Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 060: Guyana. Steven Rinella talks with Makushi guide and fisherman Rovin Alvin, along with Garret Smith, Rick Smith, Korey Kaczmarek, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.

Transcript

Ep. 060: Guyana. Steven Rinella talks with Makushi guide and fisherman Rovin Alvin, along with Garret Smith, Rick Smith, Korey Kaczmarek, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew. · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening. You can't
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: predict anything, Okay. The first order business that we have
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is has nothing to do with what we're doing or
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: where we are. But again, I dude, we were talking
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: about whether people actually spray themselves with pepper spray one day,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and uh, because there's this there's this rumor you always
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: here about a Japanese woman who went to Yellowstone National
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Park and doused her kids down with bear spray as
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: like a repellent, like you would with insect repellent. And
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I say, I didn't know if that's true. And this
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: dude wrote in and he used to This guy writes in,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: he used to fly two oh seven's in you know,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Assesson to a sevens in southeast Alaska. Oh. Actual, we
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: talked about this. We got talked about rark rough arc
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: a correction another correction. Um, So this guy used to
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: fly two oh sevens in southeast Alaska. This didn't happen
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: to him, but it happened at the place he worked
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: where a guy, a tourist, wanted to get dropped off
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: at a place near Haines Alaska, and he wanted to
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: bring along his bear spray with him, and they had
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: it in a and he put it. They would fly
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: with bear spray so long as they could uh put
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: it inside a PVC tube and then lock it in
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a fifty cal amo can and then stash it in
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: the nose compartment of the plane. The pilot brings this
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: guy into an airstrip for a little hike about drops
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: dude off, gives him his bear spray, and the pilot
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: lifts off, and as he's circling on, he looks in
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the hiker is laid out on the ground, circles again
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: that the hiker doesn't get up and land the plane
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and goes over there, and sure enough the hiker had
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: put his bear spray on himself as a repellent and
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: was diagnosed with chemical pneumonia and spent his vacation in
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the hospital. When you got that their thing is is
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: another dude rolled in to say I had credited Robert
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Ruark with writing Death in the Tall Grass. If we
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: had an Internet connection, I tell you who did write it.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: But he told me that that's not who wrote Death
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: in the tall Grass. No, it's Peter Kapstick. There you go.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Why didn't you bring that up when we're talking about it?
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Just zone out? I was in the zone. You know
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: What's funny because I do remember talking about Ruark. I
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: remember thinking, so you'd let me say, like a bald
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: face like his best book, his best book is, uh,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the Old Man and the Boys Ruark? Well, and Ruark
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: is using enough gun. I'm sorry, I just missed it
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: in passing. All right, it's because we tune you out, Steve. Yeah.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Speaking of literature, UM, I got a book idea for
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: anyone aspiring writers out there. It's called this Whole Ain't
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: big Enough for both of us? And what it is
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: a fishing book and and like with fishing books, like
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: you look at anyway as the Old Man in the Sea, right,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: it's about fishing, but it's not. It's about growing old
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and tenacity and perseverance and how and the futility of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: it all right, and then river runs through it. It's
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: like suppose to be about fishing, but it's about fatherhood, brotherhood,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: What are your obligations to the people that love you?
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: And um, this Whole Ain't big Enough for both of us?
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Will be a fishing book that's about a love triangle. Oh,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the title like right speaks volumes. Um, So there I'm
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: throwing a bone to any aspiring writers. Now we are
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: in Guyana, and Guyana is in northeast South America. So
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: if you imagine like the Caribbean or Caribbean, um, Guyana
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: it's north, its coast is on. It's on the north
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: and faces up into the Caribbean, and some of its
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: biggest rivers flow out into the Caribbean. If you go
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: to the headwaters of certain rivers, you kind of like
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: drop down into the Amazon basin. It's rainforest. Of the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: population lives on ten of the land. Um in the land.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: How do you roban elevens here with this? And Rovian
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: is Makushi Amerindian born in Rewa village. That's all true
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and correct, right Um. The coastal people's are largely like
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: descendants of slaves and other labors that were brought in
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: to work plantations on the coast. Guyana is now an
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: independent nation. Is bordered by surname Brazil, Venice, Sueola. But
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: in the interior jungles where we are, it's primarily Amerindians
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and Robic. You name some of the different tribes of
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Amerindians that live in this area. I know you have
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the Mikushi, you have a good Those are the guys
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: that come down that that river upstream from and then
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Wai I know and Creed right but they were on
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the coast. Yeah. Um, if you the the biggest so
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the biggest river the drains Guyana is the Esquibo. And
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: when the Esquibo flows out in the in the like
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the Southern Caribbeans, it's a giant rivers. I think it's
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the third largest river in South America. It's got a
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: delta twenty miles wide. Um, if you go away the
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: hell up there the Sequibo. You come to the confluence
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: of the Rewa River and the rup and none am
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I saying that right river like they flow together right
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: here where we're sitting right now. Come straight to the
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: n Riva River. Oh, so you go, you enter the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Rue Pennoni, then Riba River, Riba River, and that's where
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: we're sitting right now right correct? How many people live
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: in your village tree hundred nine? Last time I was
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: here it was two hundred and some. Why the mass
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: population growth in your village? I don't know a good
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: place to live with this to leave. People may great
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: to come here and um, you have like more babies
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: coming up. Yeah, so you have like more population and
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: what like in this village. What percent is makushi about
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: sevent what other groups live here? So yeah, makashi which
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: is seventy? Then you have the why I then you
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: have and okay, so Wapashan has lived here. Yeah, they're here.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: We all leave together and you can mayor Intermary, Yeah,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: no problem, no problem. Is it very uncommon for people
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: to leave, you know, younger generations too moved to another driver. Yeah,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that's how it is here. And if I want to
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Mario George from other villages, they can go into that
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: because I'm not foreigner, a more Indian. And you married
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: a woman from another village. Yeah, is she mukushi? Yeah?
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know that really. Yeah, so she has
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: But like I said, we are and we all leave together. Yeah.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Now when Rovan met his wife, they the primary crop
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: roban is a guy day, a fisherman and a farmer.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Is that fair correct? The main crop that they grow
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: in Riba villages cassava, which in some places is known
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: as maniac and it's a root and name the things
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: you guys make from cassava. So of cassava, we can
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: make our far in. We can make our tap yoka,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: our local drinks which is kasiri or purple drink. Yeah,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: why could call it? And parakhari and um black carrisip.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: You come from cassava, and um, I think that's it
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: most more more more of it that comes from cassava. Yeah,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and you eat cassava several times a day, every day,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: every We just did a long river trip, not because
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: it shouldn'tay a lot. How many days we spend the
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: river seven it's been a week on the river, camped
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: in three different places on the river. Um and fished
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: many many kinds of things and uh, and watched Rovin
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and his his wife and some of the guys that
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Roving works with in camps with and travels with cook
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: ah man or fishes. But the first thing we did
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: when we got here is went out and and saw
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: how they do cassava. So we watched Roban's mother take
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: some cassava route which comes out of the ground. Looks
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: like a big ass yam that everyone agree it looks
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: like a big as yam hooked to a tree. You
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: pull the tree out of ground and the tree comes
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: out the trees like not even as big as your wrist.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: It comes out with three big as yams hooked to it.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: You great it and squeeze the liquid out, and in
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: its raw form, the liquid will kill you, your dog,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: anything that drinks it. Is that right as cyanide, which
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: made me wonder maybe Robin knows the answer to this,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Rob Are you familiar with the Jones Town massacre? The
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Jonestown massacre? No? Okay. In the seventies, a Christian sect
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: from the Bay Area in the US, led by a
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: minister named Jim Jones, came to Guyana and they set
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: up a large commune and it had commune slash colt
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Jim Jones being the cult of personality, and they set
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: up a large commune. They had eight hundreds some people
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: in it, and they became like sort of as many
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: groups do they form to sort of like a post
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: apocalyptic vision. And some thing's happened. There was like an
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: investigation some congressmen, we're coming down because a lot of
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: relatives in the Bay Area of the US or like
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: wanting to know what happened to their kin folk. And
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of talk about they were gonna
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: get disturbed and there was gonna be arrest and there's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of bad things going on. And they fixed
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: up a big batch of kool aid that was poisoned
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: with cyanide. I now wonder if it was poisoned with
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: cassava water. I would think easy to find out, but
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I just don't. We don't have we don't have way
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: to log on and find out chipped in so which
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: would be like a weird thing to ship in. So
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: with the suicides, firearms and cyanide kool aid. So when
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: you hear someone say don't drink the coolid, that's what
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: they're talking about. And eight h some people all died
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: in Guyana, Americans Americans. Wow, it gave name to what
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I can said, one of the greatest rock bands of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: all time, which is the Brian Jonestown Massacre. So Brian
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Jones was the you know, remember the Rolling Stones and
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: he drowned. The Jonestown Massacre was what we're talking about now.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: And Brian Jones, how Masaker is a great band. Um,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: you hadn't heard of that? Nod Hard, Yeah, it was
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: before you were born, and it was all It wasn't Guyanese,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: it was all Americans. Okay, yeah, weird deal. However, have
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: you seen have you ever seen anything drink cassava water
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and die? I guess saw the chicken? They are chicken,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: drink a little and then running. Yea, Why don't you
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: guys guard that water more? Do you know what I mean?
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Is there like a protocol in place for when you
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: squeeze the water out of graded cassava? Is there like
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: a way that you guard it so that no children
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: will drink it? Is it ever left out? They we
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: we we got used for it? So what what do
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: we do with that? After squeezing? Note that's the one.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So you never leave it laying around. You immediately boil it. Yeah,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I got you. Okay, what he's getting is when you
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: squeeze the water out of this thing um, and it
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: looks like they make they weave, they weave a thing.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: It looks like a Chinese finger trap, but it's five
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: ft long, big around is your leg and they put
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: all that grated cassava there, and there's a pole in
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: it and you sit on it, so you're sort of
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: like as you sit on the pole, which is through
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: a handle in the Chinese finger trap, it tightens the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Chinese finger trap and squeezes out the liquid. That liquid
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: is boiled. Once it comes to a boil, it's not
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: poisonous anymore, is that right? Yeah? And that is called
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: That drink is called what local drink. No, This the
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: water after it's boiled, after the body is called the
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: black black carriage. It's reduced. It's like, you know, not
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: reduced just when when your mom first boiled and we
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: drank it. Oh, that is called umsiri. And that's not alcoholic.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: To get alcohol after three four days. That includes the
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: actual gratings not just the liquid. The gratings are in there.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Oh really Yeah, that's the grating and then the color
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the black potty too coming together, and then that's the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: one goes in the pot and bold and that's a
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: good drink. That's good. No alcohol. Alcohol would be next
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: to three days ferment. Yeah. So let me back up
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: from it, because you're hearing already. You already heard dirt
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: myth talking addie um dirts. Uh. He started chewing his
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: little what are they call yeah, and his and his
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: and his ongoing efforts to kick his tobacco have it.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: He's chewing little mini chewers little mini like they're like
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: skull bandits but not not. Yeah, they're they're they're healthier
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: for you. They actually are healthy organic. Yeah, they do
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: have They come in a package that is useful once
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the pouches are are used up, though, which is kind
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of nice. So he knew that, since he cannot buy
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: dip here, if he chewed these weakened dips pouches yea,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: that it would start to wean him off and thinking
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: that when he goes home he will continue on his
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: path to quitting. But he also knows that when he's
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: gonna go home, he's gonna take his eighty year old
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: pickup truck and buy gas and walk in to pay
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: for the gas, and there will be an entire wall
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: of dip saying dermot the right stuff, hey boys, and
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: he will buy a big thing of cope and a
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: thing that Dirt Mills is talking about tobacco too. Real quick,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: is that when you see a dude buying grizzly, it's
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: not because he likes it, it's because it's cheap. Example,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: my dad, he's very frug quality dip his cope and
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: you chew what che cope? Man? I got a good
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: job and then uh Rick Smith, who, um, just baffled
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: me that this man is single. It always just baffed
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: me that he said. I thought we made a deal
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: not to talk about this on the podcast anymore. We didn't.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Oh sorry, he's got a girlfriend, um, which doesn't surprise
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: me that he has a girlfriend. Because this man knows
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: how to juggle machete. And not only that juggles machete
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: is whether there is not even a prayer of medical help,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: no one's coming for you. Yeah, injury yourself joggling machetes
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: where you almost joggle machetes this week, that was my
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: main concern looking through the first aid kit. And then
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: he later later took a look through the first aid
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: kit and was disappointed to find that there were no
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: suitures in case, for instance, someone got cut by ship juggling.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: We do have that video. So yeah, Rick Rick knows
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: how to joggle machetes, which in which here they call
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: it cutlass, which I love is a nice touch. And
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: then uh, Corey who pronounces his name two different ways.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Catch matic is the right way. Uh, where there's kasmaric,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: which is what everyone says, and there's catch mark and
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: then there's catch mark, so it's three catch mark is
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the Polish way, and then there's Janita prote which is
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a term of endearment. Yeah you know you have you
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: have to so you're good. Yeah. Um, he's the guy
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: that failed the cray me when I have the book wrong. Now,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: roban So we made the drink and we we drank
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the drink. But when we left for our river trip,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: you had between your legs in the boat a five
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: gallon bucket which had originally contained motor oil filled with
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: what that was casiri, But you were you were waiting
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: for it to mental ferment and get a little bit
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: alcoholic like beer. Now the Robin likes it, uh from
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a bowl. So as you're motoring up the river, you
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: just open the lid on the five gallon bucket and
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: have a bowl and that's sort of like the main hydration.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: So that's one form of kassiri. But when cassiri gets
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: like towards the end, we were drinking it and it
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: was stronger. Does it have a different name than no,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: stays Kassiri stays, that's the different stuff. The other one
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: that you had that the Yeah, the other one is
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the part of hurry what does that made out of?
