Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Respect the Amazon Jungle

Just like every other city, town, and village we´ve arrived at along this journey, we didn´t look up or reserve a room or beds in a hostal in Iquitos. You could say we didn't do this because we didn't know when we'd be arriving and for two weeks stranded in Pantoja, we had no phone or internet access but the truth is we never reserve room. Let life happen.

Walking down the streets of Iquitos towards the center of the city, my pack felt heavier than I'd remembered. This was most likely the result of my muscles beginning the process of atrophy from three weeks of sitting, laying in my hammock, and endless waiting. Our group, arriving from the cargo in Iquitos was now nine people deep, including the three of us, Tristan and Amandine, Paddy and Louisa from England, Alex from France, and Javy, a soldier from Spain. We happened upon a guy in the street who told us he'd show us a cheap hostal for around 8 soles ($3) a night. A little shady? Perhaps, but at that point we wanted to get our bags off our backs, shower, and get some food and beer.

We arrived at an adventure outfitter office a block or so from the Plaza de Armas called Maniti Expeditions (http://www.manitiexpeditions.com). The office had a couple tents on the ground with other travelers sleeping, and two dorm rooms with beds separated like office cubicles by thin paneling. Only one bathroom though so we decided to haggle the price down from 10 soles (the guy was lying when we met him) to 7 soles per person per night. We dropped our packs, downed some water, and took turns washing the filth of the past few days off our bodies. That cold shower felt amazing. By the time we headed out as a group to eat, it was past midnight. We found a fast food burger/chicken place and promptly devoured our plates. On to the beer! To be honest, most of us were so beat and ready for bed but one beer would be O.K. We found a bar with large bottles of beer for 5 soles each ($2), pricey for us but it was the only place around open. One beer turned into a few and by 4:30am half of us decided to call it a night.




The following day, we slept in then headed to the market for lunch, a little internet time to tell family we actually were alive and not killed by lightning, anacondas, rebels, or the river in general. The manager of the expedition company, Guido, told me that our English friends, Paddy and Louisa, were taking a 3 day/2 night jungle tour leaving the next morning and he would give the three of us a good discount if we wanted in as well. After tossing the idea around with the girls we decided it was worth a shot if and only if we could get it CHEAP. We talked over a price, about 25% of what is listed online (people who book tours like this ahead of time from the internet are suckers) but promised not to disclose what we actually were paying. I don't think this counts. We asked him specifically, "What do we need to bring?" He said the company provides everything, from water, to food, to boots, to mosquito nets. "Just bring a small day pack with some clothes, towel and toiletries, as well as cameras and whatnot."




Us: "Should we bring our hammocks with mosquito nets?"


Guido: "You can if you want to but no need because we have everything you need."


Us: "Where will we sleep?"


Guido: "The first night will be in our jungle lodge down the Amazon river, the second will be in OUR tree house (he said his tree house like it was the company's) in the deep jungle."


Us: "Wow! A tree house. Will there be mosquito nets and beds?"


Guido: "Absolutely."




Awesome, finally we were heading into the old growth Amazon rain forest. No more puny edge growth or secondary forest. We were ready for the real thing. We left the next morning with small packs. I brought jeans, my swim shorts, tank top and long sleeve shirt from REI, towel, rain jacket, bandanna, head lamp, rubber boots, flip flops, and toiletries (toothbrush, sunscreen, bugspray). Kara and Jess did the same. Kara brought her hammock but not her net for it just to lounge around in at the lodge. In the morning we met our guide, Carlos, a polite 29 year old from Iquitos who spoke English well and was very knowledgable about the jungle. A van picked us up in the rain and took us to the docks where we boarded our boat. Here we go.




