Back in the mission town of Sepahua, almost two weeks after setting out for Manu. We arrived in town this afternoon, the clapboard houses appearing in the distance, the tangle of boats at the muddy port, the kids playing in the water, diving about. I noticed the Dominican priest, Father Jose Alvarez, there at the water front, and as we pulled in, he came over and asked where we had been. When I told him "over the Fitzcarrald Pass and into Manu," he raised his eyebrows, nodding. The Father had been here since 1953 and is getting near retirement. He still appreciates a good trip when he hears of one though, and made many similar trips when he was younger.

"You visited the Yura, did you?", he asked, wiping the gray stubble on his chin. "How is their health?"

"Good," I told him, as one of Jose's relatives began unloading the banana leaves of salted wacawa, the sweat bees still crawling over the flesh but a lot of them smashed. "They're a lot better. They seem to be settling down now and are working their fields again."

"I'm glad to hear that," the old priest said, "I still remember those first four, when they first came to visit us, they were so wild, so bewildered."

"Well, they thought they were in the land of the dead," I said, now helping Jose unload his slabs of giant fish. "They know different, now, and I think they want to stay away from here. For the moment they're better off in Manu. At least there they still have plenty of food to eat."