The Lyons Diaries: Chapter 4

The Amazon Journey

Puno, Cuzco and Sacred Valley

Machu Picchu

The Amazon

Peru home

Setting down in Iquitos, the heart and commercial center of the Peruvian amazon, was alighting into a completely different world. Gone the sleepy fog and grime, now replaced by brilliant tropical glare and rain-drenched verdancy.

As we headed from the airport to the waterfront to meet our home for the next 7 days, the first thing we noticed was oppressive tropical rainforest heat and humidity, the next was the hectic noise and bustle of a peculiarly Iquitos pattern of traffic. The noise came from mo-bikes, Japanese motorcycles that had been transformed into commercial vehicles capable of carrying the driver (riding astride) and two or three people (or unbelievable amounts of cargo) in back. The mo-bikes look like a miscongenital cross between the bicycle powered rickshaws you see in touristy places like Waikiki, and the three-wheel taxis manufactured in India and found throughout southeast Asia. The rear wheel of a motorcycle is removed and a two-wheeled carriage consisting of a seat wide enough for a couple of adults or lots of packages is welded in its place. The back is usually covered by a brightly colored canopy with de rigueur fringe to give protection from the equatorial sun and Amazonian rains. The drivers zip through traffic (which consists mostly of other mo-bikes) like madmen. Jim was devastated when there wasn't sufficient time for him to hitch a ride.

The waterfront of Iquitos teemed as we prepared to board our boat. But ... before we could depart there was the required speech of welcome and a few Andean tunes by an excellent pan-pipe band. You guessed it--version 17 of El Condor Pasa! We finally got aboard in time for lunch, which was to be served as we commenced steaming down the Amazon. Of course, the inveterate photographers were less than pleased about missing photo-ops, but the mouth-watering aromas coming from the galley were enough to tempt all of us into the compact dining room.

Both Ruth Marie and Jim had to pinch themselves to realize they were actually on the Amazon River. It was mildly reminiscent of being on the Nile in 1984 when they sailed up the Nile from Cairo all the way to Aswan on a small boat just a cut or two above this one. However, even here, thousands of miles from the ocean, and a good thousand downstream from the source, the Amazon was already a mightier river than the Nile. After all, the Nile is a desert river that must flow much of its course with little rain and only one major tributary. The Amazon is amazingly well watered by rainfall and over 1,200 tributaries as it meanders through a colossal forest basin. Of all the earth's great rivers, there can be little doubt which is the mightiest.

Our cruse ship was the MV RIO AMAZONAS. Not a luxury vessel by any stretch of the imagination, although very basic and pleasant. A few in the group were in shock because they expected a cruise ship of the type one sees in the Caribbean. Everyone soon recovered. The staterooms were air-conditioned, whenever you were on the shaded side! Each stateroom had its own bathroom with cold running river water, filtered once for the shower and sink (or so the German captain swore), not filtered at all for the toilet. There were life jackets in each cabin and each time we left the ship in the launches (two 20-passenger boats powered by outboards), the life jackets went with us. Each bunk had space underneath for our small suitcases and there was a tiny cubicle to hang clothes.

Our drinking water came from a local filtration plant and was brought aboard in large plastic carboys. Since the water came from the Amazon, there was nothing else but for everything, including the toilets, to flush directly back into the river... but this is the norm. The USA Environmental Protection Agency and Coast Guard would not be amused.

Midweek, we got a change of linen. Each day we got bottled water for drinking, brushing teeth and the like, and more was always available if you requested it. There was no hot water but we rapidly learned to tolerate the cold showers. The secret was to shower at night after the stateroom had gotten really cold from the overworked air conditioning. In the afternoon, when one and the room were hot, the showers felt like ice water. Once you were cold, the shower water felt almost warm. Well, one could imagine that, anyway. We washed our hair in cold, silt-laden water and didn't worry about how we looked.

The humidity was high, of course, since this was a rain forest, so we rinsed out clothing frequently. Our underclothing as well as our shirts took on a patina of bronze from the residue of orange silt in the river water that flowed into our sink. The rudimentary air conditioning struggled to keep up during the day and felt too cold at night, so we simply closed the grating covering the vent with our fingers before going to bed and that seemed to help. We didn't spend much time in the cabins anyway.

