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Leaving Encanta

by Sarah Faegre

A new turn for the worse give us a final conclusion to the nest of Encanta and allows us to confirm the neither eggs was viable. Now we make the most of our last days with here with the family and try to escape before the flood turns deadly.

February 10th

Today I turn 26. We are stranded in the flooded Bolivian lowlands at the rapidly sinking Encanta, where the family jokes that now they are like armadillos—forced onto the tiny, remaining bits of raised land that are still above water. The galpón is flooded now and the outdoor living area is a tiny bit of raised land next to the pig pen. We have moved the contents of the kitchen outside, since the water in the kitchen is too deep now, and are using the top rail of the pig pen as a counter.

The BTM project finally has a conclusion—yesterday the nest box was invaded by wasps and probably the wasps will have success where the macaws didn’t, creating little wasplings and perpetuating their species. Steve suited up in several layers of clothes and a mosquito net over his head and braved the angry wasps to retrieve the still-intact egg, which we knew was certainly dead since it had been without incubation for over 24 hours.



Last night we opened the egg and got a confirmation for what we had already expected: the egg was infertile, or had died in the early days of incubation, just like the other eggs. The macaws had spent more than 3 weeks incubating 2 infertile eggs, only to have their nest cavity usurped by a colony of wasps. I suppose it would have been much sadder had the wasps taken over a nest with live eggs or chicks. Still, the pair is very distressed and hanging around the vicinity, crying over their loss. It is interesting to note that the last bird to give up on the nest was the male, who Steve saw enter the nest yesterday morning and stay for 40 minutes despite the colony of wasps which carpeted the entrance and the inside of the nest box.

Last night there was a tremendous lightening storm around 1:30 a.m. which pelted us with rain and incredible gusts of wind for 2 or 3 hours before I got back to sleep. It was raining and blowing so hard that I was getting wet, even with the double rainfly-tarp system. But at least the platform held up and the water in the tent was minimal. One of the rooms in the family’s house has water in it, but it is only the food storage room and the food is up on platforms. The two rooms in which they sleep are still dry—but for how much longer?

No word from John since yesterday, when the price of the boat he had contracted to come and get us jumped from 700 to 2000 Bs (about 250 USD). I said yes, despite the price, because I am really in no position to barter. “If someone will come here to Encanta in a boat and get us out, I will pay the price,” I said. John said he would have to see if the boat was willing to come all the way to Encanta and would confirm with me at 3:00 pm. At 3:00—nothing. At 7:00—nothing. Rolando was appalled when he came back from the chaco and learned that I had agreed to pay 2000 Bs. for a boat. He has other, more affordable plans to get out, but since his last plan did not work out and the new one is just as uncertain, I will agree to whichever plan I can confirm first.



February 11th

It has been storming for over 12 hours—the dark, ominous front moved over the already flooded Encanta and opened fire with rain and 30 mph cold wind. At 11:30 pm the strobe-light lightening began. Fat drops of rain began to fall, and soon the thunder was cracking straight overhead with such ear-splitting force that I startled and plugged my ears and cowered deeper into my sleeping bag. As the hours wore on I slept fitfully and the water rose higher and higher around the tent, splashing in through the mesh underneath the rainfly.

Now it is noon the next day and the storm continues with cold wind and rain blowing constantly from the south. The water is level with our tent platform and the bottom ¼ of the tent is soaked. The family’s house is flooded with 1 foot of water and there is not a dry patch of land in sight. We are nothing but a few flimsy structures in the middle of a river which is now running with a forceful current. Animals are dying and there is no way to make a fire to cook food. The situation has become critical: we must get all the people and animals out today or as soon as possible.

Loreto is entirely flooded. Trini is flooding, just from the rain, but the water is coming with such force from the river that there is fear that the retaining wall, which encircles the city, might break. This would be utterly disastrous for the tens of thousands of families living in the center and also for us, as we would loose all of our belongings (currently stored in Hostal Las Palmas, in the center of Trini). If the retaining wall breaks, Trinidad, the capital of El Beni, will become a flooded wasteland with a flooded airport and no way out (except by boat). We are in the middle of it all, a tiny spec among tens of thousands of desperate people and a lot of water.