On the way to the lodge, down the Amazon river, we stopped to watch pink and gray river dolphins near the confluence of the Amazon with one of its tributary rivers. High fish populations where the rivers meet attracts the dolphins to feed. Freshwater dolphins, thousands of miles from the Atlantic ocean...How did they adapt to live here? It's incredible. Further down river we stopped to observe some fishing birds who make their dwellings in the mud cliffs banking the sides of the river. Their colors reminded me of the Belted Kingfisher, one of my favorite birds back home. Onward we passed two decommissioned passanger river cruise ships moored to the side of the river and growing rust. Carlos told us that two years ago, the Peruvian police with the help of the F.B.I. and D.E.A. found over 200 kilos (400 lbs) of cocaine on each ship. Wow. Later on, we turned off the Amazon and winded our way through the flooded forests to an indigenous Yagua village. A touristy chill came over us. Then men, women, and children were all dressed in traditional clothes made of grass thatched skirts, headdresses, and droopy grass necklaces that the women wore to cover their breasts. Each man, woman, and child stood in front of a booth of trinkets made for tourists. They were playing dress up for us. It felt fake, forced. If you googled "Yagua, Amazon" you would most likely find pictures from this village. All the tours stop here. The chief welcomed us though didn't seem that genuine, it was like a speech given over and over. He painted our faces with achote (the red fruit used for pigment we used in Nantar) giving different designs for those who were single and those who were married. Then they showed us a demonstration of their expertise using long blowguns, used traditionally to hunt birds. Carlos said they accept tips. Ugh. Semi-forced tipping feels so awkward. The blowgun demonstration was cool to see and he offered us a go at it for free with the expectation of a tip. I get it. These people are working for eco-tourism now. Every trinket bought, ever tip given most likely keeps a tree alive in the jungle (selling wood is most villages primary source of cash income. Most of their food though, they grow themselves). And this is great for tourists coming just to Iquitos to get a taste of the Amazon then comfortably flying back to Lima in an hour, staying in a nice hotel with good food, but for true travelers, people seeking the essence of a culture, this isn't it. Spending two weeks with the indigenous Shuar who opened their doors and hearts to us, volunteering teaching English and working in the fields, living amongst the community was real, was the essence of the Shuar culture. This just felt awkward. They didn't wear their traditional clothes when tourists weren't around. We didn't know we'd be going there and didn't bring money to tip. Sorry.




We left the Yagua village and continued on to the lodge. The boat pulled off the Amazon once again and passed a flooded house on stilts with an old dude rocking out in the flood water up to his thighs with no pants on. No Pants Pete is the watchman, making sure people don't enter the lodge when no one's there. We get out and climb the steps into the lodge. Decent, rustic, tranquillo, the lodge has a screened in room with hammocks hanging from the beams, a screened in dining room next to the kitchen with two picnic tables, a raised wooden walkway leading to the few cabins or rooms. The rooms are simple and nice with screened walls but no mosquito nets over the beds. Yeah, the room is screened but the blood suckers can still get in when you open the door. There's at least 50 in there when we arrive. We'll figure something out.




We ate lunch, which was delicious, and set out on a hike through the flooded forest learning about medicinal plants, exotic fruit, and looking for birds. Mostly we just saw the black and yellow-tailed pendulum-nest birds common thoughout the amazonia region. We walked into the town of Fatima, nothing exciting, a smaller Pantoja, and through some edge forest where fields and orchards battle with the secondary forest over sunlight and space. Kara, Jess, and I were getting ancy to get into the thick of it. Old growth. Primary forest.




"Where's the primary forest, Carlos?" This is a nice hike but we don't need a guide to walk on a cement side walk through the village. Our guide said that the virgin forest is not far but we'll save it for tomorrow. We head back to the lodge and wait for dinner. After dinner and coffee (free coffee all the time was a highlight) we headed outside for a night hike through ankle deep flood water looking for caimen, frogs, and snakes. Not ten seconds after walking out the door, Carlos pointed out a snake, about two feet long, swimming under the water. Brown with red markings, it was of the poisoness variety. Everything in the Amazon is. Every creature poisoness or not needs some sort of serious defense mechanism. From the trees living in symbiosis with ants who attack anything that touches it, or the spines and thorns that grow on just about every plant. Nothing is nice in the jungle. Beautiful but dangerous. For the most part though, dangerous or poisoness creatures see humans as predators and not prey and the snake did its best to stay away from us. But it was a reality check that if you don't respect this environment, if you are careless, you can find yourself in deep shit. As we walked along, our headlamps first on our foreheads then in our hands (the swarms of mosquitos at night in the flooded forest are insane in the light) moved back and forth in front of us cautious of each step. Next to a marsh, Carlos stopped and listened. He imitated a caimen call, a deep throatal noise similar to a bull frog, but nothing returned to call. The same marsh on our return, Carlos spotted the head of a yellow anaconda, juvenile, probably five feet long but it disappeared into the water and marsh grass. Anacondas are constrictors, hunters in the water and on land, who bite their prey, wrap them up and wait for the last exhale of breath when the lungs constrict and shrink and then they squeeze. If they're close to the water and it's a big prey they're drag them under water and drown them. Some anacondas can grow to around 15 meters (over 45 ft). Keep you eyes open. I've never experienced mosquitos like at night in the Amazon. It's probably one reason why tourist season is not when the river is swollen and flooding the forest. A couple of frogs and a tarantula, and our night hike was through. Back to the lodge to nurse our battle wounds and get ready for bed. We asked the manager of the lodge and Carlos for a mosquito net for our bed and they kind of laughed and said the room is screened. There are no mosquitos inside. They bid us goodnight. The fact was that there were loads of mosquitos in our room and Kara's blood is like candy to them. If there's one, she gets chewed to shit. If they didn't have any mosquito nets, I would prefer the truth. Forty minutes we spent hunting down every last mosquito in our room before getting into bed. Even Kara, my beautiful, life-loving, woman of the Earth found her inner predator. Kill or be killed.