The RIO AMAZONAS was constructed in Scotland during the late 1800's and sailed to Peru to participate in the rubber boom. As so frequently happens during these wild spurts of entrepreneurial, by the time the AMAZONAS reached Iquitos, the rubber boom had burst. The ship was used for general cargo until the 1950's, by which time it had neared the end of a long an useful life. Just before it was scrapped, the present owners had it reconditioned and converted for passengers. If you seek a high-class cruise ship, or the equivalent of a Lindblad or Clipper adventure cruise ship, the AMAZONAS is not for you. If, however, you seek a true taste of the Amazon, without opulence but with comfort a cut or two above the local ferries, the AMAZONAS might just be your style.

As to specifics, the RIO AMAZONAS can take a MAXIMUM of 40 passengers and, truthfully, except for a lack of sufficient chairs, did not feel crowded. As it was, we were always moving chairs around the ship depending upon where people wanted to congregate. It was nothing major, but it was a bother. The crew were all congenial and appeared to appreciate our labored attempts at Spanish. The naturalists/guides and cruise director spoke excellent English, of course.

The climate was a drastic change from the altiplano and Cusco. Even though we were well into the dry season, the humidity was high. It did not rain every day, and most of the time when it did rain it was usually in the late afternoon or at night. Since the cumulus clouds (thunderheads) built as the afternoons wore toward evening, we had spectacular sunsets, usually with rainbows, almost every day.

Two young Peruvian men, both of whom had been born on the river, served as our guides and naturalists. Both were named Victor. We christened the lead one Victor Numero Uno and the other one christened himself Magic Victor because he was a fan of Magic Johnson, the U. S. basketball star. Both were 24 years old and went to secondary school together in Iquitos. As noted above, their English was much more than adequate, and they managed in German as well. Basically self-taught when it came to flora, fauna, etc., they each possessed an excellent command of common and scientific names.

Victor Numero Uno had an insatiable desire to learn and borrowed a guide book to Peru from one of the passengers whenever he had a free moment. This particular book was one he hadn't read, and he explained that he wanted to cross-reference information that he had learned from other books. Several of us had brought copies of articles from travel magazines to read along the way. All of them were left with him for future reference.

In a conversation with Victor Numero Uno, I asked him what caused him to decide to be a guide. He told me that as a teenager he would frequent the main square and waterfront area of Iquitos and watch the tourists and their guides.

He said, "At first, I was jealous of the guides who could speak other languages and had the opportunity to talk with visitors from all over the world; then I told myself, 'you can do this too.' So I made up my mind to learn English first and study on my own to learn more about the plants and animals. The customs of the people I knew already because they are my people." We later learned that he has a wife (who is studying dental hygiene) and a baby daughter. Magic Victor's parents are teachers and he is one of seven children. Unlike Victor Numero Uno, Magic Victor had completed college. At loose ends after his required Peruvian military service, he gravitated to the waterfront and was picked up as a guide based upon his schooling in ecology, and his friendship with Victor Numero Uno.

As seems to be the case with all cruises, the crew of the RIO AMAZONAS worked overtime keeping us busy. Just once it would be nice to take a cruise not designed for Type-A Personalities. Because we started our cruise going downstream, most of our boating or shore activities took place the first few days, with more time spent on the latter days laboring upriver against the awesome Amazon current.

We left Iquitos on a Sunday, and steamed until early afternoon when we stopped to visit a sugarcane press and rum (or, to be more exact, a firewater) distillery. This was a very basic operation with water buffalo used to turn the press. There was no stainless steel in sight. Everything was done under a rusted tin shed with a packed dirt floor. The cane juice was boiled down in a huge and very rusty cast iron container. After we viewed the operation we were invited onto the owner's porch to taste the syrup and the firewater, both of which were for sale, of course. Syrup and both white and golden rum were passed around in a Mason jar. We dipped our fingers in and had a taste. Someone remarked that there was no reason to worry about any sort of "bugs" because nothing could have survived in the firewater! It was pretty potent stuff.

There was a small pond on the property where the water buffalo cooled off after grazing. It held our only sighting of the victoria regia water lilies. These are the ones that have the gigantic pads and flowers.

Days began to blend into each other since we weren't changing hotels every other day. Each time we tied up at the river bank, vendors appeared on the bank as well as in dugouts. It was amazing what they had to sell. The items appeared more primitive than what we had seen (and bought in the highlands) and they were very different. Among the things offered for sale (and/or barter) were blowguns of varying sizes, primitive art work done on paper made from tree bark, masks made from gourds of varying sizes, small woven baskets, and jewelry made from seeds, tree snail shells, porcupine quills, giant fish scales, giant catfish whiskers, and varying combinations of these.

