by Robson Green
Countless explosions later I drown my sorrows in a bottle of wine. It’s going down so well that I have another few glasses. The crew joins me, then I remember I have to be up at 3 a.m. to film at 4 a.m. and it’s now 11 p.m. I sink another glass and stagger to bed.
*
After three and half hours’ sleep I feel like hell but the sunrise a few hours later is so spectacular that the lack of rest and the raging hangover evaporate. It’s far better than the nitrous oxide I used to inhale on the set of Casualty most mornings before work. Everyone looks like a bag of shit. Mike is monosyllabic and stooped with morning grumpiness, like the troll under the bridge. We head out. We are going to find a peacock bass and we’re not coming back until we have.
Three hours later we have nihil, nada, nichts. My patience is worn through, like my bottom, and the red mist starts to rise . . . and wham! I get a bite, but I lose the fish. This happens several times. Finally, another flipping three hours later, I get a bite and this time I bring home the bass – it’s a two-and-a-half-pound speckled peacock bass. Other subspecies include the three-bar, popoca and butterfly, which have different markings but they all share one detail in common: on their tail fin is the eye found on a peacock’s feather. The theory is that predators think that’s the front end and attack, and the bass is able to escape, perhaps with a damaged tail, but with his life. This speckled fish is eating size so we’re going to keep him. Mike and I tuck in back at the hotel. The bass is seasoned and grilled and it tastes delicious. We’re behind with the schedule, though, so after shovelling up lunch the crew and I need to get a move on to our next RV point.
Fitzcarraldo
I take one look at the steamboat and want to run. It’s exactly like the one in Werner Herzog’s epic movie Fitzcarraldo, where this mad Caruso-loving wannabe rubber baron with delusions of grandeur tries to get a steamboat over a mountain and everyone suffers or dies.
Goodspeed to all who sail in her
Jamie is morphing into Fitzcarraldo with the scale of his extreme ambition. He’s not going to take me with him. This boat is meant to be our floating hotel for the next four days. I look around and it is immediately clear we have a major problem.
‘Jamie, can I have a word?’
He comes over.
‘I just want you to know that there is no way I am sleeping in this rat-infested, drug-smuggling, sailor-spunked-up gambling brothel on water. I wouldn’t have a dog in it. It’s disgusting. Even Craig agrees it’s terrible and he’s from New Zealand.’
Once again I get on the phone to the production manager and Helen Nightingale.
‘I’m not travelling on this vessel. It’s not river-worthy, for a start, and whatever’s happened on this boat – let’s just say I don’t think they missed out a sin. The marks of all seven are here and some have been done to death.’
‘But it’s the only boat available in the area,’ says Helen on the phone and Jamie in unison in my ear.
The captain comes to see what the commotion is about. He couldn’t look dodgier if he’d spent six hours in make-up, fraternising with Abu Hamza. And then there is Arianna. Dear, sweet Arianna, the cook who comes with the vessel – a podgy twenty-eight-year-old with a pretty face and an eagle eye for the fellas. She winks and smiles at me saucily and when that is ignored I find her staring at me, communicating with her twinkling eyes that she wants to ride me like Seabiscuit. I am not alone in this strange compliment – she wants Craig, Peter and Jamie as well. She wants us all.
Having no other choice, we set off on HMS Shitpit. I take the diary camera around the rooms of this floating hovel with its sweat-ridden beds, stained sheets and toilets to rival the one in Trainspotting. The engine is like an MRI scanner and we’ve got to sail five hours into the night to Jaraua. The sun is setting and I film a piece to camera: ‘Well, this is as bad as it gets . . .’
Suddenly there is a klaxon. It sounds again. We all look panicked. What’s happening? People are boarding the boat. Suddenly we are eyeballing half a dozen soldiers pointing large guns at us. We put our hands up and they want to know who we are, what we’re doing. They want our paperwork. They arrest the captain of the boat, who is led away in handcuffs. The vessel is not seaworthy and they are not happy with his documents. We are ordered to leave the boat immediately so we grab our stuff as quickly as possible and start to pile it up on the bank. When the last of our bags are unloaded one of the soldiers pulls up the anchor and sails the boat away. Another smiles, waving.
