by Stafford, Ed
Rudy continued, ‘I went into the bank today and it was empty. There were five tellers and I asked the first if I could withdraw some money. “You need a queue ticket, sir,” said the Indian man. “I am the only person in the bank, you fucking pussy,” I said. “I will find you in the street one day, you pussy!” The teller threatened to call security and so I repeated, “I will find you”, and I walked out.’
Rudy was loud and crude and swore in English all the time. But he was good fun and we enjoyed his extremely kind generosity while we recovered our strength and enjoyed the tourist city of Iquitos.
On his way in to get to us, Keith had flown through Iquitos and had met a beautiful English-speaking girl called Yvonne. Keith had a girlfriend back in the UK and so wasn’t interested in Yvonne but he had seen the sorry state that I’d been in when he arrived and so he decided we needed some R&R. Cho, Keith and I piled into the city to meet Yvonne and her friends in one of the touristy bars. This was a different Peru, one that was foreign to me; fashionable ladies with make-up and perfume – it was startling for my senses that were by now just attuned to the jungle. Yvonne had a friend called Ursula who spoke no English but who I enjoyed chatting to and so I agreed to meet her again the following day in the plaza.
‘You can drive a motorbike, can’t you?’ smiled Ursula who was mid-thirties, worked out every day and had an incredibly toned body.
‘Umm, I never have,’ I admitted, ‘I’ll go on the back.’
Ursula told me she needed to pick up her dog from somewhere and I agreed to go with her. She was tiny, not much over five foot, and it was only when I climbed on the back of her bike that I became conscious that, in Peru, the culture is so macho that a man on the back is an amusing sight. I tried not to be self-conscious as Ursula darted through the streets and pulled up at a shop. She told me to wait and reappeared with a poodle that had just been trimmed. ‘Hold this,’ she instructed and I obeyed and I took the manicured dog in both hands.
Because it was carnival time the local tradition was to throw water-filled balloons at passing cars and bikes and this was when I started laughing at my predicament. A week earlier I had been wading through swamps with machete in hand and now I was on a motorbike, drenched by water bombs with a flustered poodle and a tiny, beautiful Peruvian woman projecting me through the streets of this crazy town at high speed.
We stayed for Christmas and a little longer after because I had made a decision. One of the greatest things that I have Keith to thank for is opening my eyes to Cho. The two of them had got on so well from the beginning because Keith had put loads of energy into trying to get to know Cho. As a result I was now seeing sides of Cho I’d not seen before and qualities that I’d missed completely. Combined with also having a few nights out with Cho, our friendship strengthened considerably.
Cho wanted to continue into Brazil and so he needed a passport as he’d never left Peru before. We filled out all the forms and Rudy helped us, too, and waited for Cho’s passport to arrive from Lima.
Rudy introduced us to some very helpful people such as Dr Oto, the main military doctor in town, who was able to give us great advice on increasing our anti-venom quantities for vipers and how better to administer it.
I had to admit that the looming apprehension of Brazil and the unknown was lessened by the knowledge that Cho was going to be walking with me until the end, and that we were now better prepared and experienced than ever.
What wasn’t working was our Brazilian visas. With only a few months left before we hoped to enter Brazil, Iquitos was the last place in Peru that we could have been issued with them. I felt infuriated that my expedition might be put in jeopardy by a fat, lazy man in Manaus who I had already paid to sort out our visas. When I expressed my concern at the lack of visas and FUNAI permits, the response that came back from Manaus was offhand and unhelpful.
The delay over Cho’s passport application meant that Keith ran out of time and had to return to England without doing any more walking. He got some amazing shots and recovered from his relapse into malaria and so was happy enough with his trip. I would always be indebted to him for coming out, paying all his own expenses, being the friend I needed to help me get control of the expedition again, allowing me to see the good in Cho and, on top of all that, taking some great images that we could now use to build a new website and use in the press. Several mornings in Iquitos we had been sitting up drinking whisky until the sun rose, talking rubbish or arguing about our different tastes in music. I knew I had found a lasting friend in Keith and both Cho and I were sorry to see him leave.
From Iquitos to San Francisco de Orellana we followed muddy roads that turned into muddy paths through mainly agricultural fields and secondary forest. We would inflate the rafts whenever we got to rivers as the water was now high and we seemed to be crossing water constantly. Many of the villages were well kept and almost twee to walk through, pretty wooden huts behind neat fences and grass trimmed by the cattle and sheep. It was an easy introduction to walking after the excesses of a fantastic Christmas in Iquitos.
From Orellana everything changed. We paddled across the vast Napo River that came down from the north and hit a band of the lowest lying forest we had seen so far. Looking back, I can now see immediately on Google Earth that we were crossing a river delta and that it would be flooded, but I hadn’t realised the stupidity at the time and was used to walking by the river. The next 25 kilometres were to teach me a lesson. They took ten whole days to cover.