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Same customer the same route, yeah, the same route, but
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: their ferent steps. Of so that has been baked on
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: a huge palm. It's like a root de pon but bigger. Oh,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: that's where you bake. It looks almost like a big
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: what we would call pizza cross, which I know probably
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: as give an image to you, but like like a
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: big round bread right right right, But what part of
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: it the gratings, Yeah, the same well that goes so
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the great things started feeling, of course, feeling great thing.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: And then after grating goes into this matapi, squeezes out
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: all the stuff that left in the matapi on the
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: finger trap right, oh, the finger the moth a piece
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the thing that squeeze right. So from there it goes
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: to the sifter which we made here and see with it.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: And then we have this huge plant which is ready,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and then we baked that. The the mill which is
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: there comes out from the matapi, so we bake it
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: there no liquid, no liquid, nobody's squeezed from the mate.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: The liquid is here one that what is that is
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: in the matape that's the one we see out and
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: bake it and goes on the floor. Cover it for
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: two nights and then open it. When it's open, it's
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: sweet first day, and then and then four or five
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: days gets real alcohol. It will get as strong as
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: get stronger. Like wrong, we didn't have we brought some
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of that weathers to Yeah, I thought of the half bucket.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So five gallons of kassiri and two and a half
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: gallons or so of So that's the beverages that you
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: derive from the route. Now, the meal, the variations on
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the meal that Roven and his and his fellow travelers
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: eat every day, would be that that you well, let
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: me let me back up now, because it gets more
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: complicated this just so people, just so listeners can catch up.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Imagine that instead of saying cassava, which you can't picture,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: let's imagine that you had some apples, okay, and you
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: graded the apples and then you squeezed all you took
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: all that grated apple and squeezed out the liquid and
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: boiled it. That would be like what we're talking about.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: We're saying kassiri. Then you take the actual pulp of
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: the apple and make a pancake out of it and
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: cook it and ferment that liquid with liquid, and that
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: make the strong alcohol. One. What is the freem, which
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: is a three times which you guys eat when you're traveling,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: you eat three times a day. How do you make
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: free foreign? Is prepared differently for as we go to
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the farm, okay, get a root of cassava, which would
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: be one war she That would be roughly fifty poon.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: So what we do what is the unit of measurement
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: of war she? Backpack? Oh? Those backpacks you guys make
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: out of the woven, right, So what we do is
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: that we put the cassava in the any flower or
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: sugar bag, put it in the river so that the
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: cassava can rotten soft. Oh, so when it's like three
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: days in the river, so when we got to check,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the skin gets soft. So what remains inside, which we
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: call cassava east. Now we take that in and put
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: it in a oil bucket, and then we go and
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: look for me like the five gallon right right right,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and then we go get someone fresh cassa our roots.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: So to our ratio, one five gallon would be equivalent
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: to the two warship that would be like a hundred pounds,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: the mixed the one that had been rotten. Fresh roots
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: and then roots you salked and right right right, then
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the greeting start of course greating, and then what we
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: do after greeting we great the one that's something rotten,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: combining together and mix our boat. Okay, you have to
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: make it very good and then leave it for a night.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: The next following day start the matepe Why do you
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: started martepin? You get in rid of the juice, so
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: you put it in the what we the squeezer right
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: what we've been calling a Chinese finger trap device which
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: you probably have famliar with but like something the pressurizes
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: to get the liquid out right here, we call it matepee.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So the ladies like do mate How long does it
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: take to make them out to be? But three days?
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Three days of weaving, and a man would make it
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: or a woman would make it. Man would make it.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: So now the ladies will do the martepeeing. And then
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: after martepeing, we have a special sifter for that special
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: for in sifter, so we see it now after seeving,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: there is a pond that is set up made from
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: a gasoline barrel okay, which which we bus in half
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: and make a pan which is like maybe a six
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: six ft and um, so we got to spun ready
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: but he did with fire. We have a fire ready.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Of split open a fire, you split open a barrel steel,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: barrel steel instead it over a fire. Right, so we
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: have the firewood ready. You know, the fire started to
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: light up. Now we gotta hit the pan. Now it's
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: like when you're making a plant kick you have to
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: use a fry isle. But for for in we use
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: um cow fat. It's perfect cow fat, cow fat, So
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: we use the cow. Where do you find cow Where
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: do you get cow fat? It's on sailing in an
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: area or a village us because you guys don't raise
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: any cows. So so what we do we we put
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the carfat on the palm because if you put the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: fresh seaved cassava meal there, it gets sticky and born.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: To avoid that, we use cafat to oil up the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Pland then the stuff came in and then you started
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: like storing the whole meal that goes in there. Roughly
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: roughly is like two and a half hours to complete
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: the whole from from putting in the palm until the
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: finishing part. That's when it started to get hard and
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: you're do what You gotta be very careful when you're
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: storing the plan because you gotta look out for fine
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: ones burning out. When that happens, the whole of your
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: friends will get born up. So to avoid that, you
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: got a storied Ye is that something new and your
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: wife do together. Yeah, when you make it and then
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: you do it all way till it's dry. Yeah, I'll
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: leve it, tellus dry and then when you got to
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: feel it, put it in your hand, then start putting,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: start cheating. That's good. Now what who came up with
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the Who who equated it to grape nuts? I said that, Yes,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: it's like if you imagine the end product would be
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: like if you had it's the color that the product
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: is the color of corn meal, and the side there's
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: a there it's it's not it's not homogeneous in size.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: The size of the meal ranges from an uncooked grit,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: let's say. And there's something that are like a cuckoo,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: a cuz cuse piece on up to like a grape
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: nut piece, maybe even a p Yeah. I call those
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: parts gravel because they are very difficult to chew. But
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Roban says that children especially like to chew them. So
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: when these guys travel they carry a tell me that
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I already forgot the name of the stuff. When they travel,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the main thing you need when you travel is a
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: big thing of fireen. Yeah. And they grow hot peppers
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: which just real look like American small peppers, and they
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: dry them and pulverize them and you put those in
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: a pop bottle. Right, So you got a pop bottle
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: full of dried peppers and you have farine. And when
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: it's lunchtime, you catch fish in either chopped the fish up,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: bones and all gut them and then part them out.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: And when I say chop them up with a machete,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: it's gonna like I think that people envision like someone
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: just randomly hacking up a fish with the machete. But
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: it certainly is not that. It's like surgical. It's a
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: it's a surgical chopping up of a fish, very precise. Yeah,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: it's they're like the portions. Yeah, it's like splitting certain
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: splitting the spine, splitting the head. Oftentimes pull out the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: or pull out the spine, leave the ribs, slabs on head,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: open uniform pieces done where it's like, why it's beautiful
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: to see the fish get chopped up. That fish can
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: be roasted on a what they call a barber cut,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: which is a grill you set up with like all
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: out of greenwood, set off the fire. Probably that might
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: be a little generous. No, yeah, it says more eighteen
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: right foot and a Half's get a big fire and
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: then you build a great over with greenwood and roasted
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: fish on there, or just take raw fish and boil it.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Then when that fish is cooked, for lunch, you take
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: a bowl and put the the cassiri. No, I'm messing
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: up there. Put the free in the bowl, dip up
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: some river water, pour it in there, put on some
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: cold boiled fish, and then put on some of your
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: pop bottlefull of ground peppers, and that's lunch. When you
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: add liquid, it's like adding milk to the grape nuts
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: and get a little yea. For dinner, it's basically the same,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: except the they make a broth with river water and
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the addition of a syrup produced by making a kassiri
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: reduction until it turns into a black syrup. You flavor
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: it and color the bra with that. Put the peppers
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: in there, and then put whatever fish you caught or
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: whatever animals you hunted in there, and that's dinner. Breakfast?
