Don't Rock My Boat (Part 2)

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On the fourth day, the grey, marbled blanket of clouds is still there and stretches out over the Napo sky. The jungle scene is still there and drifts past our field of view. At times, the series of tree clusters and small coves seems to be an exact repeat of what we saw not two hours before. It reminds me of some 60's Saturday morning cartoon where the animators reuse the same strip of five buildings over and over in the background while characters zoom along in a car. I am Fred Flintstone in God's own low-budget creation. But that isn't fair. The jungle wasn't designed for speed. You have to pass it on foot. Only then can you see every last leaf as a unique key frame in an endless sequence.

The passengers are still there - more of them, in fact. For the first few days, stopping at a village involved little more than offloading a bit of cargo and onloading a few more human beings. Now we are at full capacity, and they sling their hammocks wherever they fit. Several are in the narrow walkway along the outer sides of the cabin which makes it an acrobatic feat to get anywhere. Some hang high in the center over the piles of luggage and all the crisscrossing nylon cords rub together to fill the cabin with the creaking, croaking song of a giant, synthetic cricket. An unlucky few hang their netted beds down on the second deck next to the smoldering, putrid bathrooms.

The Amazon of consciousness is still there, rolling over my mind. The cognitive blisters have calloused over and 'boredom' is just as meaningless a term on the Cabo Pantoja as 'full capacity'. It is really only with a faint spark of distant and disinterested effort that I am even able to say that this is the fourth day.

The Amazon is beautiful, and there are serpents beneath its surface.

I look down at my lunch. The fried banana is still there. The rice and chicken are still there. I am glad for that. I prefer the chicken to the fish they sometimes serve. In Iquitos, I ate fish all the time - long, monstrous bass that were grilled outside in front of the restaurant where they doubled as one of the more perfect forms of advertisement. No, these are sad, meager little perch and piranha that easily fit into the tupperware and fall apart under the lightest press of a spoon. Oily, loose-skinned little bottom feeders that stare up with one apologetic black eye.

I hack the banana to pieces and eat it first, careful not to mix it too much with the rice. Then I go after the rest. Today is a treat - the chicken comes without bones or gristle which is much easier to eat with a spoon.

But after a few bites, something tugs at the back of my mind. The strips of chicken seem quite narrow - too narrow. And uniform. The texture is a bit odd, too. As if -

I sigh. You can't cram nearly 200 people onto a cargo boat and send them up a river in one of the most isolated parts of the world for six days with a full supply of meat, vegetables, microwave popcorn and fine Cognac. When we stop at a port or village, the crew buys food from the locals and that is what is used for the next few meals until more is needed. So whatever the village has available is what you're going to eat. Sometimes it's chicken, sometimes it's oily little bottom feeders.

Sometimes it's caterpillars.

Somewhere back in Iquitos, my friend Jonathan who sang the praises of the delicacy of suri has stopped whatever he is doing and burst into a guffaw of hearty laughter and has no idea why.

Oh well. They aren't half bad. So I eat them.

Showdown

At night, well after dark, I dig into my large pack to look for about $100 in cash I stuck in there for use in Ecuador. It isn't there. No one on the boat could have taken it. Everything is exactly as I had packed it, and there is no way anyone would have had time to go through the bag, find the cash which was well hidden, and repack precisely. And although I'm sure there are a few bad apples on board, most of the passengers are good, decent people and never would have allowed such a transgression while I was downstairs getting food or taking a leak.

One of the maids in the hotel in Iquitos? This is just as hurtful as it is enraging. I got to know everyone in that hotel and talked to them everyday.

I sit and stew and hate and wish for the entire godforsaken city to be swallowed up in a violent jungle implosion.

Then I groan as I realize that I know exactly where the cash is. I used it weeks ago to pay for part of the trip into the jungle. Then like an amnesiatic jackass, I promptly forgot about it and went on assuming that it was still there.

I peel back the suffocating layers of jungle from the unoffending city of Iquitos and use one of the vines to hang myself from the ceiling beams for such careless and idiotic planning.

A trip up the Napo doesn't end when you step off the Cabo Pantoja. You then have to take a combination of private boats and launches further upstream to the port city of Coca in Ecuador. Along the way, you have to find places to sleep. None of this is expensive, but none of it is free. I may not see an ATM for another week or more. I've managed to place myself in the middle of a rain forest with a bare minimum of cash to get myself back out.

Idiota. Imécil.

The wad of Peruvian soles in my pocket is more than enough to pay for transportation up the river, and maybe three or four nights in rented rooms while I wait or search for boats. How much does that leave for food? What if one of the ferries doesn't leave for a week? I also have to worry about exchanging currencies. Maybe I won't find a good rate.