The following morning, we took a canoe for a ride through the surrounding swamps...there was no dry land. We spotted a couple of different species of birds, their names in Spanish going in one ear and out the other. Maybe when I get home, I'll look them up in a common birds of the Amazon book or online. Carlos was a wonderful guide paddling us around the swamp even though two hours into the trip we were starving, excited to get back and eat breakfast but we were lost in the swamp. Even the pros get turned around in this place. When Carlos was here two weeks ago, the swamp was two feet lower. Trees or plants that were markers of where we were or which way was home were submerged or looked different with different water levels. But we gave him some time and he found the way.




After breakfast, we took the boat further down river to "Monkey Island," where rescued animals from the Iquitos black market could be brought to be rehabilitated and released into the wild. Although it seems to be more of a tourist petting zoo than a rehab. Animals are constantly handled and fed by hand. I don't see many of these being successfully rereleased into the wild. The first creature to greet us was a capuchen monkey who clearly was habituated to humans. He'd climb up on your shoulders for a photo and take mango slices out of a worker's hands with no hesitation. There were other capuchen's in the canopy of the nearby trees that were more wild and weary of humans. A female spider monkey named Suzie stayed at the top of a tree for most of the time gracefully flowing from one tree to the next. Two macaws, one red/orange and the other blue/yellow waddled around on the ground, their wings probably clipped before they were rescued from the market. Another mammal, related to the ant-eater but smaller who looked like a mix between a racoon, ant-eater, and tasmanian devil would climb the trees and run around on the ground oblivious to the cameras flashing around them. On another tree, only a meter from the ground was the ever-so-slow, ever-so-adorable three toed sloth. With a perpetual smile across its face that was contagious, he just chilled moving at a snail's pace up and down the tree. This sloth was also handled by the workers and less likely to be released. It was a zoo, without the cages. Except for the three anacondas, the animals could go as they pleased. The anacondas were each a different species, one a yellow, one a black, and one a patterned land anaconda whose name escapes me. The snakes would be picked up for pictures with tourists.


As fun as it was to see all these beautiful animals up close, this didn't feel like the jungle adventure we wanted either. We wanted WILD. Before we left, we were given a taste of a medicinal drink called "seven roots" traditionally used to cure common colds, flu, or just taken each day to stay healthy.




One of the roots used is "Uña de gato" or "Cat's claw," a common medicinal herb from the amazon used for thousands of years to treat everything from mild illnesses to cancer and leukemia. Steeped in boiling water as a tea, the uña de gato repairs damaged DNA to reboot the biological apoptosis or "cell death" killing mutated cancer cells where the cell's apoptosis has ceased to function. There is a growing interest from "developed countries" for alternative therapies to treating cancer. From teas using uña de gato to suppliments of amazonian tumeric spice (also repairs DNA) to ayahuasca. Cat's claw is in clinical trials in the U.S. in different hospitals, I'm sure closely monitored by pharmaceutical companies, to take something that has no lethal dosage, and change it, manipulate it, and mix it with other drugs that the average American's health care won't cover while making a fortune selling the drug to hospitals. All the while a $500 plane ticket will get you to the door of the real thing, practically free. Silly.




