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"How to Paddle the Amazonas" by Bryan Adrian reporting from Brasil 1983 [2011 reprinted]

by BRYAN ADRIAN in "The News & Courier"

and "The Evening Post" Charleston, S.C. 1983 (reprinted 2011)

 

SURVIVOR -- How To Paddle The Amazonas

by Bryan Adrian

Special Writer

Man does not live by dread alone, in the Amazon Basin. He requires a reliable guide, a hardy constitution, and essential survival gear ---- if he intends to return from the world's largest jungle.

This colossal body of flora and fauna in the Amazon Basin incorporates one-third of Brazil, a chunk of Peru, and pieces of Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia. For the hunter, there are behemoth beasts that slither and pounce. Ornithologists and anthropologists will encounter birds and tribes in their uncorrupted nests and huts. Tourists can capture sights and sounds sufficient enough for crates of slides, photos, videos, and disks -- for Grand Premieres to their friends that breathlessly await the return of an errant neighbor.

Missionaries can have a heyday, as can altruistic doctors, or students of both ecosystems or rain forests. Others may go simply for the adventure of experiencing life in its most rudimentary and incorrigible presence. The Amazon revitalized my instincts like a bracing tonic, rejuvenating senses which had been dulled by the tedium of the work-a-day world.

The quickest method of finding oneself a member of a tour of the jungle is to fly to Iquitos, Peru, the capital of jungle excursions.

Once in Iquitos you will find many options. 'Explorama' has packaged a number of tours, parceled into time intervals of three, five and 10 days. Their office is located in Santiago Lores 684, Iquitos (near the central plaza). Among other theatrical displays, Explorama offers a staged exhibition of skilled sharpshooters of "perdigones" (poison darts), which is presented on the third day of every excursion. Explorama's safety record is unblemished. A modicum of tourists actually complained of a lack of hazards, after their adventure booked through Explorama was completed.

Unorthodox entries into the jungle are arranged with independent guides who prowl the Plaza de Armas. In the jargon of the tourist agents, these independents have been dubbed "pirates." They offer an excursion of any duration, and are employed frequently by scientists, researchers, entomologists, vacationing dental surgeons and doctors seeking thrills, writers for National Geographic and other such global publications, or simply just students struck with wanderlust after their semester break commences.

For those like myself, who prefer the unknown, replete with all its contingencies, a trip of one to three days upriver from Iquitos is recommended as a starter. It is relatively easy to rustle a poor unemployed Indian hunter, born into a long line of ancestors --- all of whom were trained by their forefathers in the arts and sciences of how to survive (and remain master of the jungle). Simply paddle your way into a riverbank and climb onto the streets of a sleepy river town, and hire such a guide to lead your expedition. This method of exploring the jungle and its plants and animals and insects and river snakes -- is by far the most authentic experience, and consequently, the cheapest, due to its nearly non-commercial orientation. A guide of this ilk will charge almost nothing for his services --- and requests no more than a few dollars at the end of the expedition, in addition to all the raw foodstuffs, petro, ammunition, medical supplies, and ample and adaptable humor [in case you run into one of the cannibal tribes, which we did], that must be supplied for the outfit by someone such as myself. We took only one liter of rum and two cartons of cigarettes for a party of four, for an estimated two months into the unknown, so any human vices had to be relearned as an artform in the practice of moderation, over a very short time.

On an unchartered route with a poor native hunter one can custom tailor his itinerary and carve his own fantasies, with his own machete, into the hinterland. Every hour is a compromise with the strong and mild elements and caprices of nature, richly rewarding and often full of surprises. At times there is no avoiding the necessity of canoeing two to three days through the black armlets of obscure river bends, only to find oneself confronted with an obscene tangle of trees and vines, when you finally disembark onto a high and dry land mass -- creepily striated in a miles long, metallic black, shiny path of army cutter ants. Never open jams or tins containing anything sugary or sweet or you will live [maybe] to regret it. At no times drink water or liquids after 8pm, because if you get up from your mosquito netting and exit your custom-built palm hut [which you spent nearly a full afternoon constructing out of local plant fabrics] to urinate, you unzip your life to the fangs of killers, when the night canopy is at its most still. Dangerous and exotic vipers have highly sensitive heat seeking bio-devices, added to their acute fangular toxins, for which there is no antidote, and lunge out of the ashes of the previous night's campfire, if you forgot to bury the ashes underground. Of particular concern in this region is the "silent bringer of death." The Bushmaster, known as the 'surucucu' in Brazil, and the 'shushupe' in other countries, is the largest venomous snake in the New World.

Believe me, it takes much much longer to master the jungle at night, than it does to avoid calamity in the daylight.