The first day, we immediately hit thick vegetation and deep water. Imagine the thickest of bramble bushes, knotted with razor-sharp vines and spiky palms. Then imagine sinking the whole thing in a swimming pool full of muddy water and having to make your way through that swimming pool using just your 18-inch machete. In the thicker parts five metres could easily take five minutes and in the first ten-hour day we covered 2.4 kilometres. The water at times was up to our nipples and we couldn’t see our feet or anything in front of us under the water so we had to feel our way through the spines. At the end of the day there was nowhere to camp. Nothing but trees and floods, and the only option was to push out of the tree line, inflate the boats and head downriver looking for a patch of land or a settlement in which to stay the night. We marked the position we’d got to with the GPS so we could return in the morning to the exact spot and set off downriver. After a half an hour of paddling we found a group of houses on a unique patch of higher ground and asked the inhabitants if we could stay. They agreed and we gave them some rice and tuna to prepare and put our hammocks up in their hut with their children.
On 25 January 2009 we paid a local man ten soles (£2) to take us back upriver to where we had got to the day before. He dropped us off but still wasn’t sure what we were doing. ‘You’re going to walk back?’ he asked, stupefied.
And we did. But what a day.
It was 0930 when we started walking and we had with us Cho’s smaller pack, two machetes, a compass, a GPS, a video camera, two packets of fags (Keith’s legacy had not yet been stamped out) a lighter, a head torch, an EPIRB, one kilogram of farine and 500 grams of sugar.
The moment we set out the land started to drop. We were wading up to our waists at first, but then deeper, to our chests.
I observed things that I never expected to: how light a machete is when you hold it under water all day; how slow you have to walk if you don’t want two-inch needle spines sticking into your knees and shins. The spines were horrific; I was in wellies and they went straight through – no messing. Under toenails, into kneecaps. When extracted, they left the immediate area with a dull ache that almost always became slightly infected.
We took turns up front and we took turns to lose confidence. I realised that it really was all in the mind and that it was positivity that made the walk exhilarating and challenging. In my moments of negativity, when stung, spiked, bitten, or all three, I was left almost in a panic attack wondering how I could get out of this spiky hell. I had to calm myself down o
n such occasions.
Cho would have his moments, too. I could feel the times when I was stronger and had more courage than he had. But each time he recovered well.
It was anaconda country and there were plenty of piranhas and I was still amazed that we never got a bite from one. At the time we were fairly sure that there were no caiman this close to the main channel although I later learned that there were probably plenty all around us. In truth, of course, none of these animals wanted to attack us. We were too big to be eaten by all but the largest of black caiman (and jaguars out of the floods) and as we progressed we felt less and less threatened by the wildlife. There is a pressure when writing about the Amazon to extend the myth and write about the place as if dangers lurk under every log. But the truth is that, although there are potential dangers, the likelihood of becoming prey is far less than people imagine. The fear of the unknown is the biggest cause of such rumours and embellishment and, in truth, the times Cho and I walked through the jungle I felt we were safer than if we had been walking through London dodging traffic and pickpockets.
Late in the afternoon the flooded forest became too deep to walk. I tried carrying the rucksack above my head but my face was half submerged and it wasn’t working. Rather than panicking, I found that challenges like this now brought out the best in me. Fully recovered, my brain was now working at its absolute best when faced with real, tangible pressures from the wild. We just had to adapt and find a way of continuing. With a situation developing, a plan would form in my mind to allow us to do just that. Cho would inflate the pack raft in the river and take the rucksack and paddle in the river while I would have nothing more than a machete and I would swim from tree to tree in the forest. The boat would have been punctured in seconds in the mass of thorns and so Cho had to be on the river. Cho agreed grudgingly as he always wanted to walk when he could, but the only person who physically had to walk (or in this case swim) was me.
The line between the forest and the river was blurred. There were no banks (they were well below the surface), just a massive sheet of water cutting straight into the jungle.
The plan wasn’t a sensible one. Swimming isn’t one of my strong points and wearing wellies and carrying a machete I was gasping and spluttering my way through the forest. I could tell Cho was concerned. At each tree I clung for a few seconds, gasping for air, before plunging into the floods again with as much swimming grace as a petrified cat.
Eventually we reached an area of very high ground and climbed a river cliff using tree roots and getting covered in mud. Muscles quivering and sapped of energy after my swim, I deflated the boat and pushed on. We’d waypointed the village downstream, Siete de Julio, with the GPS the night before and so we knew we had only 300 metres to go.
That last 300 metres took us an hour and a half and four or more water obstacles before we emerged, bedraggled and bespiked, into the village.
We washed, put on dry clothes and felt human again in seconds. We were given a meal of a fillet of fish. I was sure it had been cooked in butter but Cho insisted otherwise. He was right: the fish had been cooked in its own wonderful natural oils and we washed it down with rice, yucca and Inca Kola.
The following morning was serenity itself. The forest was calm and quiet and although we were chest-deep in water the forest was open enough to allow us to pass with little cutting. The mosquitoes were not too bad either.
From our map we could see a tributary river called Atuncocha coming down from the north ahead of us and we could see that on the far side of Atuncocha was a lone contour line. Due to the angle of Atuncocha coming in from the north-west, it was decided that we should head away from the main channel of the Amazon and head north-east directly towards this tributary.
