Allison - How to walk a puma: and other things I learned while stumbling through South America

How to Walk a Puma

And Other Things I Learned While Stumbling through South America

Praise for Whatever You Do, Dont Run:

Allisons infectious enthusiasm for both the African bush and his job showing its wonders to tourists is readily apparent. Booklist

His misadventures make Whatever You Do, Dont Run an absorbing read.... The material is rich, and Allison is a gifted storyteller. And the only thing stranger than African fiction is African truth. National Geographic Adventure

After reading this entrancing memoir, an African safari may move to No. 1 on your travel wish list. The only catch is youll want the author as your guide. Chicago Sun-Times

Praise for Dont Look Behind You!:

The best compliment you can pay a travel writer is to read his work and feel like youre right there with him. For more than two hundred pages, I felt like I was in Africa, up to my neck in danger. I dont even know this guy, but more than once I lay awake at night, worrying for his safety. Enough adventure, action, life lessons, and laughs to fill a movie and four sequels. The fact that Allison survived to write any of this down is a miracle in itself. Cash Peters, author of Naked in Dangerous Places and Gullibles Travels

How to Walk a Puma

And Other Things I Learned While Stumbling through South America

Peter Allison

Copyright 2012 by Peter Allison

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.

Project editor: David Legere

Text design: Lisa Reneson

Layout artist: Sue Murray

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Allison, Peter.

How to walk a puma : and other things I learned while stumbling through South America / Peter Allison.

p. cm.

E-ISBN 978-1-4930-0013-5

1. Allison, PeterTravelPatagonia (Argentina and Chile) 2. Patagonia (Argentina and Chile)Description and travel. I. Title.

G156.A44 2012

918.2'704411092dc23

2011038618

This is a book about escaping a desk, hitting the road, and collecting new experiences. While this is an exciting thing to do, there is always the downside of leaving treasured people behind. In my case it is my wonderful sister Laurie and my niece and nephew, Molly and Riley Taylor, plus my friends Nick Goodwin, Hayden Jones, and Marc Butler. Huge thanks must also go to the family Gomez, who looked after me so well on my arrival and on many subsequent visits. I love you all, despite the names I call you.

Contents

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks go to the following people:

Harris and Marguerite Gomez, for giving me the softest landing imaginable in South America and being such wonderful friends.

Pete Oxford and Renee Bish, wildlife photographers extraordinaire, for saving my bacon, then putting it in some of the most exciting situations I have been in. Much of this book would not have come about without their advice and introductions. They have also produced an incredible photographic account of time they spent deep in Yasuni, titled Spirit of the Huaorani. If the stories here have spurred any interest in the subject, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.

The Minke, for more than can be said or written.

Tom Quesenberry (now thats a funny name, isnt it?) and Mariela Tenorio, who run the beautiful El Monte Lodge in Mindo, for arranging and assisting with so much of the Huaorani trip, and laughing as heartily as the Huaorani at all my maladies.

Bec Smart, Bondy, Mick Payne, Adrian, Rob Thoren, Nina at Inti Wara Yassi, home of Roy the puma.

Sam Sudar, for getting in a car with me.

Julio, the night watchman at Hostel Americana in El Calafate.

Marcello Yndio, for the way he killed a chicken.

Peter Fitzsimmons, for coffee, adviceand constant reminders that he sells more books than me.

Guillerme and Andres at the Sacha office, Tomas the manager, as well as all the staff at Sacha Lodge, for making my stay there so pleasurable and monkey filled.

Aaron Sorkin, for answering so many questions, and the Undeletables, for laughs and thought-provoking debate.

Marcela Liljesthrom, for the swallows.

Friedereke Wildchild Wildberg, for some wise words, but mainly for being German, yet funny.

Lloyd Temple Camp, because he wants to be mentioned in a book.

Donald Brown, for the same reason (and yes, yes, yes, it is true, he also kept me employed for two years when few people would).

Tarli Young, for saving me from a planned life of luxury and comfort in Costa Rica and inadvertently sending me to Bolivia and Inti Wara Yassi instead.

Ben and Kate Loxton, for insisting I waste some time in debauchery and laugh myself silly while doing so. And Yahtzee, too.

Diana Balcazar, for expert guiding while filming in Colombia.

Matt Mitchell and Jonny Hall at Hostel Revolution, Quito.

John Purcell and Tamsin Steel, for putting me upand putting up with mewhen I was recently single and a moping dullard.

Louis, Hoens, and Jan Louis Nortje, who gave me somewhere to stay during the main editing phase of this book, far from South America in Namibia.

My wonderful agent and friend, Kate Epstein of the Epstein Literary Agency. As always she went above and beyond to make this the best book it can be.

Holly Rubino, Gail Blackhall, Nicholas Brealey, Tom Viney, Nadia Manuelli, Helen Holyoake, Joan de la Haye, Louise Thurtell, and Angela Handley for their work on this book and prior tomes as well. Special appreciation goes to the late Nick Pryke of Wild Dog Press in South Africa.

Introduction

I was sixteen and on a scholarship for a year in Japan.

A series of near Biblical plagues overtook my host familys city of Okayama. First came praying mantises, which begat a plague of frogs that emerged en masse from the citys open drains in pursuit of the bounty of insects. Then there were the snakes.

For the townspeople this was a nightmare. I was delighted. My host familys cat was the only one to share my enthusiasm, and she caught the snakes alive and dumped them proudly at the bare feet of whichever startled member of the family was at home.

Piitaa! would come the cry, and I would sally from my room and perform what they saw as an act of lunacy by scooping up the snake and taking it back to the slime from which it had come.

Sayonara, I would farewell. Hiss, the snake would reply, if at all.

Three years later I decided to head overseas to somewhere that had an abundance of wildlife. Id been to Asia, and I lived in Australia. My staple diet of documentary television told me there were really only two choices. So in late 1993, a few days before my nineteenth birthday, I used the most rigorous and scientific method I could think of to decide between South America and Africa: I tossed a coin.

Africa came up heads that day and changed my life. I thought I would stay for a year and then please my father and go to law school, but my passion for wildlife won out while I was visiting a safari camp and I was offered employment behind their bar. Over the years I worked my way up and became a safari guide, a camp manager, and ultimately a teacher for those wishing to get into the business of guiding. In that time I had some of the best experiences with animals that anyone who loves them could wish for. I witnessed an elephant giving birth, was charged by lions, had a leopard walk into my tent, and made friends with a family of cheetahs that would allow me to lie down beside them. I stayed seven years. Eventually, though, I felt I wasnt doing the job a service, tired as I was of the demands of tourists, and I also felt that all that fun somehow meant I was cheating at life. I moved back to Sydney.