It is another steamy morning in Puerto Maldonado, and Gabriel Granados Olivera and I are sitting on a low-slung motorized boat looking across the wide stretch of the Made de Dios ready to head upriver.
The Madre de Dios River is a tributary of the Amazon River, the river that flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Embarking for El Lago de Sandoval (Sandoval Lake), however, you sense that your journey could have no destination and no end. Watercourses of the Amazon curl and embrace each other like lovestruck snakes in their courting dance. The body's pores open and might continue to open into infinity. It's as if a person could dissolve into the liquid veins of the river that, like clouds in a blue sky, are hardly solid at all.
El Lago de Sandoval, located in Tambopata National Reserve close to the Bolivian border, is within an area holding one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity on the planet. To arrive there, you must be intrepid. If you elect to stay at one of the lodges closer to the lake your journey to the lake will be shorter. But the boat dock at Puerto Maldonado is within sight of Puente Continental, one of the longest bridges in Peru, uniting the country with Brazil. Its 21st-century elegance superimposed against a primeval backdrop is stirring. What's more, Puerto Maldonado Dock is as delightful as the city itself. The exuberance of locals who may appear on one of the ubiquitous motorcycles to enjoy a freshly squeezed fruit juice and snack of hard-boiled quail eggs is contagious.
A half day's journey from the bustling mass of humanity that is Puerto Maldonado, Granados and I arrive at the gateway to Tambopata National Reserve. We have already traveled hours by motorboat. Ahead is a 90-minute walk through primary jungle to reach a swamp-like location where we board another boat. This time a flat-bottomed bote (skiff) that will take us to Sandoval Lake itself.
Heat and humidity are disrupted only by the movement of our vessel. Silence is fragmented only by the sound of Granados rowing at its stern and the vocalizing of birds and monkeys as they attempt to communicate across the dense jungle landscape. Trees loom so high that it is impossible to see where many of them crown. Every inch of everything in every direction is copiously adorned in vines, ferns, mosses, mushrooms, the trails of leaf-cutter ants and the enormous nests of edible termites that Granados says taste like carrots. The blue morpho butterfly shines surreal like a luminous blue-finned fish swimming out of context, a fluttering exclamation mark inside the shadows. We are in an isolated realm that is entirely removed from the human sphere.
After a twisting passage through the half-light, in front of us the ceiling of the seemingly impenetrable forest suddenly expands into a cathedral-like vault. An unbelievable vista is spread out before us. Known as “Mirror of the Sky,” El Lago de Sandoval and its surrounding environs is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Insanely beautiful in the sense that it envelops you in its ostentatious wildness. With mesmerizing force it dares you to gamble on the unknown.
Someone is watching us from across the surface of the lake. A pair of eyes that, although small, seems to examine us with profound attention, assessing us, processing information. This is caiman-infested territory, a world where the alligator belongs and we don't. He no doubt sees us long before we see him and remains still, tucked partially behind the branch of a tree that arcs over the shoreline. We can't tell his size; most of his body is submerged, but he is a black caiman, a top predator and one of the most aggressive in the Amazon. Terror of this primordial beast is ingrained in our psyche, even among those who have never seen one. Hollywood movies and children's cartoons have distorted our notion of the threat that it poses to Homo sapiens. Nevertheless, our quicksilver shiver of fear arises in the oldest, most primitive area of our brains, the cerebellum, often referred to as our “reptilian brain.” It controls self-preserving behavior patterns to ensure our survival and the survival of our species. Although most feral creatures prefer to avoid human contact whenever possible, it is also true that all are potentially dangerous. Unlike our controlled and ritualized lives in “civilization,” Nature is unpredictable. Within the jungle, we are vulnerable to the imperative of all life to feed – feed on us if necessary. In our bote, shallow and close to the skin of the lake, we keep our distance.
The waters that fill the rivers and lakes of the Amazon basin begin their journey to the lowland rain forest in the Andes Mountains. I spent many weeks in the very heart of these mountains on horseback with Edward Rimachi Yanqui, summiting to as high as 13,500 feet above sea level. Ethereal vapors called phuyu float immediately above the ridges and descend into the valleys of the cordilleras. They not only hydrate the soil and crops but also augment the rivulets that flow naturally from glacial melt. Streams that are formed throughout the altiplano become drinking places for animals as well as bathing and clothes-washing places for people. It is no surprise that Runasimi-speaking descendants of the Inca make offerings to Pachamama (Mother Earth) directly into these cold, clear depths.
Torrential seasonal rains do not disturb the giant otters of the lake. Only humans run for cover when they detonated like dynamite in the “river in the sky.” The beauty of oxbow-shaped Lago de Sandoval becomes convulsive as its banks flood. Inundated are surrounding low-lying spaces, creating new pools, habitats for the largest members of the weasel family. Handsome, graceful creatures of the Indigenous lore of numerous tribal peoples of the Amazon basin, they are the shape-shifting tsunki, or water spirits, that may appear half-human and half-fish. Inhabiting a 3-dimensional, aqueous universe, they corkscrew, alive with character and emotion, diving beneath the waves into unfathomable freedom. They share their environment not only with the caiman but also the electric eel, stingray, piranha and infamous parasitic Candiru, or “toothpick fish,” which some believe can swim up the urethra. Perhaps, too, there exist here fish that are unfamiliar even to the otter in spite of the fact that they know the lake so intimately. Fish that swim in profundities where the sun is quite forgotten.
Gravity keeps the moon in orbit around the Earth. Physics also determines that the Amazon basin attracts moisture toward itself as if it were dark energy. Waters beginning their journey in the sacred glaciers of the Tawantinsuyu Empire explode into a landscape so sensuous that it affects us beyond our intellectual jurisdiction at an instinctive level. We feel what is all around us. It's as if the organs of the body come home to an amplified “knowing.” The sensation, quasi-familiar, is like being in love – a consciousness of being joined to something more meaningful than our individual selves, to the wider cosmic fabric of which we are but one tiny thread.
Janice Jada Griffin is a graduate of Sotheby’s Institute Of Art in London, a designer and an internationally-sold painter who owned her own art gallery in Portland, Oregon, for a decade. She lives and works in Santa Fe, and is currently writing a book based on her ongoing experiences in Peru. For more information visit avant-garde-art.com or email her at soul@avant-garde-art.com.
