A slow boat to the Amazon jungle
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2005
1
20
24
Trip End
Ongoing
Iquitos,
Peru
Monday, May 16, 2005
A novice to river travel in the Amazon, I soon realised my romantic notions of a leisurely cruise on a slow boat to the jungle city Iquitos with a comfortable cabin to retire to at night were rather wide of the mark.
The boats loading up with cargo and passengers looked like they might struggle to make it to the opposite bank, let alone 800 kilometres down river where I planned to go, to Iquitos, the biggest city in the world without any road to link it to the outside world.
Some research in a local Internet cafe did little to raise my spirits, revealing travellersī tales of food poisoning, boats running aground on sandbanks or breaking down
01 - Campeon III - last word in luxury cruising
.Still, one thing was clear, plenty of people had made the journey and lived to tell the tale, so wimping out and buying an air ticket back to Lima was not an option. Iīd already bought my air ticket from Iquitos to Lima. And besides, how bad could it be?
So the next day, new hammock and food supplies in hand, and sporting a rather dashing one-pound haircut from the local barber, I boarded one of two old tubs claiming to be leaving for Iquitos later that day.
My home for the next four days was to be the Campeon III. I didnīt ask what had happened to the first two.
Even though I already had my hammock, a smooth-talking vendor on board persuaded me to buy a second, cheap one to store my belongings in above me. "Es mas seguro en la noche" - itīs safer at night - he told me. On the Amazon waves, the passengers sleep in rows of hammocks on the upper floor deck, while the cargo - animals and all - goes below.
With my hammock strung up alongside the few dozen other passengers that had already embarked, there was nothing to do but lie back and wait for the departure, due in the early evening.
Boat schedules on the routes are notoriously unreliable, and vessels only leave when they are full of cargo, sometimes a day or two late
02 - The sleeping quarters
. Whatīs more, Iīd been warned that captains lie through their teeth about when they will actually depart, so I feared we were in for a long wait.A steady trickle of passengers joined my boat and the one next to it. The crew of both periodically shouted at the passengers in the rival vessel that their ship wasnīt going to leave today, triggering some angry exchanges between the deck hands.
So you could hear the sigh of relief as our boat pulled away, on time, leaving the neighbouring boat behind in its wake.
Somewhat ominously, the crew starting handing out life-jackets, which most passengers eagerly donned.
My fellow passengers appeared to be all Peruvians. I was the only foreigner on board. Just before leaving, Iīd glanced into the other boat and seen quite a few gringo faces onboard. I wasnīt sure if I was glad or disappointed they werenīt travelling on my boat.
One thing was for sure, I was the only person making the trip out of anything but sheer necessity.
It was early days, but so far no-one had really taken much of an interest in me. A friend who had already done a similar trip had told me beforehand, ī"Youīll meet loads of interesting people." But at this rate, I wasnīt so sure
03 - Me on the Amazon
.It was already nightfall, and the food included in my ticket (for the extortionate sum of about 21 dollars, or about 12 British pounds), didnīt seem to apply to the first day. So I cracked open a tin of baked beans and watched the nubile Latin lovelies wiggling their behinds around on the television at the snack bar.
I awoke at dawn as the sun struggled to break through the mist outside. Strangely shaped trees appeared, ghostlike on the banks of the river. Soon a banging noise indicated it was time for breakfast. Given the price of the ticket, my expectations were running low, and there was to be no pleasant surprise.
Breakfast appeared to be some kind of white gruel, with bagel-like bread. Iīd read that boats use the river water for cooking, and this looked a little too liquid for my liking, so I opted for the bread alone. I could do with losing some weight anyway.
As the mist cleared, the river was revealed - a brown, muddy water-way flanked by two banks of green trees. It wasnīt to change much for the next 800 kilometres.
Soon I had my first success conversing with the natives. The lady next to me asked where I was going.
"Iquitos," I replied with a smile.
"Que valiente!" (How brave!), she replied with a shudder. Not the answer I was hoping for.
I soon discovered there was little on board to do except lie back in your hammock, read, and occasionally shuffle outside for some river watching, waiting to see what was around the next bend. Inevitably it was another bend.