Already pigs and chickens and one horse have died. Any belonging that falls or is dropped becomes lost in the current. The wind is shaking the tent and blowing so hard that it sounds like we’re on a beach near the pounding surf. Don Basco is on his way from Loreto to rescue us and the animals. John never came through and we haven’t had any contact with him since he said he would confirm our boat trip two days ago.

In theory, Don Basco will arrive any moment with the boat and they will begin taking animals to the chaco (the tiny, garden/island a few kilometers away from the house). If all goes as hoped, all the animals, people and important belongings will be out of Encanta by the end of the day.



8:00 pm

We’re out of Encanta—Steve and I, the family and the remaining pigs and chickens rescued by Don Basco and 2 others guys who helped Rolando move the pigs to the chaco and took us out to Esperanza. So, at the moment we are lying in a wet, broken tent that we just spent half an hour patching together after a horse stepped on it.

The family is spending their last night in the flooded house at Encanta, hoping the earth walls don’t collapse on them in the night. The pigs are probably contentedly munching on the corn and chasing away the capybaras…(or will the capybaras chase away the pigs?) in the chaco. Really, there’s not much of an “away” for any person or animal to go to from the chaco, which is an island of about 300 meters diameter amid a vast, flooded wetlands that is now truly traversable by boat alone.

Tomorrow Don Basco will go back with the boat and move the family and all their belongings to the chaco, and then help Rolando swim all 20 horses to Esperanza. The 3 school-age kids will come to Esperanza in the boat with Don Basco so that they can join on our eventual voyage to Trini, where they will live with family members and attend school (assuming the center of Trini doesn’t flood). John was due to arrive in Loreto today, though we don’t know if he will arrive with the 2000 Bs. rented boat, or simply as a passenger on another boat.

Outside Esperanza things sound pretty grim. It rained for 15 hours straight last night (and into the morning) and Loreto is entirely flooded except for one street and half the church. Trini’s retaining wall has broken in 2 places. Trini, which is the capital of the Beni Province, houses nearly 100,000 people and is slowly going underwater despite the peoples’ efforts to keep the water out with sandbags and pumps. I was told today that Trini is actually lower in elevation than Loreto and up until now has always been protected by the combination of pumps and its circular retaining wall.

The current news is the airport is already partly flooded and we may not be able to leave Trini. We have no idea how bad it will be when we arrive. Will the hostel where our baggage is stored be flooded with water? We can only wait and see.

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 10/07 at 04:04 PM
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A Sad End for the Eggs of Encanta

by Sarah Faegre

We discover that the macaws have been incubating dead eggs for the past three weeks and this sad news brings our work at Encanta to a close.

February 4th

Our time here at Encanta is wrapping up with 99% certainty that the nest is a failure. Two dead eggs. That is what the macaws have been carefully incubating and caring for during the past month. After noticing that one of the eggs was smelling rotten and getting lighter and turning a dark, rotten opaque color, I removed and opened it, expecting to find a dead embryo inside. Putrid, greenish liquid exploded all over me when I put a bit of pressure on the eggshell. Either it was laid infertile or the embryo died after only a few days of incubation.

We will leave the remaining egg of course, because we are not 100% sure that the egg is dead, although even if we were sure, it is probably best to let the macaws finish their nesting cycle naturally. It would also be interesting to know how long the female would continue to incubate a dead egg, though chances are that she’ll still be incubating it when we leave Encanta and no one will know how much longer she stays. I wonder how common it is for Blue-throated Macaws to lay a clutch of infertile eggs, or for young embryos to die during the first few days of incubation. Perhaps inexperienced parents do not always attend their eggs as consistently as necessary. Yet, shouldn’t they be able to tell that something has gone wrong when the eggs fail to hatch?

All we can do at this point is take advantage of our remaining days at Encanta by getting the best photos possible of this pair. The photos will be compared with past BTM photos and also used in future years of the project to track the activities of this particular pair. This is a sad way to end my time with the Blue-throated Macaws, but it is also a reality check—the vast majority of nests fail during incubation, whether that is from predation, flooding, inattentive parents, or a doomed start with infertile eggs.