Where was I? Oh yeah, Monkey Island (they wanted tips too). We left and returned to the lodge for lunch and to pack our stuff for our second night, our night in the thick of it, in the tree house in the jungle. We take the boat back to the village of Fatima but waste 45 minutes waiting to sign our names to enter the reserve when there was no one to open the door where the log was kept. We didn't even know there was a reserve, we just thought it was the jungle.




Us: "So Maniti Expeditions has a tree house in the reserve?"


Carlos: "No. It's a watchtower, not a tree house, used for spotting herons in the swamp. It's not Maniti's. It belongs to the reserve."


Us: "So...it's a watchtower, not a tree house owned by the expedition company. O.K. But there are beds or mats there to sleep on, right?"


Carlos: "No. We will sleep on the floor. I brought mosquito nets. But, the villagers are saying the swamp is flooded and we cannot reach the tower without hiking through waist deep swamp for 30 minutes."


Us: "Is that safe?"


Carlos: "Eh. There are black anacondas, poisoness spiders, and electric eels. We could just make a jungle camp instead using plastic tarps and dry grass without going into the swamp."




We were hesitant about trying to go. Someone in the village said a different expedition company was using the tower even though we had paid to spend our second night there. And we couldn't go back to the lodge because it was full with another group of jungle travelers. We were irritated and didn't feel like we were getting the truth or that we were getting the run around. Either another group was using the tower so they were exagerating about the swamp OR the swamp really was dangerous to go through and they said there were others using the tower to make it seem like we couldn't go anyway. "Well. Fuck it, let's go see if it's that bad then we'll make a decision."




After 30 minutes of hiking on dry land, we arrived at the black, dark, swamp water. No one really discussed it, we just began walking. We all had shin high rubber boots on and the water wasn't that deep. This was O.K. But slowly, the black water rose on our boots until the moment came when water crested the top of the boot and flowed down our legs and feet, soaking our pants. No turning back. Deeper we forged. Knee high, thigh high. Someone would step in a hole underwater and be soaked to their hip. Keep moving. Don't think about what lies beneath. A huge spider crawled up Louisa's back. Paddy didn't say a word and just knocked it off her. Better she doesn't know. Finally we reach a bench, nearly submerged in the swamp with a dugout canoe chained to it. 30 minutes by canoe to the watchtower. We climb in, carefully. Someone blinked and a little water crested the canoe. We were barely afloat. Carlos began paddling from the front. The canoe only had one paddle. We bumped into a tree covered in ants. One of the girls got bit by the angry ants falling into our canoe, but the bite feels like a wasp sting. Carlos was up front using his machete to clear a path. A waterlogged and half sunken canoe sat ominously off to our left. Was that the group that was supposed to be here? We could be in a horror movie. Carlos is trying to be a good guide. He says this is Amazon swamp, primary, untouched. It's deep. There are large anacondas here, caimen, alligators, electric eel. No one's blinking. Louisa wants to turn back but the sun is nearly down. It's safer to keep going, get to the tower. She starts to hyperventilate and having an anxiety attack. Carlos spotted an alligator hiding in the vegetation growing on top of the water. Louisa and Paddy ask him to quit being a Naturalist and get us to dry land. Twenty minutes later we arrive at the basic, simple watchtower. No other group was there. Three stories above water with leaf-thatched roof. We were happy to be out of the canoe but there was a new problem. Ants.

