To do this, we all hopped in the canoe and headed back down river to the junction with the main river. There was a small village there, but on the opposite side of the river there were also a few individual houses in clearings and it was to one of these that we went.
The home consisted of two huts up on stilts about 2.5m off the ground.
They were situated in a cleared area of maybe 300m x 200m in area.
And, living in this clearing was a family of Dad, Mum, two daughters (say 13 and 10 years old) and a son (say 5 years old).
The hut roofs were thatched with palm leaves, the walls were made of planks of wood, and the floors were made of "unrolled" palm trunks. I only saw in the kitchen/eating hut but I assume the other was for sleeping. The kitchen hut was about 20m x 10m, and was simple and spartan ( one stove, two hamocks, one table, and two sitting benches). there were no doors or window shutters at all.
Living under the house (and about the place) were about a dozen chickens and a rooster. There was also a single dog (who looked like he didnt get fed that much but was not starving).
The cleared land was about half fenced off and there were about half a dozen healthy looking Brahman cattle grazing in it, and one bull.
Most of the rest of the land was devoted to crops with about half devoted to subsistence crops of rice (ready to harvest) and Yuca (a 2m high shrub that grows big underground edible tubers)
And there was also a good amount of a cash crop from Cacao trees. Cacao is the raw material that chocolate is made from. The Cacao trees were ready to harvest with the pods of "beans" being a purplish red... The pods are picked and opened and the beans are dried in the sun and then sold in town to middle-men who eventually sell them to the big international chocolate companies.
Cacao tree with pods.
Ripe Cacao pod (though they are usually yellow when ripe)But, we were here to mess around with the Yuca...
First we went out the back and forcibly pulled one of the Yuka plants up out of the ground. Then we dug around and got about a dozen good sized tubers from the root system :)
Then we peeled the dirty skin off the white tubers ready for further processing back at the hut.
Before we headed back to the hut, a short section of the original plant stem was cut off and it was planted in the hole that we had created by pulling up the plant... Apparently in about six months (regardless of season) the plant will have fully regrown and be ready for the next harvesting :)
Back at the hut the tubers were washed and then turned into pulp with a large improvised grater. We all took turns and it didnt take too long to turn the tubers into a large pile of white milky mush!
The mush was then scooped in several handfulls at a time, into a sort of long narrow mat woven from plant fibers.
The mat was then rolled diagonally into a sausage and hung from the hut wall by a loop at one end. A stout stick was then put through a loop in the lower end of the mat and it was "wrung" very forcefully to get as much of the water out of the mush as possible.
The nearly dry Yuka was then taken out of the mat (sort of granular consistency) and rubbed through an improvised sieve.
The resulting finish powder was then scooped onto a very hot flat clay cooking disk and pressed down in the form of a crepe or pancake... And it as it cooked, it stuck together to form a sort of tortilla.
... And then we ate it... And it was quite tasty I must say. :))
So, then we sat around and had our packed lunches along with the Yuca tortillas, and generally did not much for a couple of hours...
But, there was another form of entertainment on hand in the form af the families pet TeeTee monkey! He had been in the hut since we got there but was a bit shy with strangers at first. But that didnt last long, and he quickly became the centre of our attention and was quite playful (as well as hungry).
I dont know quite how he came to be a pet, but there was the most antiquated relic of a gun in the house that I suspect had a lot to do with it!
The gun was fascinating to me though... It was a really old muzzle loader with an external firing-cap mechanism. But it was sooo corroded and the breach looked like it had been re-welded several times... The thing looked like a real "death trap" to me!... But it was their house, so what can ya say?
Me and the "gun"The hows and whys not withstanding, the monkey was mischievous and playful... He quite liked to bite gently on your fingers and to then turn around, lay down, and hold your fingers with his back feet... very strange!
But the most fun game for him was to "be the monkey hat"... He did it to every one of us more or less as often as he could... He would scramble, climb or jump onto your head (often when you were not looking or expecting it) and he'd grab on tightly to your hair with all four hands... and then he'd just lay there and enjoy the ride! He was only about 18 months old, so I think it was sort of a surrogate "riding on mums back" thing, but what ever it was, he liked doing it a lot...
I was a bit of a challenge for him though because I didnt have enough hair for him to hang onto, so he had to scrabble quite a bit and it was a bit painful with his little finger-nails raking my scalp.
But I could easily get him off when I wanted whereas the others had long hair and he would really hold on tight and had to be "prised" off with several of us holding his limbs away from the victims hair :)
Me with the "Monkey Hat"on
So, the American frontiersman Davey Crocket and his famous Raccoon skin hat that I think everyone in North America has an iconic image in their mind of, had competition for a day with our Monkey hat!
... and a good time was had by all...
And then we went back up the river to our own little huts with thatched roofs for the night :)
A few pictures of "back in the city" down in the jungle... all there to support the Oil industry as usual...
