I awoke during the night at 2 a.m. when Eduardo VI pulled into the little jungle town of Lagunas (GPS: 05 13.006S / 75 40.091W). This is where I got off the boat and arranged for a two-day jungle excursion by canoe into the Reserva Nacional Pacaya-Samiria. Lagunas also represented the furthest point that I traveled downriver from Yurimaguas.
An extremely heavy, unwieldy piece of cargo had to be unloaded. There could be no lifting it. It took 10 men just to tilt the item enough to slip a plank under it, then--counting all together in order to time their efforts--they pushed the cargo, foot by foot, down the plank and onto shore. How it would be moved after that is anybody´s guess, but it wouldn´t be by forklift.
I slept only fitfully after we pulled back out into the river. I returned to my hammock and listened to music on my MP3 player. Just downstream from Lagunas, Rio Huallaga flows into Rio Marañon which, from the point where it joins Rio Ucayali much further downstream near the town of Nauta, is the great Rio Amazonas.
At last there is evidence of dawn. I looked out and the edge of the jungle (selva) was closer than usual, perhaps 100 feet away. Rio Marañon must be braided in this stretch since we´ve usually kept 1,000 feet or more from either riverbank.
There were no clocks displayed on the lancha and I saw no sense in wearing a watch (though I did relent later in order to assign a time to a place on my map). I watched the selva, listening to birds. Thatched dwellings and communities were less frequently sighted here than between Yurimaguas and Lagunas. Several people had disembarked at Lagunas and now only one other passenger shared the upper deck--a late-middle-aged Peruvian woman, a Cruz Rojo (Red Cross) worker returning home to Iquitos.
When I was called to breakfast (desayuno) we were in the vicinity of Santa Teresa. The settlement is only a dot on my excellent Rough Guide map of Peru, the best travel map that I´ve seen--waterproof, extremely durable (we´re on our second trip to Peru together, my map and I), and highly detailed.
The Red Cross worker and I were served a pitcher of fresh-squeezed papaya juice, hot water to prepare coffee or tea, some indifferent bread with butter, and a plate of four roll-ups secured with toothpicks. These can best be described as mini-omelettes, each one about three bites in size.
It was very pleasant this morning--hace buen tiempo--in the covered, open dining area. The fresh air moving by at the boat´s 11 knot speed was cool. Even overnight there had been no problem with bugs other than those attracted to the flourescent lights that illuminated the dining area and deck. This was not exactly what I had expected on a jungle river cruise at approximately 5 degrees south latitude.
Rio Marañon, like Rio Huallaga, was a brownish-red in color. Vegetation floated downstream alongside us, the most commonplace being dinner plate-size flora shaped something like an open artichoke.
Mid-morning, Eduardo VI pulled out of the channel in order to drop off a few supplies at the relatively good-sized settlement of Urarinas (GPS: 04 48.156S / 75 13.038W). There were dozens of kids at the landing. Many women with small children stood or worked near their thatched dwellings. Men could be seen working, some bent over hacking at vegetation, others shaping and loading freshly-cut planks onto an open canoe. If you consider a 2x10x8´piece of lumber to be good-size, and it is, consider planks that I estimated to be 4x20x20´. The canoe appeared to have a half-dozen of these already loaded, with more to come.
We were not stopped at Urarinas for five minutes before pulling back out into the river, having neither taken on nor disembarked any passengers.
A half-hour downstream the lancha stopped at a settlement on the other side of Rio Marañon. I was determined not to let another opportunity to pass without purchasing some regional food from one of the women or children who board the boat if it stops for even five minutes.
I bought two large fruit, larger than a grapefruit, for 1/2 sole ($0.16 USD). I didn´t know what it was at the time--it was tapote--but others onboard were buying the fruit which had an appearance not unlike a smooth-skinned butternut squash. The cook quartered the tapote for me, revealing a fleshy, orange interior. Perhaps sensing my unfamiliarity with the fruit, the Red Cross lady showed how to eat the soft, sort of peachy flesh surrounding a sizeable pit in each quartered segment. It was juicy, sweet, messy, and good.