I still have some tuna, bread, and fruit in my pack. That helps. I have also read that some people will let you hang your hammock on their property which is much cheaper than a room. I run through all the calculations again, and things start to look a bit better.

Whatever. I'll figure something out. Maybe Captain Paisano can give me work doing some manual labor when we get to Pantoja.

I shake it all off and head downstairs to use the bathroom. Just inside and at the front of the second deck, the double doors of what I had assumed to be some sort of utility closet have been thrown open to reveal a low, wide refrigerator - the kind you see in convenience stores with sliding panel doors on top. Perched on top is a small TV blaring music videos of Cumbia and traditional Peruvian rhythms. One of the crew members slouches in a chair and gazes blankly at it. Three guys in their mid-twenties stand nearby and pass around a liter of Iquiteña beer and a plastic cup.

On my way back from the bathroom, one of the group - a skinny guy with tiny dark eyes, light skin, and a crew cut - catches my attention.

"Hey mister."

'Mister' is the default name of any gringo in this part of Perú - pronounced 'Meester'. I can never seem to explain to them that this is a term best used by a ten-year old kid trying to sell a newspaper to a man 30 years his senior somewhere back in the 1950's.

The guy holds his hands out to me. They contain not the evening edition of the Chicago Tribune, but rather the Iquiteña bottle and plastic cup.

Refusing such an offer of hospitality in this part of the world is without a doubt one of the most unacceptable faux pas one can commit. So I smile, take the bottle, pour myself a bit of beer, and toss it back. We exchange a few conversational pleasantries. After a minute, they pull up some wooden stools and invite me to take a seat.

Now my defenses go up. A few weeks in the Loreto region has put them on a hair trigger. The friendliness of the people here never ceases, but far too often there is something behind it. I am a gringo. I am presumed to be unreasonably rich. I am presumed to be unusually susceptible to the effects of alcohol on my judgment and willingness to spend money.

These gentlemen probably want to share their beer with me in an attempt to push my emotional and biochemical buttons. In turn, they want to see how much beer this will coax me into buying for them.

Still, aside from a few fragments of conversation with my neighbors and more lengthy chats with the crew outside the control room, I've been largely ignored by everyone on the boat. It isn't rudeness - I am simply an outsider and people aren't quite sure what to make of me. With selfish motives or not, these guys are at least making an effort.

There is the financial situation to consider. But if I'm screwed, I'm screwed. A few bucks of beer isn't going to make a difference.

So I pull up one of the stools and take a seat. Let's see how far you lads think you can string this out.

The skinny kid to my right introduces me to the equally skinny one to my left as his brother. He's built the same, but his skin is a multitude of shades darker, and his black, frazzled hair forms a razor-sharp widow's peak. He holds one of his brown arms out for inspection.

"Different fathers, obviously," he grins.

I like this about the culture. You never hear the term 'half brother'. Your brother is your brother.

The one to my right explains that they both work at a medical outpost back in Santa Clotilde where we stopped for a few hours yesterday. Santa Clotilde is the largest settlement on the river between Iquitos and the border and can actually be considered a full-blown town with a population of almost 10,000.

Across from me sits a squat, bulldog shaped guy who peers out at the world from behind a clunky pair of thick glasses which he endlessly adjusts on the bridge of his nose with his pudgy right hand. He is the local version of a policeman in Santa Clotilde. His glance darts back and forth from face to face, but doesn't say much.

The three of them are heading home to their village where we will stop in the morning for a week off work.

Soon, I fall into the rhythm and custom of their drinking. The brother to my left calls my attention with "Ey, gringo.". He hands the Iquiteña to me and holds the full cup up above his brow.

"Salud," he says, and drinks the beer.

When he is done, he hands me the cup. It is then my turn to fill the cup and immediately hand the bottle off to the brother on my right. So it goes and so it goes.

At the bottom of the bottle, I lean over to the crew member still glumly glued to the seductively swaying Peruvian hips on the TV screen to ask for another beer. It is, after all, my turn. He lurches forward to slide the refrigerator door panel open and retrieves another liter of beer. I drop a few coins into his hand.

The bottle continues in the orbit around the circle left by its emptied sibling and we talk and share juvenile and ever dirtier jokes retrieved farther and farther back from our youths. Each time the Iquiteña comes my way, the dark brother snags my attention with a "gringo" or "señor" or "amigo" to hand it to me and refuses to drink from the flimsy plastic cup until he catches my eye again and offers a solemn "salud!".

At the end of the bottle, one of them holds up the empty carcass, raises his eyebrows, and asks if we might have another.

"Sure," I say, and ask the crew member for another.

