yarapario
11-23-2007, 11:35 PM
OK friends and neighbors, heres my first try. This is actually a true account of my first day on the River. Some of the things that I experienced there will be serious topics. The boat trip to the base camp could not have been more bizarre, too hard to try to make a serious topic. The story makes sense to me but...if it sucks, let me have it. At least give me a clue as to how to change things. If it's total trash and I need to start over, say that too. Thanks, Steve
. Up River, Busted Paddle and Something Stinks
First day in the real world, 120 miles from anything that looks like the 20th century and I’m in a dugout canoe with a half naked boy from the jungle who likes my tattoos. Seems like a good start for the day. We, a group of medical volunteers, left Iquitos yesterday in a handsome home made boat some 50 feet long. Lots of others just like it plying the waters of the Amazon River, which here is some 2 ˝ miles wide. Proud boat, proud owner, first trip he says, Nuevo es, New. No Problems. Thankfully he was lying about the no problem part and the adventure was underway. New it was, tested with a full load of passengers and supplies it wasn’t, so A, it was a damn slow boat and B it ate gas at twice the expected rate. Slow is good though, lots a time to check out the river, other boats, small villages along the banks when we were close to them. No, the real problem was the gas thing. What was supposed to be a 12 hour trip saw us just over half way to the obscure tributary we were heading for. In the art of logic that creates adventures, only enough fuel was on board for about 15 hours…ooppps. Near the Equator, daylight and dark are equal measure, light at six, dark at six, so along about 5 the boat starts coughing like a 3 pack a day junkie. No problem, the boat is new. A bit of a huddle between the captain and the street urchins he had for a crew brought great news. ”The boat is fine, only it is out of gas.” Cool! No problem. Except I really didn’t see anything that resembled a port, or a village, or a floating 7/11 gas station. In fact, about all any of us saw from the middle of the river was a distant tree line of jungle…that and the street urchins making the sign of the cross and kissing each other good bye. Ah well, something’s bound to happen I figured and so it did. We began drifting backward down the Amazon River, 2 1/2 miles wide, 350 foot deep, in the encroaching darkness. The prayer level was picking up among the urchins, El Capitan is lookin’ nervous too. It can’t get better than this I’m thinkin’…I came for adventure and I’m getting’ my first taste of it. One of our dumber fellow passengers asks an urchin why everybody’s looking scared. “The trees senor”. Well that’s a silly thing, I said, all the trees are on the shore and we’re no where the bank. Si Senor, but the trees that have washed into the river, big trees, bigger than the boat, they float just under the surface they are so big. If one hits the boat, no more boat. Without gas we cannot steer around them…in the dark we cannot even see them. Oh. So about then some of the passengers start up a little prayer thing with the urchins while a couple of the others join me in telling the captain he’d better start paddling this big assed barge toward shore. Oddly. It seems that our conversation jolted his memory. “We have an outboard in the supplies for the camp” he cries, “We are saved.” He runs to the stern, throws the tarps aside with maniacal abandon and reveals our salvation, about a 1937 model 7 horsepower Johnson engine. It’s on his shoulder and he’s off the engine compartment where he lashes it to the gunwale and begins jerking the starter rope. Oddly, it has gas in it and even stranger it starts. Slowly we veer closer to the shoreline. The urchins are on point searching the now dark shore for signs of light. One of them cries out,”There, we are saved capitan” , “the Virgin has saved us”. I looked around real quick in the dark and didn’t see any virgins in sight but hell, who cares. We made it to the bank of a settlement of huts oddly backlit by the glow of a great fire…. under the cooker of a huge still set in a field of sugar cane. Ethanol, I wondered, how progressive. Well not quite, These boys had gotten tired of the old hunter/gatherer routine and sort of commandeered a century old , British made still, left over from the rubber boom days. With a little engineering and luck they were producing a few gallons of raw sugarcane alcohol each day and trading it to all the locals who floated by looking for a buzz. A quick and desperate conversation ensued between El Capitan and the Brewmaster. In almost no time, the captain had traded off a couple of the urchins and a fist full of green backs for 2 cans of fuel. Everybody was feeling jolly except the 2 urchins who had become collateral. They had lapsed back into maximum prayer mode and appeared to be trying to kiss their little ass’s goodbye. Getting in the spirit of our new found salvation I decided to bond with the Brewmaster whom, I had noticed had several tattoos adorning almost every part of his nearly naked body. Well, thinks I, I’ll just show him my tattoos so we can have a bit of kinship here. Hermano! He exclaimed upon seeing the various doodles inked on my arms while under the influence of a strange and different era. He grabbed me, pulled my shirt off over my head and quickly marched me into the center of his compound. Women and kids of all sort appeared from the huts, most bearing gifts from the Brewmaster’s still. Drink, he says, so I did. Sweet Jesus, I was enveloped in flame from the inside out; it became daylight then dark and daylight again. I would have fallen had he not had hold of my neck. Hermano, you must live with us now. Sure, I think, why not, I’m gonna die in the next few minutes anyway. Sure, I’ll live with you guys till I die. At some later point, El Capitan approached the Brewmaster and informs him I cannot stay because I still hadn’t paid for all of my trip expenses. As business men they both understood and soon had my body stored on board. Hanging over the stern, I watched my newfound brother fade away into the darkness. He had consoled himself to our parting by getting to know the two traded urchins. As they vanished I saw him sniffing various parts of them as they sobbed. Bye Bye boys. Have fun.
As it inevitability does, the sun crawled out of some dark hole and proceeded its daily cooking of the tropics. Feeling quite like some grand explorer of yore I was anxious to start my first full day in the jungle. Had a breakfast of unknown meat and eggs and moved into a planning session with the local at the base camp. The grand plan was to have our western doctors work side by side with the various village shamans in order to have an informational exchange. The ground work had been laid months before and now all we had to do was go to a nearby village and see if we could find the Shaman.