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Is that? Yeah? And you guys can go hard day
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: after day after day after day with great enthusiasm and
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: being spatially aware to a degree that I've never seen of.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Aware of your surroundings. What birds you hear, what fish
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: you see? You find, you spot all game? You drag boats,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: row boats, right, hall things, portage stuff, work your asses
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: off eating that thing. Yeah, I asked Rown if they
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: like green vegetables. He said, no Ah, you good. Yeah,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: so's the good thing with it. For it is like
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: when we have our or the Barbie barbek your set
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: up whenever we're eating the far end, Like once you
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: soak the faring, it swells, and after you're eating it
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: swells more in your stomach. You can keep you up.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: And then if you have your local drink, the barkery
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: or the cassiri, like it's you can just stuff up
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: pretty good and then you can do a hard work
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: through the whole day. Yeah, it's it's like drinking the
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: juice or lime juice, were juice you have after no snacks,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: no dessert, no dessert, fish, just fish three times a
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: day with the meal made from the root. Yeah, you don't.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: You don't appreciate how like from an American year from
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: from our the way we live. How like unusual that
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: is we eat so I mean we how many of
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the things eating today? This is really depressive to me.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: I like it is there an ancestral like legend of
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the cassava plant, Like it's amazing how some poison can
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: be turned into something so like a powerful food. Yeah,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of people ask that question, but it's trying
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to get the backgrounds we had to come from out
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: of that. You know, it's it's hard to see, hard
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: to explain. But um, since I get to know myself,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I know what my parents were doing the same. They
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: were doing fishing, farming, hunting. So I grew up the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: same way when when Robin was young. Um, like the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: river run. Now we went up the river. How many
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you guys figured out? Like river miles or thirty five miles? No,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: sixty it was sixty. Yeah, So we went up the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: river a good bit basically like three days of of
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: motoring with fifteen Like, uh, what are they like? Eight
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: twenty ft boats being pushed by fifteen horse Yamaha outboards.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Three days of motoring upper river, um, big sandbars, Virgin jungle, um,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of rock outcrops, holes, rapids, that kind of river. Um,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: that was like getting that back in the day. Oh
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: we but yeah, so when Robin was a boy, now
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: to give a sense of how much like sort of
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the way times have changed. When Robin was a boy,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: you never made it. You know, you guys never went
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: as far as we went up the river because you
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: were traveling in handmade dugout canoes. Correct. And when Roban's
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: father needed to get money, when he needed currency, the
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: way to get currency was that he would take your
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: whole family. No just is his a big son, which
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: would be like cli the are all their sons helped
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: him the paddle and to get more fish. But your
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: mother would not go on those trips, he would. She
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: would stay because they smart kids, the smallest to take
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: care of the small kids. And you guys would paddle
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: a dugout canoe with the heaviest paddles I've ever lifted
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: up my entire life. Yeah, they make a paddle of
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: a very durable would called purple Heart, and these paddles
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: are probably twelve pound paddles. You would paddle up river
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: for one week, yeah, camping along the way, camping on
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the week. Then you get to a fishing spot right,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: spending on a week there just fishing and hunt fishing
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: hant and fishing only one spot insalt all of the catch. Yeah, correct,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: paddle back down and your father would sell those salted
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: fish to who. So in uh on the area they
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: have store owners that buy fishes, so who would buy
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: who would you sell the salted fish too? So we
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: have store owners, Um, they have markets. So what they
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: do like they request for salt fish and my dad
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: will go up at a hundred pund last fish. Taking
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: up the river from here to Anna is like two
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: days paddling and then so he'd paddled back down to
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: your village and then back up another river right fifty
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: miles of the river and then use a bullock cart
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: to take the fish. Because back then there were new
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: tractor no car on a truck. So from the rever
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: to the village it's a one hour walk. So my
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: dad would not walk with that load. So instead he
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: had like a bullet cart high and then put this
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: stuff inside. Then they came straight up to I'm sorry,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: what kind of cart the bullock cart like oxen or something? Yeah,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: are you saying bull and cart? Yeah, you know there's
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: two with a trailer behind. Yeah, I got you. So
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: they would haul the load of salted fish into the
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: place to sell. And if you did a trip like that,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: do you have any do you have any recollects? Like
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: how much money would that be? How much money would
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: you make? In those days? Those times were cheap, really cheap.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: I think it's like eighty punk Then then I get
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: into myself eighty Guyinese dollar. Yeah, yeah, that was like
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: many years ago. Now it's the price gons up. Uh,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: maybe like fifteen sixteen thousand after you sell out, And
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: what would that be in today's US dollars? Fifteen thousands,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: it's a seventy five US dollars. Yeah, many days of work,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: many days of work. But now it's far different. The
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: price is gone up. But well, then there were no
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: jobs here in the village. You just hunted. You had
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: a hunting fish. Now yeah, hunt fish, go fish, catch
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: more fish and punk fish to hunt the punk fish
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: than go sell. We had no job in Planbate here.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: So that's what my dad had been doing just to
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: support me going to the school. That was what the
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: money was for. And by the basic salt, sugar and
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. And in those days when you were
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: little before you found out, before you started to be
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: a river guy and to take people up the river
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: to fish and to experience like a way of life
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: or to view wildlife and all these other things that
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: you guide for how many days? And I've asked you
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of questions, like I say, like how many
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: days a year? And I gather you don't really think
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: in that way, like that's not a way you count time,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: but like how often would you hunt and fish when
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: you were twenty years old? Maybe like twice a week,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: twice a week and that would get you enough? Yeah,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I got I had a wife, and I have my household,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: and that does for me and my family. My parents
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: are close by whenever I have more than I share.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: So if you to get it, just to get a betterson,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: if you kill a if you were to kill a peckory,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: how many days would that packery last? That wasn't last?
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Are we okay? Okay? It's one of little favorite together.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: A favorite is packery. Yeah, you're saying that that catfish
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: was two days, right, the one you salted on this
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: trip for your family, the leopard catfish when we left here. Okay,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: try to think as we traveled up the river. Try
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: to think of the uh notable bits of wildlife we
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: saw traveling up the river. Scarlet macaw, lots lots of
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: cause powerful in a different kind of acause that's a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: different color green, red and green, scarlet, blue and yellow marcos. Yeah,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Rovan knows every bird and every bird call. And this
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: is a place that has how many hundreds of species
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: of birds. It's so it's like one thing. If you
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: think you're cool because you know the seven birds that
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: County bird feeder, we're talking like a encyclopedic amount of
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: you know. So we saw mccause, we saw a cappy bara,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: which is the world's largest rodent. That's the interesting point
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: to bring up about the river. This river has the
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: world's largest alligator, black cayman, the world's largest rodent, the
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: cappy barra, the world's largest snake, anaconda, and the new
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: world's largest eagle, which I saw today, which is a
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: harpy eagle who prays on monkeys. I did not see it.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I'm jealous. Rick cares more than I do, and and
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: he didn't. He didn't see it. So we saw cappy
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: bars on the way up mccaus. Two cans wait two
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: cane Sam the breakfast cereal bird. I think we saw
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: a different one. Which one did I saw one with Rudy.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: We have two tapes. They look similar, but you gotta
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: be careful which which when you were looking at this.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: So one is called the channel, then the other one
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: is white. We saw the channel channel build. What were
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: the white cranes that you see a lot of dudes
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: are herons? A lot of herons. I forgot to mention
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: an important part. Another thing before we left, besides uh
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: messing with the cassava is Rovan made some arrows now.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Roban's fishes and hunts with a bow, which they call
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: him a kushi bow. And he makes his own bow.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: And the bow was made from what tree? Wam tree,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Wamara tree. The bow string is made from, Yeah, imagine
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: he took like a um magice. He took a aloe,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: like a picture of giant aloe plant, and it's like
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: a fibrous part of the plant, and you stripped away
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: all the pulp and then took just a string, the
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: fiber string, and twisted it into a string that is
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Roban's bowstring. Roban makes his arrows from a plant called
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: aero plant, which is my favorite name for a plant
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: in the world, aero plant. He fletches his arrows with
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: um a black or crestless curus out feather. Yeah, ties
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: the fletching on with the same fibrous plant rope that
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: he makes the bowstring out of. The knock is made
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: from purple heartwood, bullet would bulletwood, and then on the
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: other end of the aero plant there's a shaft made
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: from the same wood, bulletwood. And then they take a
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: chunk of depending on what kind of point you make,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and either if you're making a blade for hunting, packery
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: or deer, you cut out a piece of a machette
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: what they call it cutlass and make a blade and
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: that gets a fixed. Other fish points are made from
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: a piece of hog wire fencing that they pound and
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: pound and flattened it and then cut barbs into it
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: to make drop points and wire points. And that is
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Rovan's tool. And we made an arrow and then we
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: went to a plant. What was the plant where we
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: got the maggot bait the corporate a palm. Yeah, it's
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: called it's called a corn. So we went to a
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: corporate corport went to a corporate palm and it had
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: dropped all of its fruit, and we caught a couple
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: of the fruits open the in the grubs. There's a
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: grub in each one, and a lot of the grubs
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: that already turned the moths and flown away because you'd
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: find a little hole board in them. We went to
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: another tree and it was the right ripeness where every
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: time you found one that didn't have a hole in
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: it from the moth escaping, the beetle escaping would have
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: a big magot, a big larva. Once you've identified it
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: as being the right fruit, then you just fill up
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: your pockets or a bag with the fruit and bring
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: those along as a fishing bait. Yeah. Our first night
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: up the river, we caught for dinner black parana. Tell
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: me about that fish in this um river here there
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: are a lot of black piranhas, different species of um parnas. Yeah,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: can you name off the different species of pranhaus. So
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: we got the black one are the biggest we have here,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: the black piranhas. Then we got the red baited piranas.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Then range chicken parrenas um um. What next? Well, cats
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: back and poor of the herbivorous promise. It was out
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: of farming what we call. Yeah, now, you guys were
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: kind of humoring me when we went out to fish
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: black prown because I was throwing a crank bait and
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: not successfully at all, and eventually I can't if I
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: caught one. Maybe I caught one, And all of a sudden,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: your brother Dennis made some cut bait and had about
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: a hand line with ten ft line on it, and
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: took a hunk of prown of meat on a hook
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: and hung it over the side of the boat and
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: started slapping the surface of the water with a stick
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: to make like a frantic water slashing noise, and then
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: started knocking the ship out of huge promise, big prince,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: How big of the promise? Three pounds? Oh more than that?
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: These four five pounds, and we caught a pile of them. Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Where is that? Like? Is that a favorite fish? Yeah?
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Their favorite uneasy to catch. Yeah, why do you guys
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: not eat Why do you not eat caymans? Because you
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: have a lot of fish and do whatever, but you
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: like to hunt for certain birds and packeras and an
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: also a large road called a Goody and a large
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: road called paca. Yeah, but you know what I'm saying,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Like if you asked me if you were if we
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: were in my if we were in my country hunting
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: and we saw a possum, okay, and you said to me,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: why don't you are you going to get the possum?
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I would say I would have a difficult time explaining
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: why we were not going to eat the possum, but
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: it would kind of come down into um. People don't
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: really like the meat. They're difficult to deal with, and
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: it's just not a thing that we traditionally hunt for
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: and eat, though in some parts of the country some
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: people do eat them. Does that make sense, Yeah, because
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I was in Bolivia and they ate The Amerindians in
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Bolivia like to hunt for red howler monkeys. When I
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: told you that, you laughed, why, Like, why is that?
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Why is that not a thing that the makushi hunt
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: and eat? Well, I guess we, like I said, we
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: have a fish and we are not so much bend monkeys.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: And then we have the animals like the ault lava curas. Dear,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: we have them here. They are more taste here, I
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: would say, not. So you think it really comes down
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: to you have like a big abundance of food. Yeah,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: we have a lot of food, big abundance of fish,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: so if Yeah, so I think if we don't have
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: fish or any animal identity, could perhaps start eating monkeys
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: if you were desperate. Yeah, but it's really just a
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: matter of It's like the fish are better, they're easy
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: to catch, they're very abundant. Because you guys really like
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: I noticed that, um, as much as you had long
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: exposure to them, you really like to stop and watch
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: the monkeys and observe all the different animals even though
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: you don't have any thinking about them as like a
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: food item. Yeah. Did you like to watch them when
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: you were a kid or did you learn to like
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: watching them? Because Americans and other in Europeans and things
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: want to come and see these things. I I started
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: like doing that about I started off bared guy and
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: taking us natural hikes. You learned that people like to
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: see these and then you start observing them more instead
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: of just focusing on the food items. So that's what
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: I give up by the monkeys and the behavior. Yeah.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: And then there are some animals that that used to
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: be hunted here but became very rare. Yeah, like the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Arab pama, the world's largest freshwater fish that used to
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: be a thing that people here hunted and sold for
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: sold to Brazil, right, and now you in this area,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: generally people don't kill them anymore. Yeah, they're worth more
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: alive than they are dead. Yeah, that's correct. They weren't
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: more on life than dead, because why we sport fish
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: for them? People want to come and get to be
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. Not many of him in combat. Yeah,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: that's of money too. Catch an aro for a week,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: an absurd amount of money. Yeah, like like a the
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: amount of money that it costs to come and catch
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: an Arab pim would be equivalent to an elk hunt
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: twice as much, twice as much as an elm on
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: the elk, I mean elk cohants vary. But that's what
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: strikes me as like such a huge change that occurred
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: in your lifetime. And you're not that old, you're in
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: your thirties to be that, to be that you used
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: to go on trips with your father to spend two
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: weeks of labor to make seventy five dollars in salted fish,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: and now people will come and give a hundred times
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: that to catch and look at and let go the
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: same fish that you used to catch and self. Yeah,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: it's it's a big difference. What do you think about
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: that difference? Is there? Are there? I could see all
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: the positives right when I walk around your village, and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: I've traveled a fair bit. Right when I walk around
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: your village, I see like very happy, prosperous people. M hm.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: He like for how far out you live, Like for
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: how far you live away from a city. I see
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: people like healthy, happy, prosperous, like a place that anyone
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: would be pleased to walk around, like good, friendly people. Right,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: I see all the pot And I'm not saying that
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: all that came from your love having a lodge and
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: having an airstrip where people can come in and experience it.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: I know that it didn't all come from that, but
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: that helps, right, But are do you recognize other negatives?
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Like other things you miss about the old way? Wow? Negative?
