Detox in the Jungle

Usually, I avoid Carnival by travelling somewhere else in Latin America.  In 2021, due to the Covid pandemic I could not travel and did not need to as Carnival was cancelled.  This year, the Carnival revelries were postponed by two months and Covid disruptions in France delayed the delivery of my new French passport.  Without a valid passport, I could not leave Brazil.  Our differed Carnival (April) was not as disruptive as usual, principally because the wild street Carnival groups had been moved to Rio’s empty downtown.  Autumn is usually less rainy than summer and the 2022 Carnival was dry.  The gallons of beer guzzled by the revelers ended splashed in the streets in the form of urine and there was no rain to wash it off.  The city stench was abominable.  I made the decision to leave in search of a more pleasant-smelling location.

On a fluke, I chose the Amazon jungle.  I did not choose the forest solely for its sweet scent of humid vegetation and decayed wood but because the Cristalino Jungle Lodge in the State of Mato Grosso is, by Brazilian standards, easily accessible by plane.  It is a one- hour drive and fifteen-minute boat ride from the small city of Alta Floresta in the southern Amazon region.  Alta Floresta means High Forest, which it was before the 1970s when the military dictatorship opened the region for colonization.  The federal government gave a large chunk of federal land to Ariosto da Riva for agricultural development and settlement.  Da Riva was born in the city of Sẩo Paulo but had a proven pioneering spirit; before launching this project, he had made money as a diamond wildcat miner in the State of Minas Gerais.  Fifty years later of slash and burn, the region of Alta Floresta has few trees left; only 43% of the area is covered by forest.  Its economy is mainly sustained by maize crops, logging, cattle ranching and budding ecotourism.

Pioneering is in the da Riva’s blood! His daughter Vitória has also massively invested in the region.  Surprisingly, she took daddy’s opposite business direction to become a national leader in fighting deforestation.  In the 1990s, Vitória had to sail against the current; she started her conservation venture from scratch and with no national role model, she sought expertise from American NGOs.  She has demonstrated that money can be made by keeping trees standing.   Her conservation efforts are paying off and the 114 sq kilometers Cristalino Private Natural Heritage Reserve[1] is the validation of her courageous business choice. 

Larger than the island of Manhattan, the reserve is surrounded by other protected areas, including the Cristalino State Park and the vast 2.2 million hectares Brazilian Air Force Reserve.  Moreover, Vitória made every effort to encourage local people to move away from the prevalent predatory economy by offering more sustainable jobs in her estates.  For example, the tour guides and boat drivers of the lodge are mostly former garimpeiros, artisanal gold miners who were eking a meager income when gold became harder to extract.

Cristalino Lodge effortlessly demonstrates that luxury can be environment friendly.  Solar panels provide electricity and hot water.  Wastewater is recycled to keep the garden and lawns green year-round.  The bungalows have no television and are cool enough to do without air conditioning.  There is no need for television as the forest birds and mammals provide plenty of entertainment day and night.  Before Covid, guests were 80% foreigners, now Cristalino is attracting more national visitors who had ignored that Brazil had such an award-winning lodge.  It ranks among the 25 best ecolodges in the world!

I flew from Rio de Janeiro to Alta Floresta with a short stop-over in Cuiaba, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso.   A driver picked us up at the airport and after a one-hour (dirt road) drive, we came to the river rendez-vous where my guide and the bass boat driver welcomed me.  We stayed together during the five days I spent at the lodge.  Like in Africa, the best season to spot animals is during the dry season.  May is the beginning of the dry season, it did not rain but the level of the Cristalino river was still very high.  My forest and river programs were similar to those provided by safari lodges in Africa, considering that the Amazon forest’s animals do not cooperate like the “ready for their close-up” Big Five which roam in the African savanna. 

Cristalino Lodge started as a bird watching and research camp.  Some 595 bird species, 1/3 of all Brazilian birds, can be spotted along the forest trails and during boat excursions.  Forest and river mammals are harder to spot unless you have a very experienced guide (my luck).   It is notably frustrating to know that they are so close, that you smell them (jaguar, peccary) or spot their fresh tracks (jaguar, ocelot, tapir) and remain invisible.  Except for monkeys, they hide from you.  Luckily, we enjoyed an exceptional encounter with the near threatened Atelocynus microtis, commonly known as short-eared bush dog, the extremely elusive Amazon Forest canid.  In normal circumstances, it would not have come close.  However, the dog did not smell us, fooled by the scent of the herd of peccaries.   Actually, it was frightening to be in the middle of so many panicking wild pigs.  Males can weigh up to 40 kg.

On the other hand, forests monkeys do not panic, but go about their business over your head.  We met several families of large white-whiskered Monkeys, the largest Amazon monkey.  They can be aggressive and make their displeasure violently known; one big male threw a branch at us.   Monkeys are plentiful and they have colonized the lodge area looking for fruits.  Tufted brown Capuchins woke me up by jumping on the roof of my bungalow.

Cristalino has two 50 m high bird watching towers.  I like birds but I am not really into birds.  All the same, it was a disappointment not to see the Harpy Eagle, the Americas’ largest and most powerful raptor, which is occasionally spotted in the reserve.  I prefer mammals and I spent exciting time sitting in the saleiro[2] “theaters” to watch visiting animals doing their things like licking salty clay, cavorting in the mud, or sucking tree bark.  After noticing tapir’s tracks in the mud, we went back at night to one of these elevated observation shacks, and bingo the tapir came back for a bark dinner.  The size of a small cow, the Brazilian tapir is the least threatened sub-species; it looked meek and gentle, but my guide warned that we should not get too close.  This night encounter was the highlight of my jungle outing.  Camera-wise, I was totally unequipped, but monkeys, peccaries and tapirs were close enough to be snapped with a cell phone. 

 Elated and refreshed, I returned to Rio, to find the city quiet, clean and odorless.

 

 

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[1] www.cristalino.com.br

[2] Saleiro comes from salt.  Water hole with salty clay.

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