February 7th

Such complications! Yesterday the boat finally came, bringing the family their long-overdue and much needed food supply. As I climbed the nest one last time, I heard the motor approaching. I candled the remaining egg for the last time and was overcome by a sudden uncertainty. My experience candling parrot eggs was minimal and many years past. What if I was wrong? Could it be that the translucent, rosy pink color I was interpreting as a lack of life was actually a chick, filling the space within and nearly ready to hatch? With this sudden feeling of absolute uncertainty I had to rush back from the nest, through waist deep water, in the broiling heat of the mid-day sun to arrive at Encanta just as the boat arrived. This was our chance to get out, as least as far as Esperanza. “Be ready in 15 minutes,” one of the men told me.

Steve and I took down the tent and readied our bags as fast as we could. With all the rushing, the heat, and my sudden uncertainty about the egg, I was feeling sad and unprepared to leave. I sat at the kitchen table with Lurdes, Rolando and 2 of the 3 guys who came on the boat: El Gordo, Don Basco, and Rolando’s brother. I asked them about getting to Trini from Esperanza.

“Oh, it’s extremely complicated right now,” Don Basco told me. “You have to get to the river, but there is no transportation passing on the road (1 km from Esperanza) because it is entirely flooded, and yet it is not the best route for boats coming from Loreto.” I told them that I could pay them to take us to the river from Esperanza, if they had the time to do so in the next few days. “Not enough gas to get to the river,” I am told. And there is no gas for sale in Loreto right now.

“When might more gas arrive in Loreto?” I asked. My question was met with much laughter. “Maybe August.”
“So, can we get to the river by horse?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, that can be done,” they told me.
“How deep is the water,” I ask. “Will the horse have to swim?”
“Yes, the horse will have to swim quite a lot, so you can only bring one small backpack.”
Okay, cross off that option.
“So, it would be better to leave from Loreto then?” I ask. “Is there enough gas to get us to Loreto?”
“Yes, we can take you to Loreto,” says Basco. “But from there the trip to Trini is also complicated.”
“Are there small planes traveling between Loreto and Trini?” I ask.
“Yes, but in these last few days the runway has flooded.”
“So, from Loreto how might we get to Trini?” I ask. I am given a complicated series of instructions about asking around in Loreto to find space on a boat going to a place called El Lomito (The Lump), where some people are living and boats can not cross because it is still dry. From The Lump we must get another boat to the river, where, on the far side of the Rio Ibaré a truck might be making daily trips to Trini. But Loreto is flooding, they tell me, and lots and lots of people are trying to get to Trini, so you might have to wait a few days to find space on a boat.

And then, just as I picked up my backpack to begin loading our equipment onto the oxcart which would haul it 200 meters through the shallower water to the boat, Rolando came to me with an alternative plan: Steve and I will leave with Rolando and the school-age kids this coming Saturday or Sunday by hiring a boat (through a series of radio communications) to come and get us at Encanta and take us all the way to the river. We’ll see what happens…I sure hope he can find a way to make the plan work. So here I sit, once again, in the blind at Encanta.

Now, a few hours later, I am back at the house, sitting in my hammock, strung up between two palms. Below my hammock—water. Surrounding the house and lapping at the doorstep—running water. We are now part of the river system and the water is rising steadily, despite the change in weather. This is the 4th day in a row without rain, though the towering cumulus clouds blowing in on the strong, cool, north wind are promising that this 4th day will not be completed without showers or perhaps a good drenching.

The kitchen is now part of the river and this morning we got up and made a system of plank walkways from the fire place out the door of the kitchen and across the yard to the galpón, where we have moved the table, since its former location is flooded. The galpón is an open, palm-roofed structure with a raised earth floor that is normally used to store saddles and hang meat or to rest in hammocks. Now, after days of adding countless cartloads of dirt to raise the floor above the flood-level, it is the only dry space outside the house and thus has become the center of daytime activity. And if these last few days are anything to judge by, it is only a matter of time until the water rises into the house, or turns the dirt walls to mud, collapsing the house all together.

