by Lydia Laube
9 Jungle juice
Motorbike taxi-ing to the Amazonia Hotel I found it all in darkness. I knocked on the massive, ancient wooden door until finally a light showed and a large, rumpled but friendly man gave me access to a bed, bless him. Badly needing a shower first I asked if there was hot water. ‘No, aqua naturalle!’ I didn’t care. I fell on the bed and slept for hours. Today was Sunday the sixth of August and this was National Day in Bolivia. I heard church bells as I went to sleep.
The Amazonia Hotel, a stone, twostorey building of obvious great age, cost forty bolivianos per night. Lots of wood had been used in its construction. The lofty ceilings were all polished wooden planks and the walls were panelled to chest height. The entrance doors were like those of a fortress, great solid old barricades secured by padlocks. I saw no other type of lock in this town. The floors were lovely parquetry or ceramic tiles. Set into the tessellated yellow brown and green floor tiles of the entrance-lobby-cum-sitting room was one continuous plank, without joins, that must have been twelve metres long. It started at the front door and passed through into the kitchen to disappear under a 1920s’ dresser. It was possibly mahogany and there were signs of wear in its middle. Although I puzzled over it I could not work out its use. The hotel owner, a laid-back man who had a Spanish look, had a great job, as two young Indian girls did all the work. He unselfconsciously wore a torn, creased shirt and had three-day old stubble on his face, but he was very kind to me.
My room boasted an overhead fan with only one speed – noisy – and a feebly inadequate fluoro light. The wooden plank door into the swampy bathroom was fastened by a plastic bag twisted to make a loop over a long nail and the shower rose was suffering from third-degree rust. The windows and the door panels had no glass, just fly screens. There were two huge double beds, an open rack for my clothes and a hideously incongruous, triple-seated brown vinyl couch. A wide verandah outside kept the big room cool. Palm trees and bushes grew in the courtyard and around the outdoor sitting area and somewhere in them lurked a pet parrot who was up early and very verbose. This was not a tourist town and I could not find a laundry, so I washed my filthy clothes outside in the yard sink.
Near the main square I had a great lunch of the famous Beni beef – in the form of barbecued shaslicks – with rice and lovely fresh apple juice. This was the first decent pile of meat I’d had since the Atlanta. The town was sleeping in the hot afternoon, so I went back to bed until evening when a smashing rainstorm came to cool things down.
Taking a walk at five o’clock all the people I passed greeted me with ‘buenos tarde’. One small boy had a monkey on his shoulder and there were the now expected legion of dogs. The two main streets were brick-paved or cobbled and the other streets were dirt. The footpaths went crazily up and down over breaks, holes, deep ditches and open drains, lethal at night when the streets were unlit. Shops were very basic, but the streets were reasonably clean, helped no doubt by the pouring rain that soon had them awash. Boards placed conveniently over the deepest drains and gutters enabled them to be negotiated without drowning, but I still got very wet. (I don’t mind this as long as it is not cold.) The market displayed the usual array of goods in a big covered shed. Near the hotel I passed a large second-hand-clothes shop and wondered where all the stock came from. Most people looked as though they were wearing their old clothes – as did I. The rain washed away the band and the celebrations for National Day were a total fizz. Shame. All that was left in the plaza was a lot of rubbish and a damp, forlorn seller of fairy floss.
Riberteralta is on banks of the River Beni near the confluence of the Madre de Dios. After the rubber boom collapsed around 1914 it resorted to its current mainstay of growing, producing and exporting oil from Brazil nuts. My guide book said that Riberteralta is ‘paralysingly hot with a contaminated water supply and deadly open sewers’. The town’s plaza was enormous and in its centre was a rotunda surrounded by gardens and seats under large trees that were neatly clipped into dense umbrella shapes. The edges of the square were colonnaded, or shaded by the verandahs of stone buildings, none of which were grand – indeed, some were rather tatty. The few cafes had their seating outside on the footpath. Nothing was fancy. The cathedral that fronted the plaza was a massive, new-looking pile of reddish brick, not at all conventional in style. When I looked inside at seven in the evening it was packed with worshippers. The pews all faced the altar in a fan shape and on one side was an almost open confessional – a pretty public place to be airing your sins and negligences.
