THE MV RIO AMAZONAS...MY HOME FOR A WEEK.
When I went down to the Amazon to research Little Tiny Teeth, I also signed on to write an article on the trip for the New York Times Sophisticated Traveler magazine. Here's the piece, reprinted with the permission of the Times. (For more photos, CLICK HERE.)
CRUISING THE PERUVIAN AMAZON
by
Aaron Elkins
If by "sophisticated travel" you mean "luxury travel," then I have to tell you right up front that a cruise on the M/V Rio Amazonas is not for you. It is, let me be frank, pretty basic as cruises go. No fitness center, no hair salon, no beribboned little basket of goodies on the bathroom counter. The cabins are clean and air-conditioned and come with private baths, the food is fresh and good, the staff is friendly and knowledgeable, the bar is well-stocked, and bottled water is plentiful. Other than that . . . well, there is no other than that.
But if what you're looking for is 700 miles of leisurely travel through one of the most interesting and remote places on the face of the earth, then it might be just your cup of tea. There are strange creatures to be seen, and Indian villages to be visited, and mile upon mesmerizing, green mile of roadless jungle gliding by.
With my fellow passengers, I boarded the Amazonas at Iquitos (rhymes with "mosquitoes"), Peru, a bustling jungle town of 270,000 reachable only by air and river. The ship, Scottish-built in 1896 for the then-booming Amazonian rubber trade, has been refurbished a good many times, most recently in 1994, but on the outside it still looks like everyone's image of an old jungle steamer: tubby, and experienced, and just a little raffish. It's by far the oldest passenger vessel operating out of Iquitos and believed to be the longest-serving one still on the Amazon. It can hold forty-six people in twenty cabins, but on this trip there were seventeen of us: two Peruvians (he a retired admiral); two Aussies; two Spaniards; and eleven Americans, including me. Ages ranged from the twenties to the seventies.
Coming as I do from the Pacific Northwest, where people start grumbling about heat exhaustion when the thermometer hits eighty, I was dreading the notorious Amazonian heat, but it was the humidity that really took some adjusting to. The felt-tip pens I'd brought for note-taking were useless; the ink wouldn't dry on the page. The sturdy pocket notebooks that ordinarily last me for weeks fell apart in two days in the steamy climate, their glue liquefied. And my shirts were soaked from morning till night.
It all took some serious getting used to, but get used to it I did. Simply to be on the Amazon River is an overwhelming experience, as the Amazon itself is overwhelming. It is the greatest river in the world, probably only the second-longest after the Nile (nobody's sure), but by far the first in volume. From its mouth pours almost a quarter of the world's river-water; four times that of the Congo, the second greatest river, and ten times that of the Mississippi. In one day it delivers as much water as the Thames does in a year.
And yet its pace is measured, even languid. From the base of the Andes to its mouth on the Atlantic ocean nearly 4,000 miles away, it drops an average of a quarter-of-an-inch a mile, barely enough to keep it moving, so being on it is more like floating on a vast, mud-brown lake than it is like being on a river. The pace of the Rio Amazonas is similarly unhurried, leaving plenty of time for expeditions, by dinghy and on foot, to see at least a few of the exotic denizens of the world's greatest rainforest.
On this particular run we went bird-watching a couple of times (brilliant blue-and-yellow macaws, giant orange kingfishers, great yellow-headed vultures); we fished for piranha (and even managed to catch some, which were duly served up for dinner); we cruised slowly along the shore to look at life in the trees (sloths, monkeys) and on the ground (capybara, wild pigs); and one rainy night we went searching for caimans, spotting them by the way their eyes glowed red in the beams of our flashlights, just above the surface of the water.
And at least once a day we trekked into the rainforest itself, there to see some out-of-the-ordinary plants—rubber, cacao, and mahogany trees, wild ginger, five-foot wide water-lilies that can support a child—and some wonderful if creepy jungle creatures. There were hairy, five-inch, bird-eating spiders, so quick they don't bother with a web, but pounce on their prey; jewel-like poison-dart frogs no bigger than a thumbnail, that secrete a curare-like neurotoxin used by the Indians for their blowgun darts; three-inch-long millipedes; and giant snails . . . giant even by the generous standards of my western Washington home.