Tapote (left) and guave
Eduardo VI was pulling into another settlement, Serenezgo, before I had finished my first tapote. The waterfront was, like always, filled with locals when the lancha pulled in. Women and children came aboard selling fruit. Neatly uniformed children milled about. I will pose the question: how do you maintain seemingly spotless uniforms in such a locale? It is conceivable that there would be a generator and washing machine in Serenezgo, perhaps at a mission there, but it´s inconceivable to me that any of the locals would have access to any electric appliances.
My fellow passenger on top bought a couple of bunches of something called guave. Dark green in color, these were about the diameter of a cucumber and two feet in length. You split these lengthwise by hand to reveal their cotton-white interior. Pick out one of the 2-inch segments; the edible white flesh adheres to a shiny, black, date-sized seed. Each guave has about a dozen of the edible segments within it. The flesh is light, sweet, and sticky, not unlike a large damp cotton ball. I´d eat it again, but likely won´t beat a path to Whole Foods to see if they have it in their produce department.
Among the cargo unloaded at Serenezgo was play equipment. Many large bunches of platanas (bananas), each 3-4 feet in length and perhaps 80 pounds in weight, were loaded to go to market in Iquitos. A poised woman with children was seated elegantly on a chair, a parasol shading them from the sun. A child in her school uniform bent over to drink from the river.
Loading and unloading at Serenezgo
At midday we stopped at the refinery town--yes, rifinery town--of San Jose de Saramuro (GPS: 04 43.160S / 74 55.602W). My map shows an extensive pipeline that follows the river to San Jose, then proceeds directly north another 40-50 miles into what must be deep and remote jungle. At San Jose we made a short stop to take on a young woman who was attached to a saline drip. She would ride with us on the top deck, generally prone, to Iquitos where she could receive care in a hospital.
It´s interesting how it is determined whether or not to stop at the smaller settlements. There was no radio that could be used to contact someone ashore at the small settlements; in fact, I don´t believe that there was any radio for use even in such busy ports as Iquitos. As Eduardo VI approaches a settlement, a small launch with an outboard motor is dispatched ahead to determine if any cargo or passengers needed to be loaded. If yes, the lancha would pull in.
Lunch was served that included chicken, potatoes (papas), rice, and a very nice fresh vegetable salad. Regional specialties included a cool drink--refresco de sebatta--and a fruit called taperiba that had only a layer of edible flesh between its skin and a large pit.
At 2:20 in the afternoon we were at the settlement of Esperanza (GPS: 04 34.818S / 74 46.938W). ATCF we were almost exactly halfway between Yurimaguas (127 miles south and west of our position) and Iquitos (123 miles to our north and east).
I had intended to use this day to write a narrative to be blogged which described a recent trip to The Masters with my longtime friend, Tom Boeding. In fact, I got quite a bit done this morning while I set up shop on one end of the dining table. I didn´t accomplish much more towards my goal in the afternoon, though. Rather, I spent it talking with the three other gringos onboard the lancha.
The only gringos on Eduardo VI: (Green to tan) Anna from Germany, Minia and Carlos from Spain, and myself. Joseli joined us for the photo.
Anna came up to the top deck from below with a young Peruvian girl, Joseli Conitios Pua, to return some magazines I had loaned her to read. The two would sit there more than an hour with me. Joseli was short and very slight of build. I would have guessed her age to be nine, or even eight, but she was 12 years old. She had prominent teeth that were constantly exposed by her wide smile.
After a while, I asked to take pictures of the Anna and Joseli. It was funny. Every picture I took resulted in Anna´s eyes being shut, looking like horizontal parentheses, while Joselina´s eyes were wide open above her smile. Finally, I asked Anna to somehow prop her eyes open and for Joseli to shut her´s.