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's hard. It's hard to say it. But
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: if there's not a don't make one up. I mean,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: if if you really don't, if you know, I mean,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not like pressing you to think of one. If
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: there's one that is always on your mind, that's fair
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: to say, but you don't need to like try hard
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: to think of a negative. It's hard to say. You
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: view it as very like a positive thing because what
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: why you said, it's it's a big definitely like my
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: father and I would go just to get a little
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: bit of money, then support me going to the school.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: They're the donor jobs. There were no ecologists here, but
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: then when we built up this ecologe, we have the
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: borders coming in, different types of autorists coming in. Then
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: we have well booting for us. We have this area Pama.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: They were close to extinct, but then we conserve them
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: and then the population increases a lot. Now so instead
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: of harvesting, then we support fish for them. As where
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: I said, it's it's a big difference than then going
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: with my father. You know, he showed me some punds
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: where we gonna fish. Now at this age, I know
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: where to take my guests because he showed me wherey
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: pants are the sam ponds And now I'm thinking the
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: guess of the ponds fish? Yeah, let me explain it
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: real quick. So the Arab pim is correct me if
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: I say something wrong, tell me. The Arab Pimas are
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: in the river but generally live in Oxbow Lake. So
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: if you imagine like like if a listener is imagining
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: a river, how it flows in like a long series
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: of sss now and then one of the ses will
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: jump itself, like the river will cut through, take a
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: short cut through and jump to the next s and
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: that leaves a big U shaped lake where the river
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: changes course. But the old river channel stays full of water.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: That that is what we call ox Bowl Lake. And
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: the river rivers change all the time like worse right now,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting near the river on a spot that absolutely
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: was at one point in time the river, and then
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: the river moved over that way and something that will
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: go over back this way, um creating these new channels
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: and the Arab pimas living there and they get up
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: to hundreds of pounds over fours. The lakes flood during
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: the rainy season, so the Ara Pimas aren't necessarily stuck
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: there like they get there during the rainy season the
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: water recedes. They stay in these stagnant areas and feed
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: on peacock bass and other fish and then they can
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: move when everything floods again. Robe was telling me that
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: last year there was a lake that was it was
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: very dry and the lake was going to dry all
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: the way up and they rescued twenty six Arapaimas out
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: of the lake and dragged them over to the river,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: ranging from eighty some inches long down to fifty some
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: inches long. Aripima rescue operation. How did you move them?
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Put him into both would have been a good episode
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: of TV, wouldn't have Yeah, we put them in the boat.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: So the part was like maybe from here the dining
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: area shallow water, but those are AP payment did dig
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: their own hold, so it was like five feet depth.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: So most of all those are a payment. The back
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: were missing, the scale were missing from the words that
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: you know from birds packing on Yeah, because they were
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: there stuck in there. Yeah. So one of those one
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: guys like checking the pond and said, hey, you know
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: what our payments are driving up so here because our
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: AP payment, you know, it means a lot to us.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: We make a lot of money to our appayments. So
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: instead of allowing them to death there, we go and
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: rescue them since we were making lots of money from
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: the area payma, because if we lose twenty six are
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: appayments and then that's where we want we take our clients.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: They're like, no more are pim in that point. So
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: what we do is that we rescue our appointments. So
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: after the rainy season they were able to or throw
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: the rating sis and they were able to go back
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: to the same spot. And then can you explain how
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: you rescue them? So we get a net which is
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: like six six in it, we sta wrong the one
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: not to one only because if you're sta wrongly, two
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: one were dead. So we do that one at one
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: at a time. You grab them, put in the boat,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: some water in the boat because our parent they breed here.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: So we have probably like fifteen guys ready to run
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: with with our appoma. At a certain point they will
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: lift the fish, give the fish some breadth and then
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: continuous straight to the river. Every ten or twelve minutes
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: and air pim will come up in gold water. They
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: come to come up to gold air. And how many
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: days to take to do all? Twenty six? He took
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: like about four days, really hard work. Yeah. Can you
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: explain to me how in the old days how you
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: guys would hunt for ara pama? Well, all right, I
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: saw my dad ones he he spot some Arab pima
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: ruling in the pond. The technique that he was like
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: climb up in the tree on the tree, climb up
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: in the tree and wait because our plan was ruling.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: So he spotty spot and then you find a tree
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: and the climb up their weight. So when they fish
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: roll and he's up in the tree and he aimed
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: should the fish with his bow with his bow and
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: then tracked on the chest behind the arrow. Because let
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: me let me I'm sorry, but I need to just
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: just some people because people won't be able to picture
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: what how this works. They make a arrow? What what
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: does the arrow call that that you use for pacuh okay?
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: So it's a It's basically an arrow mounted with a
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: detachable harpoon head, and the arrow is buoyant. Picture like
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: the closest equivalent would be to imagine like a piece
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: of bamboo um as thick as your thumb. It's not
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: like bamboo at all, but just picture like how how
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: bamboo would he's a bamboo the size of your thumb
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: would float. That arrow is long, much longer than our
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: than long than American arrows, and it's mounted with a
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: detachable harpoon point. The harpoon point has line on it,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: and the line is coiled around the shaft of the arrow.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: So when you shoot the harpoon point goes into the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: fish detaches from the arrow, the arrow floats up, and
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: all the line that's been woven around the wrapped around
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: the arrow unspools, so that wherever the fish goes, he's
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: dragging around a booi so to speak, if you ever
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: harpooned the hell. But it's the same kind of like
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: same principle. This is driven by a boat. So your
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: father climbs up in the tree, waits for the arab pama,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: and flat he hits him, and the fish takes off
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: with the arrow. Yeah. And then the arrow popped off
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: the point popped off on the point, and then the
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: arrow floats and then he chests behind and in the dugout.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: In the dug out, what he does that he has
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: like a hundred point line with a single hook. So
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: he's swinging his hand and then grabbed the arrow that
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: is going away. Okay, so he pulls it, pulls the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: p when he hooked the line. So now he's hand
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: lining the arabie. Yeah, so he helped pull And how
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: long did it take? Its like forty five min still
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: on the fish wow. Yeah. And then he then he
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: butchers it, but he said, and then make him slab
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: for four slabs out of it. Yeah, on our trip,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: we didn't fish on our trip. We just did with robot.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: We didn't fish Arab pim and And I'm not, like,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: I'm very respectful the program they have, but it's like
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: I just not It's great. I recommend people come and
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: do it, but it's just not something I'm interested in. Um,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: what we were doing was traveling with a group. How
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: how many people were all together in a group. We
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: had four boats, ten people members plus us, so yeah
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: we had fifth We were traveling four boats, fifteen people
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: and we were um exploring, observing wildlife, doing some amount
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: of hunting on a lot of fishing, and we were
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: basically catching. We were catching the amount of like enough
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: fish that we were eating fish as we went and
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: traveled along, and we caught black prana catabac. Right now,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: one day we're sitting there yed talking about your your
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: your mystery fish because this is an interesting thing to happen,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: the flower eating rainstorm prana, that's what I call them. Yeah,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: that was a catabac, right, So explain that big gully
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: washer rainstorm. Yeah, probably the first big rain we had seen.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: I think of the trip. We're sitting at some tables
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: underneath them heavy duty tarp and uh yeah, it's kind
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: of rain where it's like frothing the water, you know,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: I mean just so many big heavy water droplets that
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: you can't really see the water services. I call it
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: full balls rain, full balls rain. And somewhere upriver there
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: must have been a tree. Do you know what kind
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: of flowers those were roving? What tree they fell out?
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: But probably, um, I don't know, probably rose, but sized,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: not rosebud, but just like the flower of a rose.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: I kept thinking, I remember that charity organization like when
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: you were a kid or something when you were a
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: kid that you like they'd come up to your window
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: and you give them like money. They give you that
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: little red flower where the greens fake stem and I
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: had like a wire in it. It wasn't the Shriners.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say something like the Shriners, like, I
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: haven't seen those flowers and forever they're that big. If
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: you're old thing to know what the hell I'm talking.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: I think it's Veterans Day? Was it those little flowers
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: anyhow smaller than a rose? Then? Yeah? Um? But they're um, beautiful, yeah, beautiful, pink,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: hot pink. They've been knocked out of the tree by
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: the rain and they are being basically funneled through this
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: uh new cut that's actually created an ox bow, and
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: coming out of that cut, there's basically a just real
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: classic scene. That's like going into a big pool. So
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: you've got like slow water on one edge and you've
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: got this faster moving current. There's like a foam line
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: in there, and just like in the American West, you'd
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: see bugs and stuff floating through there, and you'd see
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: trout you call them the food conveyor belt, yeah, or
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: the fish treated like a food conveyor, yeah, exactly. They
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: can sit in there and just have the food coming
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: right to them. Well, we're just watching this rainstorm and
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: watching the flowers floating by, and um, all of a sudden,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: there's a you know what from that distance we were
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: what a hundred yards away, it's like what looks to
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: be like a five to ten pounds bright red fish
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: comes up and gulps one of these flowers like holy shit,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: you know, and they proceed I don't know, there's probably
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: maybe what three or four of them over there doing
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: that but for fifteen minutes while it was really pouring,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of flowers in the water. We got
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: to watch that feeding, yeah, feeding on a bouquet of
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: flowers coming down the river, and it turns out to
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: be a vegetarian veranda. Yanni was throwing a popera at it,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: but Roban was incredulous of the plan. And Roban believes
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: that that fishes is very sensitive to smell, and then
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: he's smelling those flowers and and and hitting the flowers.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: Now to back up, the first fish we caught was
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: the big gas black prown. This is like your classic piranha,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: like your horror movie Parana. Roban has a large scar.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: Was that from a black parana on your leg, red
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: belly Prana. He was shooting fish with his bow when
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: you were a little kid, right and you got attacked
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: by parana and that would call that. Then hooked the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: fish called a swordfish, which is like a gar with
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: a very fat body, a gar mouth. Imagine that your
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: classic like long noose gar with a big bat body.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: Then the catabacts, which are the one the flower eating.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: We heard the basha you explained the basha maysha. They
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: mix songs let in the afternoon songs. Yeah, so they
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: want I don't know if you could remember the one
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: that they are lower. Those are the one. They are
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: far away. They were not the louder that they are
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: close in the depot. It transmits through the bow, that
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: transmits through the whole of the boat. Yeah, a croaking noise.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: So they like to sing in the afternoon. Yeah, and
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: apparently they're bitch to catch. I wanted to catch one bad,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: he said. It looks like a white peacock bass, and
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: they like they'll take live bait on the bottom. Right. Yea,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: we went out and hooked some big gass catfish. Vampire Yeah,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite vampires were above there weren't there,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: so we stopped and to talk about the vampire fish
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: your word for it, and what kind of where they
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: like to live and what they do for a living
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: vampire fish there. They are pia, right, they are called pira.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: We call them pia. They are They have two very
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: huge teeth if you don't any fish that passes, and
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: they hang around the rocks rapids and when the water
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: comes up they can travel up the river like we
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: were seeing them this morning. So we have traveled up
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: the river. They go up to breed in the rapid
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: area and um, yeah, they can get really big. And
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: the eyes there, they are a big eyes eyes too. Yeah.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: I don't understand how because those teeth are the one
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: that Steve. But these guys caught. Those are like two
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: inch dagger teeth inch and a half and they go
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: into a sheet on the upper jaw like a like
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: a like a like a sabertooth cat, like a pocket
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: that houses the tooth. And so Dirt had a great question. Yeah,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: like how they hit a fish? It's like trapped on
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: that tooth. Right, how's he ever get the fish back
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: into his throat? One of the great mysteries. Yeah, he
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: must somehow open his mouth and inhale. Yeah, it kills
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: him the initial strike killing and then he and those
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: things are pain And he asked the hook they go,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: You can't get a hook in him because they got
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: all this teeth going on and they want of them
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: jammed you right, what happened? Well, I tried to see
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: how sharp is tooth? How sharp was it? Steve sharp enough?
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: I was bleeding pretty good. Check out a sharp Justice
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Roving was advising that I don't check out sharpest tooth
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: was that was a badass fish that it looks like
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: a saf there a salmon with a sabretooth cat head.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: How big is the biggest one of those you've ever seen?