Hundreds of ants were crawling all over the tower. Most were the size of large ants in the states. Interspersed were soldier ants, monsters, three times the size of the others with mandibles (pinchers) visible from six feet away. We made it to the top floor but they followed. Carlos said they're jumping ants. Great. Some of them were in the thatched roof and fell on us and began biting. Their bites are painful! Their pinchers grab on to you so you cannot just brush them off then they dig in and bite. We were thinking if they keep coming up to the top, one of us is going to end up in the hospital in Iquitos. "How are we going to sleep here?!" The sun sank over the Amazon to the west, a beautiful and brief moment of wonder for us then it was back to the ants. Adding to the shit, swarms of mosquitos. O.K. Focus on the basics. Carlos brought a couple sheets, blankets and mosquito nets. Paddy began setting up a net. Kara began hanging her hammock but she didn't bring her nice net that goes with it because Guido is Iquitos said they have everything we would need. His "tree house" my ass. We started killing the ants but that only attracted more ants to eat the dead ants. So kill and sweep, kill and sweep. If the guy in Iquitos had just said, "Hey, the watchtower is pretty rustic. Bring your hammocks with mosquito nets," then it wouldn't have been an issue. We camp all the time. We know to be prepared but his assurance before leaving Iquitos screwed us. Meanwhile, Carlos is down below trying to make a fire to boil swamp water for tea because we had no water (How he managed to find dry wood in the swamp escapes me). We brought our liter bottles with us but expected there to be water at the "tree house" so we didn't conserve it during the hike. Carlos comes up the tower and begins to burn our toilet paper supply to deter the ants. They don't like the ash. Good thinking. They began to keep away from our floor. We all climb underneath the one mosquito net set up at this point to escape the mosquitos for a few. They're covering the net searching for some gringo blood (Carlos doesn't get bothered by them). He calls us down to eat dinner, hard boiled eggs and bread. The fire from beneath the tower is keeping some of the mosquitos away.

Then the last thing I want happens. I have to take a shit...in the swamp, at night. I'd changed into my bathing suit at that point because my jeans were soaked. I climb down the tower and wade through ankle deep swamp water looking for a patch of dry land. Got one. Then, sweeping my light back and forth looking for snakes and spiders nearby. A tarantula-like spider the size of my hand glows in the light of my head lamp a few feet away. "You stay where you are!" I squat and turn off the light to keep the mosquitos away from my exposed ass cheeks. "Please God, make this a quick one," I prayed. I wipe and leave the tp on a log to retrieve in the AM to burn if it's not already consumed by an insect of the jungle and high tail it back to the watchtower. Success!

Our nerves calmed down. The ants seemed to be leaving us alone. We talked about getting drunk when we get back to Iquitos and laugh about our night in the swamp. The stars came out, a clear night. Beauty in the Amazon rain forest. I set up a mosquito net for myself after a failed attempt to put Kara and myself in her hammock. Kara jerry-rigs a mosquito net over her hammock (it didn't work well). The boards beneath me felt like rocks against my hips and knees. I killed all the mosquitos who had found their way beneath my net while setting it up and we all doze off telling funny stories from the past. The chorus of frogs singing to us. We were in the Amazon jungle.

We woke up around 6AM to take the canoe through the swamp two people at a time through the swamp to look for birds. Kara and I went first. Carlos paddled us through tunnels of overhanging vegetation to a heron look-out, similar to the tower we slept in but only one level. We spotted a couple types of hawks with Kara's binoculars as well as some herons, specifically the cougar heron. It's call sounds feline like a jaguar or mountain lion hence its name. We also saw some humming birds, and some tanagers. It was a beautiful morning.

We packed our things, got a couple more ant bites for souveneirs, had some swamp water tea and eggs for breakfast and got back into the canoe to head back to civilization. We paddled the canoe as far as we could in the flooded forest until a submerged log stopped us and started our wet hike back through the black swamp. Even though it didn't rain, the river must have pushed more water inland because the water was higher than the day before. Just get through. Something brushed against my leg and I just told myself it was a stick and kept moving. We made it through though without an incident. Back on dry land, we had made it. It was sunny, and hot, and we were out of water. We hiked back to the boat, back to the lodge for lunch, filled our water bottles and surveyed the damage. Kara got chewed by every insect possible through her pants, through her hammock, all over her legs and bum. I don't understand sometimes how she likes Nature with bites like those. After lunch we headed out, back to Iquitos. We were too tired for beers. We must be getting older. Showers, dinner, then crawled into bed to read and fall asleep. Our adventure in the jungle was over. It was difficult yet worthwhile. The Amazon is like nothing we've ever experienced. Respect it and protect it. It has something to teach us all.

Welcome to the Amazon!

We had spoken about crossing into Peru a bit different than most tourists and backpackers. Most travelers stick to the coast of Ecuador traveling by bus across the Ecuador-Peru border to the coastal town of Tumbes and on to Macora. However, there are other ways to cross the border, ways that Robert Frost would have written another poem about, this one being called "The River Less Traveled."

