The Amazon - Part 1

After our night in Iquitos we were picked up and bussed down to the river to board one of Explorama´s river launches for the 45 min trip downstream. As we pulled out into what we learned was a tributary of the Amazon, Cesar our guide, pointed to the water and told us tributaries have black water (and it was the color of black coffee), while the Amazon itself is brown like coffee with cream. And a few minutes later as we entered the Amazon proper, we could see a distinct change in the color in just a few feet. The visibility in these rivers must be virtually zero. It is hard to know how fish survive but the waterways teem with life from the legendary small piranha to the golden catfish which can grow to over three meters.

The river was magificent despite its dirty color. We were told the river was approaching its annual peak water level which can be 40-45 ft higher than the low water mark in October or November. In fact the people here name their two seasons in reference to the river...High Water and Low Water season, as the weather and temperature do not vary all year, basically being hot, humid and rainy. The rise in the water level is due to snow melt in the mountains of Peru and surrounding countries. Even here near its source, the Amazon is over a mile wide. By the time it reaches the Atlantic nearly 4000 kms away it is so wide you can´t see from one bank to the other. It is a fast flowing river and at this time of year is full of floating debris. Trees, logs, plants and even small floating islands are everywhere so that the many small craft boatmen have to keep a sharp eye out and manoeuvre their boats carefully.

We disembarked at the small jetty at Ceiba Tops and were escorted to the main lodge, a thatched-roof, screened-in structure housing the lobby, gift shop, bar and dining room. There were seven of us in our group including a couple from Romania and three young men from Taiwan. Cesar who was to be our dedicated guide while at Ceiba Tops, briefed us on the day´s activities. We and our bags were then taken to our room, past the lovely little pool set among towering palms and various jungle plants.

Ceiba Tops is a ¨luxury¨ jungle lodge. We had decided to splurge on comfort, giving the sleeping platform, mosquito netting, latrines and kerosene lanterns at some of the other lodges, a miss in favour air conditioning and a king size bed with private bathroom. Cesar had suggested we meet at 11:00 and go for a walk in the jungle nearby, so we donned the long pants we had brought for such occasions, and set off. We spent an hour or so checking out the local flora and fauna which included the largest ceiba tree we had seen so far and an interesting 4 inch long millipede which everyone had a turn holding, or at least providing a hand for the little critter to crawl along.

All meals were provided at the lodge, always buffet and generally excellent. (Although as it turned out, I only ate 2 or 3 meals the whole time we were there, though Sue thoroughly enjoyed the food). After our buffet lunch of vegetable soup, fresh Amazon river fish and various salads and other vegetables, we set off on the first of a number of river excursions.

Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, my stomach was starting to feel rather upset, which later in the afternoon turned to a full-fledged bug of some sort. I managed to enjoy that afternoon´s trip until we started the ride home when I really started to feel poorly. We motored downstream for about 45 minutes and pulled up on the bank next to an Indian village where the natives don traditional grass skirts, tops and headdresses for the benefit of visitors. Obviously this is not how the natives live and dress today in most parts of the Amazon, but we were given a glimpse of traditional Indian culture which was the norm as recently as 40 years ago. We were escorted into a large oval-shaped lodge whose thatched roof rose to 25 ft at its pinnacle. The dark interior was lit by three small oil lamps made from tin cans. Here we witnessed a native dance to the accompaniment of several men playing traditional flutes and drums, and of course we were asked to join in the dance. Following this, we were taken outside for a demonstration of the blowgun which is still used to this day for hunting small animals in the jungle.

The tribal chief selected one of the 6 inch darts from his pouch. The darts are obtained from a certain palm tree and tipped with a wad of kapok, a cotton-like substance from another tree, so that the dart can be propelled by a blast of air. After putting the kapok end into his mouth using his lips and tongue to form a compressed cone shape, he inserted the dart into the 6 ft long blow gun. A quick blow into the mouth piece and the dart went flying 40 or 50 fit to embed itself in a 6 inch pole (trunk of a banana tree) which had been stuck in the ground. Each of us were given a chance with two or three darts, and we all managed to at least hit the post if not the target painted near its top. Cesar said the Indians still use curarae to tip their darts to paralyze small prey.

