Photo taken from http://www.slshrimp.com/Projects/Rhyncho.html

This is el “suri”, the grub of a palm beettle (Rynchophorus palmarum). This fatty grub is sauted or fried and prepared in various dishes shown below. According to ethnobotanist James A. Duke, approximately 62 percent of the suri grub is protein. Insect fatty acids are highly unsaturated. Also suri are rich in thiamin, zinc, riboflavin, copper, iron, and niacin.

Juane is a regional dish that is prepared using the leaf of the bijao plant. The leaves are stuffed with rice, spices, usually chicken, egg and an olive. Iquiteños consume enormous quantities of this delicacy during the San Juan festival, along with tacacho, or mashed sweet platains, and cañazo, liquor made from sugar cane.

Juane de yucca relleno de suri

This juane is prepared with a puree of yucca and suri.

And this is me eating suri! The heads are crunchy but otherwise it was delish!

Caldo de suri con yucca, papa y platano – This is a soup prepared with suri, yucca, potato and sweet platain.

Cebiche de platano – Local fish marinated in lime juice with diced onion, sweet platain, aji (local chile) served with yucca. Delish! It won 1st place in the food contest.

The following blog has some good information on ´suri´: http://singingtotheplants.blogspot.com/2007/12/suri.html

San Juan festival takes place every year from June 23-25, although officially it is June 24 that marks the festival. It is an amazing celebration of water, culture and regional food. Since St. John was associated with water baptism, water is the gift of life for this region. It revitalizes the earth, plants and gives home to multitudes of animals.   

According the some sources there is a legend, that a message was said to be given to a man from the Jibaro tribe after he saw an apparition in the jungle while hunting. He proclaimed a miracle to his village, and dreamed that night that St. John the Baptist spoke to him and instructed him to build a church in his name.

The festival is marked by regional music and dancing and all day long events. Llanchama held it own San Juan festival with tons of activities.

 Dancing: Madre Llanchama and the dancers are celebrating and revitalizing regional and local traditions through music and dance.

This folkloric dance is to teach us to protect and care for the environment specifically the trees. The area surrounding Llanchama is being more heavily deforested for commerical rather than local purposes. This dance is intended revitalize the local cultural roots and promote regional pride.

Padre Aguaje and Madre Llanchama: These are the spirits that protect the trees teaching us to care for the plants and the earth that give us life through the products they provide us.

Music

This guy has real talent! He can play the recorder (quena) with his nose, very amusing to watch.

Raising the Humisha.

 A palm treet that holds presents and when chopped down people fight for the gifts.

Here we are preparing to chop down the humisha. The dancers, several professors, Junior, me and Madre Llanchama danced around the humisha.

Junior dancing around the humisha with Madre Llanchama (Doña Yolanda).

Madre Llanchama

I met a Columbia University student named Cina who is here in Iquitos studying the Belen fish market. On Sunday, the 15th we decided to explore and we took a trip upriver.

We arrived in Padre Cocha, a small town about 3o minutes upriver on the Nanay, to find a motorcross tournament in progress. This tiny town was overwhelmed with crowds of people to watch the tournament along with a couple of local bands playing cumbia and crowds of vendors just like the fair.

These boys were sitting in a small tree watching the action, mostly motocyclists having to hop off and push the moto up the imbankment!

I can´t explain how amusing it was to see this tiny town host a motorcross event – a surreal experience. But as you might imagine, do the conditions of the roads and the excess of motorcycles in the Iquitos area, motorcross is a popular event.  

Afterwards, we enjoyed the sunset on the Boulevard in Iquitos.

 Saturday, June 14th was Llanchama´s 79th anniversary.  The festivities began with the raising of the Peruvian flag and the San Juan Bautista municipality´s flag.

The local school children assembled to sing the national hymn and the town´s ama mater.

And then the real festivities began with lots of music, food and games. The children´s games were first.

Egg Race

How many times can you bounce the soccer ball on your foot? The winner did it 5 times!

Others like myself unfortunately couldn´t bounce it more than once, but one girl managed to head butt the ball as well.

Can you dance cumbia and eat? Well, these kids were attempting too.

Not running with scissors, thank goodness but with paper under foot.

 Now, for a bit of sumo wrestling.  

The professors of Llanchama´s school organized all these games for the anniversary. It was a bit of a project to organize all the events and the keep track of the kids. I got to hand out the prizes, yah!

Prof. Elena with her two kids and one extra!

