Avoid

I live in Iquitos, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Even after three years, sometimes I have to pinch myself and say it out loud; “It’s true! I live in Iquitos, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest!” I love to live here and I get excited about every opportunity to tell everyone what a great place this is and how fortunate I feel for being here. When someone makes a positive comment about the wonder and the beauty of this place, my chest swells as if it were a personal compliment.

But sometimes the reality of cultural differences comes around to kick me in the teeth and put me right back, solidly with my two feet on the ground. I have to keep reminding myself that as a gringo, it is not my place to preach, just to witness and learn. But it can be darned difficult.

Today was such a day, when I visited Las Boas, a serpentario on the Amazon River, about one hour down stream from Iquitos.

I thought I was prepared, as it wasn’t my first visit to such a place. Four years ago I came here as a tourist and another serpentario by the name of Las Boas, on the Momón River, was part of my tour. Apart from being ripped off -they charged me a 40 soles entrance fee, which, in my bewilderment, I paid- I found the place extremely depressing. I wrote a long and furious e-mail to my travel agent about the appalling conditions under which the animals there were kept and put on display for tourists like me.

A friend had warned me; “This place is probably worse than the one on the Momón!” During my time here, I have already learned that animal rights and well-being are not very high on the priority list of most Iquiteños. Once, when I asked some of my Peruvian students if people here would be interested in animal rights activism, one of them, a biology student, told me; ”Teacher, people are going to say that it’s ‘just a stupid gringo-issue!’” He was right.

But things change in four years’ time. I used to be naïve and ignorant about the local customs and habits, and since my first visit I have learned to live with the sight of turtle eggs, monkeys tied down with strings, pieces of caiman at the market and bloody charapa shells being cleaned out by black vultures. I was never a hippy, but as a vegetarian left-wing pacifist, I might be considered a ‘softy.’ I decided that it might be time to go check out Las Boas again myself, take some pictures and determine whether I had been oversensitive and things weren’t quite as bad as I remembered.

I accompanied two British tourists to Las Boas, one of whom had already stated; “I don’t like animals: even as a child, I refused to take the class gerbil home.” Not the kind of guy who would get watery-eyed about a jungle animal kept in a small cage.

When we arrived, we found a bare piece of land with a small thatched roof over a couple of hammocks. Some children and teenagers were there, but didn’t acknowledge us, nor answer our greetings. The animal-keeper, for lack of a better word, upped the price from the usual 30 soles for two people to 40 soles. I protested, but he insisted the price had gone up. I gave in, as we had already traveled an hour, but the price seemed outrageously high.

The animal-keeper showed us to a bench and said he would bring the animals to us one by one. We were not supposed to leave the area, or go see the animals where they were kept. In the immediate vicinity, there were some small cages in which some snakes, a sloth and two small kinkajous were kept under dire circumstances.

A baby kinkajou was presented to us first. A lovely, sweet animal, the first one I ever saw up close. But it was obviously ill, and had an infected eye. It was nothing but skin and bones and did not seem to have much energy at all. The other kinkajou, an animal that lives, eats and sleeps in treetops, and which is an expert climber, was kept alone in a small cage and lay motionless on the wooden planks.

The animal-keeper went back to the cage, to pull out the sloth. The poor animal tried to hold onto the cage. Eventually the animal-keeper succeeded, but the animal screamed, its mouth wide open, as the man held it with only one hand, under its armpit. I could see that all of its teeth had rotten away to little brown stumps. My heart broke right there and then. I nervously took some close-ups, but they turned out rather blurry, as my 'intelligent' camera tends to focus on the wrong thing.

The sloth was put on a tree stump and we were shown a green parrot, a rare, prehistoric turtle and a young boa constrictor. The snake put up quite a struggle and proved to be very strong. But our host was stronger and he kept the animal under control.

Then it was time for the ‘piece the resistance,’ the reason why most people come here; a 120-pound, 12-foot anaconda. The animal-keeper and his son dragged the animal across a fence and into the visitors’ area. My guests had posed for pictures with the other animals, but declined to pose with this enormous reptile. It was just a bit too big.

The animal-keeper draped the snake around his body and gave us his standard grimace, which was supposed to pass for a smile. Meanwhile, he tried to keep the giant anaconda in check by squeezing its head between his large strong hands. I saw how he almost strangled it and its lower jaw was pushed out of place. The animal opened its mouth and let out a loud hiss, but the man kept squeezing and squeezing, until the snake started to bleed from its mouth.

The man threw the snake to the ground and one of my guests was willing to pose with it, helping to lift it off the ground. And again, the snake was dumped on the sand. It tried to make for the river, but the animal-keeper kept it back by placing his boot on its head and, with the help of his son, dragged it back a few yards. This scene repeated itself several times.

Eventually, I told the man that we had seen enough and his son and he took the snake away, dragging it over the fence. I was curious about where this large reptile was kept, and followed the two across the fence. Was it a cage? A pit? Well, I wasn’t prepared for this; I found the two stuffing the 12-foot animal into a large bag. A bag! It was the fibery plastic kind that I believe is normally used for packaging charcoal. That is where they keep this magnificent animal when there aren’t any tourists around. My mouth dropped and my heart sank, as I felt a cold shiver running up and down my spine.

So Las Boas once again proved to be one of the coldest, cruelest examples of jungle animal exploitation. I imagine not only to a veggie semi-hippy like me, but probably to many, if not most visitors who go there. Still, there appear to be plenty of tourists who are unfazed by the circumstances under which these animals are kept and who just enjoy seeing live jungle animals up close and even posing with them.

Animals rights aside, 20 soles per person is a rip-off for seeing eight animals in an ugly, uninteresting environment. Quistococha Zoo charges just 3 soles. But apart from being ripped off, I hope that most people would refuse to support such a blatant form of animal abuse. Especially when there are such excellent -and less expensive- alternatives, like Pilpintuwasi and, as I discovered this morning as well, the caiman farm in nearby Barrio Florido, both truly wonderful places for animals and visitors alike.

Las Boas on the Momón river, which belongs to our animal-keeper’s brother, now falsely advertises as an animal ‘rescue center,’ just to give it a more animal-friendly layer of varnish.

As I said, Iquitos is a great place to live. But there are some things I will never get used to. I implore visitors and our fellow tourism agents to steer clear from Las Boas and other serpentarios and instead spend their time and money supporting places where the animals are well cared for and treated with respect.

After hearing about my experience, Bill Grimes of Dawn on the Amazon Tours and Cruises has decided to permanently remove Las Boas from his daytrip destinations. I hope others will follow suit