Amazon River Cruise 1999; part 4

Wednesday, February 24

Awake early (6:00 AM) to tour a river village. They get up early too, I guess.

This village appears a bit more prosperous than the last, though it is just as muddy. Chickens and pigs peck and root through the mud, smoke from kitchen fires filters through the palm-thatched roofs. Inside, the huts are cool and dark and relatively clean.

Victor says he can smell masata (fermented manioc) from last night’s carnival celebration

A woman swings her infant in a hammock and the chief, an older man with splayed toes, shows us a toy for children made of bones. Spinal bones. You slide the bones up the string (held vertically) then let them go and they rattle down, clicking and clacking . The string, by the way, is a vine, of course.

These people are reserved. They do not make eye contact. Even the children don’t stare, they glance shyly. Smiles are infrequent. They seem self-contained, not sullen. Only once did I ever hear a small child cry.  The ones in the first Peruvian village, Pebas, had been conditioned to smile; those children took our hands and led us like little pied pipers to and and from the boat.

Later, when we are on the boat passing by their houses, children wave and laugh (Laughing at us, I wonder?)

After lunch we took another rainforest hike, the higher ground beyond the flood plain. This is supposed to be an example of primary rainforest but Roger says it has been cut some. We see a merthiolate tree which is used as an antiseptic (Mercurochrome?) The bark exudes a yellow-brown liquid. We also see a milk tree which bleeds when cut, a milk of magnesia-like fluid that is good for treating diarrhea. It is all very interesting but the mosquitoes attack when you are standing still, which we frequently do when Secundo is orating.

Lunch — siesta. Bob and I skip the leper colony tour…

I had a nice conversation with Tom about Ambrose Bierce (Incident at Owl Creek)

This afternoon the sun was illuminating the east bank of the river and we had a remarkable display of birds — blue and yellow macaws, a flash of color as they burst from their roosts in pairs… All of us sitting on the upper deck of the river boat witnessing the rainforest around us as we glide along with it…

Sunset on the Amazon and the river is glassy, reflecting the heaped up clouds, the arms of the trees, the birds.

The night excursion is memorable mostly for the frogs and the night sky, the planets Venus and Jupiter, still close in the western sky, reflect in the black waters. Above us, a gibbous moon sails.

I get up during the night, late. The moon is reddish on the western edge of the sky and the frogs and insects are still singing and the Southern Cross is high above. The diesel engine thrums reliably, the air is delicious.

 

Later that night the fog drops like a curtain and we collide with something — a log? the bank? — it jars us from our sleep and I listen for a distress call, the cry for All Hands! or Abandon Ship! But all is well, this steel hull is tough and soon I fall back to sleep