 Prof. Franchesca

After this we enjoyed some freshly fried fish, quinoa, aji (local chile and hot sauce – yummy).

Next, there was a soccer tournament involving the local towns but I was exhausted from all the games.

I just had some chillout time and later took a swim in the Nanay River. How refreshing!

And no, I didn´t tip the canoe over into the Nanay, I really went for a swim!

The last light was waning, the road was desolate and empty, lighting flashed above in the clouds. It was a dark and stormy as five people were walking unsteadily down the lonely dirt road in the pouring rain. The four men and a women were laughing as they slipped and struggled to remain upright as the rain continued to pour down turning the dirt road into soup. There wasn´t another soul to be seen for the next hour but finally as they crested the last slippery hill – lights, humanity, sadly no motorcars to been seen. Well, if you guessed I was walking from Llanchama to Nina Rumi with a group of professors from Llanchama. We finally arrived back to Iquitos very late and wet just wishing for a hot shower.

The reason for our late night was because on Saturday, June 7 the school had a cook-out Peruvian style. It was much like our backyard BBQs: music, plenty of food and drink with the company of friends and family, not to mention the ubiquitous fútbol! The photo above is the school´s director in the yellow dress shirt and several of the other professors.

In this photo, I holding a lovely 2 mos. old girl named Cinthia Amanda and Prof. James (PE prof.) joins me in a pre-game smile. I enjoyed a game of futbol with the boys not the men they play too rough (rugby-like)but I had plenty of fun with all the kids and profs.

Junior also played several games of fútbol and there was plenty of singing and music!

Now that I am back in the states, I am sorting through my pictures and picking the best ones for this blog! I’m not much of a writer, so I am going to do a photo essay of my trip to Peru. Most of these photos are generally in chronological order.
This is my roommate, Lanka. We are enjoying a hot cup of cafe con leche.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

For any tourist arriving in Iquitos, , the first thing that capture the attention is all the activities in the streets. Many people , many vehicles. Iquitos is a city, which is the capital of the department of Loreto, located in the middle of the Peruvian rainforest. Something else that attracts the attention is the artistic aspect of the city. Almost everything in Iquitos is used with an artistic approach. The walls around the streets covered with all kind of multicolored scriptures for advertisement, the big boards for advertisement, the buses multicolored with many scriptures. All, absolutely all here is art. However one object which is the heart of the art, according to our opinion, and which makes a lot of noise in the streets, keeping everyone awake, is the motor-car. The moto-cars are the principal means of transportation in Iquitos. They are imported from China, cost about 4,000 to 6,000 soles ( $1,450 to 2,200 USD).

Those two weeks April and I have used the moto-cars a lot to get to Llanchama. Unfortunately there are about 4 or 5 moto-cars drivers that cover the section Iquitos-Llanchama. When we don’t find the moto-cars to go to Llanchama, we take the buses that stop at Nina Rumi. From Nina Rumi to Llanchama we walk 30 to 40 minutes.

While the buses don’t arrive in Llanchama because of the mud in the road, the moto-cars do, and they are reliable.

We will keep enjoying the great experience of the moto-cars which, even though noisy, is extremely interesting.

Junior and I have been in Llanchama most of the week getting to know the population.

I have helped bring water from the river, given piggy-back rides, played soccer and been rocked to sleep in a hamock by the breezes off the Nanay river.

However, the indomitable spirit of the children continues to amaze me! In this region, vegetables is used as a term to mean natural plants and herbal remedies which from the photos shows you just how strong these children are, they´d give Popeye a run for his money!

On Friday May 30 2008, we left Iquitos early to go to Llanchama, this village where the people are really nice. Unfortunately the buses( Combis) can not reach Llanchama because in this rainy season, the road is extremely bad. They stop at Nina Rumi, the village next to Llanchama. We got to Nina Rumi at about 11:15 AM. From there we took a boat to cross the Nanay River. It took us about 30 mn to get to Llanchama. The experience was very interesting. The boat owner told us that per day he makes 10 trips from Nina Rumi to Llanchama with at least 10 persons aboard. Each passenger pays only 2 soles.

Once we arrive in Llanchama, we met the director of the school and the municipal agent who were very friendly. We spent about 2 hours socializing with them and another young professor at the school, playing guitar,  and singing. Before leaving we planned our activities of the following day with the municipal agent.

Everyone in the village was very happy about our presence and they were really eager to help us doing all the activities.