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: Like four four? Oh gosh, it's night big? Do you
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: keep the teeth for ornaments? Nah strung? When we decided
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: to go and catch big catfish, what was the bait
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: you guys were trying to procure for the big catfish
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: with the fish that I know from Bolivia and Argentina
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: as sabolow, but you have another word for it, local
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: yakoto yakotoo is good bait. It's basically a sucker picture
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: in Americans, some species of American soccer. That's what that
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: fish looks like. And then you also liked catabac for bait, right, Yeah,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: they haf a good cent so pire black black pirana
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: what we call it pire period like a period black parana.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: They don't have very good smell, so what we do
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: kind of mix of the smeal. So instead of having
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: the black parent all the time, we can't switch to
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: a kattabac ktaa with more smell um. That's why we
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: were catching with those maggots. Yeah, quit warm, we call it.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: And then to get a catfish, so you catch we
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: case some small bait and you guys like to run
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: cut bait, and then you go just like you fish
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: in the American River. I mean, do you read the
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: water the same way and go to a hole and
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: drop in with weight down at the bottom. And there
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: are I now know from our experience, there are four
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: species of very large calfish, the leopard calfish, which I
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: thought was make believe until I saw one. So catfish
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: just looks like a leopard tiger catfish, which is known
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: in some places as a s ruby banana or red
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: tail catfish. What do you got? What's your word for it? Yeah,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: you do, that's your words. And then what's the giant
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: catfish that I hooked and lost when we got it
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: up by the beach? Look all, let me see anna
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: we call it. It's in Portuguese, and I don't believe you.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: I think they call it the mataurotro mataorial like the
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: bowl and they get hunt. Yeah. So, and then we
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: have the biggest one that leaves more in the Escrable River,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: which LA gets about over four under pump, very huge.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: Have you ever caught one of those. I caught the
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: one small. Yeah. Now the ones we were after that.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: You like to eat our the banana catfish, and I
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: can't even begin to describe it. They looked like heavily
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: armored patterned red yeah, yellow belly, kind of a green,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: dark olive back and a red tail. The banana. The
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: leopard catfish has had such a hard head. When Roban
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: got his up, Robin asked for an arrow. He wanted
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: to jab with an arrow. It's sort of like how
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: you use a gaff to get a fish in the boat.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: I took my bow, my fish bow, and pulled back
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: and tried to shoot in the head. And the fish
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: bow arrow bounced off its head, and the realized you're
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: not You can't shoot him the head. He got shooting
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: the body, and then Robing jabbed with a drop point
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: arrow and pulled it up. But the banana calfish were
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: much bigger, and the really big calf they're still you said,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: you guys do not like to kill that catfish because
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: it's very rare and not good to eat. Yeast, what's
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: the best one to eat? The leopard one, the one
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: that's the one you look, that's the one you salted leper,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: the catfish and the banana When you're out, how do
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: you decide, Like when you're fishing, how do you decide
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna what fish you cook, what way, and
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: whether or not you're gonna salt it and bring it
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: home or whether you're gonna eat it right there. Because
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: when we fished catfish, we took the banana catfish and
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: roasted them on the barber, cut over the fire. The
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: leopard catfish you salted and dried to bring home. Why
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: how did you make those decisions? So? Um, the bana
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: catfish the way the way we bar where we caught
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: this is it have more tastes after they roast. When
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: you cook it, it's more tastier than fresh. That's how
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: we we normally roast the they're buying a catch fish,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: so if you cook it after after they were walthy,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: have more tists. And the the leopard one, it's it's
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: gonna be you as fresh. But since that that was
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: the only child I have there, I gotta fish I
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: have to exalted to bring home. Yeah, because it's such
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: a good field. Yeah, it's a good fish. You get
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: divorced if you don't bring fish home. Yeah. On that note,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: Rodan was telling us that a lot of the folks
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: that stay at home, wait on these the crews they're
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: out doing these trips. Now, they don't always understand when
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: they're not coming home with fish because they're like, well,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: weren't you up there fishing for a week, And they
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: don't understand that Roban's crew was just out there working hard,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: setting up camps, cooking for the clients, and they come
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: home they might not have fish, right, Yeah, and the
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: wives get mad. I have to get the real mod
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: um I've been hogging up. Then we have questions at
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: this point, questions for Roman Roban are observations about what
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: Roman Roban said. I've been getting all my questions answered.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: Hand hand lining effectiveness just throwing a hand line. No, no,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: Roding Roan hasn't mastered. Yeah. I think it's a fact
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: from my perspective. Yeah, it's very effective if that's what
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: you have learned, If you're if that's what you've learned
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: to do, I think a lot of people would pick
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: up the hand land probably snapped the fish off. What
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: do you think that big calfish wag ynest the biggest
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: banana we called, Oh, I don't thirty pounds, maybe forty
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: not more than that. No, I wouldn't say more than
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: probably not more than forty. The one that got away
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: was probably over a hundred pounds, the one we weren't
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: gonna keep, or maybe not over but in that in
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: that range maybe what what do you think I shouldn't say?
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: You should say. All I want to say is big. No,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: it looked like a like a six or seven year
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: old child, you know, laying in the water next to
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: the boat with whiskers, with whiskers and a big fat
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: green head. I mean, just for you know, to give
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: relative size, I mean it's big fish. Yeah, so rolling Uh,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: they don't braid their own fishing line. They obviously you
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: know now use not obviously, but now they use monofilment.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: What's the would you carve your spool from your hand
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: line spool? It's some cedaa. It's a light wood. So
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: if a fish, big fish like tech tech the um
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: fishing line handle what you call it from your ham
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: by mystic it can float. Oh you can't get it back?
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: So you picked that would because it's buoyancy. Yeah, so
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: he's got like a like um. It's picture son. You'd
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: wrap kite like a kite line around or something, but
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: it's not quite like that cause it's open on one end.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: It's got handles, but the line can just spool off. Okay,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: So if you imagine like your classic kite cord house,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: it's got like help me out here, it's an H. Yeah,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: imagine a kite cord being like an H right, and
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: you're wrapping it around the horizontal bar. This is an
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: H minus um minus the one side minus two legs,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: basically the H minus two legs. So you can hold
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: the handles and let the line to spool off, and
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: they wrap it with eight y or a hundred pound mono.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: For sinkers roving bys a sheets of lead marketed as
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: fishing weights, and out of this sheet of pounded lead,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: he cuts strips of lead and then using his players
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: folds are using his players folds, these cut pieces of
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: sheet lead into what we would call a plum sinker
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: that passes through his line, and he runs his mono
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: to a wire leader to a big gass hook with
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: a with a hand fashioned sheet lead sinker, and it's
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: the same thing. When the fish picks it up, you
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: let him run before you set the hook. Then you
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: set the hook, and he pulls all kinds of drag
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: and you gain on him, and you lose on him,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: and gain on him and lose on him, and this
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: is all the same thing, but you're doing it by hand,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: very effective. And these guys can cast accurately, which is
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: more impressive to me using a hand line and far too,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: I mean like a circular motion overhead, like go at
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: the right time and yeah, and they get about they
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: get about three quarters the distance what your typical person
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: is gonna get thrown a spinning rod. Half the three
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: quarters of the distance that you're gonna get with a
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: spinning rod. But very good accuracy. Okay, that was a
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: rig That was a question. Are you're feeling good? Cover?
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: I got a mannerism question. Please with the because you
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: had talked about um when we were at the village.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta restart this over um. I think
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: these guys rowning in the boys, we're like these badasses
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: obviously from what we're talking about, but extremely uh soft
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: spoken and kind of very quiet and polite and not
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: oysteris do not yell, yeah, no yelling, do not hail.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: You do not hail a person. You do not speak
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: from boat to boat and get along great. Like there's
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: there was some stressful stuff going on, and it always
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: seemed like is that unique to your community or is
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: that you know what I mean? You said you had
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: to learn to kind of interact with the tourists because
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: of that nature of your community. Is that unique to
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: the man rook here? Yeah? So the way we speak
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: here is a creole way, not the perfect English speaking.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: So if I have to speak to one of my friends,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: I would speak my own way. If I have to
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: speak to you, it's I gotta try to speak the
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: right way where you could understand. Okay, if I speak
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: to you the way I speak to my friends, that
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: you would understand, you would like what because it's some
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: it's a it's creole, but also like there's some like
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: local words, Makuchi words put in right in between. Yeah,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: and then we speak to one or in a quiet way.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: Maybe we understand we're not. But since I started to
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: work with different people, started guiding, I tried to speak
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: more louder, try to speak more better, all of that,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: but that oh sorry, but the nature, like that calm nature,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: is that unique to the community but I think what
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: guarante asking is like, do you like, is that just
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: here in real village with your people, and or would
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: you go into any Amerindian community and you would find
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: everybody speaking softly, quietly? Yeah, I think it's it's like
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: it's all around the region that's the same way. So
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: just like like an observation about that, Um, when you
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: got speak, that's probably it's something I'm sure something you
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: never thought of. But it's unusual for us. We're loud.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: You guys always speak out a whisper. Yeah, And you
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: do not. You wouldn't yell to a boat. Matter of fact,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: I saw you today. You stopped to speak to a
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: man on the bank of the river, and we pulled
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: up at a distance that I would be very comfortable
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: carrying out a conversation, and you got out of the
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: boat and spoke to him at a whisper, almost in
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: touching distance. Um, you do not, Hailey. You would never
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: yell over hey go that way. You would never yell
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: to get someone's attention, like hey, grab my thing, don't
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: forget the You go up to the person and whisper
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: to that person, not whisper, but a very very low voice.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: That would never, um, you wouldn't detect it. Do you
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: think that does that come from needing to be quiet
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: because of hunting and fishing, or does that come from
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: some other thing? Do you think you wouldn't yell at
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: another person? Ever? Thinks just the way we we grew
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: up here, it's a respect. It's kind of a respect
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: because my parents are not yelling at each other every day,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: so they don't yell at each other. So you grew
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: up the same. And the rest of the says, well,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: would you ever yell at one of your kids at
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: some point? If if I see the kid is about
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: to fall, I would say that I would yell atze it.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: Don't claim or don't, but you would never yell at
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: about something that wasn't urgent emergency. You had mentioned in
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: one of our conversations since you started guiding that you, um,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: you learn learned how people will yell hey Rovan and
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: say hi. And you mentioned the challenge now of remembering
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: of learning to do that, but remembering when you go
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: into your village to remember to be quiet and calm,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: as you said, yeah, it's hardly at first. Well, it
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: was a little easier for me when I started guiding
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: because my guests did not hear what I was saying. Yeah,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: that was the problem for me as a guide. So
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: what I do and I started to pick up speak
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: up more so that my guests can hear what I'm saying.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: If it's a snake there, and it said there's a
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: snake there, does imagine you are guiding like eight persons
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: one one one of them wouldn't hear, or one of
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: them would have probably hearing, and then everybody said, they're
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: just there, probably might step back on the marshy snake
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: and get So that's where I got to speak louder
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: so that they gets with here, don't touch that. What
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: we're stepping the bullet on roun snake. There's a whole there,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: dinner time, dwarf dwarf Caymans which hide in the rocks,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: and the rappit the risks that that when earlier I
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: use the term, I don't have you ever heard the term,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: but there's a term like spatial awareness. It's just it's
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: like a thing like UM. Pilots, like helicopter pilots, need
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: to have tremendous spatial awareness where there um they see
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: everything around them in a broad sense, Okay, So everything
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: with an eyesight outside of their their aircraft, they need
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: to be aware of all things on all sides. But
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: then also spatial awareness of these instruments and mechanisms that
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: are right around them. So they're just capable of being
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: aware of everything. They don't bump their heads, like a
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: military helicopter pilot does not walk through a low door
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: and bump his head because he's kind of like he's
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: aware all the time of everything going on. I noticed
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: that you guys that that we were traveling with carry
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: that spatial awareness where when you go to touch a
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: stick or step over a log, you're very aware of
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: what insects or snakes or things might be there. But
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: you're also pointing out a red howler monkey yards up
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: away up the river and in the top of a tree.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: So does this like continual thing? And and the threats
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: are real and you rattle off a bunch like in
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: this area you have a couple of kinds of ants
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: that have like a debilitating and bite um the world's
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: most deadly snake or the new world's most deadly snake,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: the coral snake, maybe the world's dwarf caymans, which can
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: bite there's a lot of things to pay attention to.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: And imagine when you're guiding, you kind of feel like
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: an obligation to have it be that people don't get
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: Have you had anyone get messed up by anything? I
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: was with you one time before and got zapped by
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: an electric eel, which would be difficult to notice at
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: night underwater. I wouldn't be surprised if they could see it. Still, No,
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: you know, growing up here, we grew up along with
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: his snakes and the hands weaver in the forest. I'll
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: play that week. So when we walk to the forest
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: or we go travel to the river, campaign when ever,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: we know which ants could bite, which ants does not bite,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: what to touch, what not to touch. We're to hold on,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: We're not to hold on because of the rotten wood
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And now if but when you
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: told me not to step on a piece of rotten wood,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: was it because you thought it would break or because
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: they would have things that could get you inside of it?