Rolando butchered a cow today—an entire cow per two months is the family’s ration of meat—and Rolando is now in the Galpón, busily turning the 600 lb. creature into piles of charque (think beef jerky on a massive scale), which will be smothered in salt and hung in the sun for at least 2 days. With two days of hot sun and lot of salt, the thinly sliced meat will stay good for up to two months. Lurdes is boiling a gigantic pot of the cow’s internal body fat, mostly stripped from the kidneys, which will be turned into blocks of lard and stored for future use: anything and everything can be deep fried in lard. Even rice and noodles are first deep fried before adding water (leaving the boiling grease so that they are cooked in the mixture of boiling lard and water). The food tastes good, but I find that large amounts of lard, especially for breakfast, does not agree terribly well with my normally-strong digestive system. Or maybe it’s just the water. We are now out of rainwater and are forced to drink the brown flood water that is flowing all around us.



February 8th

Rising, rising, rising. We hear messages on the radio about potable drinking water being carried in by Brazilian helicopters to families in Trini and Loreto. Meanwhile, here at Encanta, the outhouse has flooded and all the contents are now mixing with the floodwater that flows through and around it. Steve and I are both sick with diarrhea despite our efforts to drink only boiled water. Miraculously, Rolando, Lurdes and the kids seem unaffected and tell us that the water is fine.

Yesterday (before the outhouse flooded) one of the kids was about to use the outhouse when he suddenly ran out, screaming that the “sicuri” (anaconda) was entering the bathroom. I ran over to see and sure enough, a 2-meter anaconda was slithering slowly through the gap in the boards. Once inside the outhouse the snake proceeded down the hole and I got there just in time to grab its tail and haul it out of the outhouse. It writhed and lurched and quickly freed itself from my uncertain grip. It swam away quickly, across the yard, under the fence, and through the flooded pampas. Luckily it wasn’t aggressive and only had an interest in escaping, not biting me.

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 10/06 at 09:20 PM
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Hard Times For Everyone

by Sarah Faegre

February 2nd
11:30 a.m.

Rolando and Lurdes spent the non-rainy hours of yesterday gathering loads of dirt from termite mounds and hauling them back to the house in the ox-cart. Then we all shoveled loads of dirt around the flooding corners of the house and onto the flooded floor of the galpón. Tension is running high at Encanta as bit by bit all the family’s food runs out and the rising water puts their house and animals in danger. For almost a week they have had no sugar or flour, which are normally two of the staples out here. Their bi-monthly food delivery was due on January 15th and the “encargado” (man in change, directly below the landowner) is incommunicado at Esperanza. It is the job of the encargado to coordinate the delivery of food and see to the needs of the people working the land. Rolando and Lurdes are frustrated that he didn’t get the food delivered on time, or before the flood made the delivery more complicated than ever before. Now the 2-month supply of food will have to be brought by boat, since the water is too high for the ox cart.

The family has run out of everything except rice, lard and charque (dried meat). But in a day or two the rice and charque will be gone too. We have also used up most of the project food that Steve and I brought. We have enough beans and lentils for one meal of each, but all the rice, noodles, sugar, honey and canned food we brought is gone. We have 6 packs of crackers left. Luckily there is still corn and bananas in the chaco—the family’s garden island, 20 minutes by horse through the flooded pampas. Of course there are plenty of chickens and pigs to kill if necessary.

Bad news for the macaw family as well. When I climbed, the day before yesterday, I found one of the eggs smelling rotten and looking opaque. The macaws seem restless, although the female is certainly still incubating, as if at least one of the eggs were alive. This afternoon I will climb again if the rain stops.

5:45 p.m.

I am at the blind, writing with a headlamp because with the stormy weather it is as dark as night. The water just keeps rising and rising. It is starting to enter the house and Rolando and Lurdes are very worried. The blind, which luckily is on higher ground, is trying to become an island and will succeed if this rain keeps up for a few more days. Today it rained for 8 hours, almost without stopping. The new path that Steve found and hacked through the bromeliads is now boot-flooding high and not much better than the original path. When I was helping Lurdes in the kitchen today she looked outside and sighed deeply. “This rain makes me think things,” she said.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like the people at Esperanza really don’t care about us. No one has come here to check on us. They know we have no food and that the flood waters are rising and they can’t even be bothered to attend the radio.” She confided that she wished they could leave. “But anyways, there’s no way to get out,” she said. Then, almost as an afterthought she said, “But it will be really sad when the rice is gone. Then it will just be meat, meat, meat.”