‘Welcome to Brazil!’ he shouts.
We are left stranded on the riverbank, the sun setting, wondering what the hell we are going to do now.
A little way up the bank is Arianna, surrounded by all her pots, pans and utensils, which, by the way she’s looking at us, she doesn’t just like to use for cooking.
‘I’m not going to leave you,’ she says reassuringly.
She grabs my hand roughly and looks at it: Are you married?’
‘Yes, happily.’
‘Cabrão. Cabrão!’
‘What?’
‘I believe it’s Portuguese for bastard,’ says Peter coolly.
I can’t confirm this as our translator, Alessandra, is tucked up in a hotel in Manaus because Helen Nightingale doesn’t think a boat, with all us boys, is the right place for a young lady. Looking at Arianna we all strongly disagree – we need her here to protect us.
Jamie is straight on the satellite phone to Alessandra to work out a way of getting to our destination. But Craig, Peter and I have other ideas of getting the fuck back to Manaus and hitting the bar. Eventually we get the fixer to rustle up a tiny speedboat with a local from Manaus who can navigate us up the Amazon at night to our destination. So the whole team, along with psycho Arianna, who keeps asking me to take my wedding ring off, head into the night, embarking on a seven-hour journey to Jaraua.
São Raimundo do Jaraua, Mamirauá
We arrive at the Jaraua Reserve in the pitch-black. Our first concern is where are we going to sleep? A kind lady vacates her hut on stilts and the whole team piles in, proceeding to install hammocks so we can swing ourselves to sleep. This will be our abode for the next four nights. Five blokes snoring, farting, gurgling, dreaming, fidgeting, and all acutely aware that Arianna could jump us at any moment.
Arianna is really pissed off she can’t share the same hut as us and she’s not going to bed without a protest: ‘She is cold and lonely in her hut.’ We ignore her and slowly all drift off to sleep when suddenly I become aware of a warm sensation by my ear.
‘I can’t sleep. Can you?’ Arianna whispers seductively.
‘I could until you woke me up. Go back to your hut, Arianna.’
‘Come with me, Robson.’
‘No,’ I say, turning my back on her as best I can in a swinging hammock. Silence descends once more.
‘Jamie?’ she mummers.
‘Mmmn?’
‘I can’t sleep.’
The whole hut is now awake.
‘Go away, Arianna – bugger off!’ we grumble collectively.
The next morning, after little rest because of Arianna going bump in the night, we try to film our first sequence: my counterfeit arrival in the village. I step off a small boat looking like a sexually molested hobo in desperate need of lager and therapy.
‘There’s no one here. I wonder where everyone is?’ I say.
Well, I know bloody well where all the men are: they’ve gone out fishing and we’ve missed them because we overslept. Unable to have the meet-and-greet he planned for, Jamie decides to see what the local Jaraua women are up to, and that’s when we discover a scene given by God. They are playing football, of course, and Jamie asks me to join in their game. They are happy for me to do so and I need no encouragement. The girls are lovely and fit, with a kick like a frigging mule. I run round trying to play like a professional: I fall dramatically at tackles, call for the referee and run around with my shirt over my head – well, that’s what the paid ones do. I pass the ba
ll to a very cute Amazonian lass and she fucking belts it into the back of the net.
‘GOAL!’ I jump around hysterically inviting us all to hug and kiss but there are no takers and with the way I’m behaving there is no way I’m going to score! Arianna watches from a distant hut, arms folded like a jealous wife. She stomps inside and continues to poison our lunch.
Eventually a few guys return from their morning’s fishing, including father-and-son team Fernando and Juma. Fernando, I’m told, is sixty-five but has the body of a ripped thirty-year-old gymnast. Juma is charismatic and good-looking and, I’ve heard, the best fisherman in the village. I hate him. Our objective is to catch tea for Fernando’s wife Alija so she can cook and feed her family. Thank God Juma is with us, then, because by the way I look and feel there is no way I could catch supper on my own.