Taking a boat from Coca, Ecuador down the rio Napo to the Ecuador border town of Nuevo Rocafuerte, then a canoe from Rocafuerte across the Peruvian border town of Pantoja, THEN wait for a cargo ship to arrive from Iquitos, Peru and spend four to seven days crammed in a hammock like a sardine in a can with over one hundred other people. Maybe Robert Frost should stick to the woods of New England.

We said our sad goodbyes to our new family and friends in the Shuar community of Nantar and made our way north to the city of Coca. Coca is a not so nice, dirty city whose only purpose of existence is to support the flux of oil workers destroying the nearby Amazon forest drilling for petroleum. We happened to arrive for the end of Carnival, the multi-day festival of partying, water fights, silly string, flour and eggs and a free reason for men to chase down women and throw cold water over the front of their t-shirts. We walked around, had some beers and delicious street food and stopped at a grocery store to stock up on cans of tuna, sardines, crackers, water, cookies, toilet paper, and anything else we thought we might want or need on the cargo ship. The few blogs we had read about this journey said the food cooked on the ship is gross, cooked with river water which is taken from very close to where the only toilet on the ship empties into the river. Yeah, gross..,a couple more cans of tuna for good measure.

We bought our tickets for the Thursday boat to Nuevo Rocafuerte down the Napo leaving at 7am. For $15 per person, we loaded onto the long metal canoe with a roof and torn plastic hanging from the windows for when it inevitably would rain. Packed in on the sides of the boat on long benches with sixty other people and as much cargo as they could fit down the middle, we set off. The driver was in the back of the boat near the engine while the captain sat on the front bow looking for shallow spots or submerged trees and debris on the flooded river. Giving hand signals, he would direct the driver where to turn.

Lazily, we made our way down river stopping to drop people off at a village here, a village there. Space slowly opened up on the boat, at one point enough that I could lie down on the bench and doze off into a nap. I woke up a bit later to the sounds of the plastic sheets being unraveled on the sides of the boat and a black plastic tarp being handed out to the passengers in the front to protect them from the oncoming storm. Looking down river, all I could see was a wall of black coming towards us. The rain hit with such intensity, it sounded like the explosion of glass when a car crashes through a plate glass window. We were heading into something heavy. Lightning and thunder began to engulf us, at first from a distance then too close for comfort. I was thinking to myself, "We're in the middle of a huge river, three-quarters of a mile wide, in a metal boat, and we're the only thing around. Shit." Would we head to shore and wait out the storm hidden beneath taller objects? No. We just kept moving down river like it was no big deal. At one point, everyone in the boat jumped when a bolt of lightning hit the water within 100 yards of us. A crack of orange light with a split second before the thunder clap. I looked up at the bow at the captain, all alone with his poncho on, and his lips seemed to be moving. I was convinced her was saying his prayers.

CRACK! BOOM!! Another bolt, I thought it hit us. If it didn't then it was within projectile vomiting distance. This couldn't be happenening, not after what happened in Nantar a week ago.