The high school drama teacher in our group had brought a lot of T-shirts and some athletic shorts to barter or just give away. One day as the boat was pulling away from the bank, he appeared with a small blowgun in his hand. Someone immediately asked (as this was the custom), "And what did you pay for that, Bud?" To which he promptly answered, "It cost me my shorts."

I had taken yellow school pencils, small plastic sharpeners, and small spiral pads of paper to donate to the schools we visited, but I hadn't thought about it being winter vacation. Magic Victor told me that when we visited one of the villages, the kids would probably be happy to trade with me for these items. Boy! Was he ever right!!

We visited the Bora people in their community gathering house. They first offered us bread that they make from grinding the root of the casava plant into flour. It was a spongy, tough, flat bread made in a large round, about an inch thick. They passed it for each of us to break off a small piece. It had a mild, though distinctive flavor which would probably have been enhanced with a bit of salt, which is in short supply because it has to be imported from the coast.

Then they passed around a small wooden bowl of ground coca leaves. The leaves were pounded into a powder inside a tall wooden mortar and used as a mild stimulant. Each person licked his/her finger, dipped it into the powder and passed the bowl. Taken this way the leaves were slightly bitter, but I didn't feel any effect from them, possibly because of the small quantity and because we didn't put them between the teeth and cheek (like tobacco). In comparison, I think I prefer the coca tea that we took in the highlands since they were both made of the same leaves.

The third item that was passed was their local brew which was also made from the casava plant. It had the consistency of glue - no, I really mean it. It was very, very thick and syrupy. The large calabash was passed and everyone who chose to do so dipped in a finger again. It was not as potent as the firewater we had sipped or the syrup we had dipped our fingers into the first day out.

After this communal sharing, we were treated to a couple of songs and dances, one being the Anaconda dance. The Anaconda spirit is a good spirit for the Bora people and the dance itself was very spirited. The other dance was the one done before fishing to ensure that the take would be plentiful.

It is my opinion that these performances are done now as a way to bring in outsiders rather than before each fishing or hunting trip. After the dances, we were encouraged to look at the items for sale (or barter). These were hanging on the walls of the community house and each family seemed to have their spot.

Standing in the middle of the house, I opened my daypack and pulled out the Ziplock bag containing the school supplies. Almost immediately, I was surrounded by children! I could feel little fingers tapping my legs before I ever looked down. They were eager to trade! I hardly knew what to do, but when I paired 6 yellow pencils with a sharpener, they were extremely happy. When I was down to the empty Ziplock bag, one of the ladies came up to me with a rattle made from a small gourd. It was not decorated as the ones used in the musical presentations had been, but it worked the same. She pointed at the plastic bag and then to the rattle, shaking it all the while.... so I added the rattle to the other items I had traded with the children. In the end, I had several necklaces, a bracelet made of porcupine quills, a small primitively decorated gourd container, a small basket and the rattle. Most of these items have been sent to my sister and niece, who are elementary school teachers, for their "other cultures" units.

One of the ladies in our party had brought along small lipstick samples as well as a few bottles of fingernail polish. She was swamped by the women as I had been swamped by the children. Another item that I would take to barter, if I ever get to return to this area would be small sewing kits. Someone had brought the little free one from the hotel in Lima and that was a much desired item as well.

On another shore visit, we went to the settlement of Intipacara. This was not a buying or bartering trip, but one to visit the chief and his wives as well as to see how the villages were laid out. We were expected to leave a little token of appreciation at the chief's house. There were jungle fowl roaming free in the compound as well as small monkeys and coati mundis that were pets. The chief also had a pigmy marmoset and a green parrot as pets.

They lived in his kitchen, which was a separate one-room affair built on stilts with an elevated walkway from the main house. This was to avoid burning the entire structure in case there was an accident in the kitchen. During the wet season the locals get a piece of termite mound, dry it, and then let it slowly smolder on a low fire. The smoke acts as a mosquito repellant.

