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