Walking the Amazon Blog

I am writing this from Atalaya with the River Tambo now behind me. The six days walking was hard work but very rewarding to have completed in good time.

Most of the Ashaninka communities were wary at first and then kind and welcoming once they knew we were not a threat. We often slept in the houses of the community chiefs and ate catfish, fried eggs, and yucca with them.

Two Ashaninka settlements gave us slight problems. Poyeni had a group of women with painted faces shouting at us from a high bank as we climbed to the community. We were not even allowed in to explain who we were and had to scramble down again and continue along the beach – avoiding the community.

The second was Quemarija where we met Jorge, an old friend of Cho’s and he invited us for dinner with his wife, Nelly, and baby girl. The couple were lovely but worried about their baby – it had several infected abscesses on its head and feet. They asked me to have a look at it and I explained that although I was bringing medicines to each settlement I was not a doctor. Nonetheless they were keen for my opinion as there was no medic in the community and no access to medicines either. I gave the baby’s father a quarter-dose course of Amoxicillin for his daughter, a pretty general antibiotic, but told him he must consult the medic in the next community before starting the baby on it.

Gifts are important to the Ashaninkas. Their language has one word that means both “trade partner” and “friend”. Medicines, despite being potentially dangerous, are the most valued thing that I can bring to the communities. I have tried other less complicated items such as fishing hooks and line, lighters and torches, but medicines are appreciated much more. Most communities have a person who has basic training in uses of medicines and I have normally given the drugs directly to them.

At about 5pm a horn was blown and the village were summoned to a meeting. Cho and I stayed in Jorje and Nelly’s thatched house and started to put up our hammocks for the night. A few minutes later we were summoned to the meeting and subjected to a fiery lecture from the village chief who was wearing his official headdress of feathers, which I had not seen before in any community. He spoke passionately about the community’s right to make their own decisions and as he finished we were ordered to leave immediately.

Confused, we gathered our things together and hoped we could reach the next settlement before nightfall.

I asked Cho what we had done wrong – we had donated medicines, shown our permits and we even knew some people in the community.

“He was drunk,” said Cho.

Above is a photo of Valdez (an Ashaninka guide) and Cho as we drew near to Atalaya.

Without checking my “Neotropical Companion” (which was a tad heavy to pack) I think we are about to leave the tropical dry forests behind and move into far more biologically diverse tropical rainforest. This means far more animal and plant diversity and the start of the Amazon basin proper. Amazingly we only now have 380 metres to descend until we arrive at the Amazon’s mouth - some 5,268 kms (3,274 miles) from here. That’s pretty flat.

As the Tambo and the Urubamba meet they become the Ucayali. That is the river that Cho and I will now follow until Pucallpa, a huge jungle town in the southern Peruvian Amazon. We originally allocated a month for this leg but looking at the expanse of flat rainforest, the vast meanders and scattering of oxbow lakes, plus the ominous lack of settlements (and therefore paths), we really don’t know.

Perfect.

I’m writing this from a wooden shack of a hostel in a port called Puerto Ocopa at the junction between the River Ene and the River Tambo. There is a thunderstorm outside and the muggy, sticky air is being washed away and replaced by a cool freshness.

I have finished walking the Ene (at long last) and I think over the past five days we (Cho, my new Afro-Peruvian guide and I) have averaged 35km a day on paths and spanking new logging routes.

If a gringo gets odd looks round here, a gringo with a black guide gets double! Cho has been fantastic, singing most of the way, completely content to explain my crazy expedition to whoever asks. He has worked for many years in the logging industry and has lived with the Ashaninkas for some of this and understands (although does not speak) their language.

I held back from writing about the horror stories that I had been told about the last part of the Ene for a fear of coming across as alarmist. Deep down I knew they were exaggerated and as it happens we walked through the supposedly “uncivilised” communities with ease. Cho was a part of the reason we had no problems – a white person alone would be another story.

Sadly the logging was horrendous. Cho estimates that 10% of what we saw was legal logging and that the rest was completely illegal. In my naivety I asked why the authorities didn’t do something to stop the illegal removal of huge trees from the forest here. The obvious answer was that the authorities are involved and benefit nicely from the situation.

