I got to thinking about life in the Amazon Basin...

by Paul , Saturday, March 26, 2022, 09:44 (973 days ago)

back in the day. This bit of reminiscing popped up as I was looking for something else on my hard drive.

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My folks took me down to Brazil when I was just a wee lad. We first lived near the mouth of the Amazon river in the city of Belém before moving to a frontier town 500 miles south. It was a wonderful time for us kids, growing up in a wild, beautiful part of God’s globe. The area is between two major rivers, the Araguaia on the west and the Tocantins on the east. And the jungle was kind of a mix between the Atlantic rain forest and the Amazon rain forest. We were always ready for an adventure so when I got the invite to visit a new mission work being done up in virgin territory above the Amazon I jumped at the chance. By this time the roads were in better shape and the trip north to Belém took only 12 hours. From there I caught a plane up to Manaus to save time for the coming boat ride.

Even today there are vast tracts of the Amazon basin where no white man has set foot. There are huge pieces where only the foot of the native leaves tracks, along with myriads of as yet un-catalogued species of insects, reptiles, birds and mammals. There are nameless rivers snaking their way through dense, steamy jungle. As we used to joke, in the Amazon it rains every day during the dry season - and in the wet season it rains twice as often.

From the airport I caught a cab to the waterfront where I made my way through the bustling throng, always conscious of my pockets and belongings for there are many folks with light fingers and no regard for the concept of personal property inhabiting this even more savage jungle. My friend had told me to catch a ride with Bertinho, a river boat captain he had known for years. I found Bertinho towards the upriver end of the waterfront, yelling orders to his crew as they finished loading the last of the provisions he was to take to the new mission site up river. His crew consisted of José, his eleven year old son and Alfonso, his fifteen year old nephew. My few things were quickly stowed on board and my hammock slung for the ride. After a few more adjustments and double checking of supplies and order lists Alfonso cranked up the one lung Yanmar diesel engine that powered the boat. Slowly we put-put-putted away from the bank and up the river.

“So,” I asked Bertinho, “what do you think of this new area?”

His brow furrowed slightly and he shook his head, “I don’t know, it’s a beautiful area, lots of game and I even found some gold dust in one of the streams. But do you know what the natives call the river?”

I shook my head. Communications from our friends were few and far between and my info for this new work was sketchy at best.

“We finally found a translator,” he said, “and the name this tribe uses for the river is something like ‘Rio do Bicho’ - and they throw offerings into the water to appease the spirits.”

Rio do Bicho – roughly translated “The Critter’s River”, an odd name, but so are most in this part of God’s green earth.

As we pushed our way up the Amazon I quickly was lulled into a blissful stupor by the beauty of the jungle, punctuated by flowers and announced by raucous parrots, monkeys and other denizens of the jungle. Here and there the riverbank was slashed with small holdings where folks had squatted in squalid huts to eke out a living from the poor, sandy soil. Troops of naked, pot bellied children would cease their playing to wave as we put-put-putted by.

We overnighted below a large island, tethered to a tree. We took turns standing watch through the night and I drew the last (and my favorite) shift. Bertinho shook me awake in the dark before moving quietly to his hammock to catch some more rest before the day’s travel would begin. I marveled at the beauty of the starry sky above and listened to the sound of the jungle around us. The river is vast at this point, still far above the outlet to the Atlantic. Countless rivers and streams feed into it, bringing enormous quantities of water and nutrients into this, the largest and longest river in the world. As the sun slowly approached the eastern sky the river slowly came into focus. Tendrils of vapor still rose from the surface and I saw a school of pink porpoises feeding between the island and the shore.

After a breakfast of farofada and coffee, Alfonso cranked up the Yanmar and we went put-put-putting up between the island and the shore. The water was clearer here than the main channel and the reason was soon evident when we came to the mouth of the river which would now take us roughly northeast to the new mission – still two days’ travel ahead. Here the clearings were fewer and instead of the mestizo population we’d seen on the way up from Manaus along the river we were seeing truly native huts and clearings.

The rivers are the only means for travel in this region and the river boats provide transport for goods and passengers while tiny dugouts provide personal transportation. So it was only natural for folks to hail a boat and ask for a ride, much like city folk will hail a bus. Passage was paid in goods as cash money is scarce among subsistence hunters and farmers. Fresh fruit, freshly killed game, dried fish and even balls of raw rubber were used to repay the captain for his kindness of giving folks and their belongings a lift. It was near noon when I noticed that Bertinho was watching the water behind us, a dark scowl on his face.

“What is it?” I asked.

He merely pointed to the rear and it took a minute or so before I saw the dark shadow that was behind our boat. Slowly it moved, keeping roughly the same distance behind us as we moved up against the current. I moved closer to the stern and started to lean out a bit to get a better look when I bumped against a tamborete, the four legged, rawhide covered stool typical of Brazil’s poorer abodes. The stool fell into the water and drifted beyond my grasp before I could grab it. 70 feet or so behind the boat it suddenly disappeared in huge swirl, reminiscent of a bass sucking down a popper! The shadow in the water quickly resumed its place and kept pace with us as we wended our way up the watery highway.

