Wading Creeks

Among my collection of artifacts from around the world is the skin of a 23+ foot anaconda snake (water boa).  I awkwardly encountered this large snake in 1958 when trying to climb over a jam of tree trunks in a muddy creek hidden deep in the jungle of the Upper Amazon Basin near Contamana in eastern Peru.  Dr. Bernhard Kummel, a paleontology professor at Harvard, and I were surveying the surface geology of an oil-prospective area by wading streams all day long.  We were constantly wet.  Actually we could move faster in the creeks because we didn't have to wait for a trail to be cut through the undergrowth.  Furthermore the rock formations cropped out on the river banks.  That was what we were looking for.  It was a mapping expedition to assess structural geology and oil potential.  I was a geologist with the Texas Petroleum Company.  Dr. Kummel was on a consulting assignment for Texas Gulf Producing Company.

Near Contamana, Eastern Peru, August, 1958.  Unnamed tributary to Quebrada Maquia, Rio Ucayali drainage system.  Shows part of the log jam in which the 23' anaconda was found and killed.  Samuel T. Pees, geologist with Texas Petroleum Company.