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: There are both things. One, it could be broken, you
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: might get broken legs. Second, probably there is some ants
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: that could bite and be painful. So that's what I said,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: don't step on the red wood. Well, All of that
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: is part of guiding, you know, when you're very when
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: you're getting a group of people, you have to be
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: telling them all of that because they don't know what
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: is there. And even like a little kick bite, you
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: can be scratched in your I have two of them
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, so they don't even know about that.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: I know about dick. I know when can't bite me yea,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: even like the jaggers, I know when the jagger in
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: my foot, I would take right away. Oh, did you
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: guys hear the last night because we decided to skip
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: out on bathing time, we missed the jaguar siding? Well,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: you saw jaguar last night? Yeah, this guy the bids
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: on the bank on the seat where we're all hanging out,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: where the tracks were. The jaguar came back. Yeah, while
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: they were in the boat. It was just on shore.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: That was on the shore on the shines. Jaguar there. Oh,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: is that jaguar in there? Is that jaguar? Because all
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: the turtles had laid eggs there and there were lizards
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: and vultures and carracras feeding on all the turtle eggs.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: Do you think the jaguars in there because of all
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: that activity with the turtles. Is he hunting turtles? Yeah,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: he's off the turtless when they andrew abo tortless comes
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: up to the eggs. Did jaguar sees the tartal and
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: then comes a game? So that's what they're doing, is
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: hunting turtles. That jaguar the jaguar track we saw I
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: was traveling with another jaguar, probably its own sub adult baby.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: I would guess would that make sense? Or it would
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: be a large male and a female. It could be
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: that or probably has a young one, or it could
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: be too man and female. Yeah, um, you got you
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: questions comments. We haven't hit up the whole boat fishing.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: Oh we're getting to that all right, don't you worry
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: about that? Rick? Yeah? I was always gonna ask Roban,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: you have enough time to keep talking. You don't have
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: to be anywhere. Mmmmm. I'm good to know. Okay. I
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: don't want to be the only guy who gets to
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: ask questions. No, no, no, no no no. I just
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: want to make sure we're not keeping roving too long. No, no,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: let's get onto both fishing, or you don't have any
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: My question was gonna be like, um, do you have
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: a favorite thing to do out here in the bush?
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: Is it fishing? Is it hunting animals for legged creatures?
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: Or is it is it bow fishing? It's it's both,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: it's all. Yeah, you don't have a favorite though, No,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: it's just both. Like so with the arrow and the
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: arrow is like you could do hunting and fishing. I
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: could shoot police or or a lava row that's a
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: that's a large semi aquatic road and a very large
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: smaller than a turkey, but a very large game bird
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: polies they called polis. And then I could do the
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: paco shooting with so unites. It's like fun, it is fun,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: looks fun. So he didn't say both. He said, you
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: said bow. That's your favorite to do, just to walk
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: around with the bow and then whatever comes about you
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: like so so you like let you back up stuff.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: How many days a week when you're not doing any guiding,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: how many days a week do you farm? Like twice
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: twice a week, so you spent a couple of days
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: a week fishing and hunting a couple of days a
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: week farming. Do you like fishing and hunting? I know
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: you don't like this kind of question. Do you like fishing?
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: And hunting more than farming. Oh you like it all,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: look at because if you don't farm, nobody would like supporting. Hey,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: here's your faring or here's your local drink or here's
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: your co SERI. So it's rather you gotta have your farm.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: So you got to have like a hull boat. So
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: all you have to do it farming, fishing, hunting. Yeah,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: but there's a difference between half too and like to to.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: But you don't view it that way. No, good, that's good.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: I think I really think it comes down to like
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: asking a rancher if he lives in a pretty valley.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: It's just not part of it. It's just like the
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: nouveaux ranchers would say something but very pragmatic response like yeah,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: it's just it just is. Your brother Whitcliff said, you
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: have to be a hunterman, a fisherman, and a weaver man.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: You have to be a perfect man to get a wife,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: right yea if if if you're not capable of doing
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: those things, you would not get the wave. Weaving, hunting, fishing,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: and presumably farming. That's my problem. So yeah, Rick can't weave,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: you can juggle, um, so yeah, does that get to yeah, no,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: I understand you know, I mean, I know you, but
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there was a if there was
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: a discrepancy between what you were asking and what was
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: being answer. My question was more fun sitting in the
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: boat fishing or bow and I think he likes to
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: do the bow. You can shoot birds or the fish.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: When was the first time that you made it all
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: the way up to the uh Bamboo falls bamboo and
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: that was on seven? Went up here? When you got there?
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: Did you? I want to? I want to like, yeah,
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: I do a segue, do a segway for me. Bring
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: us into this is a hosting challenge for you, bring
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: us into pocket. I don't even know where to begin.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: It's so like bow fishing for pacu is so extraordinary
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: that I don't know how to get into it. Like
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: do you approach it through the tackle? Do you approach
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: it through the fish? Do you approach it through the
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: covered you covered romans tackle? No, not the pacu tackle.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: Just set the scene, just the lambs. It's a drop
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: drop point with this with the string right, because he
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: has a spool of line in his hand on the
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: fishing pocku. It's it's meant defferently because it washed down
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: the waterfall and go over the rap. He's never see
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: the damn thing, right. I think the portage with the
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: loud roaring of the waterfall, it's a good way to
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: get into it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how to even.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: It's so extraordinary and otherworldly. It's just very difficult for
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: me to even. It's just I don't know where to begin.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: Where you pick a thing and begin bright red fish, Okay,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: go with it, there you go. That's what you look.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: That's what you're looking for is bright red fish that
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: are eating like red, like something out of a fish store. Yeah,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: Like if you went to Petco, which I don't think
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: carries fish, if you want wherever they help people buy
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: aquarium fish, and you said, I need like a six
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: seven pound bright red fish, bigger than a dinner plate. Please. Yeah,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: it's very I was gonna I was actually gonna relate
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: that scene when we saw the catabac eating the flowers
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: to like it was like very cooy pond like you know,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: it was almost had this like oriental sort of like
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: feeling very flowers and bright red fish coming out of
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: murky these paintings like they would love to paint that scene, right,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: those old style Japanese paints. Are you paint like a
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: tranquil scene? Yeah? So these, uh, the pocuar bigger than
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: dinner plate. I'm guessing very big dinner plate like serving
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: platter size. And uh as they are long, Yeah no,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: I mean they yeah, exactly there. Yeah, if they were
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: just a little bit shorter, they would be a circle.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: And they're eating pacu weed. Yeah, yeah, which grows? This
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: is a question I don't think we we got an
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: answered during the trip. Does that plant grow when the
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: water is lower out of the water or is it
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: Is it an aquatic plant? Is it always in the water.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: It's stays on the rock, but it always has water
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: gushing over. This is full balls waterfall. I mean this
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: is like like drops that are five ft drops up
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: to We're better bring in the kayak expert drops with
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of steps in like like natural fish ladder
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: structures up these falls. When you're thinking, like the hidden
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: gym in a in the jungle rainforest, like like onspiring
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: that it was that was unreal if it was rainbows
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: and ship off the mist so hard, if it wasn't
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: so hard to get to they would build boardwalks and
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: just charge you to take a look at it. Yeah,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: And it's throwing up so the waterfalls throwing up so
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: much miss that it's a completely different plant regime there.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: You know that all the vegetation is different down there
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: because it's like a it's like a misty moisture in there,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: and it's a damn warm all the time, which just
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: like creates a weird habitat. But Yannis running with the
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: fish teeth like a human being. Yes, And they have
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: a top row in the bottom rower teeth all lined
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: up and they're sort of squ squarish, I guess. And
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: they touch yeah, person like a person with teeth. Yeah.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: But when I first looked at it in his mouth,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: I wasn't like, oh my gosh, you look like my wife.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: Relative to other fish, possibly, yes. And the greatest name
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: ever like the plant they make arrows from us called
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: arrow plant, and the plant that the poc who eats
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: is called it looks like part It's kind resembles resembles
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: parsley and has a water cresty kind of vibe and
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: grows where grows stuck to the rocks of a waterfall
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: in the waterfall like not like in a riffle, not
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: in a churning pool, but where the water is gushing falling. Yeah,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: say if it was six inches deep, it's a place
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: where there's so much velocity to the water that if
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: you stuck your boot your foot into that six inches
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: of water, it would gush up halfway up your thigh.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: There's that sort of velocity moving through there. It kind
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: of like grows on rocks almost like underfalling water. Yeah,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: and sometimes right in the just like in the current
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: and the pacus holding the current, and all kinds of
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: postures that they have fins, like, like their whole backside
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: is like fins, like because their dorsal fin is so
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: far back that it almost becomes like in the line
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: with the tail in their ventral fin is huge and
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: goes back. We're almost kind of joined forces with the
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: tail too. And they hold like like a normal fish upright.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: They hold sideways sometimes depending on what they're doing. And
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: they're in there like a like a like an aquatic
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: mountain goat, climbing around in the falls eating the water cress,
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: poku plant. So when you got them, it just looks
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: like you could guard. Like I was telling Corey like
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: when you got them, you could take it and garnish
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: a dish with it. Yeah, with the contents of his gut. Yeah.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: I think something that you could point out, I can't.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: I can. I can visualize it because I saw it.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: But something critical of those spots that were good pacu
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: fishing or boat fishing areas was like where it's not
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: like a river and then waterfall like said a step,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: it's like all these weird pocket the rock is cut
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: in so many different depths, weird like I don't know,
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: Like the center of the river might plunge, the center
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: of the river like does a real plunge, but the
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: sides of the plunge have like these steps where it's
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: like fall pool fall pool, all haul and ass. But
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: it's like a monument if you were to design a
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: waterfall from scratch and be like, Okay, I'm gonna put
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: a little step here, a little step there, and like
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: very aesthetically pleasing and a big gass redfish and a
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: big kind of climbs around it kind of climbs around
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: in the rapids, and you walk up to the rapids
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: and you're like the only thing that would make this
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: waterfall better is a fish that I could shoot my
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: bow and arrow and lo and behold out of the
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: froth emerges for a second, just enough to make you
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: think you're like hallucinating this giant red fish who then
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: goes back under water. And then you perch up with
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: a bow and an arrow and their cag and yeah,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: you gotta sneak up on them. So you sneak up
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: into like bowl range of where you saw this improbable
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: flash of red, and you perch up, not at full drogs,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: you don't know how long it's gonna be, but at
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: an attentive quarter draw. Some of the fish some of
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: are just pretty much sitting there holding but you know
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: they all kind of dodge in and out and you
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: wait and when your shot opportunity comes, you're doing what
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: every bow fisherman knows. You need to aim low for refraction.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: So it's like when you stick a stick in the water.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: If you ever jab your fishing pole in the water,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: looks like your fishing pole has gotta bend to it, right,
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: it's refraction. Um, you gotta aim below the fish for refraction.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: But what American bow fisherman never have to do is
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: hold up for current. I was shooting fiberglass arrow, which
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: cuts better than Roban's arrow wood arrow. There's been a
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: jaguar killing dogs in this town, and the dogs ran
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: by them, waiting for the jaguar to come after him.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: He only comes out. He only comes that night. How
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: many dogs has he gotten in the last couple of weeks,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: let's four nights more. He's got twenty four dollars. When