At 4 p.m. we decided that, as we hadn’t seen any land above the water for the past two hours, we should stop when we found some and make camp. We were far too far inland now to escape downriver in the boats – we were camping in the floods, no matter what. We were still about 700 metres short of Atuncocha and the situation looked ominous. The forest closed in and became brambles and thorns and we could not have erected our hammocks there had we wanted to as all the trees were too thin to bear our weight.
At 5 p.m. I found a piece of land above the water that was six foot by three foot and I thought it would have to do. Soon after, though, Cho found an island in the forest that was 10 foot by 15 foot and that was where we made our camp (see my diary sketch below). Our hammocks were over the water but it was only ankle-deep. Importantly, we had land on which to make a fire and cook. If the river rose in the night, though, we were in serious trouble. In the dark the only option would be to inflate the rafts and rise with the water, keeping in one position by securing ourselves to a tree. It would be too dark to move at night, the forest was too thick to move through in the rafts, so we would have to sit it out until dawn.
Writing that reminds me of what an amazing time we were to have ahead of us. The waters still had six months to go before they were at their highest in Brazil and high ground seemed to be running out fast. Every day I questioned whether this expedition was possible.
Diary entry from 26 January 2009:
If the water was ANY higher this section would be unwalkable. Sometimes only our heads are out of the water and often we have to backtrack and choose different routes because the water is too deep. Now it is fun – I wonder whether I will still think so in a year’s time.
We woke up on 27 January and although it had rained in the night the water level was the same. I dropped out of my hammock into six inches of water, naked except for a pair of jungle boots. I found my wet T-shirt, my wet trousers and my wet socks all still dirty as we had not washed as usual the night before, and cursed myself for not having been more composed.
The island of solid ground was a haven for animals and every crevice of my rucksack was inhabited by spiders, bugs, beetles, millipedes and ants. We broke camp and immediately the waters became deep again and the vegetation dense. We prepared ourselves for hours of hacking through matted thicket up to our chins in brown sludge when we caught a glimpse of a bright light ahead. Sun was streaming into the forest and we opened up on to an oxbow lake. The lake was inhabited by every spiky plant imaginable and so we inflated the rafts and gingerly worked our way across, cutting through the prickly vegetation. The lake was deep but on the other side it went straight into the forest and we had to stay in the boats, crawling under branches and over giant lily pads with armoured thorn-covered rims.
The precarious navigating was like playing that game where you have to pass a wire hoop along a wire course without touching it and setting off a buzzer. At any moment I was expecting to burst the rafts and plunge us into brown, sludgy, caiman-inhabited water.
Eventually the vegetation opened up and we spilled into the river that we’d been aiming for, the Atuncocha. We’d been walking for a day and a half from Siete de Julio to reach this canyon and to make the three kilometres felt like a real success. Our eyes revelled in their ability to focus on things far away and the space around us on the water felt reviving. We whooped like Americans and paddled across the canyon to the long-awaited high ground denoted by the lonely contour line.
Santa Rosa de Atuncaña lies at the mouth of the Atuncocha on the banks of the Amazon’s main channel. On arrival we were welcomed and invited to stay in a house on the tallest stilts I had seen so far – perhaps five metres off the ground. Everyone came to and from the house in their dugout canoes. A drunken man offered to guide us to the next village, Roca Eterna, but by morning he was so plastered that we left him and continued on our own again.
We left Santa Rosa, heading for Roca Eterna, with no food and no idea how far away our destination was as it didn’t feature on our map. We suspected it was about three days’ walk but the village shop had nothing – so we left with no more than a soggy bag of salt.
The morning was slow as the high ground was so overgrown and tangled that we had to push away from the river and
into the more open flooded forest. We glided through the mysterious world with everything reflected in the waters, hardly making a sound as we floated along, rucksacks buoyant on our backs behind us. The waterproof rucksack liners were absolutely invaluable; without them we couldn’t have walked in this manner. They were thick 100-litre roll-top canoe bags and everything was bone-dry inside them, despite the rucksacks being half submerged for most of the time.
At 4.30 p.m., having walked just over a kilometre and a half, we decided to GPS our location, inflate the pack rafts and paddle downriver to Roca Eterna. Cho had got very cold while wading and was struggling more than I was as a result of being constantly submerged in water.
We planned to return in the morning to continue walking – but at least we would return having eaten, dried out and bought supplies. It annoyed me, this going out and coming back into the walk, but there was no other way I could see of doing it. Little by little we were chipping away at the vast mileage still ahead of us and at least we had a workable system that enabled us to continue.
As we drifted away from the banks on to the main channel of the Amazon the sun was strong behind us and I turned my cap backwards to protect my neck from burning. Ahead a rainstorm was approaching malevolently. The wind picked up and the waves grew bigger and, as the dark wall of rain hit, Cho started singing religious songs at the top of his voice. It was the sort of rain that smacks you in the face, like diving into a glacial lake. The individual drops stung like hail and I turned my cap to the front again to protect my eyes.
