Freshwater Shrimp: A Delicious Dish

Yesterday I went on a hike with Javier - the caretaker of our house - down to a jungle creek. Javier has lived in the area around Cuervito all his life. He doesn't speak much English so all our conversations took place in Spanish.  He taught me a number of names and facts about the local wildlife as well as some stories from his life.

Cardulovica (Panama hat palm) flower beginning to open

Javier has 22 brothers and sisters and he took me to a waterfall where they all used to swim on Sundays when he was young. He hadn't been to the spot in 10 years, but we still found it quickly and easily. There was no path down to the creek, really, we navigated down an incredibly steep and slick face, composed of the wet clay soil and a topcoat of slippery leaves. Partway down the face we paused so Javier could cut us long, sharp walking poles with machete. My pole kept me from falling several times but I also kept picturing how gutted I'd be if I slipped onto it.

Approaching the pool at the base of a 30 m waterfall

The waterfall was several times higher than the one we went to previously. Almost immediately on arrival I spotted one of the freshwater shrimp my sister had mentioned before. I pointed it out to Javier and he said

"¡Agárralo! Él no muerde - acaba de quitarse de la cáscara!"

I have seen and handled lots of crayfish in the united states and they have strong claws and hard shells. When they pinch, or snap their tails on your fingers it can really hurt, so I was a little bit timid. This strange shrimp was both large and alien to me. The foremost arms and claws were nearly as long as the rest of the body and it seemed disproportionate and possibly dangerous, even if it had just shed its shell.

Javier kept repeating that it wouldn't bite so I reached into the water and herded it toward him (I still didn't want to grab it myself). The shrimp was quick and slippery, but eventually we cornered him into the shallows and Javier grabbed him.

Javier holding the freshwater shrimp, freshly-pulled from the quebrada

Javier said that sometimes the locals come down to the stream at night with flashlights and collect up to 4 kilograms of the shrimp in a night. Once we'd wrapped the shrimp up in a plastic bag and put it in my backpack we sad down by the water and chatted about the animals, plants, geology and human history of the area.

A close-up of the newly-molted freshwater shrimp we caught near Cuervito

There is still gold in some of the quebradas, like the one we visited. Javier explained how the oreros sift it out of the sand and gravel and how some people seek out the ancient graves of the natives that often contain caches of gold. Javier had personally seen two palm-sized gold figurines - one of a vulture and one of a frog - collected in such a way. He'd also once served as a guide for an American who recovered 11 troy ounces of gold from the area's streams!

On the way back up the hill he told me about how the perezosos (sloths) favored the guarumo (Cecropia obtusifolia) trees. We searched their scarred, bare trunks but didn't see any sloths.

I tried to get Javier to take the shrimp home and eat it, but he insisted it was mine, and that'd I'd better not forget about it in my backpack. So I took it home and fried it up with my mom and sister!

It was actually super tasty. Unlike the strange or muddy taste crayfish can sometimes have, the tail of our shrimp tasted like lobster and the claws like crab. It was an awesome midafternoon treat. Especially when paired with some incredibly juicy oranges from one of Javier's trees.