Away from the square the buildings were mostly basic wood or clapboard and had divided swing doors that opened directly onto the street. The top half of each door was often open and I could see what family life was like inside. There seemed to be only the bare necessities – a bed, a table, a cot.
At the Social Club I waited an hour for some picante macho but when it arrived it was very good. I also had some delicious juice of unknown aetiology. The club was an attractive building outside but inside it was a monstrous, empty stone place with high ceilings, arches and columns and pale green walls. There were fancy metal chandeliers with glass shades, ceiling fans, and lots of white-cloth-topped tables with red artificial rose buds in glass vases. The kitchen was so far away I couldn’t smell any cooking, which had me worried when my dinner took so long. And I had all this echoing emptiness completely to myself. Lunch seemed to be still the focus of the social scene.
Riberteralta traffic was motorbike or scooter, on which it was pleasant to ride pillion in a cool breeze. Discovering that there are no buses that travel further north, the next morning I went to a share taxi stand on the edge of town to negotiate a ride to the Brazilian border. After I had arranged to be collected at my hotel at twelve, I had a sumptuous breakfast of pawpaw juice in a milkshake, coffee, real French bread, two eggs and chicken salad – all for the usual five bolivianos. Then I tried to change some money and found that both banks were closed, possibly because of the holiday or just out of pure cussedness. I was saved by the hotel proprietor who sent one of his girls off to a moneychanger for me.
The taxi came for me three quarters of an hour late. The driver, who had a round jolly face, helped me with my bags and made the hundred kilometre trip in half the time that the book had alleged the mythical bus took. The beat-up old car made horrible noises and I never thought it would make the distance, but it zipped along over the dirt road at eighty kilometres per hour most of the time. This got exciting at corners but Jolly Face was a good driver. Soon after leaving Riberteralta we crossed a bridge over the wide river where an entire village was in the water washing clothes, pots, pans, kids and themselves. Long lines of poles supported by posts were festooned with dripping clothing. It was a washing-fest extraordinaire. But it was Monday!
The country we passed through was jungle so dense I couldn’t see a metre past the side of the road. There was only a very occasional clearing occupied by a lone house or a tiny village. The houses were made of white-painted adobe or wooden sticks, with thatched roofs. We crossed another river, this time on a punt that was pushed by a canoe with a twenty-five horsepower Yamaha outboard. No fee was charged for this. At times there were roadworks and bridges in progress along the road. And once a man on horseback wielding a big, business-like whip chased a three-coloured – white, brown and black – bull down the road. Later I saw cleared and burned ground and herds of cows, mostly skinny white brahmins.
10 Across the river
to Brazil
Guayaramerin, the terminus for the road from Riberteralta, is a small, dusty settlement with a frontier atmosphere. Situated on the alligator-infested Rio Mamore, opposite the Brazilian town of Guajara Mirim, it is a river port and, due to the impassable rapids further on, the end of the line for transport along the Mamore. It is also a rail town where the railway never arrived. The line was planned to transport rubber during the boom days by connecting Riberteralta to Porto Velho in Brazil and thence to Manaus, the Amazon and the Atlantic. The 364-kilom
etre line from Santo Antonio to Riberteralta, completed in 1912, cost six thousand lives thanks to malaria, yellow fever, gunfights and accidents. But the line to Porto Velho was never finished and no trains ever came. The world price of rubber plummeted and the railway became a white elephant while it was still under construction. Today the road goes across the railway bridges, but the railway line is used only occasionally for short tourist trips from Porto Velho.