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 10/03 at 08:46 PM
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Floodwaters Coninue to Rise

by Sarah Faegre

The macaws continue incubating their two eggs, high and dry in their nest box, while the people of the Bolivian lowlands do not fair quite so well.

January 29th
5:45 p.m.-- in the blind

The rain was dumping down all morning and the water rose to within inches of our tent. The vicious red ants are as desperate as we are for a dry spot to set up camp and are trying to colonize the walls and roof of our tent.

Earlier today an anaconda swam into the flooded yard and grabbed a big, white rooster. The kids came running towards their father, screaming “Sicurí! Sicurí!” (Anaconda). Steve got some amazing photos of the 5-foot snake, coiled around the rooster, before Rolando killed it with machete. The rooster survived, though it was squeezed so hard that it looked as though its eyes would pop out. I felt very sad for the snake, however I can not hold it against Rolando and Lurdes that they need to do all they can to protect their animals. They have six children to feed and one rooster is worth a lot.



The mosquitoes are driving me insane inside the blind right now. The eggs still haven’t hatched and I couldn’t feel any movement within the eggs when I checked them today. I am beginning to doubt that I ever did feel movement in one of the eggs. Maybe I was just feeling my own pulse in my fingertips and mistook it for the tiny movements of an embryo. We have been here for 9 days and it is known that the eggs were being incubated for at least one week (and probably 2 weeks) before we arrived. That means that the latest they could hatch would be two weeks from now. I suppose I had better stop being impatient and settle in for the wait.

One of the reasons for my impatient is that Steve and I have to get to town soon and I don’t want to leave the nest during this most vulnerable stage. Upon our arrival at Encanta, we thought it would be easy to travel to town for a day or two, just by riding a horse to Esperanza and then taking the daily public transportation to Trini. Now, boat is the only means of transportation. The current news is that someone from Esperanza will try to get a canoe from Trini. I just hope someone gets a canoe before February 15th, the current date for Steve’s departure flight, which he will change whenever we can get to a phone.



9:00 p.m.

I am now in the tent, having escaped from a ravenous cloud of mosquitoes that appeared and engulfed me when I decided to give myself an extravagant bucket bath on the chapapa. A chapapa is a makeshift, table-like structure, perhaps more accurately translated as “platform”. A chapapa, unlike most tables, often has spaces between the planks, sticks or logs that make up its surface and can be quite partial to falling down, even when used properly.

I dislike standing in the mud while I bathe, especially because there is something that always bites my toes—little painful pinches, as if there were aquatic ants. So, in preparation for my bath, I carried a bucket of water from the pond to the chapapa. The chapapa, near the well, is entirely surrounded by water and perhaps it seems a bit odd that I would carry a bucket of muddy water from across the yard, only to bathe, surrounded by the same, muddy water. However, I think the pond water smells less like cows and so I prefer it. Anyways, when I tried to stand on the chapapa so I could bathe without getting my feet muddy, I discovered that many other creatures had had the same idea and climbed up the chapapa to stay dry: mostly a bizarre variety of ants and spiders. I decided I could share the chapapa with these critters and began to soap up until, halfway through my bucket-bath, the chapapa fell down, dumping me, my clothes and my towel into the water. So I stood in the mud and continued my bath, lamenting my wet clothes and towel…and then the mosquitoes attacked, making me prance around naked, splashing around in the water and slapping at my body. Finally I ran, soaking wet, for cover in the tent. Now I am dry and the tent is damp. I hate bathing.

I hear great-horned owls, hooting faintly in the forest, across the pond. The frogs and bats are croaking and squeaking so loudly all around me and over head that the noise level is almost uncomfortable. I hear soft voices and laughter from the family in the house. A horse snorts. I hear Steve’s soggy footsteps as he returns from his anti-frustration walk. The three guys at Esperanza go to Trini tomorrow and John (a project employee who is working at Esperanza) will supposedly be back on Saturday.

