Wet Welcoming
- 11 Jan 08, 02:03 PM
Posted from:River Maranon between Yurimaguas and San Lorenzo
My first day on the river started well enough. As we clambered onto our 25 foot aluminium boat, my now new chums gallantly offered me the front seat. How thoughtful - as a sound recordist I rather appreciated being furthest away from the outboard motor. I settled in with my book and camera, only vaguely aware of the muffled sounds of bag shuffling and zip fasteners behind me. As the banks of the Maranon began to glide effortlessly past me, I turned round to share this moment with my colleagues. Having nested into a carefully arranged pile of all available soft bags, they were fast asleep. Well it was 5.30 in the morning and the dawn was breaking. Ah, bless them, I thought and returned to enjoy the rest of the journey.
The team asleep on the boat
Now during the rainy season in Peru, it's not rocket science to assume that at some stage, in the rain forest, it will indeed rain, and when it does, the rain is likely to be quite heavy. Something must feed the largest river system on the planet. I don't know why I didn't twig that.
The storm seemed to appear from nowhere. Travelling at 20 knots set into motion a chain of events that were beyond my control. True, our boat did have a canvas roof stretched across a tubular frame, but our forward motion shifted the dry bit back by a few metres, back past me in fact, to where my colleagues were still sleeping soundly. Our boatman screamed above the noise for me to pull back a plastic cover from the bow of the boat, and leaning forward into the sheer force of nature, I managed to haul back the sheeting over me and the film equipment. Wet through, I was now confined to a blue translucent world that soon, without the cooling effect of passing air, became a very humid one, a world I also couldn鈥檛 help but notice I shared with the extremely well travelled feet of my presumably still sleeping, still resting, comfortably tucked up fellow crew members.
One other fact was also impossible to ignore. Water is heavy. Forced to lie between the harder of our equipment cases, my confined space below deck happened to be under its lowest point, and pretty soon a shallow lake had formed directly above me. As our boat ploughed on through the storm whipped surface of the river, any upward motion of our hull forced me to meet head on this body of water that, through its own inertia, felt less inclined to move as quickly as I was. Still, only another 300 km to go and, cut off from the outside world, I had no choice but to sit this one out.
With time to think, I began to realise two very important things. I now know what it must feel like to lie under a very popular children鈥檚 paddling pool on a hot, humid summer鈥檚 day, with a number of strong cheeses for company. More importantly, I know that the crew I have to work with for the next two months aren鈥檛 such nice people after all.
It wasn鈥檛 all doom and gloom though. At some point, rolling around in the bilge waters of this underworld, I found a can of six frankfurters that must have slipped from the store bag. I was hungry and with an indeterminate amount of time to spare, I set to work on the tin with my trusty penknife. Even reading the declared ingredients of 43% mechanically recovered pork tissue and 37% pork blood plasma failed to deter me from my task and pretty soon I had consumed the lot. Given the circumstances, it was one of life鈥檚 finer breakfasts. Should I have shared them? Well, it is a jungle out there, and maybe one day, my conscience will get the better of me. But for the time being, I鈥檓 happy with the decision I made. After all, I wouldn鈥檛 have wanted to wake them now, would I?
Comments