Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Cesar Klauer Hidalgo

Once you come down the plane, you can feel a vapoury hand caress your face, go down your neck, get inside your shirt and suck out the fluids in your body. From your temples, a salty rain of sweat forms rivers destined to wet your clothes or dry out on the floor. You look around and through the wide windows you see the beautiful green. You are in the jungle. Welcome to Iquitos.

The first thing you need to do when booking a hotel room is make sure they have air conditioning. I found one on the internet and made the reservation for me and my colleague (we were sent by the company). I also recommended the place to my brother-in-law who coincidentally was going to be on business in the city too. A bad luck ghost had resolved to show me its power: I found that the A/C in my room did not work, to be exact it did work but made a clanking noise, like the engine of an old truck. If I turned the thing off, I became a soup. If I turned it on, I could not sleep. The next day, I was so tired that all I wanted was to sit down, pour a freezing beer down my dusty throat and let the steamy air wrap me up.

After work (my brother-in-law had arrived already) the three of us went to the Malecón overlooking the mighty Amazon river. What we saw can´t be described in words, not even shown in photos: you have to see it for yourself. All I can say is, my heart stopped, my mouth opened wide, my breath froze and my eyes got wet –and not with sweat. Is there anything prettier? The answer depends on you but I know what you will say.

Then, we noticed that somebody had had a great idea and built a giant frame in the middle of the sidewalk. What´s this? At first we did not get it, A frame without picture? But then we realized that the empty space inside it was not empty at all: it was full of life, beauty, and peace: your own canvas of the jungle. Next, we spent a long time admiring the handcrafts offered on colourful mats the floor and on foot by the locals. We visited an intricate market made of wooden platforms supported on long poles stuck in the riverbed. We bought marvelous souvenirs at incredible prices, including a smiling piranha and a warrior spear. Then we sat at the tables outside one of the little bars in the Malecón and admired the sun set through the giant frame. A rainbow of reds, browns, yellows, oranges. All in motion. All touching every fiber of your body. All making your soul thank nature for this miracle.

The next day, my brother-in-law had to come back to gray Lima and its absent blue sky. We stayed one more day and decided to take a tour of the river. The little boat almost tipped when my friend sat inside. Happily for me –I can´t swim– he was petrified either by the thrill of the trip or the fear of falling. We sailed through the brown waters to a Bora village and danced with them. We also gave them some money. Then we stopped at a clearing off the shore.

The boatman promised a “nice thing.” What is it? I wondered loudly while my friend sweated either by the prospect of being mugged, the heat or the mere fact that we had to climb kilometric stairs to get to the place among tall trees that the boatman was now pointing with his dirty, black-nailed finger: There! His voice was creepy. Let´s go, I looked at him, jumped out and started to go up. The stairs were not kilometric (that was just a figure of speech to make the story more thrilling) so we got there in no time at all. The squeaks of birds of all kinds reverberated wildly in our ears. The aroma of the wet swampy ground invaded our noses. The brightness of the sun stabbed the clearing we were standing in, formed bars of gold with a hazy background, profiled the jungle in alternate dark and incandescent tree barks. Swirling fumes escaped from the cracks in the ground and stained the view.

Suddenly, another voice –creepier– came from behind us. The boatman was accompanied by a shabby looking guy who had asked us if we wanted to see the snake. What snake? I have one here, he pointed at a piece of wood on the floor. The shabby looking guy kicked the wooden slid open and revealed a snake pit, a dark hole. Then he took a long stick with a hook in one end and put it in. When he pulled back the stick, it was holding a boa snake. It was fat and greeninsh (everything is green in the jungle). Its head moved about looking at each one of us in the eyes. A Basilisk like in Harry Potter? We did not turn to stone, but almost. He asked us to hold it: my friend did not think it was such a good idea and stepped back. I did not. The reptile was longer than I had reckoned. It curved around my arm first, then crept towards my shoulder and finally ringed itself around my shaking neck.

I must have looked really frightened: the shabby looking guy took pity on me. He caught the snake as if carrying a puppy –he even spoke to it quietly, I thought– and threw it back in its pit. How about a sloth? He walked past us towards a tree with a joking grin of contempt on his face. A sloth? Yes, a sloth. This is a kind of bear or monkey or whatever, that is known for its slowliness. He said it takes him 4 minutes to move one meter. What we saw confirms it. A couple of dark deep eyes stared at us. If I hadn´t been there in person, I would have thought I was looking at a sculpture. We were hypnotized, perplexed, but then the creepier voice became a filthy hand holding a rum bottle with half the label peeled off and covered with a cork.

A glass stuck to the fingers of the other: A little drink? My friend turned his face away and pretended to enjoy the river view, but I stoically accepted the offer (after a snake had almost choked me to death in the middle of the jungle, I needed anything badly). The guy seemed surprised but did not say a word. He bit the cork and took it off. The liquid inside it was amber in colour and attractively shiny. If honey were transparent, this would be it. I examined the beverage while the guy held the bottle in front of my eyes: it did not have anything strange in it. I had expected a fruit, a piece of wood, a spider, a salamander, a viper skin, anything, but it was clean. Now I had no pretext: down with the shady liquid. Cheers! It was not bad, strong, but edible. What should I have worried? They fix these things in an aguardiente brew; that is all. And I didn´t feel sick that evening.

We finished the trip and went back to town. The adventure had paid off: we danced with the Boras, I touched a boa (or the boa touched me?), we looked at the sloth and I drank a strange jungle beverage.

For more on Cesar Klauer go to his website Cesar Klauer Blog.