My taxi driver helped me find a hotel, took my bags in and shook hands before departing. Everyone seemed happy to see you in Bolivia. A nice girl showed me a room that cost fifty bolivianos, sixteen Australian dollars. The hotel entrance was merely a corridor next to the pizza shop in the main square. The corridor led to a narrow garden with two rows of tile-roofed, stucco rooms either side of it. Guayaramerin was hot and there was no breeze, but my room had a good fan and was comfortable. The bathroom, however, was a fine example of DIY electrocution, with exposed wires hanging out from where the hot water switch had been. I presumed from this that there was no chance of a warm shower.
Lunching on terrible tough meat at a table on the footpath in the plaza, I took my Japanese lacquer fan from my bag to try to combat the heat. This fan has had a hard life and was partly broken. The cafe owner, lovely lady, saw this, went into the nether regions of her shop and, returning with a hot glue gun, fixed it. And she did this even after I had interrupted the siesta she had been enjoying on a mat on the floor behind the counter while her assistant minded the empty shop. The plaza was bigger and smarter than Riberteralta’s and it was graced with many yellow flowering trees and ungraced by many cruising motorbikes ridden by girls and boys.
Guayaramerin was still celebrating National Day and the holiday parade started at half past six that evening. Unfortunately that meant that it was mostly too dark to see what was happening, but days were too hot for such strenuous celebrations. Groups dressed in the colourful traditional costumes of different Indian tribes danced exuberantly around the square to the music of brass bands. To my surprise I saw that they were still at it at eight the next morning, albeit looking more than a little frazzled and some of them drunk, or high on coca. Even when I left Guayaramerin at eleven there was lots of partying going on.
I ate dinner at another outdoor cafe on the plaza and continued to watch the parade. A man at the next table drank his coffee, poured down a glassful of a vicious-looking green concoction and soon after commenced an animated conversation with the empty chair opposite him. I wish I’d known how to say ‘I’ll have what he’s having’.
In the morning I followed the road that leads from the plaza down to the riverfront and port offices. Atop high, wide stone steps there was a spacious area that housed a small cafe and several moneychangers who were seated at wooden desks. I had an excellent breakfast here for a few bolivianos then, at the port captain’s office, made enquiries about a boat to Porto Velho. A sailor in a white uniform took me to the ticket office and showed me how to get to Porto Velho. This operation did not, darn it, entail the use of a boat except the river ferry that crossed from here to Brazil.
I transported myself and bags back to the waterfront with the local taxi system, a three-wheeled motorbike with a seat tacked on the rear. Many ferries, which were really only glorified canoes with a cover on top, lined the bottom of the steps waiting to fill with passengers who wanted to cross the wide river to Brazil. Other canoes constantly criss-crossed the water ferrying freight – including contraband, I was told.
A policeman took me to immigration to get my passport stamped. I’d never have found it alone. I don’t think they expect a lot of foreigners. You could cross over and back without papers but if you were continuing on a visa was necessary. On the Brazil side I took a taxi – a car no less – to that country’s immigration office and continued on to a hotel. It was strange to go from one side of the river to the other and find that everyone now spoke Portuguese.
So here I was in Brazil, the fifth-largest country in the world. It received its name from the hardwood that was its first export. Although Chris Columbus gets the kudos for inventing South America, he really had made a giant boo boo and thought he was in India. He only set foot on South America on his third voyage, in 1498, when he reached the mouth of the Oronoco in what is now Venezuela. Adventurers, pirates and crooks have followed him, and so have I. Brazil, which has taken immigrants from all over the world, won a bloodless independence from Portugal in 1822.
I’d found a decent room that was quite cheap. It had airconditioning, hot water and the first shower screen that I had seen in a long time. And just because I had a shower screen and didn’t really need it, I had the item I’d longed for – a bath mat. It was a limp dish-rag of a thing but it was for real.
After the boisterous gaiety of Bolivia, the Brazil side was deathly quiet. There was no fiesta here. The streets were deserted and by siesta time – one o’clock – everything was shut. I wondered if the locals had closed the town and run away to hide when they saw me coming. For lunch I tried the only cafe I could find open, a pay-by-the-kilo place. Its sign said ‘Lanchonette’, which wasn’t too hard to work out. You helped yourself and then your plate was weighed – what a great idea. There was a good selection of dishes and a big feed could be had for five Australian dollars.