After this interesting visit, we boarded our launch and our boatman, Jorge, took us into a nearby tributary where again the water suddenly turned from brown to black. We were on the look out for Amazon dolphins and it wasn´t long before we saw some splashes near the bank. For the next half hour or so we had several glimpses of grey and also the star attraction, the pink dolphins, as they breeched the surface for air. A neat sight!! Cesar told us we would not have been able to come up this river in the low water season as it would have been dry.

My stomach had been feeling queazy since lunch time and on the boat ride back to the lodge I really started to feel ill. I returned to our cabin to lie down and before long I was burning with fever and heading to the toilet every half hour. Sue went for dinner without me and at dinner she learned that our three travelling companions from Taiwan were actually doctors, a neurosurgeon, an anaesthesiologist, and an opthalmologist. After dinner two of them came to have a look at me. One of them took my pulse and felt my forehead but didn´t seem too concerned. He told me to drink lots of fluids. He later told Sue that my fever and chills were probably symptomatic of a bacterial infection so the antibiotics I started taking (we had brought these with us just in case), should help, however.... I had a terrible night and got little sleep. I was no better in the morning, so had to miss the fishing expedition. I eventually crawled out of bed and sat by the pool until Sue returned.

As Sue related to me, the first stop of the morning´s excursion was to see the giant water lillies, Victoria Regis. They landed at a native village and walked a short distance to a small lagoon where they boarded a small boat and floated amongst the huge lilly pads. They were up to five feet across with white flowers which changed to purple and died within 24 hours. The pads themselves lasted about 40 days. Apparently it was quite a sight. As they walked back to the launch, they met the family of the boatman. The family had small pet sloth which each of the touristsa held for a bit. The sloths have the sweetest faces. They look as if they are dreaming happy dreams and appear to be smiling peacefully. This is in sharp contrast to their huge treacherous-looking claws on their two or three toes. There was also a two metre Anaconda which some of the group held, but not Sue.

Next stop was piranha fishing. In one of the black water tributaries (piranhas live only in these black water tributaries, not the Amazon itself), they were each given a fishing pool, line, hook and small pieces of beef for bait. Cesar had joked that they would have to catch some fish or there would be no lunch for them. The piranhas were pretty adroit at stealing the bait without getting hooked but Sue caught one of the four Red-chinned Piranhas, the group managed to land, and was very pleased with herself. They are actually very pretty fish altought the protruding teeth are pretty scary. The indigenous people carry a set of their teeth to sharp their blow darts. However, the mosquitos were the most successful hunters of the day as they were absolutely voracious despite the repellant. Cesar did arrange to have the piranhas fried up and Sue sample them for lunch. She said they were mostly all bones and there was very little flesh on the small fish, though what there was tasted fine.

Sue returned after her morning excursion to find me sitting by the pool where I had spent the morning with frequent trips to the baño. The Immodium I had been taking seemed to have little affect on my cramping bowels, though having consumed only water for the previous 24 hours, there was not much left in my stomach. I was feeling marginally better (this thing came in waves over the next few days), so I decided to try going on the afternoon excursion which was a visit to another village not too far downstream.

Upon arrival, we were invited into one of the homes near the river, a two room ramshackle structure built on stilts. As we entered the dim interior, we could smell the pungent aroma of burning wood. At one end of the small room a wood fire was burning and two old, dented metal pots sat on a grill above the embers. There was surprisingly little smoke from the fire, but what there was wafted through the spaces in the boarded walls. Cesar said we were just in time for lunch, this being around 3 pm. He told us that people living along the river only have two meals a day – breakfast about 9 or 10 and ¨lunch¨ about 3 or 4. They rise with the sun about 6 a.m. and go to bed about 6:30 p.m. when total darkness envelops the village. The family puts down mats in the same area they live, cook and eat during the day, the 10 x 10 ft room we were sitting in. They sleep together covered by a large mosquito net, their only protection from the voracious insects that come out at night. And there were 10 people living in this house, so sleeping arrangements would have been pretty crowded!

We had been greeted by the mother and father, a smiling couple who looked to be in their 50s though were probably younger and who seemed genuinely happy to have us visit. They sat on two wooden chairs while three of sat on a small wooden bench, the only other furniture in the room. Several children stood staring sheepishly at us and one girl who looked to be about 14 or 15 stood nursing a baby.

