Canoe

It belonged to some Ticuna Indians and we bought it from them during
one of our forays in between taking the tours out.

Carlos had got a job following the Lima debacle with Nelly Negusa, who
had a tourist agency specialising in Amazon Tours. His language talents
held him in good stead and I used to join him as his unpaid
assistant.

We would escort groups of about 6, mostly Americans or Germans, many of
them working in Lima or Ecuador. We showed them jungle life from the
safety of a motor cruiser up various minor tributaries of the
Amazon.

Some of it was farcical. We used to do a ritual trip to visit a Yagua
Indian Village which meant a long days boat ride followed by a visit to
the village, then a night in a nearby jungle lodge and return the next
day to Iquitos. About a mile from the village and not within sight of
it, Carols would pull the boat over to the side. He demonstrated the
secret of the Amazon jungle drum (no such thing of course other than in
the moves about Africa). There is an enormous and very common tree
which has very large and nearly hollow roots at its base, they are
triangle shaped and when beaten vigorously, make a loud drum like
sound.

This was our signal to the village to change out of their jeans and
t-shirts, put away their radios, hide the washing and chain up the
dogs. Change into the traditional dress and be ready on the edge of the
river to do an invented ritual dance. So the boat party would round the
bend and we would see the village in full Amazon Indian mode. 'Look',
we would cry, 'we are very lucky, this is almost unknown! The Yagua are
doing a ritual hunting dance. Now you can see how they myth of the
Amazon female warrior came into being' and from a distance the straw
head dress looked like long blonde hair (what crap!)

Even a dead badger could have seen through that lot, but none of the
tourists ever did, but then they didn't want to! I felt guilty of
course, 20 years of Scottish Presbyterian guilt education wouldn?t let
me get away with such deception cleanly.

The fun was immense, the Indians enjoyed the weekly pantomime and got
paid for putting up the show and the tourists certainly enjoyed it and
the night in the jungle lodge with hammock, mosquito nets and the
simmering sounds of the jungle through the night was very exciting when
fuelled by an evening on Peruvian aguardiente (firewater) and a jungle
meal of mysteries meats brought to us by the Yagua (actually a mixture
of beef and port bits from the Iquitos supermarket).

I've lost touch with Carlos over the years. I've tried to find him in
Australia and Argentina. I would like to go back with him to that
Ticuna village from where we bought the canoe, but who knows?