Joseli from Peru with Anna from Germany
I offered to buy them cold bottled drinks from the bodega on the second deck. While going to get them, I ran into Italo, a young Peruvian man traveling with Anna, and invited him to come up and join us. The young couple had been to Ecuador recently, so I elicited some information from them about travel and lodging that might serve me later on my trip. Joseli impishly tried to help herself to any of the items of mine that she could see on the table, eventually ending up with some pink sticky notes and a page of circular gummed notebook reinforcements.
Dinner was particularly good this evening. We were served slices of braised beef cooked with onion and tomato slices, rice, and french fries (papas fritas).
I spent the couple of dark hours between 7 and 9 to make entries in my journal and to take a shower. I was in my hammock by 9 p.m., reviewing and deleting photos. A crewmember drew close enough to see the pictures and spent perhaps a half-hour looking at them with me. And then I surrendered to sleep.
A crew member woke some of the passengers on my deck who would be disembarking when we reached Nauta. It was 1:20 a.m. I got up to look, but the lights of the town still seemed far off.
Our lancha pulled into Nauta at 2 a.m. Nauta was the largest town we encountered on the river after leaving Yurimaguas. A light rain was falling and lightning was visible in the distance. An open-air cantina, not five feet from the gangplank connecting our vessel to shore, was open for business. Numerous pigeon-size bats fed around the lights on the waterfront.
A large number of passengers disembarked here. It is shorter in both time and distance to take the highway connecting Nauta to Iquitos, now just 58-1/2 miles from our position ATCF.
A steady stream of men marched up and down the gangplank. Hundreds of identical bags of some commodity were stacked on pallets on the boat. The bags (perhaps 40-50 pounds in weight) were loaded onto the men, usually four bags high, who carried their load down the gangplank onto shore where the bags were once again stacked pending shipment to their final destination. There was not a pallet-jack or forklift in sight.
When I saw that other cargo--sacks of salt twice the size of the others on the front of the boat--were just beginning to be unloaded, two at a time now, from inside the boat, I returned to my hammock. It was after 5 a.m. when I awoke with a start--we were moving. Had I missed the confluence just downstream of Nauta of Rio Marañon, which we´d been on for 24 hours, and Rio Ucayali? It is at that confluence that Rio Amazonas is formed and flows eastward to the Atlantic.
The map on my hand-held Garmin GPS showed that Eduardo VI was exactly at that point where the great river formed when I popped out onto the deck. It was only just faintly light, but I could not make out Rio Ucalayi flowing in from the right (south).
I remained out on the deck at the front of the boat until what I saw matched what maps portrayed. It was a half-hour, 5:45 a.m., before we were abeam a large river joining forces from the right. It didn´t exactly match my GPS software, but Google Earth or a good map would show if the following coordinates in fact represent the origin of the Amazon: (GPS 04 26.774S / 73 27.409W) ATCF, we were 51 miles from Iquitos.
For some reason I thought it would be a great idea to sit outside listening to Beethoven´s Piano Concerto No. 5 as I traveled the uppermost miles of the Amazon River. A rooster crowed from one deck down. Three cattle were being transported one deck further down. The breeze across me was soft and humid and cool.
Large masses of vegetation were now being carried along by the river. Clouds obscured the horizon, but it was the time of sunrise. I wouldn´t see a manatee, I was sure, but seeing one of the unique fresh-water dolphins that live in these waters was a possibility. I would be watching.
The list of superlatives that describe Rio Amazonas is lengthy. I read that it carries more water than the next eight largest rivers on Earth combined! Another tidbit of information that I find interesting is that, though our present position was more than 2,000 river miles from the sea, the river´s elevation was less than 500 feet above sea level. And so the Amazon does not rush and tumble on its way, but moves steadily and relentlessly.
Today is the second anniversary of one of my great traveling debacles--taking the ferry from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, on May 1. Porteños are great for getting away any weekend, but May 1 is Labor Day in South America and in much of the rest of the world. What a disaster I encountered!
