I had come to Ecuador, where I was heading for the eastern lowland province of Oriente, one of the Amazon’s most biodiverse regions and the one with the most ‘uncontacted’ tribes. Depending on the season, its mouth is 200 to 300 miles wide, and contains an island larger than Switzerland. Carrying a fifth of all the earth’s fresh water, it pushes 5 billion tons of sediment into the Atlantic every year, staining the ocean for two hundred miles off shore. Spread over nine different countries, this single system drains over 2.7 million square miles, an area not a long way short of the 48 contiguous United States.
The whole river system, from the Andes to the sea, is over 4000 miles long, almost the width of Asia, or the equivalent of the distance from Istanbul to Beijing. Like maggots, the scale and complexity of the Amazon basin can take some getting used to. But squatting beneath a kapok tree, while the great forest gently dripped around me, I encountered one of Amazonia’s oddest facts. It is cornucopia of marvels, of the weird and the bizarre. Closing my eyes, I popped one in, and chewed gently. I lifted a few from Bei’s outstretched hand. What was the point of coming half way round the world to the depths of the Amazon if you were going to go all squeamish about maggots at the last moment. ‘Eat, eat,’ he said in the manner of an Italian mamma. Rocking back on his haunches, Bei began to munch on handfuls of the raw yellow larvae. No one could possibly have any objection to maggots, the prawn cocktail of the Amazon. The tribespeople believe they hold the souls of dead ancestors, and no one wants to dine on grandfather. Apparently it is those great brown doleful eyes. For the Huaorani, monkeys have always been firmly on the menu while they remain resistant to deer. Other’s people’s food is often a bit of a wonder. Not really a main course, naturally, but as a starter you couldn’t beat them. Maggots, according to Bei, were the greatest gift of the forest. In reverential tones, he explained the best seasons, the best state of decay, the best varieties. His smile was as wide as the river mouth. Sinking his axe into a fallen trunk, Bei opened the rotten wood as deftly as a surgeon, and lifted out a handful of squirming yellow grubs, the larvae of Amazon beetle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)ĭeep in the Amazonian jungle, I am discussing maggots with a Huaorani tribesman.
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