One of the village men had successfully hunted and killed a peccary that morning. He and his family were in the process of skinning it out and dealing with the meat and such. As we left the village, I noticed that Magic Victor was carrying a plastic bag of meat. That night, in addition to the wonderful fish for dinner, there was a plate of small pieces of fried meat. So those who wished had a taste of peccary. Never ones to pass up an opportunity to taste, we both had a piece. The consensus of those who tried it was that with some tenderizer it would have tasted much like beef. It was mildly gamey. Not nearly as strong as I expected.

Another shore visit took us to the village of San Pablo where there is a settlement and hospital for people who have Hansen's disease. The only other settlement for Hansen's disease is on the island of Molokai in the Hawaiian chain. The inhabitants of San Pablo do wood carvings and embroidery work for sale. We brought several small carvings back as gifts.

It was truly amazing and heart-lifting to watch people who had lost their fingers to Hansen's disease still have the skill and courage to carve, sew, knit, and weave. The hospital part of the settlement is run by a French-Canadian nun with the help of two Peruvian sisters from Lima. As we sat on the veranda of the hospital to listen to her explain the workings of the settlement, we were treated to a heavy rain shower as the sun continued to shine. The sound of a tropical downpour on a tin roof is one that is often heard in movies or TV shows, but it is nothing until you hear it in real life.

We made one early morning trip in the launches to catch the early birds catching their worms. Unfortunately, because of the geography of that section of Amazon, we were on the eastern margin of the river, and thus were looking into the brightening sky of daybreak. Nonetheless, we glimpsed a number of birds including the white-winged swallow, black caracara, turkey vulture, brown-chested marking swallow, short-tailed parrot, ring kingfisher, black-collared hawk, yellow billed tropical flycatcher, social flycatcher, striated heron, laughing falcon, Amazon umbrella bird, chestnut-fronted macaw, greater kiskadee, boat-tailed flycatcher, scarlet macaw, Amazon kingfisher, one of the oropendulas, several parakeets, a couple of hummingbirds, yellow-headed caracara, red-bellied caracara, black ani, and a wattled jacana (there may have been some others, but Jim doesn't have his notes handy and is doing this from memory).

The laughing falcon was very memorable. Its call sounded just like a person laughing! There were several night launch trips into slow-flowing tributaries to catch 2- to 3-foot cayman, as well as a giant Amazon bullfrog. The procedure was simplicity exemplified. The boats moved along slowly while the guide shined a bright flashlight along the shoreline. Because eyes are retro-reflective (light entering them reflect directly back to the source, as anyone who has ever taken a portrait using a flash mounted next to the lens well knows) the cayman's eyes glow brilliantly when they are caught in the beam. It's easy enough to follow the beam of light directly in to the hapless animal. The cayman can see nothing and hunters can either shoot or capture them with little effort. It is for this reason that unfettered hunting (particularly with rifles) can quickly eliminate a population of crocodilians.

We were lucky enough to catch the black and rarer white cayman, so it was possible to compare the features of each. The guides moved through the launches with the cayman so everyone could "shake hands" with or rub the bellies of both species. It was interesting that Victor Numero Uno caught his cayman by hanging from the front of the skiff, while Magic Victor preferred to get off the boat and creep up on the critters through the shallow water along the shoreline. After everyone had a chance to become familiar with the befuddled reptiles, they were released by placing each on a boat cushion and letting them leap to freedom.

When we were birding or caymaning, the boats tended to separate, so one would not spook everything away from the other party. On the night trips, this was particularly important, because it allowed us to cut the outboards and listen to the sounds of the Amazon night. It was fascinating to hear what near-wilderness actually sounds and looks like. Even though there are literally hundreds of thousands of people living near the river along its length, within an hour of sunset, the entire basin went dark and one could easily imagine they had been transported to the dark side of the moon.

Overhead, cloudless expanses of the night sky became black velvet sprinkled with countless fragments of twinkling jewels, with the Southern Cross guiding the way. The Milky Way was the brightest anyone could remember seeing since childhood. Only a few moments in that inky blackness served to remind us of how much of nature our over-lighted civilization has stolen. And the night sounds! A completely different type of experience than walking through a city park at night. Here, there was not even a hint of mechanical noise once the outboard was strangled. From what at first seemed absolute silence, there slowly emerged a natural symphony. Frogs sang first, soon to be joined by birds, insects, and monkeys. Was that the cough of a big cat, or the distant grunt of a primate? The longer we sat in silence, the more defining became the sounds of the unbelievable variety of life awakening around us. It was marvelous, and an experience not to be missed.