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: are you guys gonna kill the jaguar or don't you
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: think you will? Yeah? Are you were about running out
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: of dogs? No, there's letter dogs, puppies, and there's no
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: fear that that jaguar is gonna grab a person. That
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: just doesn't really happen. That doesn't happen. Yeah, that's rarely happens.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: He'll just eat dogs and chicken. He's killed twenty four
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: dogs in the last couple of weeks. Was here his hands? Oh,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: he's been here for a couple months, making a good living,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: getting with me. So Roban's arrows buoyant. You sometimes probably
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: have to aim. If you imagine the issues length. How
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: much are you leading the fish upstream? Well, it's it's
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: not much since I have the wire point to shoot
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: the pack. Oh, it's heavy. Point and also the the
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: drop point. It's made from three engineer, so it's heavy.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: If if I had a bullet wood or a proper
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: heart point, it will be light. So when I shoot,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: the crunt of the water will drift away the arrow.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: But I'm using a wire point, so I would aim
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: probably four inch um off the head. That's what when
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: I was pictured. When I was shooting him, I was
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: sort of aiming at his basically aiming at his mouth, okay,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: And I was hitting most most of the ones I
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: hit were just behind the gill cover. But I was
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: kind of picturing like I aim at his mouth and
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: then it'll drift back, and so you figure like four
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: inches off his nose. Yeah, And it depends on where
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: the fish is and how deep and how deep. If
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: the fish is in strong current, that's where I picked.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: But if the fish is like behind the rock there
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: is not so much of corn hanging around there, then
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: I am straight to the fish yep. And sometimes the
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: fish come up with their fins out of the water.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: I need his aim right at him, yeah, streight on him,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: and when he gets hit, he starts. He the fish
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: in your arrow to start tumbling down the waterfalls which
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: is one of the challenges of it. Um Well, so
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: the dropoint is tie into the line, and the line
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: is eight point. Sometimes when I started to get it hit,
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: it goes on the falls a little, and then the
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: line thang ups here and kind of wrapped there on
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: your foot your hand. That's a difficult part because it
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: pulls the dark pull your parents point out, and it's
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: it's strong. It's strong, very strong fish. Yeah, so all
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: that fish, when when that fish wants to take off,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: all can needs to do is turn sideway and then
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: it's just like there's no stop on him. So Rovan's point,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: like I said, he makes his harpoon point from a nail,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: a three inch nail, and flattens it and then cuts
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: barbs into it. And if his line tangles up on something,
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: he's not he the fish can't pull drags, so to speak,
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: so it'll pull and pop his point out. Modern like
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: American fish arrows can kind of withstand it. The way
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: the barbs are set up, you can kind of like
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: stop the fish and pull them back. But it's like
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: a pretty delicate thing because you're shooting the fish and
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: then playing it handlining it, and you gotta climb your
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: way down the rapids, climb way down the waterfalls to
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: try to retrieve your fish. And that's one of your
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: favorite fish. Yeah, these are one of my favorite deer
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: tasty and it's it's fun. You'd like to shoot him? Yea,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: I sure do. It's just like like I said, it's
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: like when you both fish in America and our country,
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: you both fish in the dankest, like muddiest swamp hellholes
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: generally not always, but generally you're in like stagnant backwater
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, hunting for fish that are not the best.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: Let's just put it very kindly and say that they
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: are generally not the best eating fish, because they're really
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: good fish. They're very popular fish in our country. You're
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: not allowed to shoot with the boat. So the fact
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: that you can both fish for the best fish, and
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: I think the boys here can speak to the quality,
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: table fair of the fish in this river. I was
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: gonna say, like, like, how is that the like how
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: their meals are very u not very variety. As guests,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: we had amazing food and like I don't know ten
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: different ways catfish cooked or maybe seven, I don't know,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: a bunch of different varieties. The fishy isn't very the
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: fish isn't very fishy. It's like there's no mud. It's
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: like it's all like meaty, like groupery, yellow eye rock fishy,
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: like really satisfying, dense, dense. Yeah, that packed PACKU lunch.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. The fish are good. They're like ocean fish.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: They taste like ocean fish. I mean, just the ecosystem,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: the amount of fish, the size of the fish. It's
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: like a fall on just a bit. You know, when
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: when I think of American rivers, I think of a
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: little trout or even big trout, but nothing like nothing
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: like what's going on trout or cupcakes many, yeah, little things.
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: I just realized that Paco thwarts my theory about fish.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: Who I pointed that out when you posted the theory
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: Taco being one of the Yeah, Dirt Dirt was observing
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: that not to tell what you were observing, well, big
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: game generally the herbivores or the tastier animals other than
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: the mountain lion, like in general things animals that eat
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: grass and grain, and then with fish beast generally the
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: fish that are the predatorial fish that are the tastier
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: flake eer meat. I told I totally agree with that.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: I must. Yeah, but the Parsley fed it's the mountain
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: lion of fish. But this is a I mean it
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: is a vegetarian piranha, like it's from the you know
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: family of all right, man um to catch that from
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: the pocu with a line? Yeah, you walk out of
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: the waterfalls and get yourself a handful of poccu weed
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: and then you build like a little paccu weed nugget
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: that's uh, what are the size of like am like
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: maybe a fun sized Snickers were a little bit smaller
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: fun sized Snickers And uh, you wrap it up with
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: like a heavy braided line. Made this little packet and
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: you basically run your hook right through it and that's it.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: You cast that out and just dead drifted in the current,
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: wait for the hip. And while we were both fishing, um,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: we kind of checked out a few different falls and
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: got five pacu big bastards. And while we were both fishing,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: some of the other guys were hand lining pacu weed
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: hooks dressed in poccu weed and they caught three small ones.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: Do you get we gets to wear that. That's the
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: things like you go off in one direction to do
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: something these guys and you think that like you're kind
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: of following all evidence goes on. Then you come back
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: and said, where the hell this thing comes from? Like
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: a bunch fish laying in the sands. You're like, you
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: can't like keep you ye this morning, Yeah, there's a
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: whole We wake up to go out. It's raining too
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: hard to go. It's raining too hard to go out
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: looking for semi aquatic rodents, and so I go back
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: to sleep and wake up and get word they're out
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: fishing and come back with like a splendid array of
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: fish to bring home. It's hard to keep up. That's
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: my concluding thought. Too much life on this river, it's
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: too much to keep up, too much stuff to catch.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: What do you call that rick in the visual sense
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: with the drone when there's too much My buddy reads.
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: So you're like like a dog at the beach, dog
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: beach dog, beach in it and you're just running in
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: every direction like you're so excited about everything you don't
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: know which way to go. It happens when we're doing
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: camera work. There's something to film, and there's so many
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: things to film that you just can't. You don't, you
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: don't film any of them very well, because you get
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: so you get so distracted by everything that you end
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: up with nothing. So maybe the fishing was like kind
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: of like that here, just so much going on. That's
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: that's how I would But these guys hone in and
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: get it, get it done so dirt. H Yeah. Actually,
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: the I knew the trip was gonna be good as
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: far I knew it was gonna be good regardless. But
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: when we showed up to the first camp and you're
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: committing to this, you know, seven day trip, and the stove,
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: the modern stove we brought ends up for technical reasons
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: not working, and there wasn't like a beat skipped in
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: these the boys and the cooks. These two gals cooked
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: for fifteen people for seven days over fire. Yeah, we
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: brought down a camp chef. We brought down a camp
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: chef stove that runs off liquid pro pane. But these
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: guys get a gas. Look that crazy weather happening. These
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: guys get a gas that comes out of Brazil and
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: we can't I can't tell what the hell it is.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: I've never seen a fitting like that, but it didn't.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: They didn't skip a beat there, like no one ever
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: is like oh Son of a bitching like people don't
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: talk or like blaming like as I go, sir, I
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: got bit. Oh oh, we ever goes like oh no,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: they never yelled, they got bit. I'm like, dude, they
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: not get bit. Of course they get bit. Very impressed
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: with with the whole experience in the culture. Yeah. All.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: Second that Roban's got a tight run ship to the
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: nice crew to be on the river. It's a lot
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: of his Roman works with his relatives. So brothers brought
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: learn laws wife cousin right in the villa. Was your
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: cousin cousin? Yeah, so that's when he travels with. Would
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: you do you get along so well because you're all related,
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: or because you're all from the village. We are at
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: the point of village, so you get along that way
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: with everybody in the village. So the way we do
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: it like we do want to get into so much
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: of a problem. Family only implied this kind of rumors,
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: so we call it rudy. We call it. Other persons
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: and some of my brother in laws in between. So
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: everybody left we have to get in played. So you
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: keep people when you're doing a river trip for with
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: clients you hire outside of your own family and just
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: get everybody involved. Yeah, Rick, I'm trying to think. Um,
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: there was a the work has thick. It was really
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: great to see. But it's a really real nice balance
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: from all the guys that were basically working those his
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: outfitters and and setting up our camp, and there was
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: a ton of work to be done, um, and it
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: would be done very quickly, efficiently, and then uh, the
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: guys were very quick to just just hang out in
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: a very relaxed way, and it was a nice It
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: was just it was nice to watch this work hang
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: out balance that I think most people don't do a
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: very good job at. And they just seemed to handle
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: the tasks that need to be done and then they
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: just had to you know, take go fish or go bathe,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: or go just hang out. Um. The Yeah, I think
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a lifestyle that I think Americans often
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: want to have some some sort of balance like that
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: but can't reach it for for any number of reasons.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: Some people work too much and some people hang out
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: too much. That's exactly right. That was an ongoing conversation
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: we were having is we were I was griping when
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: we have like bullshit sessions. I was griping a lot
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: about a thing that I've developed that's sort of a
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: pet subject, kind of like a pet peeve is like
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: American relaxation culture. People who get like really serious about
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: relaxation and who like to get all set up to
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: relax and who are like, who plan a day of
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: just relaxing. How much that aggravates me, But they're not
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: really relaxing in the end. No, they do relaxing. Well,
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, they gotta planet, They gotta go buy this stuff.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: They gotta work hard to buy this stuff. Yeah. We
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: had a chair that comes out to be like probably
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: more work than relaxation. I had a chair and it's like, uh,
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: on one arm of it a camp chair and on
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: one arm was like the zippered insulated pocket. On the
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: other arms a cup holder, and thinking being you can
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: put like two beers in the chair arm that you're
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: ready to drink, and then the one beer that you
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: are drinking and have me you've eliminated. Now then you
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: need to get up. You're like, ha, suckers, get here
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: that these people are getting up to go get a beer,
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: you know, not knowing that you could get a chair
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: designed so you don't even need to do that. I
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: was one. If you're gonna get, make one with a catherin.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: If it had another bag that just held a yurine sack,
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: then like people who who like really are into relaxation
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: would be even better. I bring this up because one
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: of the things that I've been like my wife and
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: has bought our first house not a year ago, and
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: it has like a rooftop deck, and I'm rigging the
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: rooftop deck up for what I imagined to be, Like
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: you would at a passing glance think of it as
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: a relaxation area, and I'm just one day it struck
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: me like, when this is done, the last thing I
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: will ever do is come up and sit here and relax.