A week prior, we were still in Nantar, the indigenous Shuar community, and on one of our last days we decided to go down to the river behind the village with some of the kids and teenagers to cool off. We hike down and the little kids begin splashing and playing in the shallow eddies on the side of the river. The water had risen a lot since our previous time down there. Nantar sits in the upper Amazon basin and the river collects all the rainwater coming down mountain from the eastern side of the Andes. One of the teenagers, Asael, dives into the rushing water and swims across with ease. He proceeds to climb a cliff on the other side, dive back into the river and swim back to our side. A bit later, Asael asks me if I want to cross the river? I had zero intention of climbing the moss and fern covered cliff and diving back in. Maybe I just wanted to explore the other side a bit? I didn't have a good reason but I said "Sure." It was a decision I would have made when I was eighteen, not twenty-eight. He swam across first and was waiting for me on a small island of rocks to help me to my feet. I dove in and swam hard, fighting the current pulling me downstream. I made it across safely, grabbed Asael's hand to get on my feet and...he loses his footing. "Fuck" is the only word going through my mind. The two of us begin floating down the river, feet first past the girls with shocked expressions on their faces. "FEET UP!" I thought at first. "Don't break your leg putting your feet down and getting caught between a rock." But that mentality soon vanished when I realized there was nothing but roaring rapids and no way out downstream. Cliffs lined both sides of the river. If I didn't do something, soon, I was going to die. Period. Asael and I scrambled trying to stop our momentum on the rocks beneath the surface. We caught one at the last possible moment before we had gone too far. The force of the water was so powerful and constant. I have my back facing upstream, my feet and hands trying to cling to the rock below. The force of the water pulls my shorts down and rips them off. Boxers it is. I didn't care if I was naked as long as I could get out of that river. We make our way the only way we can, towards the far side of the river. Clinging onto roots sticking out of the cliff, we slowly work our way upstream a few meters to a place where we can stand on a rock, but still downstream from where Kara and Jess were on the other side. Asael tells me we're going to dive back into the water and swim across. It's the only way. "Fuck." He said he'll go first and wait for me, again (this time it will work out) and he's gone, swimming across like it's nothing. An indigenous Shuar teenager with the Amazon jungle as his backyard. But this wasn't "nothing." If I didn't swim fast enough or hard enough, or if I caught a rock when I dove back in (I needed to dive no matter water for the momentum), that would be it. There was no place to go except down the choked canyon. They would never find a body, the anacondas would make sure of that (I didn't know there were anacondas where we were swimming until after the fact). I was standing on this tiny rock, terrified, frozen, screaming at myself for making such a STUPID decision to cross. Kara is on the other side, could see the terror in my eyes and in my body language. She's screaming over the sound of the rapids that I could do it, swim fast and keep swimming more. I didn't believe in myself. I was screwed. I was fairly certain I was about to take my last breaths on this Earth. I took a deep breath, screamed like a wild man, and dove in.

This is what was going through my mind as the second bolt of lightning nearly hit our boat. Surely, I couldn't survived the river with 45 foot anacondas (the villagers told us after when we hiked back up boxers and all) to be on this other river and killed by a bolt of lightning. The lightning kept coming but instead of on top of us there was a second delay before the thunder, then two seconds, then five. We had made it through the eye of the storm.

The remainder of the day was quite mellow. We made it to Rocafuerte, found a cheap hostel, made friends with a couple from France, Tristan and Amandine, got some dinner and a couple of beers on our last night in Ecuador. What a beautiful and magical country. the following morning, we got our exit stamps for our passports, hired a teenager with a dugout canoe and a "peke-peke" motor (it's a weedwacker with a small propeller instead of the string at the end) to take us the two hours down river into Peru to Pantoja. We had six people in the canoe plus the teenager and six backpacks, heavy, weighing down the canoe. There wasn't a half inch of space from the river to the top of the canoe on each side. We were statues. If someone sneezed, we'd surely tip. If it rained at all, or their was a slight breeze, we'd tip. And somehow, like every other miracle on this journey, we made it safely to Pantoja two hours later, dry.

Pantoja is a small town tucked away from the rest of Peru like a leper yet serves as the nearest hospital for hundreds of miles as well as the regional military base. Back in the 90's, Peru and Ecuador had a little border war and the military base meant something more. Now, all is tranquillo. We met a local, Rodrigo, who showed us to the immigration office where we officially entered Peru, and he told us he lets travelers crash at his house for $1.50 per person per night. He's got a grill, fridge, and TV with DVD player and a handful of horrible spanish dubbed movies (we would end up watching them all). Not bad considering the only hostal in Pantoja has no kitchen or TV and cost $6 a night. The only problem we faced was that the cargo ship wouldn't be arriving for at least a week. Shit. So...the three of us and our new French friends became a little family in Rodrigo's home. We'd wake up, boil water over the fire for coffee and tea, wait around reading books or making macrame until lunch, go to the only restaurant in town, come back, read some more, prepare dinner, and at night either watch one of the horrible movies or play some Farkle (a dice game I picked up from good friends in Peace Corps Senegal). Everyday. Save money. Buy rice and plantains. Go to the river and ask about the boat. We'd get different answers from every person we talked to. Meet the new batch of travelers arriving from Coca. One day there was a football match between the military team and the civilian Pantoja team. The civilians won. But it was more fun because the guy sitting next to us had a pet monkey that we played with the entire time.

