Early in the morning (think 5?) in Yurimaguas, we awoke and, for lack of anything else to do, walked to the area around the plaza to see if there was a market and if we could get cash, bug repellent, and breakfast. There was indeed a market, and it was a more “authentic” experience than most we had been to in Asia, if by authentic you mean that were the only gringos there, no English was spoken, and people looked a little wary. The Professor had a tasty little sandwich and we each got a fresh grapefruit juice (yum) but there was no coffee readily apparent. So after getting cash and repellent, we returned to our hotel.

It had a nice dining room with big windows on the second floor overlooking the Huallaga River, and we enjoyed some coffee. Our neighbors at the next table were fellow Americans, an evangelical biker gang if you can believe it. “Riding for the Son” was on the backs of their jackets, and they had the kind of deep voices of men from manly states, Wyoming or Nevada or Idaho, where the air is clear and there’s room to think and all that. Voices with an echo, that you can imagine telling cowboy tales during a pause while you are out fixing fences together. Anyway, it made me homesick, but they didn’t strike up a conversation with us, and we didn’t strike one up with them.

We met up with our tour company at 7 ish, and we took a mototaxi down to the boat dock. It was a dirty, noisy, messy place and we were swarmed by people telling us which boat to board, and also to try to secure us as clients I am sure. I told them in Spanish that we were waiting for the man I will call Jefe, the company’s owner, and they immediately backed off and told us he was just behind us on his own motorcycle.

Jefe is just a touch older than us, a middle-aged father with a round head and a pleasant smile. He boarded the bus with us and rode with us all the way to Lagunas, which is a full day’s boat ride – the boat left at 9 a.m. and arrived at 7 p.m. Along the way, we talked a good deal, and he pointed out things to us along the riverbank – garsas, which are egrets, for example. When we boarded, rather than set us up in the giant common area in the middle of the boat, he quickly hustled us up to the smaller area up a short ladder – above the engine, kitchen and bathroom. Open-frame walls at the front and back of the little cabin made it not too unpleasant despite the engine notice and smell. This was not a special or private cabin, as we three were some of about 7 hammocks in the place, but its size kept it from being as overwhelming as the main deck, and we felt more comfortable using electronics.

I came to like Jefe a fair bit as the ride continued. He had been guiding for some 15 years before he started his company some three years ago, at around the time his daughter was born. We all alternated talking and napping in our hammocks, swaying as the boat drifted downriver. At lunchtime, we were served rice and carrots and yucca and a little bit of chicken, the latter from more rubbery parts than I typically eat.

I also spoke with another passenger, an hombre de comercios, who makes a living buying things in bigger cities, and bringing them on the boat downriver to sell in Lagunas. He had a lot of toilet paper, and bags of rice, and brooms. It reminded me, for the second time that day, of the old west.

Eventually we arrived in Lagunas, and we walked down a wooden plank, into some muddy water, and up onto the shore. Jefe booked us into a cheap but serviceable hotel, and we went out with him and his wife for chicken and plantains at a chicken restaurant.

And then we turned in, and slept in our last real bed for a week.

– The Private Eye