Amazon River Cruise 1999

Notes from the Amazon River Cruise

with Explorations, Inc.

From my logbook as written on Saturday, February 20, 1999:

Miami to Iquitos, Peru, in just 4 1/2 hours. From the Fontainbleu to the upper Amazon, just like that. The adventure begins

Roger Harris – English speaking guide

Victor – Peruvian guide

Secundo – Peruvian guide

The first thing I noticed deboarding the plane was the smell of smoke in the thick, moist air. The smoke from fires far away, a primitive smell, the smell of human life at a simpler level.

Driving through Iquitos on our way to the boat (a river boat named Arco) and I am remembering the time 12 years ago we went to Brazil; the dark streets filled with people, dim, yellow lights, the cantinas, the blue lights of televisions in rude homes where half the neighborhood has gathered to watch, women sitting on chairs outside in the dark, talking maybe, or just listening… People everywhere, not like wealthy American neighborhoods where you never see anyone. It’s mysterious, yet familiar somehow. It’s exciting, basic, simple, human. And thick in the air, the smell of smoke.

Sunday

First morning – Bird watching before breakfast

Secundo hears the birds, identifies them from the symphony of sounds around us. Yellow-rumped cacique white earred jacamar, cormorant, blue and gray tanager,  herons, parrots, a three-toed male sloth in a cecropia tree — I have to give up writing them all down – the birds – so many I can’t keep up, they blue in my ears.

“Macaws and parrots always fly in pairs…”

Visited a village next to Pebas, a village of Bora peoples. So very very different — almost like visiting another planet.

Children choose their protectors, their “amigos, amigas,” grasp your hand and and give you a shy, yet open smile. Later, my amigo Edward, asks me for a dollar for taking his picture, the little capitalist…

(Where are you now, Edward, 25 years later?)

This is real, this is what it is, this is the Amazon. Not a set, not a re-creation. We watch a tribal dance, several of them, complete with bare breasted women and men pounding sticks on the hard packed clay floor.

A good lunch of catfish in a sort of spicy cream sauce over rice. The food is good and I hope I’ll lose a few pounds because it is not very fattening and there are no snacks or desserts. After siesta we take a rain forest walk and see many of the things we’ve been reading about. Leaf cutter ants, most wondrous, and the belligerent bullet ants, an inch long.

Sunset on the river, we’re underway on a cool evening breeze. The air is filled with the sound of parakeets, quite a racket; they fly about in great swarms, preparing to roost for the night.

Continued…

copyright Linda Collison 1999, 2024