As interesting as the creatures it holds is the rainforest itself. Walking in virgin equatorial jungle is easier than the tales of old adventurers and explorers suggest. A machete is helpful but hardly necessary, because the canopy overhead shuts out so much light—less than five percent of it is estimated to reach the jungle floor—that there isn't much undergrowth to contend with. What there is tends to have huge leaves, so that, coupled with the dimness and stillness (the canopy effectively shuts out wind too, and the birds and insects are quiet during the day), there is an uncanny sense of being in a weird, silent dreamscape, something you vaguely remember seeing in a painting of Henri Rousseau's
There is a pleasing variety of fellow human beings to be seen and to interact with along the way as well. At its turnaround point, where Peru, Colombia, and Brazil meet, the Amazonas drops you off for the morning at the joined cities of Leticia, Colombia and Tabatinga, Brazil (allowing you to almost effortlessly check off two additional countries on your bragging-rights list). There you can re-acquaint yourself with some of the delights of civilization: Internet cafés, ice cream cones, and ATM machines. At the much smaller villages of Pebas and San Pablo, Peru, you can stroll through the morning markets and buy anything from sugared manioc breakfast fritters to curious fruits like coconas, which look like oranges but have green, tart flesh, or pacays, which look like cucumbers but snap open to reveal a string of beans surrounded by plump, white packing that looks—and tastes—like cotton candy.
Most intriguing of all are the stops at the Indian villages along the river, isolated settlements of ten or twenty open-walled, thatch-and-pole houses, with the occasional painted wooden church, or schoolhouse, or chief's house to vary them. Getting to them between June and November, as we did, during what is laughably known as the "dry season," takes a little effort and a good sense of balance, inasmuch as they are all perched on fifty- or sixty-foot banks—in flood season the river will rise forty feet—and there are no docks or piers to make disembarking easy. One must navigate a narrow gangplank from the ship, then struggle to the top via rough "steps" hacked into the slippery clay.
There is always a gaggle of kids in T-shirts and shorts to watch you pull in, and although they don't exactly beg, they don't say no to a piece of hard candy either. The adults, at least those that come out to see you, are uniformly welcoming, and there is usually an event of some sort put on for you: a song presented by the Tikuna schoolchildren, or a rousing, decidedly interactive dance put on by the Yagua or the Bora in their communal house.
Afterward, there is bartering for simple native handicrafts: necklaces, bracelets, bags, or masks. Peruvian soles or American dollars are accepted, but the Indians show more enthusiasm for logoed T-shirts and hats. In the Yagua village, I showed one woman a baseball-style cap with "Honolulu Marathon 2004" on it, and asked what she'd be willing to trade me for it. She fingered it a while, then asked something in a Spanish dialect that I couldn't understand.
One of our guides translated for me.: "She says, 'No tiene usted otros colores?' " Don't you have any other colors? '
Well, I didn't, of course, but I'd brought along an extra T-shirt with a Cabo San Lucas logo, and that did the trick. I came away with a net bag made from rolled palm fronds and five nut-beaded necklaces--presents for my wife and a few of her friends. She seemed as pleased with the transaction as I was, but afterwards, I kept thinking about the question: No tiene usted otros colores? Had she thought that my backpack was full of them? Did she think that we gringos who showed up on Tuesday mornings were carpet-bagging merchants making their weekly rounds of the native villages? If nothing else, it was a reminder that these people were just as busy inventing "logical" histories and rationales for us, as we were for them . . . and probably about equally off-base.
Mosquitoes, and insects in general, weren't the problem I'd anticipated. In a week of jungle travel, I suffered three minor bites. Spraying myself twice a day with DEET and wearing long sleeves and long pants may have had something to do with that, but those in shorts and short sleeves seemed to fare equally well.
The one exception was one afternoon when we were slogging along on one of our rainforest treks. Our guide suddenly jabbed at the ground, yelled something to us, and went into a peculiar, high-stepping run. Startled, we looked down to see that we were standing on what looked like a pulsating, brown carpet flowing from our right to our left. They were army ants, millions of them, and a few expeditionary units were already scrambling up our legs. With visions of Charlton Heston up to his eyebrows in the things, we sprinted after our guide for the far edge of the swarm, about fifteen feet away. Safely there, we danced about for a while, frantically pulling off shirts and blouses and plucking ants from ourselves and each other.
In the end, there turned out to be only a few bites and stings, nothing too awful. If anything, the incident raised our spirits; we'd been attacked by Amazon army ants, a real jungle adventure! It was something we'd be able to dine out on for years to come.
In any case, it was worth a few bug bites and a little sticky heat for the pleasure of sitting out in the Amazonas's open-air bar in the evening, freshly showered and changed, sipping a Pisco sour or Inka Cola under unfamiliar southern constellations that make you realize just how far away from home you are. And with it comes the strangely relaxing knowledge that the only means of communication with the outside world is the captain's short-wave radio in the wheelhouse. There is no television reception, no radio, no telephone, no Internet, no e-mail; one is virtually immune from disasters scandals, orange alerts, and reality TV.
Ah.
**Like to see more photos from the trip? CLICK HERE