I rolled my bag up and down the cobbled streets of Colonia for several hours, fatigued, disgusted and somewhat short with my traveling companion (me!), and just about ready to search out a bus to Montevideo. I finally found a room, not knowing or caring what it cost.
After a night´s sleep, I awoke to a crystal clear morning in an old city on the Rio de la Plata. I made up to my traveling companion and ended up enjoying a great day at this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
With that as background, you will understand if I say that I´m extremely wary now of traveling on the May 1 holiday, expecting that a room will be available. That is not to say that I had done anything about reserving a room in advance, but at least I had sense enough to be concerned about it as Eduardo VI pulled into the docks of Iquitos (GPS: 03 43.080S / 73 14.279W) at 12:30 p.m., just short of 48 hours since departing Yurimaguas.
The shoreline at the boat landing was teeming with people and mototaxis. I expected to be met by an associate of the tout I met at the Plaza de Armas in Yurimaguas. I hung back on the boat as other passengers rushed to disembark, waiting for someone to approach me who knew my name. No one did, but that´s not to say that I wasn´t heavily recruited by aggressive drivers who came aboard with an unshakeable faith that they were not leaving the boat without me or whoever their target might be.
Nudging between two boats, approaching shore in Iquitos
The first to approach me was a somewhat unkempt young man with the unlikely given names of Wilson Sandro. Sandro took great pains to show me his official license as a driver, and pointed out his vehicle parked amongst the scrum on shore. He spoke almost no English, but I tried to explain that I was waiting for someone and, if they didn´t show up, I´d go with him, and only to a hotel of my choice, not one he was commissioned to promote.
Then a neatly outfitted driver insinuated himself into our conversation. He had heard the words ´friend´and ´hotel´and wanted me to believe that he had been sent to pick me up. When he couldn´t tell me my name--information he would have had if he was legitimate--I made my decision to leave with Sandro.
We negotiated the tangle of humanity and vehicles, Sandro leading the way to his mototaxi while carrying my bag overhead. The first 100 feet ashore are where you are most likely to be separated from your money or goods by pickpockets or thieves. It´s here that people actually try to grab your bags, at worst to steal them, at best to secure your business for the ride to a hotel.
Sandro and I proceeded without further incident to Hospedaje la Pascana (Pevas 133; www.pascana.com), a place that was recommeded in Lonely Planet Peru and by at least two independent sources. I was met at the door by an elderly (i.e., older than me) woman. She was neatly groomed. Her dress and carriage suggested someone who may have once had money, but who had subsequently fallen a notch or two down the economic ladder.
The woman insisted on showing me the room before I committed to it. La Pascana´s rooms, like the woman showing them, were ageing noticeably, but they were clean enough, I had my own bathroom with sort of a Pullman shower, and the flowered courtyard was pleasant. And so, for 35 soles ($12 USD), my lodging was secured on this May 1 holiday in Iquitos. And I was ready for a shower and a shave.
Sandro was back to pick me up at the hotel in his mototaxi as we had arranged. I had the bizarre notion to go to the Amazon Golf Club, a place I´d read about. My driver knew nothing of it, but the destination was in nearby Quistococha and he knew that barrio.
I surely didn´t want to golf, but the searching would provide a reason for looking around Iquitos and its environs. And perhaps I could pick up a scorecard listing interesting local regarding encounters with jungle fauna. It told me much about Amazon Golf Club (hereinafter referred to as AGC) that Sandro--whose livelihood depended upon taking tourists to various destinatioins around Iquitos--knew nothing about it.
Quistococha, besides being the purported home of the AGC, is the home of Complejo Turistico Quistococha (CTQ). That´s where we would go first. And, if truly ´complejo´, maybe I would cut short my trip to South America and return home tomorrow.
I´ve mentioned that this day was a holiday and CTQ was the the destination for thousands of locals enjoying the day off. Sandro parked the mototaxi, I paid a few soles for us to enter, and off we went to explore the grounds.
