Amazon at Last!
- 20 Jan 08, 03:04 PM
Posted from: Iquitos
We’re on the Amazon at last! Even though we’ve travelled well over a thousand miles since we started this epic journey, the river has always been called something else – Apurimac, Ene, Tambo and so on. Yesterday morning we hit the confluence of two massive rivers – the Maranon and the Ucayali - and at that point the river became officially known as the Amazon. It felt like quite a big moment for our bedraggled little team. It’s taken us three months to get to this point and we’re not even in Brazil yet!
The Amazon at last
The river now is enormous, maybe a kilometre across and full of floating debris revolving slowly in giant whirlpools. The wet season is well and truly here now and the cloudscapes are extraordinary – vast storm systems climbing high into the sky, black bellies heavy with rain.
The river has changed its character now too – here it’s a great trading highway. The dugout canoes have been replaced with big cargo ships and barges. Yesterday we passed rafts of felled logs as big as football pitches floating slowly downstream with the loggers living on board in little shelters. They even had a cooking fire.
Amazon at last
We had another big moment last night (it was quite a day). The sun set behind the boat for the first time. This might not seem like a big deal, but it meant that we were heading East for the first time on the whole trip (the upper Amazon flows north towards the Equator). East means we are heading towards Brazil and the Atlantic Ocean and the mouth of the Amazon.
The crew on the Amazon river
We celebrated in some style in Iquitos. Hot showers, cold beers, red wine, pizza and Pisco Sour. It was bliss. Blish.
Iquitos is great fun. It’s an old colonial town of half a million people stuck in the middle of the jungle almost totally surrounded by the river. There’s no road access, so you can only get in by boat or plane. It’s a funky town full of dreadlocked gap-year gringos, street hawkers selling ethnic tat and promenading Peruvians. It’s got a great buzz and we blasted round town last night in a convoy of tuk-tuks filming the sights.
A street scene in Iquitos
In recent years Iquitos has become something of a centre for ayahuasca, the hallucenogenic vine that Bruce took with the Achuar in Wajint. Around here they mix the ayahuasca with another leaf that makes the visions incredibly strong and the experience potentially very profound.
While Bruce’s ceremony with the Achuar was an extraordinary spectacle (more vomiting than you’ve ever seen), he didn’t find his vision. The elders instructed him that he must find his vision on this journey so tomorrow we’re heading back into the jungle to an ayahuasca retreat.
A lovely young shaman called Percy will take Bruce on a spiritual journey. Bruce is really excited, but also quite apprehensive. Ayahuasca is powerful stuff and must be taken with respect or you can have a pretty bad time.
Exciting isn’t it?
Comments
Hi - congrats on reaching the 'official' Amazon river.
Will someone at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ think about compiling a CD of all the ethnic music and singing that Bruce and the team have encountered on all their adventures please?
Can't wait to see the new series.
Thanks
E