A couple hours later we were hailed from the western bank. A young woman wanted to accompany us up to the next village, along with her passel of children. She wasn’t more than 18 and yet already had four children and one on the way. Bertinho had José and Alfonso run the boarding plank up to the bank above us (the river being low since it was dry season) and the kids scrambled aboard, chattering like monkeys in their native tongue. Bertinho reached up to take the girl’s hand and help her aboard and she slipped, dropping the stalk of bananas that she was bringing to pay for her passage. Bertinho caught her, but the bananas quickly floated aft, beyond our reach. Alfonso ran up the board to the bank with a rope in his hand, hoping to snag the fruit - but he was too late. The bananas disappeared with the same sudden swirl in which the stool had met its fate!

José was only eleven but had spent his whole life on the river. He was excited and ready to get revenge for the theft we had suffered. Earlier in the day the boys had knocked a macaw from a branch above the river with a badogue - a cross between a bow and a slingshot that children in backwoods Brazil are very proficient in making and using. They had plucked and cleaned it and hung it in the shade awaiting a chance to get to land, build a fire and roast it. José quickly grabbed the bird’s carcass, threaded it on a hook and tossed the offering into the water. The huge shovel nose catfish that the natives call surubim can reach astonishing size in the rivers around the Amazon. The natives use hooks reminiscent of something you’d seen in “Jaws” and the “fishing line” is often a thin rope. In his haste José forgot what he was fishing for and he took a couple of wraps around his hand to give himself a better purchase to set the hook.

The bait drifted down towards the shadow which was holding in the current below the boat. Suddenly it too disappeared in a swirl! So intent were Bertinho and I in watching the proceedings that we forgot to check on José’s procedures. After all, in spite of his youth he had been hunting and fishing with his father along the rivers for his entire life. We yelled with delight when we saw the bait disappear – followed with a shout of horror when we realized that José had been drug overboard! Kids along the rivers learn to swim before they can walk so we weren’t too worried on that account, but José was quickly dragged away from the boat by the heavy line wrapped around his hand!

Helplessly we watched as he was dragged along, and then we breathed a sigh of relief when we saw his movement stop – then he started back to the boat, swimming strongly and laughing. “I taught him a lesson, Dad!” he called. Suddenly he sunk below the surface in a slight boil of water!

I barely managed to grab Bertinho, to keep him from throwing himself into the river after his son! José was his oldest, and favorite son, his companion in his travels and best fishing and hunting buddy. Being much larger than he was I managed, with difficulty, to pin him to the deck. “Bertinho! There’s nothing you can do!” I said

He ceased struggling and I let him up. He sat up and I watched warily, hoping to keep him from throwing himself overboard after his son. Alfonso was still on the bank and had seen the whole show. Suddenly he yelled, pointing downstream. There it was again, the dark shadow, our companion on the journey up the river. The water was murky from rain upstream, but we could still make out the movement of the shadow – which was nearly as long as our boat.

“Bring me that rope!” Bertinho yelled to Alfonso as he scrambled forward and frantically dug amongst the cargo. He quickly found what he was looking for, a fishing spear that had been ordered for the mission upstream. He tied the rope to the spear and ran up the board to the bank, then eased his way downstream towards where the shadow hung in the water.

These native boatmen are impressive. Mostly of mestizo origins, most of them have a large percentage of native blood in their veins. They learn to hunt and fish at an early age and their ability to use primitive weapons and tools is impressive indeed. Where a city man will see nothing they can throw a spear and bring up a fish – stuck right behind the head for a quick, clean kill.

Bertinho moved down the riverbank and I stuck to him, worried that he might have bitten off more than he could chew. Losing José was a blow, and I didn’t want to have to take the boat back down to Manaus and explain to María, Bertinho’s wife, what had happened to her husband and son. Bertinho crouched, arm back and tense. Suddenly he threw the spear and the rope slid quickly from the coil in his hand. The spear penetrated the surface of the water cleanly, with scarcely a ripple and immediately a flurry of water erupted! Bertinho ran towards a small tree and threw a couple of hitches around it, bracing himself against the weight at the end of the line. Slowly the struggle subsided and the line was taut from the weight of the creature and the pull of the current.

Slowly we hauled in the rope, Alfonso keeping the rope moving smoothly around the tree to control the slack as Bertinho and I pulled against the tremendous weight. Slowly but surely the rope came in. I was worried the spear would pull loose, but it didn’t. Soon the shadow became more distinct and the ugly head of the beast could be seen – the spear stuck firmly behind where it had broken the vertebrae as it plunged home. The creature was huge, two thirds the length of our 28 foot river boat, and of an incredible girth.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’ve never seen one before.” Bertinho replied. “I think this is why the call it “O Rio do Bicho”.

We got the front part of the beast on shore and Bertinho pulled his facão – the omnipresent machete which is found with almost every native man – and started to open the beast. I moved to his side, understanding his need to retrieve his son’s body for proper burial. We rolled the creature on its back and Bertinho carefully yet quickly made a cut from below the gills towards the tail. We each took a side and pulled, opening up the cavernous interior to the green light of the jungle.

Imagine our surprise when we saw José sitting there on the stool, eating bananas!