Living in Peru : your everyday companion

By A.J. Rivera

Made it back from the Rio Amazonas Raft Race; what an adventure, this makes Survivor seem like child’s play, but packed into four intense days. Twenty-four teams compete in two categories, domestic and foreign. Claudine turned out to be thirty-two, a doctor from Zurich, Switzerland. We met at the Yellow-Rose Café. We were sitting alone on the sidewalk tables enjoying a cool morning drink when we struck up a conversation. As it is when traveling, we quickly made the decision to enter the Great River Amazon Raft Race 2007. While I took care of the registration, Claudine struck up a conversation with a tall young German girl that in many ways reminded me of my daughter. Sonja from Güttingen, Germany became our third team member of the four person balsa-raft. We needed one more person.

The following day we took a bus to meet up with the rest of the foreign team members and support crew who had left the previous day on a boat. In the town center of Nauta, the municipality held a commencement ceremony. Before the governor, mayor, and town of Nauta, I was called to help raise the Peruvian flag while the band played the national anthem. After the ceremony, I was drawn to the conversation of fast paced, slow drawl, southern belle. She spoke of having a house in Iquitos, and teaching Spanish on line for a Community College in Natchez, Mississippi.

“Do you own the “Gringa House?” I asked.

“How do you know about the Gringa House?” Puzzled she countered.

“I am A.J.” Introducing myself. “We corresponded about a room.”

“Aei. Jei.” She screamed and hugged me before I could finish. Like two old friends that had just found each other after a long separation, we quickly bonded and kept each other laughing. A little persuasion and Linda became our fourth member. With Linda at fifty-seven and me at fifty-five, we became the oldest team members to enter the 2007 race.

The web page reads as follows: “The 3 day race will start in the town of Nauta on Friday, 21st September 2007, and finish in the City of Iquitos on Sunday, 23rd September 2007. Each 4 person crew will paddle their ready built, lightweight, balsawood raft down the mighty Amazon River for 132 miles. The winning crews will show excellence in teamwork, stamina and knowledge of currents and rivers.”

We expected a “… ready built, lightweight, balsawood raft…” but what we got on a remote beach on the edge of the jungle was a rude awakening. We had to fight for eight heavy balsa logs, and strips of soga-bark. But before the bark could be used for binding the balsa-raft, the bark had to be soaked to soften and make pliable then pulled apart into strips. (There is an art to working with vines and barks.) The logs and bark was all the material that we were provided, for us to construct our raft. When we finally realized what was taking place the Peruvian teams had already selected the best wood, and since they were prepared, they brought axes, machetes, hammers, and various other tools while all we had at hand was a couple of Swiss Army knives and a bucket of North American southern charm.

The first load of lumber was delivered early in the afternoon and the Peruvian teams whittled and shaped their logs into streamlined light craft, while we waited for our logs to be delivered Linda gathered and borrowed enough clothes and gear for the trip. She had originally come along as support crew, not as a racer.

An hour before sunset, our team, Los Charros, had been provided with only one log. Claudine and I had salvaged wood for crossbeams from driftwood on the beach. Sonja was anxious to get started on the construction of the raft, and I was starting to voice my displeasure to the Peruvian organizers for their lack of organization, when finally Linda stepped in and used her Mississippi southern charm on the Amazonian boys. Within an hour a peke-peke came from across the river with eight blasa-logs for us to use, by this time Sonja had fallen asleep in one of the tents which were provided by the local Civil Defence.

After sunset, and in the mist of a thunderstorm, a muscular Iquiteño physical education teacher arrived with a machete in hand, he helped us layout the logs, and trim the wood. As he chopped groves for the crossbeams and hacked shape into the leading edge of each log, his work made it obvious he was a teacher, not a shipwright or a rivereño. A neighboring Peruvian team helped us to tie the raft together, for there are specific knots for tying with barks and vines, and also specific knots for binding the raft.

Claudine and Sonja cut a pillow in half and wrapped the halves in plastic to use as seat cushions. Linda showed up with a young Peruvian carrying lumber, nails, hammer and padding, he buillt her a raised padded seat. I used a drybag with my sleeping bag in it as a seat cushion. With bamboo and string we raised the red, white, and blue American (U.S.A) flag, and the red, white, and green flag of Mexico. Had we had a German and a Swiss flag, they would have flown proudly side by side. We named the balsa-raft, “The Mississippi Queen.”

We were the most diverse team in age and countries, and we were ready to go, except there was a slight concern, Claudine, Sonja, and Linda had never paddled a raft before. I am the team captain and my other team member is Swiss, not sure what her name is, but she looks like she is in her twenties. My other two members will be Peruvian and I will not know who they are until tomorrow. Our team name is Los Charros, and I will fly both the American and the Mexican flags since I have dual nationality. There are other U.S.A teams.

“En sus balsa,” the announcer called all the teams to get on their mark.

“Walk, don´t run. Paddle as if you were using your muscles to walk not run. Paddle consistently. Remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare.” That was my advice to the team on the beach minutes before we put-in into the muddy waters of the Amazon River.

“Listos,” the megaphone rasped a call to get set.

You can imagine what happened when we, with the help of six men, pushed off with our "light” balsa-raft.

