An invitation to the Amazon Rainforest was something I couldn’t resist.
On our first night, we stayed at Augustu’s Hotel in Altamira, south of Belem
at the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil - the only hotel in town with a
swimming pool.
While there, we watched the last day of the annual Amazon Olympics between
several Indian tribes, many of whom succumbed to heat exhaustion – this made
me feel slightly less wimpish as I dissolved into pools of heat.
Meals were enormous: at the Churrascaria Casa Nova (tel: 91 515 2964) you’d
help yourself at the ubiquitous buffet and men carrying skewers with beef,
chicken, sausages and fish would repeatedly come round to fill up your
plates.
After lunch we left Altamira and sped south along the Xingu River by motor
boat. Initially I wasn’t sure how I would be able to cope with four hours in
an open boat in the boiling heat but soon I was reminded of Henry Walter
Bates’ remark that “There is something in a tropical forest akin to the
ocean in its effects on the mind. Man feels so completely his insignificance
there, and the vastness of nature” (The Naturalist on the River
Amazons).
It was both soothing and peaceful to be on the river and conducive to thought:
“Perhaps, then, this was what travelling was, an exploration of the deserts
of my mind rather than of those surrounding me?” (Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes
Tropiques).
It was however hot. Every so often we stopped for a swim in a place that we
were assured had no crocodiles, piranhas, anacondas or sting rays – all of
which, bar the anaconda, we saw at various times. When we reached Tataquara
Lodge, on an island on the Xingu River, both owned and run by The Amazon
Rainforest Foundation, it was dusk.
We just had time to see our rooms (each with its own loo and shower) before
darkness fell. We met in the massive living area for a welcoming caipirinia,
a mixture of cachaça (sugarcane rum), lemon juice and sugar. The dining area
is in the middle and the kitchen with an open fire at the far end.
The profits from this eco-friendly lodge, which was built from wood found on
the ground and treated straw and has no electricity, go straight into the
Amazoncoop; eight Indian tribes belong to this co-op and use the lodge on
their way up and down the river. In Altamira the Co-op also has a brazil nut
oil factory, a green pharmacy and an internet provider –the profits from all
three going straight to the Indians.
Much of what we ate, including piranha, is either caught in the river or grown
on the property: “If I could sing, I would sing the banana. It has the
loveliest leaf I know … A world could not be old on which such a plant
grows” (H.M. Tomlinson, The Sea and the Jungle).
As there is zero light pollution the stars are magnificent and the only noises
are those of the jungle. However the howler-monkeys that start yowling at
dawn are as loud as the carnival in Notting Hill that I had left behind.
After one night we travelled a further five hours up the Iriri River, often
having to get out and pull the boat due to the low water, and spent the
night in Laranjal with the shy but friendly Arara (Macaw) Indians who had
only had fleeting contact with white man until the 1970s.
A Kayapo village, Kararao, is only a couple of hours down-river from Laranjal:
a fatal mistake had been made in using the Kayapo as trackers since “In
Arara mythology, the Kayapo were the incarnation of malevolent spirits who
had destroyed the primordial order of the cosmos and were sent to earth as
the tribe’s persecutors. Whites now came to be identified with the Kayapo”
(John Hemming, Die if You Must).
I had my leg painted in the traditional way by a Kayapo woman when we stopped
at Kararao on the way back, and whatever vegetable dye was used seemed to
protect me from the ‘piums’ that seemed to invade every other part of my
body.
Henry Walter Bates described these insects in The Naturalist on the River
Amazons as “a minute fly, two thirds of a line in length … It comes
forth only by day, relieving the mosquito at sunrise with the greatest
punctuality … They alight imperceptibly, and squatting close, fall at once
to work; stretching forward their long front legs, which are in constant
motion and seem to act as feelers, and then applying their short, broad
snouts to the skin. Their abdomens soon become distended and red with blood,
and then, their thirst satisfied, they slowly move off, sometimes so
stupefied with their potations that they can scarcely fly”.
Sadly in Altamira we had to leave our wonderful guide Miriam Wai Wai who had
accompanied us and translated throughout, and a day later we were back in
Belem “ … a vegetable town, a town owing its existence and prosperity to sap
and lignum, to nuts and fruits and juices” (James Hamilton-Paterson, Gerontius).
We tried manisopa a poisonous vegetable that has to be cooked for seven days
and seven nights at La Em Casa (laemcasa@laemcasa.com) with a variety of
other local dishes including roasted duck in manioc sauce and then went to
see the splendid opera house Theatro da Paz (www.theatrodapaz.pa.gov.br)
built with marble from Italy during the rubber boom and which now has
air-conditioning under the seats.
I was quite pleased to still have some bites that itched on my return to
London since it proved that I had indeed been to the jungle.
In less than two weeks I had visited remote tribes on the Xingu and Iriri
Rivers in Brazil and now back in London an air of unreality hung over the
whole experience; due to the speed of modern travel I had been to “the last
frontier on earth” and yet was suddenly back in Notting Hill.
More information: www.amazonfoundation.org
