.
Olaf and Magnus opt out, and Ian and Mina are off on their walk. That leaves LC and I, Paula, Sarad, and Stuart. We go get our headlamps, put on shoes and socks, and head down the trail into the dark.