TripTracker.net - 2009 Trans-Amazon Expedition, The First Leg: Chasuta to Yurimaguas

Preparation, Preparation, Preparation The Final Countdown El Mercado Mira Flores La Selva Chipaota The First Leg: Chasuta to Yurimaguas Pacaya Samiria Reserve The way to Iquitos to Leticia The Slow Boat to Manaus Difficult Questions

RainforestPartnership

2009 Trans-Amazon Expedition

The First Leg: Chasuta to...

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Oct 7 2009, 01:55 AM

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Traveler

RainforestPa-
rtnership
Austin, Texas, United States

Journal

Location

Yurimaguas, Peru

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To save money and to get a taste of how the everyman makes the trip from Tarapoto to Chasuta, we forked over eight soles a piece (the equivalent of five dollars total) and hopped in the back of a waiting pickup. They cram a dozen people in the bed of these four cylinder beaters, stack them high with luggage, crates of eggs and anything else one could think to tie onto a truck and gun it for an hour and half straight to Chasuta. We held on, people seldom spoke, and we made great time bouncing and skidding all the way down the mountain pass that leads to that little riverside town. After an hour and a half we unfolded ourselves from the back of the pickup all blurry-eyed and groggy from the fumes and dust and carried our bags back to Hugo`s house, the man who was helping us acquire the boat. He drew us a map by memory and the next day as soon as the morning rain ceased, we struck out for Chipaota for one last goodbye with the community. Walking back down the center path of Chipaota was like walking into a family reunion; everyone was all smiles and calling our names as we walked by. We left Chipaota laden with gifts of platanos, eggs and a hat and we continued our trip down the river. Hugo left us late afternoon that day, after he accompanied us through the rapids and we were finally doing it; it was just us and the river.
We stopped for the night in Paraizo, a native community not altogether different than Chipaota and pitched our hammocks in an abondoned building where a pair of palm-sized spiders watched us sleep through the night. We woke up, broke camp and were on the river by 7:00 and by 8:00 it was pouring. The rain came down thick and heavy, blowing slantways upstream and we paddled for hours like this right into the maw. Just as we thought the rain would never stop it did and not long after we were flagged down by a young guy working on his canoe. He was excited to see gringoes passing by and wanted to show us his farm. He had moved down from Iquitos with his wife, dad, and kids in search of something different from smog and bustle of the city only three months prior. We talked and walked around the small farm and they sent us off with more oranges and limes than we knew what to do with. That day we made it down to the slightly bigger town of Papa Playa. Some men helped us unload our gear and we settled into a large cane hut. That night the men of the town greeted us the only way deserving of a couple of weary boatmen. With aguadiente. Aguadiente is a cane alcohol made all up and down the Amazon. In Chipaota the aguadiente tasted like sake mixed with coconut juice. In Papa Playa it tasted like sake mixed with paint thinner. We drank bottle after bottle of that wretched stuff and it was mad. Their was urgency in the air as we drove at the type of intelligence native to the rainforest, an intelligence that comes only through an ancestry that lived closed to the land, something wild and primal and pure and completely foreign to the asphalt and celophane of America. We gestured madly and a crowd gathered at the door to see who these maniacs were and when their was too much more to say but no more words with which to say it we went next door. There, an old man plucked gypsy chords out of his beat, out of tune guitar and haunted the night with his high, ghostly wail as people moaned along knowing or not knowing the words but without a doubt knowing why. The next morning the men helped us load the boat and by 6:30 we were back on the river, paddling into a fog so thick it we couldn`t see the other side of the river. It was then that Tim discovered that one of the men had slipped off his tattered old boots and swapped them with a pair of ours ¨Well, you never really stay anyplace for free,¨ he said as we rounded the next bend, and it was true.
I found out how true that really was in Yurimaguas. We holed up in a hotel with the intention of taking a day off to rest up and resupply before making the push to Lagunas. At five pm I laid down and couldn`t get up. I spent that night wrapped in sheets drowning in sweat and feverish dreams. Two days later I called my mom, the doctor, and told her I had a one hundred and four degree fever. She told me to go to the hospital and in my febrile delerium i hung up and went. the Hospital was a sad place, the waiting room was dirty and full of sick kids and pregnant women and the smell of sweat. I sat and watched the dirty tiles of the floor move with feverish saucer eyes and when it was my turn I shuffled off slowly and confused. After a quick exam they sent me to a backroom that looked like something out of a Halloween haunted house. There were piles of oxygen masks in the corner and jumbled instruments on stainless trays on the counters. There were bloodstains on the sheets. An uninformed man came in and said he would give me the injection. I asked if i needed to roll up my sleeve. He told me to turn around, and I understand what would happen next. Right before the injection he said ¨just like in the military,¨ and then there was the pain. It burned all the way down my leg like hot tar and ran back up it like liquid fire and I collapsed on the bed. In ten minutes though, I felt remarkably better. The tests came in and they showed I had amoebic dysentery so I got the meds I needed and limped home and went to sleep. All this for no more than eight dollars. Even so, I guess it is true, you never really do stay anyplace for free.

Photos

10/07/2009
01:55 AM

10/07/2009
02:20 AM

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Comments

OH MY!!!!

Written by jokead 29 months ago

This comment was modified by jokead 29 months ago

Unbelievable story, wonderful pictures!! Now be safe and have fun!

WHOA!

Written by lizgold 29 months ago

Amoebic dysentery? Just one of the hazards of life on the river but hope you won't experience all of them - please take good care of yourselves. Love, Beth and Robert

Wowie-Zowie

Written by lisamarieram 28 months ago

This is a crazy/scary/amazing/good to be alive story!! Hope you're better and START BOILING ALL YOUR WATER!!!!

	11. Difficult Questions Jan 26 2010, 03:26 PMSanta Fe, United States, New Mexico10 photos When people from home ask me about people from the river, I always tell them about the teacher's wife. We had been staying in Chipaota for the better half of a week, living and working with the men and women of the community and trying as best we could to assimilate ourselves...

	10. The Slow Boat to Manaus Nov 29 2009, 09:39 PMManaus, Brazil14 photos We had made it to Leticia, the end of our paddling leg, but we still had a long way to go to get to Manaus. Leticia is a Columbian town situated on the tri-border of Peru, Columbia and Brazil. As soon as we set foot on the banks of Leticia and climbed the wooden steps that led to the central...

	9. to Leticia Nov 17 2009, 09:21 PMLeticia, Colombia37 photos Paddling the final few meters into Porta Masusa in Iquitos was like stepping into another world. We rounded a bend in the river out of the ether a mass of lights and urban sprawl lay ahead of us. We spent four days surrounded by the concrete and grime of this lost city dropped in the middle of the...

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