Later I sat by the riverbank waiting for the cool of evening to arrive. Boy, it was hot, humid and overcast, but it did not rain. I could not find a place to change some money. The bank refused to perform this service but a helpful teller came out from behind her cage to show me where the moneychanger hid out.
I ate dinner in a restaurant alleged to be airconditioned but this luxury had been turned so low it was cooler outside. Still, I had a great fish meal with an enormous selection of side dishes. I realised that I had ordered a two-person meal – that’s the way most come in Brazil. A doggy bag was needed.
I found the internet office. The line was out of order but I met Jose Luiz there. A Brazilian who spoke English, he arranged to meet me the next morning and take me for a boat trip. Dead tired, I was asleep by nine o’clock. Next morning a good self-service breakfast was available in a neat dining area of the hotel. Included in the room price it offered crisp rolls, cheese, ham, juice and a pot of coffee, unfortunately heavily pre-sweetened.
I finally found the elusive anaconda the guide in Rurre had told me about. He had said that it was in the zoo in Riberteralta. In Riberteralta they had said it was in Guayaramerin and in Guayaramerin they said Guajara Mirim. Everywhere I had asked, the zoo was supposedly in the next town. The anaconda was actually in this town, but it was in the museum not a zoo, and it was stuffed. Well and truly. But it was bloody big! Seven metres long at least and a tree trunk around, it stretched the length of the main salon. Other museum delights included such delicacies as a one-headed, two-bodied piglet in a glass jar and photographs of an Indian attack on the town in the 1960s. The museum was the wonderful old revamped railway station of Guajara Mirim, outside which stood two beautifully restored steam trains.
At last I discovered, after being given directions many times, that the moneychanger lurked behind an unmarked door in a side street. I knocked and the door was opened a crack by a man who let me in, but stayed to keep guard downstairs while I climbed some seedy stairs. A great place for a mugging, I was thinking, as I approached the hole in a wall through which the money exchange took place. Afterward, the man downstairs unlocked the door and let me out.
To meet John Luiz I did as I was told – sent him a message via the cashier at the ferry ticket office. After I waited three quarters of an hour, he appeared. He hadn’t received the message but was just passing. We took off in one of the covered ferries with its driver and chugged up the Mamore River until it met the Beni. A lodge was being built here. It looked an abomination to me. Huge expanses of wooden walkways meant that more local trees had been cut down, but JL was immensely proud of it.
The river water was calm and dark green. Big white water hyacinths grew al
ong its edge and yellow-brown-blue and black butterflies flitted among the dense jungle. Birds abounded – long-necked white egrets, black and white cranes, big black and white birds that were a kind of vulture and eat carrion, large black storks, small beautiful golden birds and tiny, glorious, blue hummingbirds. I heard dolphins blow but saw none. And way out there in the wilderness there was a bar. Made of grey-brown wood, it was a derelict ramshackle riverboat, the good ship Titanic. After a while the driver of our boat got out his delicious Bolivian tucker and a Coke, while I was given a packet of imported dry cracker biscuits and a bottle of water. He did offer me some of his food, but he had a revolting habit of blowing his nose overboard with his fingers and the biscuits started to look better.
On the return trip we rounded the junction of the two rivers and, turning into the very wide Mamore which flows all the way from the Andes, the driver whizzed up the speed and put on his lifejacket. Nice captain – never mind about the passengers. Approaching the town I asked about the several riverboats that were apparently abandoned in a compound at the water’s edge. JL said that the compound belonged to the drug control department and that the boats that lay there had been impounded for drug smuggling. There was much smuggling across the river from Bolivia as well as up and down it, he said.
JL told me that he had once gone to Coroico by road and had never been more frightened in his life. I was glad to hear that the locals felt that way too and not just us wimpy tourists. He took me to his office and showed me a postcard someone had sent him from Australia. He wanted to know what Uluru was. Then he gave me a letter to a friend in Porto Velho who, he said, would help me find a boat to Manaus.