. Up River, Busted Paddle and Something Stinks
First day in the real world, 120 miles from anything that looks like the 20th century and I’m in a dugout canoe with a half naked boy from the jungle who likes my tattoos. Seems like a good start for the day. We, a group of medical volunteers, left Iquitos yesterday in a handsome home made boat some 50 feet long. Lots of others just like it plying the waters of the Amazon River, which here is some 2 ˝ miles wide. Proud boat, proud owner, first trip he says, Nuevo es, New. No Problems. Thankfully he was lying about the no problem part and the adventure was underway. New it was, tested with a full load of passengers and supplies it wasn’t, so A, it was a damn slow boat and B it ate gas at twice the expected rate. Slow is good though, lots a time to check out the river, other boats, small villages along the banks when we were close to them. No, the real problem was the gas thing. What was supposed to be a 12 hour trip saw us just over half way to the obscure tributary we were heading for. In the art of logic that creates adventures, only enough fuel was on board for about 15 hours…ooppps. Near the Equator, daylight and dark are equal measure, light at six, dark at six, so along about 5 the boat starts coughing like a 3 pack a day junkie. No problem, the boat is new. A bit of a huddle between the captain and the street urchins he had for a crew brought great news. ”The boat is fine, only it is out of gas.” Cool! No problem. Except I really didn’t see anything that resembled a port, or a village, or a floating 7/11 gas station. In fact, about all any of us saw from the middle of the river was a distant tree line of jungle…that and the street urchins making the sign of the cross and kissing each other good bye. Ah well, something’s bound to happen I figured and so it did. We began drifting backward down the Amazon River, 2 1/2 miles wide, 350 foot deep, in the encroaching darkness. The prayer level was picking up among the urchins, El Capitan is lookin’ nervous too. It can’t get better than this I’m thinkin’…I came for adventure and I’m getting’ my first taste of it. One of our dumber fellow passengers asks an urchin why everybody’s looking scared. “The trees senor”. Well that’s a silly thing, I said, all the trees are on the shore and we’re no where the bank. Si Senor, but the trees that have washed into the river, big trees, bigger than the boat, they float just under the surface they are so big. If one hits the boat, no more boat. Without gas we cannot steer around them…in the dark we cannot even see them. Oh. So about then some of the passengers start up a little prayer thing with the urchins while a couple of the others join me in telling the captain he’d better start paddling this big assed barge toward shore. Oddly. It seems that our conversation jolted his memory. “We have an outboard in the supplies for the camp” he cries, “We are saved.” He runs to the stern, throws the tarps aside with maniacal abandon and reveals our salvation, about a 1937 model 7 horsepower Johnson engine. It’s on his shoulder and he’s off the engine compartment where he lashes it to the gunwale and begins jerking the starter rope. Oddly, it has gas in it and even stranger it starts. Slowly we veer closer to the shoreline. The urchins are on point searching the now dark shore for signs of light. One of them cries out,”There, we are saved capitan” , “the Virgin has saved us”. I looked around real quick in the dark and didn’t see any virgins in sight but hell, who cares. We made it to the bank of a settlement of huts oddly backlit by the glow of a great fire…. under the cooker of a huge still set in a field of sugar cane. Ethanol, I wondered, how progressive. Well not quite, These boys had gotten tired of the old hunter/gatherer routine and sort of commandeered a century old , British made still, left over from the rubber boom days. With a little engineering and luck they were producing a few gallons of raw sugarcane alcohol each day and trading it to all the locals who floated by looking for a buzz. A quick and desperate conversation ensued between El Capitan and the Brewmaster. In almost no time, the captain had traded off a couple of the urchins and a fist full of green backs for 2 cans of fuel. Everybody was feeling jolly except the 2 urchins who had become collateral. They had lapsed back into maximum prayer mode and appeared to be trying to kiss their little ass’s goodbye. Getting in the spirit of our new found salvation I decided to bond with the Brewmaster whom, I had noticed had several tattoos adorning almost every part of his nearly naked body. Well, thinks I, I’ll just show him my tattoos so we can have a bit of kinship here. Hermano! He exclaimed upon seeing the various doodles inked on my arms while under the influence of a strange and different era. He grabbed me, pulled my shirt off over my head and quickly marched me into the center of his compound. Women and kids of all sort appeared from the huts, most bearing gifts from the Brewmaster’s still. Drink, he says, so I did. Sweet Jesus, I was enveloped in flame from the inside out; it became daylight then dark and daylight again. I would have fallen had he not had hold of my neck. Hermano, you must live with us now. Sure, I think, why not, I’m gonna die in the next few minutes anyway. Sure, I’ll live with you guys till I die. At some later point, El Capitan approached the Brewmaster and informs him I cannot stay because I still hadn’t paid for all of my trip expenses. As business men they both understood and soon had my body stored on board. Hanging over the stern, I watched my newfound brother fade away into the darkness. He had consoled himself to our parting by getting to know the two traded urchins. As they vanished I saw him sniffing various parts of them as they sobbed. Bye Bye boys. Have fun.
As it inevitability does, the sun crawled out of some dark hole and proceeded its daily cooking of the tropics. Feeling quite like some grand explorer of yore I was anxious to start my first full day in the jungle. Had a breakfast of unknown meat and eggs and moved into a planning session with the local at the base camp. The grand plan was to have our western doctors work side by side with the various village shamans in order to have an informational exchange. The ground work had been laid months before and now all we had to do was go to a nearby village and see if we could find the Shaman.