We set off in search of a Jaraua favourite: the silver arowana. The Japurà River channel is bustling with activity. The waters are alive with small fish feeding – I’ve never seen so many – and we all know that small fish signify predators. As we hum up the water-way, I see black caiman, alligators that can grow up to fifteen feet long. In front of us, a 500-strong congregation of white egrets takes flight, cormorants dive for fish, a barrel of squirrel monkeys call in the trees, and a wake of black vultures on the banks inter the remains of a dead animal into their lead-lined stomachs.
I am busy observing one snapshot of nature and missing the next – there is so much to see. In front of the boat there are thousands of small fish jumping out of the river, splashing back down like an ornate fountain. They are only a couple of inches long but can leap about five to ten feet and some land in the boat. I pick one up; it’s iridescent silver and gold. Fernando suggests they are escaping predators but he doesn’t know what they are called and neither do I. (Possibly marbled hatchetfish – answers on a postcard, please.) I go to put the little chap and the other fliers back in the water.
‘No! For the soup!’ says Fernando, preventing me.
However, these small acrobats pale into insignificance when compared to the mighty flying fish of the Amazon, the arowana. This fish loves to leap out of the water to devour insects. It is a long, silvery compressed fish with a strange oblique mouth and a large gape to swallow its prey. Fernando drops anchor and we start to roll out a gillnet, vertical walls of netting set across the Japurà. We are working in tandem with men in smaller boats a quarter of a mile upstream, who act as beaters, driving the fish down towards the nets like driven pheasant across the line of guns. When our net’s in place they slam their paddles on the water to flush the fish towards our trap. Within minutes the gill-net starts twitching and I haul up half a dozen silver arowana. I pick one up; it’s an extraordinary-looking fish with the power to fling itself two feet out of the water. And what a mouth! It’s like the top of a pedal bin. It reminds me of Janet Street-Porter – only this must be her cute little sister!
The arowana is classified as Osteoglossum bicirrhosum. In Ancient Greek osteoglossum means ‘bone-tongued’ and bicirrhosum means ‘two barbels’, which are found under its lower lip like a couple of Rasta dreadlocks. These are thought to house the taste buds of the fish to help them search for food in the murky water. The arowana, like the arapaima, crushes its quarry with its bony tongue to eat it . . . I’m thinking Janet S-P again.
Fernando and Juma are working together in unspoken shorthand, gathering in the fish and re-laying the net. I help where I can but am conscious not to interrupt their synergy.
After a long and fruitful day out fishing, we return to the village. Aliga cooks the arowana over an open fire and Fernando, Juma and his younger brothers and sisters, the crew and I sit down to eat. The fish is placed in front of us, accompanied by manioc (cassava), which has been cultivated here since around 7,000 BC. The starch of this tuberous root produces tapioca. The manioc we are eating this evening is a dried powder that you stuff in your mouth, followed by a piece of fish. It has the consistency of small ball bearings in self-raising flour. I gave it a miss and delight my palate with Aliga’s beautifully cooked arowana.
As the sun is setting I do a PTC explaining that the Amazon River system is not only where the villagers source their food but is also where they bathe and wash their clothes, as well as being their transport network. The river is a lifeline to these families and without it they would perish.
We finish for the evening and face another night in the hut-from-hell with an undeterred Arianna on the prowl. We take turns as lookout but we are useless: one by one we fall asleep on duty and the hut is left unguarded. Arianna makes a grab for Peter. There are swinging noises, creaking ropes, a frantic scrambling sound, followed by a primal scream.
‘Get the fuck off me, you crazy woman!’ yells Peter, falling out of his hammock.
He is in pain as well as shock. Arianna has squeezed both his testicles. She is frogmarched back to her shack and I am concerned: ‘With all the cooking equipment she’s got we could be murdered in our beds.’
‘Shut up, Robson. Or I’ll get the mad mare to cut yours off,’ says a still-shaken Peter.
After a fitful night’s sleep, disturbed mainly by a bloody cockerel that crowed from 2 a.m. onwards, we wait for breakfast. It doesn’t come so we make our own. Arianna is on strike and is refusing to cook any more meals for us. What’s more, she’s copped off with a local Jaraua fisherman, the poor bloke. He’ll need as much manioc and fish as he can physically digest to survive her wanton lust.
