Amazon River Cruise 1999; continued

Monday; February 22, 1999

Good morning Amazonia!

Up at six to go bird watching in the skiff on a tributary. It is a good day; we spot many birds and other wildlife as our eyes become accustomed to what we want them to look for. Bob spies a sloth. The biker dude spots an iguana, up in a tree with a vulture, next to a tree full of weaver nests.

We land and walk through a village. Children, rather serious, return my smile, a bit reluctantly. No begging in this village and no bartering — except for one woman who furtively offers to sell me a blow gun. She pantomimes the action of blowing through the gun. (I regretted not buying it — but I would soon have another chance…)

The people seem well nourished. Healthy. The children have good teeth but some of the mothers and fathers do not. I don’t see any old people, none at all.

The houses have no furniture, not even beds. A man uses an ax to cut wood to make a giant roasting pan for the farina cereal.

We watch another man roasting farina over a low, smokeless fire. He stirs it continually with a paddle.

Nearby, a woman washes dishes in the river; another washes clothes.

Bony dogs wander around, biting the fleas and sores on their hides. Pigs root, chickens scratch, goats sleep in the shade beneath the shacks. Burned posts are the remainders of a hut that burned down when children tipped over the kerosene lantern one night.

The stamens of purple flowers litter the ground, a lilac dust. Two children wrap their arms around one another and walk the path with us.

There are no televisions, no electricity in this particular village. There is a school house but none of the children are in school.

Someone has killed an anaconda. The group passes it around and poses for pictures. The snake looks slimy in death and drools spittle from its mouth.

A woman asks for aspirin and I give her ten tablets. Tell her in English and sign language “2 every 4 hours”. Wondering if I have contributed to someone’s comfort or taken away something. It is fatuous of me to suppose either way. Someone asked for modern pain relief, I gave it. Don’t fancy yourself Florence Nightingale or Satan, either way. Still, the old days of nursing makes me want to give written discharge instructions, properly translated.

We come back to the boat and have breakfast, then siesta. In the afternoon Bob and I go swimming in the black waters of this Amazon tributary where gray and pink dolphins roam. (Few piranhas in this part of the river, this time of year we are told, and dive in trustingly) The water is cool and clean, very refreshing. The current is amazingly strong.

The river is everywhere, it is endless, it is for some people the world’s highway, it has become ours for the week. It is everywhere, it leads wherever you might want to go. Exciting, abundant, ever-changing…

A night excursion in the skiff to Caballo Cabocha (Horse Lake) which maybe should be called Dolphin Lake, they are swimming all around us as the sun sets and the light plays on the clouds and on the dark water.

We go across the large lake and up a tributary, passing the last of the dwellings and canoes of families paddling to town. The air now is cool, the moon is sliced in half and Bob points out Venus and Jupiter, close to convergence.

The sound of frogs grows, a pleasant clacking sound. (Are they the poison-dart frogs, I wonder?) The tributary narrows, becomes tighter, choked with weeds, water plants, overhanging trees. It is a Heart of Darkness setting and still we go further, deeper. Suddenly bats, everywhere bats, diving, darting, squeaking. On we go.

We shine the lights for caiman, going deeper and deeper. I am enjoying the ride like a kid in the car at night with the windows down.

Lightning bugs! Fireflies! Not so many as back East, but there they are. We are now making our way back and I’m amazed the “boat driver” doesn’t get lost.

Then Roger spies a caiman! Victor and Secundo try to catch it but it is very big and they let it slip away. Roger spies another one and this one the guys catch — a small Black, perhaps 3 feet long. The Black caiman is more rare and more fierce, we’re told, than other species. We pass it around and I take a picture of Bob holding it, I can see it breathing, or swallowing, its throat goes in and out. After we nearly blind it with flash bulbs popping, we release it and go on — and catch another one — a different species, a Spectacled caiman, smaller and more common.

After a satisfying dinner we have a stimulating discussion which becomes a bit heated. It revolves around genetics. People get emotional. People are fearful and subjective and want to simplify complex issues. Some of the nicest people have the weirdest ideas!

To be continued…

copyright Linda Collison 1999, 2024