Working in the field brings a lot of adventures, especially because Alma makes an effort to reach isolated communities where no one else is willing to work.
One time I was almost swept away by a rain-charged glacial river on my motorcycle at 4,000 meters above sea level, later having to spend the frigid night in borrowed clothing from a (much shorter than me) friend in the community I was driving to. On another occasion I found myself responsible for guiding a group of pack horses and donkeys on a 6 hour hike through the mountains. That one ended in me stupidly offering up my solar powered lantern to provide light and added hours to my welcome party when all I wanted to do was sleep (I don’t regret it in hindsight, but at the moment I hated myself)! There was also a night that I found myself leaning over the bow of a small boat with a flashlight on the Maranon River in the Amazon because a community assembly went too long and the sun went down half way on the trip back to port. I was in charge of sending up the warning for oncoming driftwood and sunken trees.
My most recent adventure, however, may top them all.
I recently visited the Peruvian Amazon again to begin setting up projects for 2016. One of the three communities I visited along the Ucayali River, Puerto Miguel, is a common stop for a colectivo boat that picks up and drops off passengers at predetermined stops along the Maranon and Ucayali Rivers. Unfortunately, the colectivo had been hired out by a family visiting relatives in Puerto Miguel the day I planned to travel there with our new Loreto Project Coordinator, Raquel. Fortunately, I was able to talk the helmsman into taking us along. We arrived at Puerto Miguel without incident and the family instructed the helmsman to pick them up at 5pm. He agreed and we told him that if we were going to return, we would be waiting with the family. I took his cell phone number just in case.
After a long but productive day of three community assemblies, we rushed to return to the meeting point by 5pm. We just made it and were relieved to see that the 15 family members were still there, waiting for the boat. Then we all waited. And waited. Luckily, we had his phone number. Unluckily, there is no cell phone service in Puerto Miguel.
5pm turned to 5:30, 6, and it was around 6:30 that we all noticed the wall of black storm clouds approaching us. Some were still more focused on finding the helmsman and drowning him in the river than on the coming storm when the sky opened up and made everyone pay attention. We ran to the family’s aunt’s house to wait out the storm, the heavy wind and rain removing any sense of obligation to ask if we could join them.
By around 8:30 the family was able to convince their cousin to go into the pitch black storm and search for a boat to take us back. At 9:30 we saw a flashlight coming down the small path through the jungle to the house with news of a boat to take us the three hours back to the port town of Nauta – from where we could get on a van for the two hour drive back to the city of Iquitos. The catch: the boat had no roof and only a 5 horsepower engine to bring us back against the now surging current. The solution: a long roll of industrial plastic we would collectively smother ourselves with in order to stay dry.
Six family members decided that they now lived permanently in Puerto Miguel, and the remaining 11 of us – made up of 9 family members, Raquel, myself, the boat owner, and his wife- headed out into the night to board the boat. I was unhappy about the rain, but pleased that the owner’s wife and not I would be on leaning-over-the-bow-with-a-flashlight duty.
We boarded the much smaller boat and proceeded to smother ourselves with the industrial plastic sheet as planned. The hull of the boat was at about water-level due to the weight. I kept a breathing hole open with my left hand, but I wondered how we would handle a three hour trip in a small boat on the big river with water sloshing around our feet and our heads bent between our knees under a the stifling plastic. It was hot, uncomfortable, and pitch black because we couldn’t have any light under the plastic as it would blind the boat owner who was navigating by flashlight. We advanced slowly along the river in that position for about 45 minutes.
Finally, someone broke the silence by yelling out that it had stopped raining. I stuck my head out of my air hole to confirm and quickly pulled the plastic off from over me as the others did the same. We all breathed fresh air greedily and checked out our surroundings for the first time.
Cloud cover made the night extra dark, but the large lighting bugs throughout the trees walling off the shoreline made the jungle look as if it was about to explode from a build-up of static electricity. The wet, wooden planks that kept us from sitting in the sloshing water were uncomfortable but the tranquility of moving along the winding river deep in the night after the storm made it all worth it. I knew I was going to have a story to tell once the rain started pouring back in Puerto Miguel, but I didn’t expect such a beautiful ending.
We reached Nauta at 1:30am, after being in the boat for four hours.
-Ian