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: I will lose all interest in it once it's done.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: Like I'm not gonna be like, no, I'm gonna go
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: up there and sit. Maybe you need a little bounce
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: in your life. Yeah, that's a that's a personality thing.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: Take a moment after a hard day's work and go relax.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: Just something some people relaxed by weeding, which is what
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: Steve will be doing up there. I put garden boxes
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: out there so I can go out there. That's what
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: I'll saying I would grow up there and be like,
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: why want this plant grow? I was gonna comment on
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: hammock sleeping, which I've never done. Come down here, Roban
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: sets up a very fine hammock system that's got a
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: It's amazing they set this up. There's like no poles
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: in the ground whatsoever. In an hour or less, they've
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: got a giant tarp over the top, giant tarp on
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: the ground, like four posts or maybe more. Yeah. Talk
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: about the camp style and what it's reliant. Um two things.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: It's relying um soft sandy soil seconds yeah, and then
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: um wood, soft wood that's strong, get easily chopped with
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: a machete or cutlass as they call him here, and
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: and no reservation about cutting said wood. That's how Yeah,
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: that's something we were talking about. It's like when we
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: grew up, it was like you were like we were,
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: we got whooped if we were caught, you know, chopping
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: at green trees. We go into the woods boys and
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: whack at dead rotten trees as much as we wanted,
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: but if we were caught, like working over a live tree,
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: we literally got whooped for it. And uh, down here,
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: there is just so much that Okay, if you had
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: a bulldozer run through the woods, okay, you've reached an extreme.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: But like you and a cutlass just simply cannot damage
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: the rainforest, right, So no, best you can carve out
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: like a little spot, a little spot that you'll have
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: for a little while. When you come back a week later,
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: gonna do some more carving to get it back to
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: be your spot again. But uh yeah, So they run
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: opposing polls at a little bit of an angle and
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: then run the hammock line from that, and then the
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: hammocks and closed in a m mosquito netting but stretched
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: out with little uh t bars so that you got
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: plenty of room inside there. I guess the hammocks are
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: made out of cotton. Yeah, yeah, cotton. Just They sometimes
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: peg their posts like because you'll dig a hole with
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: a machine, sink a post in it, and then take
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: a peg and like pound the peg so it fills
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: the space the gap packing with dirt. Very quick check task.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: I love the hammock sleeping. I thought I thought it
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: was gonna throw my back for a loop, and yeah
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: I was. That was probably one of the things I
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: was worried about the most, was gonna be that I
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: was gonna like three days into it be like crippled
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: from hammock sleeping and well, we had different experiences, Corey,
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: you didn't. You didn't do so well. But couple of
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: days was fine, boat portages. Maybe it's the I don't know.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: I spent a few days on the Amazon and I
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: used the hammock there and I did all right, But
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: I ended up sleeping on the ground in the last
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: couple of nights. Snakes, here, snakes, We're gonna get you.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: Where were you on the ground right under my hammock?
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: Were you getting up and bit up by the ants
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: and ticks and whatnot? A lot? No, I figured out
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: the way you put the mosquito knitting underneath good thinking.
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: You know, the machete thing we did chop all out
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: of green wood. It wasn't like remember that show named
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: that tune? Yeah, it was like a show. It's like
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: a game show. And you have to be like, there's
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: like a host, right, you'd come on, you'd be like,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: I can name that tune in four notes, and the
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: four notes and some of I'll name in three. Well
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: with that, i'll name it two. And they played two
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: notes and then if the guy gets it. He like
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: wins money. We had a game we played his kids
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: called his based off name that too. It was called
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: Chopped that Tree. And we would walk up to a
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: tree with a machete and you'd be like, Dan, I
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: can chop that tree and five hits and he'd be like,
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: I probably chopped that tree and four hits and they're like,
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: Dan chopped that tree. And then he would have to
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: you know, and what did you win? Mine can't know.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: We even't bet money yet, but remind me of like
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: how much we were able to roam around machete's And
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: last time I was here, I brought Roban's machete home
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: with me and gotten way ass trouble when my wife
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: came around the corner and are and I was letting
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: our three year old cut loose on a rotten pumpkin
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: with that machete. And she's still kind of mad about that,
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: And even Robin thought that was foolish of me. Ro
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, you don't let your kids play with machete, no,
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: when they already sharp there ye, Rick, Rick just juggles him.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: You don't, Rick don't use money anything besides the air.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: Did you guys use that hatchet or the cutlass better
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: that black hatchet? I used it last night. Is it
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: not as good as the cutlass? For it works good?
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: It's more heavier for pounding y. Yeah. And another thing
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: uh speaking of like cutlass is and whatnot? Um flam
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: not flaming, but like basically like cutting fish and doing
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: like flay type maneuvers on fish with machetes is interesting
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: to watch, Uh, Corey wrap up thoughts wrap up. See.
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: I was talking to Rudy on the beach sand beach
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: yesterday while we were drying out our clothes, and he
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: kept referring to the outside world, and I thought that
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: was it's kind of neat that you guys are Okay,
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: there's a place still left where there you know, people
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: are looking outward and thinking it's an outside world like
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't know, and like you can still
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: have the sense of their being this and then and
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: and how you guys are taking that outside world and like,
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: you know, bringing people from that outside world here to
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: the rewa lodge and um. But you're you're preserving your
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: culture through that, Like you're reaching out to the outside
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: world at the same time you're preserving your culture. You know,
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty special place and it's accessible,
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: I might add, I mean we did JFK to Georgetown
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: on like what a five and a half hour flight
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: maybe and then Georgetown an hour and hour plus a
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: couple of minutes, um charter flight. Doesn't it doesn't it
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: like a single propssess the caravan that lands on a
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: on a grass like a dirt strip, and then rolling
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: his boys pick you up and in an hour you're
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: at the Eco Lodge living large. Before we go, we
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: should I get my concluder. You said you already had
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: your concluding I thought of different on all right, Robin,
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: we talked about something privately, and if you don't want
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: to talk about you don't have to. But would you
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: mind talking to a public audience about what happened with
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: the packeries or is that something you don't want to discuss,
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: like why you're not seeing them right now? Well? Um,
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: we have sha men. They are like the I would
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: say they're like the Doctor's norths whoever you could call
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: in your country. But here we have like shamans. They
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: are knowledgeable, they have the power of using we call
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: it Amaran high science. They can't do anything to a
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: fish the river to animals such as packeries. UM twelve
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: approximately twelve years ago. We used to have lots of
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: pickeries coming close to the village feeding a white white packer.
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: Would you come like a one hundred or two hundred
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: of them at a time. Yeah, they're like a hog pig. Yeah,
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: we call it whitehugs. We call have we have the
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: collared packer, which is called Havilina. This is a bigger, louder,
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: more gregarious Havilina species of colored white lit packery. So
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: this this hugs white hugs picker is used to come
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: and feeding in the end of the ponds. We didn't
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: on fruits not warm and as you go trout up
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: the river you can bump into them, you can head
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: them up a destance. You can't even smell them. It
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: is a fun. So we used to have a lot
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: of fun, like shooting, and we have like meat, you
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: can barbecue lots of barbecues fresh meat. Now in order
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: I'm ringing villages, they have people that have very knowledge,
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: like you said, shaming and because of we um having
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of food and unwhere they don't. Now there's
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: like jealousy if forever, if I'm jealous of Steve steps
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: accurately shooting. I would do my highest science on Steve
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: and next time he wouldn't shoot accurate anything should is
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: like miss keep missing? Yeahs, So because of my I
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: use my high science on him. So people are like
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: like that here. So what they do is like this
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: top the picker is they lock them up somewhere. Well
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: I don't were, but somewhere between the mountains. I have
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: no idea using their highest science. Now to get the
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: picker is to come out from there. We have to
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: get another another shaman that could do the highest science
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: to get the pickers out from there because they are
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: lacked out there. Now if we have one like that,
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: we could get the speakers out. Now they will be
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: all over again. But that's that's how the pickeries had
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: me stopped. How did they shaman get that get to
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: that level? Well, is there someone training it or you
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? They learn from their parents, their
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: parents like it was like a shaman and smoked tobacco,
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: trades nose and you know, like the doose. A lot
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: of things. They can bring them like a fish spirit
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: by shaking the bush in the house and doing their
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: things and stuff like that and then they can bring
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: them like a pickery is ah pickory is leader. I
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: would call it that way. Now, hey, you know, jab
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: with him, take a little shout of local drink, you know,
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: by spirit, and then if the shaman sai, okay, what
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: I want to lock you up here for a while
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: to or three years, four five years, how many years,
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: and be there. I don't come on, I want you
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: to be there. I want you to stay do That's
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: how the shaman works. They have like a little power designs.
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: They are working, so they are like good and bad ones.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if you are here and you
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: said the pickers, but we used to have a lot
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: of pickers here. We have to have a lot of myths.
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: We used to have a lot of fun. But now
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: there's no white clip pickers. We just have the colored
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: ones around. Did the did the shaman or the other
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: village that use the high science to lock up the packeries?
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: Did they tell you that they were doing this or
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: did the packers just disappear? And then you you you
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: speculated that that's why they We know. We know we
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: know because for a while, viden's any pickeries and then
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: we have our someman in the village is not perfect,
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: but at least you can get some experience. But he
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: could already could tell you what is happening. He knows
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: what happened. So he said, there's somebody like them up there.
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: So they're there. That's what anymore. It even the fish, like,
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: if somebody like do something to the river, you will
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: hardly get some fish, hardly get some turtles. Author's kind
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: ones and so on. So that is how the shaman works.
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: There are goodd ons and bott ones. You know, they
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: could do any anything. I understand whoever, Like I understand
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: why someone would be jealous of Reward village because it's
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: a beautiful village that's wonderful to busines. So I understand
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: how someone that had a bad village that wasn't this
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: way and this friendly and such great people. Um, I
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: see how they would get jealous. Yeah, but I don't
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: think that you. I don't think that that that that.
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: I hope that your packers come back. Yeah, I hope
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: they come back soon. Some day. I started Shama, bring
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: bring all the picker is I hope. I hope that
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: they come back. Roban, do you have any thoughts you'd
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: like to do you have anything you want to say
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: that you didn't get a chance to talk about. Well,
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: I just want to say, like, I thank you to
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: all of you guys who come up here choosing Guyana
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: Jurdan Rea and to do a little expert tribute me.
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: And then I hope you learn something from our culture
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: that we are keeping up the traditional way of life.
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: We are doing fishing. That's what we do for living.
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: We fish, we hunt, we farm, we do all of
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: that for our leaving. I know, traveling up the river.
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: We it's not something it's not something that is new
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: to us. We have been doing this for years, so
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: we get used to it now. In parting that to
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: you guys, you maybe some guy would go there and
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: see how you live there. Maybe far different here. It's
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: like locally so do Yeah you know the river? Like
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: how a person who has had the same garage for
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: ten years knows what's in their garage. Yeah, night driving,
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: night driving, a night driving, we know the river. Robin.
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: How if someone wanted to if someone wants to come
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: and and visit with you and do a river and
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: hire you to do a river trip, what is the
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: best way that they get in contact with you. You
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: can contact me by email. Do you want to say
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: what your email is? Yeah, Robin olovint gmail dot com.
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: So R O v A E I N A v
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: A N I'm sorry from the top. R O v
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: I N A L v I N gmail dot com,
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: Roven Lvin gmail dot com. And you will help that
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: if someone wants to coll me will help arrange a
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: a a trip on the river to see how you live.
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: Um I, I don't know that we've ever done this
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: on this show, but it is a UM I live
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: in constant you know. I'm always a little suspicious of
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: that suspicious of guy. That's not the right word. I
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: don't I don't know if I've ever done this in
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: this vocal of the way. But if you have the time,
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: and you have the money and you want to see
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say a vanishing way of life,
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: because that would, I hope be wrong. UM. I hope
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: that it's not a vanishing way of life. If you
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: want to see a way of life that UH brings you,
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: that brings a closer understanding of um, how we all
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: lived when we lived in in in greater harmony with
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: the natural world and with the greater level of understanding
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: of the natural world. If you want to have that
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: set of experiences, UM, and really get a glimpse at
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: an aspect of humanity that you that you miss and
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: maybe long for and maybe always been curious about. But
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: to do it in a way where you are kept
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: safe and where you are taken care of and your
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: needs are met and UM, someone has the patients to
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: answer your questions and doesn't leave you hanging on any questions,
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: and that has the answers for the things you want
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: to know. UM. I cannot recommend Uh. I can't give
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: higher recommendation than than what I'm giving right now. It
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: really is. I think it's something that someone would go
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: do and they would refer to it when they were
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: doing their relaxing for the rest of their life. No
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: chair has a big enough beer pocket to UM hold
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: enough beer for you to tell all the stories that
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: you will pick up when you spend a week or
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: two on the river with roving Yeah. I would. I
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: don't want to sound fatalistic. I would do it now.
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: Go now, UM, don't wait too long, because things have
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: a way of changing around UH. Anyone else, any last thing?
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: Go now? That was a good conclusion, Yeah, well said,
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: thanks for Vans, for all the time you guys spent
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: um looking out for us and teaching us. It was again,
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: that's my second time down here, and it was just
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: you know, like I said, I will refer to this
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: for the rest of my life when I'm talking about
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: life in the out of doors