Pirarucu
I am determined to catch a pirarucu today to feed the village, and more importantly Arianna’s poor sexually ravaged fisherman, so I set off with Jorge. One look at him and I know he’s the business. He’s dressed in pink trousers, a yellow cardie and a straw hat – only a tough guy could get away with that outfit. He has a kindly way about him and he finds me amusing. But I know he’s thinking ‘Who the hell is this guy? Bruce Parry was way better.’
This morning the village has received some good news. There is a sustainable fishing policy enforced across the reserve and a government official is here to tell the village their quota for pirarucu hasn’t been caught; as a result, over the next ten days, they are allowed to catch 500. Although the government has banned commercial fishing of pirarucu, catch-and-release is permitted in certain areas of the Amazon basin and native tribes, like the Jaraua villagers, are allowed to harvest this giant on a strict quota system. Thanks to these restrictions the pirarucu’s numbers are beginning to recover.
I ask Jorge, using my best mimes, where he stores the nets and fishing tackle? To my dismay I discover we are using a harpoon. (Nets, rods and reels are just too expensive.) It’s brutal but that’s not why I am anxious – I was useless at javelin at school. I have never had any upper body strength. I was crap at shot put, rubbish at throwing the cricket ball but was very good as Captain Hook in the school production of Peter Pan. Armed with a couple of spears, Jorge and I head upriver looking for signs of the large serpent-like creature to surface and show itself. The pirarucu is an air breather and comes to the surface in a swishing motion every ten to fifteen minutes to take a gulp of air. The fish is only visible for a split second but it’s enough to pinpoint and launch our harpoons. Well, that’s the theory.
The temperature is nearing fifty degrees and there is no shelter. Remember, the heat is reflected off the water so it’s a double whammy, and the sunscreen is applied and re-applied as it trickles off. We slowly glide along looking for signs of disturbances in the water.
SWOOSH! SWOOSH! Jorge raises his hand, indicating I need to and keep quiet as we are now in stealth mode: we have spotted our target. And there is more than one, so all we can do now is wait. Wait and stand, arm raised with the spear like a coiled spring. Waiting and standing and waiting. After three minutes my arm begins to ache.
(Loud whisper) ‘Jorge, my arm is about to drop off.’
He looks at me, smiling. I see something move in the weeds so I raise my harpoon.
‘Jorge, what�
��s that?’ I say dramatically, ready at any moment to deploy my weapon.
‘Alligator,’ he says.
‘Oh.’
I’m sure poor Jorge has been told I’m an expert from Europe and now he’s discovered that I am in fact a puny, whingeing, mediocre harpoon-throwing lad from Newcastle upon Tyne. Actually he doesn’t know I’m a crap harpoon thrower yet – but he will. Now I wish ex-Royal Marine Bruce Parry were here as well.
I need to lower my harpoon but Jorge signals for me to keep it raised – I only have a second to fire and if I’m not primed it’ll be too late. Whoosh! To our right, about thirty yards from the boat, the fish takes a big breath like a drunk lass preparing to go into a stinky public lav, and Jorge fires his harpoon – he just misses. Seconds later after the fish has disappeared without trace, I fire. I miss, just. In fact, I’m short by about twenty-five yards. Jorge laughs. He’s never seen anything so funny in his life.
‘The thing is,’ I try to explain in an elaborate system of arm gestures, ‘I had no rehearsal for this and Jamie, that “cabrão” of a director, thought it would be a good idea not to tell me the method of fishing.’
In this moment I know for a fact that if I aimed the harpoon at Jamie I would get a flipping bullseye.
The scene of Jorge just missing and me throwing like Bridget Jones continues for hours and hours. The unrelenting heat is getting to me and so is Jorge’s chuckling.
‘You might be laughing at me, Jorge, and you may think my technique leaves a lot to be desired, but quite frankly, bonny lad, you’ve caught fuck-all as well!’
He smiles and ups the ante, starting to throw like Fatima Whitbread.
