Parrots, a Native Village and Weird Food

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Today we traveled up the Napo River a short ways to visit a native village.  Along the way we stopped to view what’s known here as a Parrot Lick, a place where a particular soil that is very high in mineral content is exposed along the riverbank. The minerals are particularly beneficial to parrots, and they gather by the hundreds to lick the soil and absorb the nutrients.

We then visited the village of our native guide, Sergio. We met his mother, who gave us a tour of the village.  The village is fairly modern by local standards.  They have the internet; however, it is contained in one building and the whole village shares it.  They have a relatively large school building, and kids from several neighboring villages attend school here.  Sergio and his mother then showed us some of their gardens and the traditional foodstuffs they grow.

After the tour, they prepared a meal of traditional foods for us to sample.  The meal included fish wrapped in leaves and roasted with palm heart.  We also sampled roasted bananas and plantains, and the roasted seeds from the cacao plant (North’s favorite!).  The adults drank some Chicha, a drink made from a fermented mash of Mantioc root, a local potato-like tuber. Essentially it’s a creamy potato flavored beer.  The real spectacle of the meal though were the roasted Palm Worms. Not really a worm at all, but a large larvae of the Leatherback Beetle, these prehistoric looking grubs are considered a delicacy by the local people. After being roasted on a skewer, they have a slightly crunchy exterior with a soft, chewy center with a slightly nutty flavor. Dad was the only one of us with the stomach to try them, and he lived to tell the tale.

Throughout our jungle visit, not just in the native village, we were able to sample local foods that might be considered unusual in the U.S.A, from exotic fruits to octopus soup.

Parrot Lick

Schoolhouse