Within the ventricles of this pulsating biomass, an inexhaustible supply of fruits, roots, wildlife, birds, insects and flowers thrust themselves into awareness. To wit, "abejas" (bees) live in wooden tubes, slick as formica, which they have drilled in their geometrical fetishes to hollow out tree trunks. At times, a colony of abejas can generate a deafening echo from the combined frequency and "voltage" of their busy busy bee-wing work. There are monkeys --- too numerous to name one and all --- the largest being the "mono negro" (black monkey), and the chorro, which is quite tasty. Garrulous birds encroach upon the midday silence, such as loros and papagayos (parrots). When you are so hungry that you have to track down a flying parrot, you know you will be eating two of them. Once shot, the mate flies in circles deploring the death of their marriage partner, in heart rending squawks and wails of grief. Many times a Pukakunga (Quechua Indian word for a red-throated water fowl) will scramble underfoot. Properly roasted in the campfire, the tender and flavorful flesh of this bird will encourage gluttony.

Large wild boors [called Capybaras, something like a cross between a hippo and a pig; some say it is a giant aquatic rodent that travels in herds like miniature cows], charge from the shadowy brambles, even more frightened than you, but nonetheless, charging for their very life. At times like this I was happy my safety was off. The Capybara is even more delicious than the Pukakunga, hard as that is to believe, but the pelt of this stringy haired Amazon pig is very ugly and wiry and not good for attire or upholstery. Do not confuse the Capybara with the Nutria, a horrible and environmentally destructive water rodent in parts of South American, the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, and the Bayou of Louisiana, notorious for its gigantic yellow teeth and for carrying nematode blood worm larval parasites.

Many wild fruits are edible, if you can find them, and on occasion the succulent "anona" can be sighted. It is a fruit the size, shape and texture of a pineapple, but with a bovine twist, the meat is very milky and the white creamy syrup oozing out of its white flesh is inimitable, in flavor and texture. Beware! The jungle is not so fertile for edible plants, due to the constant flooding that washes away most of the rich and fecund topsoil that is essential for cultivating edible plants.

Among man's greatest foes in the Amazonian jungle are aggressive electric eels, wild pigs, tigers and vipers, piranhas, swarms of malarial transmitting mosquitoes.  Despite these dangers, the most dangerous foes to the Rainforest itself, in these fervent and fast forest burning days, the most dangerous foes in the Amazon are giant oil companies and electrical mega-generator conglomerates. 

 Brasil is the largest consumer of electricity in South America.  Brasilian national company Eletrobras is dominant, and foreign investors such as Tractebel, AES, Prisma Energy, El Paso and Duke, are all also significant producers of electricity in Brasil. Petrobas is the national oil company, which will soon loosen its grip on Brasilian oil.  Private  companies  should  invest  US$  36  billion  in  E&P  between  2011-2015.  The  British  BG  Group  has  in-vested US$ 5 billion since it came to the country in 1994, and plans to invest more than US$ 30 billion by 2020, besides  US$  1.5  billion  in  research  and  development  by  2025.  The  Anglo-Dutch  company  Shell,  the  first  to produce in the country after the end of the Petrobras’ monopoly, has already invested over US$ 3 billion and plans to invest more, drilling up to ten exploration wells in two years. Norwegian Statoil has in the Peregrino field, in the Campos basin, its largest international project-- the total capacity of the  oil field is recoverable over the next estimated 30 years of production. Recent Chinese investment in Brazilian oil and gas has reached US$ 10 billion, US$ 7.1 of which came from China Petrochemical Corp’s (Sinopec) purchase of 40% Swiss Business Hub Brazil: The Brazilian Oil and Gas Sector of the Brazilian branch of Spanish Repsol, creating Repsol Sinopec Brasil. OGX has already invested US$ 3.2 billion  since  2007,  and  is  to  invest  US$  4.5  billion  more  by  2013  in  the  search  for  oil  and  gas. [ statistics from OSEC+ Business Network Switzerland].

So, in closing, it seems a safe bet to say, that it will not be cannibals nor wild animals nor the native humans of the greater Amazon Basin locale, but the appetite of Man for oil and electricity, and cheap beef [cattle grazing], those "fiends" will be the nemesis of this wonder of the world, which has little chance of surviving without humanity as a "friend" backing off from it.

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Story by Bryan Adrian

 

 

 

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A few examples of Bryan Adrian non-fiction

http://boudiccaarran.tripod.com/Abkhazia-Today.html  

ABKHAZIA during beautiful summer of 2014 during snap elections

http://bryanadrian_writer.tripod.com/HTMC_kidney_transplants.html

KIDNEY TRANSPLANTS IN THE REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA

more NON FICTION by Bryan Adrian 
http://bryanadrian_  writer.tripod.com/Non_Fiction_by_Bryan_Adrian.htm




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FICTION by Bryan Adrian  http://bryanadrian_writer.tripod.com/Fiction_by_Bryan_Adrian.htm