At the sound of “LLA,” go. All of the rafts shot away, leaving us behind spinning in the water.

All night it had rained. Our tent was flooded and most of our cloths were wet, the river carried extra sediment and was littered with rain-washed debris. The sky was dark, and continues to drop rain on us as we set of. The overcast sky was a hidden blessing, for it kept the scorching sun from us that first day, allowing us to concentrate on technique.

The first hour we watched as the rafts disappear into the distance while we learned to use the rough cut and heavy paddles we were provided. Claudine discovered the carbon fiber paddle that I had with me, and Linda adopted the other half of the kayak paddle. Within two hours, the rafts ahead of use were no longer getting smaller and an hour later we passed our first competing team. As we passed the struggling team, led an Australian sporting dreadlocks, from my right I heard from Linda, like that of a toddler alone at play, an innocent giggle of joy.

We knew we could never compete with the semi-professional team with two Canadians, a Mexican, and a German. In fact we expected to come in last, the other teams of young healthy men and women did not expect any competition from us, so later, as they watched us pass them, they were flabbergasted. They would chase after us and were only demoralized them when we stopped for smoking breaks. The girls were competitive to the core.

“How do you do it?” the team being passed would yell out at us.

Linda would respond by saying, “I have to go pee, so I am paddling like mad.”

Or we would tell them that Sonja, the twenty-five year old, was PMSing and was in a rage. When asked if we knew how much farther, Claudine was sure to double the time and add some. In the opposing team, upon hearing the exaggerated estimates, you could hear in tone of their voice and see in their body language, their discouragement. We would pull away in the current, paddling as if on a picnic, hiding our pains and sore muscles.

“Paddle softly. Do not push yourselves. We are in a marathon not a sprint. Pace yourselves.” My team mates must have been sick of hearing me repeating these words to them. But I could see it was difficult for them not to push hard to pass the next raft or hold back and watch as a raft temporarily passed us.

“The winning crews will show excellence in teamwork, stamina and knowledge of currents and rivers.”
The ladies had counted on my river experience and knowledge to lead them through the race. This was not a football size boya made of cut lumber on its way to the mill, rather a small balsa-raft, but what I had learned from the boya's river guide about reading the current and my experience in kayaking the Amazon River gave us an advantage.

As we proceeded, people would yell out giving us advice to move this way or that way. We would hold fast to our course. I showed the ladies how to identify the whirlpools hidden underwater that slowed the raft, to look for the current in the wind blown waves, and to read signs marked by flotsam. The current became our ally. When the other teams used muscle to pull them through the soft spots, we let the current carry us around. When the teams hugged the coast full of whirling water, we floated past in the smooth mid-channel flow. When the stream was swift, we took breaks; Sonja swam in the river and ate constantly like most vegetarians I have known, Claudine and Linda smoked, while I stretched my sore muscles.

That night the first team dropped out of the race, it was a domestic national team. We celebrated in the small community where we slept the first night. We had done better than anyone, including ourselves, had expected. By the end of the first day we were fifth of the ten competing foreign teams.

Day 2.
The Faint of Heart Need not Apply!!!

"The Great River Amazon Raft Race 2007 (The Faint of Heart Need not Apply!!)" The first line of the Amazon Rafting Club’s web page says it all, but most participants overlooked it until directed to it by Mike Collis, the event promoter, usually in a response to moans and groans.

On the second day, I went into the support boat looking for Linda, and to buy a cup of coffee, for none could be found in the remote native community where we spent the night amongst water buffalo. I found Linda in a bunkbed, dazed and in pain. The strain of paddling was in her muscles but showed in her face. She wanted to continue but her body wanted to surrender--she was tottering and trotting. I had led my teammates into a competition without any training, where even the trained teams were feeling the pain, and already one complete team had succumbed and several other individuals from different teams were unable to continue into the second day.

The minute we left Iquitos, the hardships began, at first annoying, then irritating, finally maddening. Everyone expects to endure the physical hardships of rowing and unconventional primitive crafts without any comforts to speak of. But many of the foreign participants were set back by the general disorganization that is typical of emerging cultures.

Linda thanked me for coming to get her that morning and for cheering her on. She had been the lucky one, for she had slept in a bed on the support boat. Sonja and Claudine slept at the football field in a tent we borrowed, and I slept in a hammock in an empty building. Most of the foreign teams slept on the boat and the Peruvians in the community on the cement and wood floors under mosquito netting.

For breakfast we had rice porridge, but the Peruvian name for it was more descriptive, meja de arroz, rice crumbs. Boiled rice mixed with condensed milk may satisfy the need for something warm in the morning, but did nothing for our pallets and held little for nourishment.

The first day we learned to steer the log raft by using a paddle as a rudder. The raft would not track a straight line at all. The crooked logs dipped into the water at odd spots and if any one of us stopped paddling the raft would spin. We did not paddle synchronized with three new paddlers. I felt it would be better if each person paddled at their own pace and capability, so I tried to absorb the difference in order to keep us on course. By the end of the first day everyone had blisters on their hands, sore muscles, and aching bones. Claudine, our resident doctor took a survey of what muscle hurt the most. Sonja-- lower back, Linda—shoulder, Claudine--deltoids muscle, and me--gluteus maximus.

To be continued...

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