CTQ is, first and foremost, a zoological park. It´s infrastructure appeared to be about 50 years old and in about as good repair as one would expect in a country having limited resources. There were an astonishing variety of monkeys and other mammals of the jungle, including giant river otters and jaguars and ocelots. Reptiles were represented by caimans (think alligator) and anacondas, boa constrictors and giant river turtles. There were birds aplenty: loros and buhus (owls), toucans and hawks, and what I would call macaws.
Sandro was enthusiastic in showing me around, making sounds to attract the animals, pointing out which of the jungle felines in each cage was mas macho (a quality Sandro clearly esteemed above all others in man or beast). After touring the extensive grounds and animal enclosures, we went down to the beach (la playa).
The day was sunny and warm, a perfect late fall day south of the equator. The beach was filled with families, and so was the roped-off swimming area. Vigorous games of beach volleyball were taking place. Vendors and permanent businesses sold food and drink.
I will say that I would never have chosen to go to a zoo and would not repeat the visit. It was, though, a pleasant couple of hours.
Sandro and friend at Complejo Turistico Quitacucha
I asked Sandro if we might now search for the AGC. It was getting to be late afternoon and I wanted to at least make the attempt. We pulled out of CTQ and into a small business on the heavily traveled road to Iquitos. Sandro asked the proprietor for directions to our elusive quarry. We could have been on a snipe hunt for all that I knew.
Turn left in just a few hundred meters, then follow the sandy road about a mile and look for it on the right. We followed those directions and found the sign proclaiming that we´d arrived at the Amazon Golf Club (GPS: 03 49.470S / 73 19.915W).
At my second memorable golf course this April
A nice woman, Margarita, readily granted us permission to come past the gate and up the hill to a newish (but incomplete) structure that serves as a clubhouse and perhaps as living quarters for the course manager. Margarita brought out a large bag of clubs and invited Sandro and me to try them out. We took turns with the putter, attempting to knock balls into the cup on the bumpy #9 green.
Margarita said that I could return tomorrow and play the course for free. Well, the course was clearly unplayable, the fairways being two-feet deep in lush grass.
I asked if there any snakes that might be encountered by players. She didn´t say that there weren´t any, only that there weren´t many.
Margarita´s daughter and husband were out on the course on a motor scooter collecting flagsticks as the sun was about to set. I can´t imagine that anyone had played the course today, but flagsticks apparently were installed and retrieved on a daily basis. I met Margarita´s daughter, a cute little girl of about 9 years with the unlikely name of Tiffany.
Sandro and I left emptyhanded save for the photos we took. I would have paid cash money for some scorecards and, better yet, some golf shirts with the AGC logo.
The road back to Iquitos was busy. Back in the city I saw six vultures picking through ripe garbage at an intersection, scarcely even acknowledging the heavy traffic passing just a few feet of their smorgasbord.
Sandro made arrangements to meet me tomorrow morning and to take me to Belen, the unique barrio of Iquitos where the market and homes are equally unforgettable. He asked for, and I paid, 40 soles ($13 USD) for fairly extensive transportation in his mototaxi as well as 3-1/2 hours service as my guide. Money well spent, I thought.
I had a nice Italian dinner at Antica (Napo 159) located equidistant from the malecon and the Plaza de Armas. It´s decor of brick walls, tiled floors, and wooden tables and benches was warm and inviting. Recommended. I followed dinner with a couple of hours at an Internet site, catching up on mail and my blog.
I left the Internet site after midnight. The route back to my lodging took me directly across the Plaza de Armas. I will tell you that in a mere hundred yards I had to get past three separate pairs of hookers (prostitutas). They were nearly as aggressive as the drivers meeting Eduardo VI earlier today. I wondered if they worked in pairs for their own security or for the promise of exponentially enhanced possibilities.
I was soon, and I mean soon, back at Hospedaje la Pascana and in my bed. Alone.
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October, 2007