On Sunday we might know if there will be a canoe to get us out of Encanta. Maybe the series of trucks and boats is up and running, to get people from Loreto to Trini. (Note: Loreto is a tiny town, 15 KM from Esperanza, which normally has daily transportation to the big city of Trinidad.) Or maybe one or all of the parts in this line of transport are not working. Maybe there is a motorboat that can go all the way from Loreto to Trini. Maybe not. Maybe there are planes flying from Loreto to Trini. Maybe Loreto’s airport is already flooded. Maybe it will rain more and boats will be the only option left. Maybe it’s done raining for a while and the water will go down enough that we can use horses.

Rolando says that probably the guy who might be looking for a canoe in Trini won’t find one because canoes are currently in high demand, but Rolando may be able to borrow a canoe from a neighboring estancia. No one knows any more than all of these maybes and probablys and probably nots, and the for sures that are never for sure, but it doesn’t matter—that’s just life in Bolivia.


January 31st

Yesterday we were finally flooded out of our tent— the little island on which the tent was perched is now underwater. I rescued all our stuff from the tent in the middle of the 4-hour downpour (while Steve was watching the nest) so that our sleeping bags were only marginally damp. By the time the rain stopped and we were able to move the tent it was filled with 6 inches of standing water. We are close enough to the river that with this flood we are now part of the river system. The water has a current, flowing along with the river Ibaré from South to North.

Even the water in the forest has a current. What was once a path leading to the nest is now a knee-deep stream with a current. The water I walk through to get to the nest was probably in Loreto a few hours earlier, and will be heading north towards Trini after passing through Encanta.

At 8km, we are far enough from the main river that the current is slow, but we are all grateful for the current because it keeps the water cleaner. It hardly seems like more rain will make much difference anymore, since we already moved our tent to a raised platform (chapapa) on higher ground and the water is so deep that our boots are flooded during the daily walk to the nest. Of course I wouldn’t wish more suffering on the people of Trini, thousands of whom are already flooded out of their houses and living in makeshift tents on higher ground.

The water is already higher than it got during last year’s flood, but Rolando says that it’s not really any worse because this year people had a little more time to prepare and knew just how bad it could get. Last year huge numbers of livestock died, as well as wild animals. Lurdes says that anytime now the armadillos should start arriving by the dozen to the higher ground at the house and yard. They even climbed up into the oven last year, she tells me, especially if it had been used recently because the thick, baked mud walls retain heat for a long time.

On the topic of ovens, the method of baking here is quite interesting. The oven is a mud-walled mound, very similar indeed to a Hornero’s mud nest (horno = oven in Spanish), only differing in that the real oven has 2 openings (one on each side) to facilitate making a fire and cleaning out the ash. To heat the oven, it is stuffed with wood and coals from the kitchen fire and stoked for at least an hour, until its blazing hot, and the entire oven (including the mud walls) are at the proper roasting temperature. Then all the wood and coals are removed, the food is put on a tray in the oven and the heavy doors are replaced and held shut by long wooden poles, braced against the ground. The structure holds heat so well that it will not need to be re-heated and can even cook a tray lined with huge chunks of meat…or an armadillo.


I am sitting in the blind where a cool breeze has just picked up. It feels like it might rain again. The female is on her nest, but I am worried about the fate of her two eggs. When I arrived here at 8:00 she was nowhere to be found and didn’t show up at the nest until 8:45. Now it is 9:30 and she is still in her nest, incubating, but it’s very odd that she would be gone for so long. The pair is definitely acting strange. The male entered twice in one hour, each time for less than a minute.

Our first signals of failure at the Vaca Muerta nest, in early December, was when the male repeatedly approached the nest (with incubating female inside) screaming, went in and out of the nest, and then sat near the entrance, screaming, as if trying to convince the female to abandon the dead, broken eggs. The male here at Encanta is still being silent near the nest, so hopefully everything is fine. Oh, please, please let the eggs hatch!

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 09/29 at 12:20 AM
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