The cycle continues, and when the third bottle is empty, the request is repeated. But I don't really care to drink too much and am in no mood to be taken advantage of - especially when they aren't even feigning an attempt to take a turn. Furthermore, the dirty jokes are regressing to an unnecessary proximity to toddler territory and no good can come of this.

"Sorry, guys. I'm a bit strapped for cash. I'm afraid that's it for me. Off to bed."

Their faces fall for a moment upon realizing that their plan to woo me into financing their voyage into inebriated oblivion hasn't quite panned out as expected. But they recover, and we head up to the third deck where all our hammocks are.

Upstairs, the lights have all gone out. The night is all inky blackness and the nylon cricket of hammock cords snores softly along with the passengers.

My flashlight is somewhere down in my pack, so navigating will be tricky. But the brothers have theirs, and in a combination of politeness and demonstration that there are no hard feelings, we inch along the narrow passageway with their light flicking back and forth. At my hammock, we clumsily shake hands in the darkness and wish each other luck. Then they work their way to the back of the boat to go to their own hammocks.

I lie down and watch the jerky motion of their flashlight as they approach the back railing, slide along it, and then move back down the other row a ways. After a minute or two of the yellow spot of light leaping up and diving down into duffle bags over hushed conversation, the flashlight switches off and all is silent.

Mystique

Twenty-two hours later and on the last night, I lean on the railing up front next to the control room and stare out into the darkness. By now, many of the passengers have disembarked at a handful of tiny villages and there is a lot more breathing room. The remainder will stop off at a few more settlements tomorrow, and we will finally arrive at Pantoja just before the border.

On the far side of the river, a single light somewhere deep in the jungle catches my eye. It appears to come from an incandescent bulb, but if there is a small generator powering it, it can't be heard from this distance or over the thrum of the cargo boat's diesel engines.

Who is that? Who is in there? A family? A hermit mystic? How do they live?

We are in deep rain forest, but that solitary, twinkling bulb is civilization as I know it. Whoever prepares dinner or potions by its glow would recognize the Cabo Pantoja. They would recognize a mobile phone, oil barrels, and maybe a Yankees baseball cap - even if they never deal directly with such things. They live at the very boundary of modern civilization.

And beyond them, maybe only a few hundred miles east, there are tribes that have never had contact with "us". They have never heard English or even Spanish. Their faces have never been lit by a halogen bulb. There are entire government agencies charged with the duty of tracking their whereabouts as covertly as possible, and the information is used in development plans to ensure that their lands and way of life is not disturbed. Civilization keeps its secret so that the tribes might keep their own.

Suddenly, there is a crashing sound and the boat shudders. I am thrown forward into the rail. A few sleeping passengers back in the cabin gasp and yelp with surprise. Recovering from his own lost balance, the kid in charge of the spotlight switches it on as quickly as he can and swings it down to the port side of the bow to illuminate the situation.

We have run aground on a beach the extends a dozen yards out from the bank of the river. A few crew members lean over the side of the railing down on the bottom deck to check for damage. Captain Paisano grunts and starts fiddling with the controls in order to reverse out of the predicament.

Satisfied that all is fine, the crew recedes from the railing and begin laughing and heckling loud enough for the captain to hear up on the third deck.

"This guy doesn't know how to drive!"
"We'll never make it back to Iquitos!"

Another lets out a scream of mock terror.

"Cabrones," mutters Captain Paisano and chuckles around the smoldering cigarette clinched in his teeth.

The boat shudders again as it slides off the beach and back into the water.

Half an hour later, we beach again. But this time, it is done on purpose - slowly and delicately with the aid of the spotlight. This beach is much smaller, and ends abruptly at the steep bank packed with grass and gnarled roots.

Someone whistles long and loud as the spotlight is adjusted to point to a cluster of trees just beyond the edge of a small clearing on the bank. A moment later, another whistle answers from deep inside the jungle. Before long, people begin to materialize and walk out into the clearing - some slightly blinded by the bright light.

The crew extend the ramp out over the beach and onto the bank and begin hauling bags of grain and provisions out. Men from the village that remains unseen somewhere in the green void then hoist the goods up onto their shoulders and disappear into the forest. Several more stand around chattering about this and that. A few kids run out from the trees to see the boat. Half a dozen passengers creep down the iron stairs from the third deck carrying bags, half-rolled hammocks and drowsy toddlers. They carefully walk across the plank and onto the bank to where family members wait to greet them.

After about twenty minutes of this, the ramp is pulled back in, the boat shimmies and shakes off the beach, and we are once again on our way up the Napo.

The villagers stand at the bank - waving and shouting last-minute farewells.

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