04 - View from the bow
Once or twice though, I was rewarded with the sight of river dolphins heading upstream.Every now and then we would stop at a small village, or sometimes just a muddy river bank, so someone could jump off or on.
I spent the first day on constant alert for any poison-tipped arrows winging their way towards me from savages on the shores. But all the villagers I saw were wearing western clothes. Most villages had a church, and some what looked like a school. All had makeshift football pitches.
Lunch consisted of rice, with some pasta and unidentifiable brown meat. I decided to brave it. After all, I couldnīt starve.
As the day wound on, some of the other passengers - presumably having exhausted conversation among themselves - started to show an interest in me. Their questions were to become very familiar to me over the next few days.
Where are you from? Where are you going? How long does it take to fly from England to Peru? What is England like? etc, etc...
The one question they never asked me was, "Why the hell are you taking a boat from Pucallpa to Iquitos when you could have flown straight there for the same price as your ticket from Lima to Pucallpa?" Sometimes I asked myself though
05 - The port at Iquitos
.My answer, I decided, was to get some idea of the sheer expanse of the Amazon jungle, rather than just swoop down in an aeroplane with the other tourists; to travel as Peruvians do; to meet interesting people; and to escape the Lonely Planet brigade.
It was not all plain-sailing though.
On the second morning I was rudely awoken from my slumber at dawn by a loud crash, and as the boat rocked violently. In my semi-awake state, I leapt from my hammock, ready to don my life-jacket and abandon ship. We had hit a sandbank. But as I looked around, most of my fellow passengers had barely stirred. The captain reversed the boat and steered around it, and I retired to my hammock once again, somewhat sheepishly.
Soon it was time to brave the showers. A nozzle above the toilets pumped out the brown river water, which was then washed straight back into the river. Not for the faint hearted, I decided if they were good enough for the other passengers, then they were good enough for me. At least the piranhas wouldnīt be able to fit through the pipes.
The days dragged on slowly, and at night there were only bad American movies, badly dubbed into Spanish, to entertain. Bedtime came early.
But it wasnīt so bad. There are worse things to do than lie in a hammock. No one seemed to be interested in robbing me blind, and I didnīt seem to be coming down with gut rot.
And I was meeting interesting people, even if I had some trouble understanding their accents sometimes.
There was Rolf, the beer salesman from Lima, keen to practice his English. He liked his job, he told him, because it allowed him to travel. Yes, I thought, looking around me, and first class all the way.
Then there was Suli, the village school teacher who bought me two beers as we chatted one evening. She asked me how much teachers in England earn, a question I tactfully sidestepped.
I suspected she might have regretted her generosity later on after I admitted I was not religious. "But you do believe in God," she asked, aghast. "Err, well, no."
And there were others whose names I forget. The girl returning home from nursing school in Lima because her parents couldnīt afford to support her anymore, the boy keen to tell me about his town, and the lad who asked me which part of Peru I was from, even though to everyone else it was obvious I was an alien being.
Some of the passengers had even been to Iquitos before, though many confided they hadnīt made it that far along the river yet. But they had heard it was beautiful.
Was London as far from Lima as Lima was from Pucallpa? one asked.
Several men on board gave a smile when I said I was going to Iquitos. "Ah, youīre going to meet the Iquitos ladies," they said, "very beautiful". "And very friendly," a couple added, with a knowing smile. The good ladies of Iquitos obviously had quite a reputation.
Not all the passengers were happy though. It seemed the captain was trying to save on gasoline costs, and we werenīt going to arrive in Iquitos on Sunday afternoon as expected, but early on Monday morning.
Oh well, Iīd just be happy to arrive.
Sometime late on Sunday we entered the Amazon river proper, and the banks grew farther apart. In the early hours we finally arrived in Iquitos. Iīd spent over 100 hours on the boat - much of it in a hammock - travelled some 800 kilometres, listened to lots of bad Latino music, and met some interesting people.
Whatīs more, Iīd achieved my aim. Iīd seen the jungle.
And one thing was for sure: thereīs a hell of a lot of it out there.