A week passed in Pantoja only to discover the boat was out of gas somewhere days downriver and wouldn't be arriving for another week. Shit. We made bets if our families had contacted each other yet to see if the others had heard from us. They probably feared the worse that we had crashed, drowned or been kidnapped by drug smugglers delivering cocaine from Bolivia and Peru north to Ecuador and beyond. We were close to running out of money before we could reach an ATM in Iquitos. No more restaurant. ONLY rice and platino. Budget, budget, budget. The last few nights in Rodrigo's house, we noticed rats running along the ceiling rafters, listening to the chew God-knows-what all night long. It was time to get out of Pantoja. After thirteen days, the cargo ship, "Jeisawell" finally pulled into town.

Wow! This ship was a rusty piece of junk. But Hey! We were moving again! I asked a deck hand, probably 30 years old, how old the boat was and his reply made me laugh. He said, "The Jeisawell is much older than my grandfather." We set our hammocks very close to each other so when the boat got packed, people wouldn't try to put one between us or above us. We set off stopping at every village along the Napo to load plantains, massive amounts of plantains to be sold in Iquitos. Chickens, pigs, cows, a couple water buffalo, turtles, macaws, every animal you could think of. The cargo and animals were stored on the first level of the ship below the sleeping area and on the roof above the sleeping area. As more people boarded the ship, the hammocks began to resemble a spider's web. The head of my hammock sat in the hammock of a woman with an infant who loved to rock her infant constantly in the hammock, a constant bump to my head day and night. Below,. where my feet were was the head of another Peruvian woman who liked to push my feet out of the way at night but hey, I'm tall, and stubborn, and set my hammock here first. She just had the bad luck of putting hers at the feet of a gringo who's 6'5".

When it would rain, droplets found their way through the cracked and rusty ceiling into the sleeping area so Kara and I had to MacGyver a plastic rain fly, life vests, and our rain jackets above our hammocks to divert the water away from us. In the rear of the sleeping level was the kitchen and surprisingly the food wasn't horrible. Most meals consisted of rice with salted meat and platino. The three meals a day were included in the price of the ticket. There was the one bathroom on the ship below the sleeping level behind all the cargo. I avoided the cramped, filthy space by all means. I enjoyed much more peeing off the front railing of the boat than crawling under the hammocks to the stairs past the pigs to the filthy toilet.

Along the trip, there were brief moments of excitement that interrupted the mundane recreational activities of sweating in a cramped hammock, sitting on the only bench on the front of the boat, or climbing onto the roof when it wasn't raining to play dice. Early in the trip, the captain's macaw (Yes, the captain had a bird AND he only had one eye! BUT unfortunately wore sunglasses day and night to hide it instead of a patch) flew overboard and was drowning (turns out macaws don't know how to swim) and one of the young deckhands dove overboard to save it. Then later in the voyage, one of the cows on board, who'd had enough of the cruel treatment and conditions decided it would be better to kill itself than remain on the Jeisawell so it jumped overboard but was still tied to the boat. So the captain steered us to shore where all the deckhands got in the water or on shore to push/pull the animal back on dry land, bushwhack through the jungle to make a path back to the front of the boat. At another point, one of the water buffalo charged the men trying to pull it onto the boat and ran itself into the river.

By day four, the novelty and excitement of taking the cargo boat was wearing thin and we were excited to get off the boat at a village called Massan, a town where the rio Napo makes a large loop before entering the rio Amazona. By getting off at Massan, and taking a twenty minute moto-taxi ride across the strip of land to the rio Amazona, and boarding a twin engine speed boat that takes an hour to reach Iquitos instead of staying on the cargo ship for another nineteen hours. Thankfully everything worked out, and we got off at Massan and caught a speed boat because we found out the next day that after we left the cargo ship, its engine cut out and it needed to float with the current until it reached the Amazon river. So...by 10 pm, we were in Iquitos, Peru, the largest city in the world unreachable by road. With a population of roughly half a million people, Iquitos made its mark on the map from the rubber trees that made the rubber barons of the early 20th C. filthy rich before synthetic rubber was created essentially destroying the rubber business. We found a cheap place to stay in a jungle tour operator's office/hostal, put our bags down, took much needed and deserved cold showers, and headed out for some nice cold cervezas in the noisy streets of Iquitos. We didn't know at the time but our Amazon adventure was only just beginning.