At one time, fresh-water dolphin (porpoise) swam in many of the world's great rivers. Sadly, most of these populations have now vanished. In the Amazon, both the pink and gray dolphin are still relatively abundant. There were frequent sightings, particularly near the mouths of tributaries, where the intermingling of waters caused fish to concentrate. The pink dolphin appeared to be about the size of a human, the gray were smaller. Both were equally difficult to spot clearly, since the silt-laden waters prevent the eye following them once they sound. And, unlike a self-respecting sea dolphin, these seemed to be particularly fond of changing course a dozen times between one surfacing and the next, so it was impossible to predict where the next snout and blowhole might appear. Absolutely by chance, Jim happened to be videoing precisely when a pink dolphin decided to make an especially spectacular appearance... so, for a few fleeting frames of video, he is now preserved for posterity.

According to our guides, the native men are very mistrustful of the pink dolphin and, if possible, will kill them. The story goes like this. During the rubber boom, men were able to earn currency by collecting latex sap for the rubber dealers. This was excruciatingly hard and time-consuming work since the rubber trees are highly dispersed through the forest. In order to get their quota, the men had to be gone for many months and, occasionally, years at a time. When the bedraggled and exhausted gathers returned to their wives, they were not infrequently greeted with an advanced pregnancy or perhaps a young child. Now, the men could figure out when they had left home, and how old this new baby had to be. Putting a few things together they would know that this new child could not possibly be theirs. When confronted, the women would calmly explain that they had been swimming when a pink dolphin caught them, and that the new mouth to feed was actually half-dolphin. Well, the men were probably simply happy to be back home for a while and to still have a wife to look after them before time to return to the rubber forests. So, they accepted the story, and to be safe, they would always kill any pink dolphins they happened upon.

Mid-trip we spent the day in Leticia, Colombia, located where Peru, Brazil and Colombia meet at the Amazon. As is so frequently the case, Leticia has a story that goes like this. In the early days of colonial South America, Colombia did not have access to the Amazon. In a rational world, this would hardly have made a difference, since Colombia is located on both the Caribbean (Atlantic) and Pacific, and is situated between South and Central America, with all the mountains, hills, planes, forests, etc. that a county could want. Anyway, Colombia coveted its neighbor's direct access to the Amazon (a tributary access simply would not do). So, Colombia kept going to war with Peru trying to get that Amazon access. Well, one of the presidents of Peru saw a way to make some quick cash, and on his way to escape Peru, he sold a sliver of Peru located next to Brazil to Colombia, and -- to make a long story even longer -- Colombia ended up with direct access to the Amazon, and... ta da... its very own Amazon port, Leticia. This may sound farfetched, but it is actually how much of Latin America got divvied up, and how a lot of ex-presidents of Latin American countries got their retirement.

Leticia is what your worst ideas of an Amazonian river town must be. Hot, humid, squalid, poor, hungry, rundown, etc. etc. etc. And, it also has quiet a bit of charm... if you like hot, humid.... Peru actually stops on the opposite bank of the Amazon, and the settlement there didn't seem to have any other name but that of the island where it is located, Santa Rosa.

Therefore, only Colombia and Brazil actually touch there, land to land. Jammed up against Leticia on the Brazilian side is the even smaller, hotter, more humid, etc. town of Tabatinga, which is primarily known for its prodigious fishermen and international airport. Accordingly, anything that comes in or leaves this part of Amazona by air must go through Tabatinga. It rained some of the time we were in Leticia, and the entire time we were in Tabatinga, but that didn't stop us from touring both "cities," nor from hitting the mercados.

Actually, Leticia is rather famous for a wide selection of T-shirts with striking jungle and avian scenes. We discovered a small store that would take American dollars and bought some salted snacks. Golly, it is absolutely amazing how good a crisp potato chip can be when you haven't had one for weeks. We recommended to the barman on the RIO AMAZONAS that he put in a stock of chips and nuts to sell with his drinks. From his expression it was clear he couldn't imagine anyone actually buying a bag of salted peanuts or potato chips. But, you should have seen our fellow passengers devouring the few chips we shared.

If anyone is looking for a quick way to retire, we've found it. Provide all the tour boats plying the Amazon with salted snacks! All too soon our week on the mighty Amazon was over. How could we ever make the transition back to our daily hum-drum lives?

(Previous chapter: Machu Picchu)