Cesar told us about their lives here on the Amazon. They basically subsist on what they can get from the jungle and river, though they will occasionally make the journey into the market at Iquitos to sell bananas, pigs and chickens they have raised and fish they have caught. The small amount of money they make is used to buy some precious kerosene for their lamps, or clothes that they can´t make themselves. Their main foods are fish and jungle fruit. The pot steaming over the fire was to be the daily fish soup. A plate of cut up catfish lay nearby to go into the broth of river water, onions, chilis and bananas. Cesar, half jokingly, asked if I would like to try some and I got a smile from our host when I said ¨No tengo hambre, gracias¨...I´m not hungry thanks. Cesar explained to our hosts that I was having stomach problems.

It is hard to fathom how these people can exist when we compare their lives to ours in the developed world. Just the fact that they drink the dirty water of the Amazon is unbelievable and in fact many of the people do get parasites from the water, though there is a native plant that they take to get rid of them. And their crowded living conditions, subsistance diets and isolation from medical care and contact with the outside world, seem to us to be an almost impossible way to live. In any case they all seem very happy which, I guess, is what life is all about.

We were joined by an entourage of village children as we made our way along the path to two small concrete block buildings – one painted blue and the other green. These were the village schools where the children go till about age 14. After that they have to go to the highschool in Iquitos though most don´t go because of the expense of living away from home. This being Saturday, the kids were not in school today. We had brought some pencils, sharpeners and erasers with Canadian emblems for just such an occasion. Cesar had the twenty or so children of various ages line up, girls in one line and boys in the other, and we gave them each a souvenir pencil. As we didn´t have enough erasers and sharpeners for everyone, Cesar suggested we ask some arithmetic questions and give them out as prizes for correct answers. I asked what I thought would be a relatively simple question to start - ¨¿Que son cinco mas diez?¨ I was surprised when this was greeted with silence for a few moments until one child hesitatingly replied ¨Quince¨. I said ¨Correcto¨and handed him a pencil sharpener. The children did not seem very confident of their sums as we asked them a series of questions, but we did eventually manage to give out all the loot. We wndered if their schooling concentrated on more practical matters for life in the jungle and doing arithmetic. But when I asked who the President of Peru was, there was no hesitation so obviously they do learn about their country. These children were all very sweet and well behaved, never squabbling or pushing, and obviously they had been well brought up. Just like the family we had met earlier, they all seemed very happy and full of life.

Every village has a soccer field and as we walked back toward our boat, several of the kids began in impromptu game on the muddy field. The rest accompanied us on the path back to the boat. Sue asked a couple of the young girls who appeared to be about 13, what they wanted to do when they grew up. One wanted to be a lawyer and the other a professor. We couldn´t help but wonder what their chances are of reaching these goals, but we wish them all the best.

Sue had broght a couple of post cards from Canada, one depicting two wolves in the snow and another of a Saskatchewan prairie scene. Even our guide Cesar seemed intriqued by these scenes, espcecially the treeless prairie. I´m sure people living in the Amazon rain forest can´t conceive of a place with no trees. Sue left the postcards with a women we passed on the way back to the boat who seemed very pleased to have them.

I had been hoping that my health would improve, but shortly after returning to the lodge late that afternoon, I was once again hit with the chills. I started to shiver uncontrollably despite the 30 degree air temperature, and headed straight for our room, a hot shower and bed. I alternated between fever and chills but thankfully durint the night my fever subsided somewhat and I had a better night. Unfortunately I was in no condition for what we anticipated would be the highlight of our trip to the Amazon. This was an excursion to a more remote lodge to do the canopy tour. I convinced Sue I would be okay without her and that one of us would have to go on this adventure. The boat was leaving at 6:00 a.m and although I had hoped for an overnight miracle cure, I was still suffering and was too weak in any case for the strenuous climb having had nothing to eat for two days, save a few soda crackers and a little chicken broth. So Sue left me and headed off.

I again spent the day sitting in the shade by the pool, sipping on cinamon tea. The travel gods, which up until now had treated us kindly, had picked a terrible time to strike. I had been so looking forward our Amazon adventure. Well at least I was able to do some of the excursions. I think I´ll have to return to the Amazon sometime, perhaps when we visit Brazil. I was disappointed in missing the day's outing but Sue had a great time. She will pick up the narrative of this fascinating day in our next entry.