Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [66]
But this was the Amazon I was heading for, not Tahiti. I resolved to prepare as best I could, given the information available to me. The troubles I soon experienced stemmed not from ignoring good advice but from not having read widely enough.
In 1987, not a great deal was known about Manú. There was no place to stay in or near the park and no Internet that would allow one to readily draw upon the limited amount of information that was available. With no experience in true jungle travel and no one else in my family or circle of friends who had ever been closer to such a place than the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland, I was on my own.
I decided not to invest money that I did not have anyway in specialized attire I might never use again. Surely, a good pair of jeans would suffice to keep off the insects, and if the mosquitoes were really bad I could swap out a T-shirt for one of several well-used long-sleeved dress shirts. So when my friend Mark and I made our arrangements in Cusco to go down into Manú, clothing-wise I felt reasonably well prepared.
It took less than a day for me to realize that I had no idea what I was in for.
There are several reasons why much of the Manú region of southeastern Peru has remained to this day in a virtually untouched state of natural bliss. Difficulty of access is one. Expense in getting there is another. But access and expense won’t keep out rogue loggers, illegal gold miners, and experienced animal poachers. What will keep them out are some of the most fearsome arthropods in the entire Amazon basin.
I’ve written about the vicious, headfirst attack of the tsetse fly and the subtle depredation of the leech. In Manú, I encountered something I have yet to come across anywhere else: bloodsucking insects that can bite through denim. At first, I was reluctant to believe it was happening. But the welts I rapidly acquired on my thighs and other “protected” areas quickly persuaded me. These had not been inflicted by chiggers, mites, ticks, or other parasitic creatures that had crawled under my jeans and up my legs. Never having heard of permethrin, I had not appropriately sprayed any of my clothing with that useful chemical prior to my departure for the hinterlands. My long-sleeved dress shirts proved equally powerless to blunt the daily attacks. Furthermore, they were heavy and hot to the point of suffocation.
I now understood why all the locals wore shorts and T-shirts. It was not because they were immune to the bites and stings, though they were certainly more habituated to them than I was. It was just that anything they could buy or afford locally would have provided little in the way of a defense against the biting insects they were forced to confront every hour of their lives. And if you’re going to get chewed up and spit out anyway, you might as well be as cool about it as possible while you’re being slowly devoured by dozens of tiny, determined, biting creatures.
I had brought along what I thought would serve as excellent protection; repellent that was 100 percent DEET. While this chemical has continued to prove its effectiveness against a multitude of bugs throughout the world, it failed me miserably in Manú. Contrastingly, there is no telling what would have happened to me without it. The problem with DEET in its purer concentrations is that it is exceptionally powerful stuff. I learned this when my sticky, repellent-slathered hands left permanent fingerprints on the metal