If a man has a plot of land with trees of value he talks to the logging company and agrees a price. Then the logging company comes in, builds a road, and extracts ALL of the timber of any value. The landowner is then richer than he ever thought possible and he now has road access and so his land is more valuable. He can farm the land (now free of troublesome jungle) and he can buy a truck. Who wouldn’t?

The Tambo I expect to take a week or so to walk. Cho will continue with me alongside Eric, an Ashaninka with a trendy bleached blonde quiff. We should be in Atalaya well before the end of the month. Touch wood.

Ed

This video is made using footage about a month old now but I’m sticking it up to show the change in scenery and life now that we are in the trees…

More videos from the Rivers Ene and Tambo to follow shortly.

“Put the camera away.” said Oscar.

“Huh?” I stalled, hearing Oscar but not wanting to comply.

“Put the camera away.” Oscar repeated. He looked worried so I obeyed.

As the waterproof bag clicked shut I realised what was happening as I was soaked with a bucket of dirty water. The girl who threw it was shouting in Ashaninka – she sounded very upset - slow, rhythmical words in an alarmed pitch.

Water throwing, I have learned, is used in serious situations. Last week a chief from a village where I stayed had water thrown over him because he badly beat his wife whilst he was drunk.

We were next to where a new school was being built and the next bucket that came was full of sloppy concrete. Then at least two more of the same. As I looked around at all the villagers who were surrounding me none of them were laughing. I felt remarkably calm although slightly pathetic completely covered in concrete. The girl then actually started pushing wet concrete mix into my mouth.

“We should leave.” I said to Oscar, spitting sand and cement. I shook the hand of the village president and as we turned and headed towards the river I noticed that some fresh bags of cement had got wet in the incident. I remember bizarrely thinking that they should make a new mix before the bags went hard.

Oscar and I had progressed only two days with the new permits. The problem is that there is an Argentine oil company, Pluspetrol, which is about to extract oil from the Ashaninka’s land. They are due to arrive this month. The Ashaninka are scared, angry and fiercely defensive and they think I represent Pluspetrol because I am white.

The village HF radio network that we had used to our advantage the week before to send news of our arrival was being used to pass the message that Pluspetrol has come and not to let them through. They are coming indeed - but its not me!

What a mess.

Oscar works for CARE, the organisation that represents the Ashaninkas on the Rio Ene, and he was being threatened that he would have spikes stuck in him and that the next village was waiting for us. This is also bad because I don’t want the local communities to start distrusting CARE because of their association with me.

We hurried down to the river, inflated the pack-rafts and started paddling downstream. Once we were a little distance away we both sat back and just floated with the current. I had wanted to continue walking on the other bank but that is the “Colonos” side and Oscar is a “Nativo” (Ashaninka) so he would not have any of it. As a result we were heading downstream for the port again.

This was my 3rd crack at the Ene – helped by Oswaldo, then Elias, now Oscar I had progressed only slighty more with each guide.

A man I told about this last night said that the Nativos in that part are “bad” and stand in the way of progression for Peru. He is repeating verbatim the propaganda that is being pumped into Peruvians by President Garcia. The TV ads say “Peru Advances” with shiney happy people extracting oil and other natural resources. Peru’s economy is indeed advancing - the fastest in South America this last year - but at what cost?

100% of the Peruvian Amazon (outside of the few protected areas) is now allocated for resource extraction of some kind. 100%. Here “conservation” is a dirty word and stands in the way of progress. The map below from 2007 shows the areas already contracted out for oil extraction in green, the lots under negotiation in orange and yellow are areas still up for grabs…

Elsewhere in Peru where the oil companies have already started extracting, native communities have been irreversibly changed. The process is dirty and pollution (largely from spills in transportation) is high leaving rivers filthy and void of fish. The locals are often compensated with salary such as 1,000 US$ a month. Enough to live like a king in the communities and be permanently drunk - which is what often happens alongside a sharp rise in domestic violence.

The Ashaninkas’ reaction to me was actually good to see. They only want to protect their land and their lifestyle and I hope they can do both. I am disappointed though that I will not have more contact with them (on the Rio Ene at least) as the communities that were not alarmed were very kind and family oriented.

I am tired now and so am having a day rest in Satipo, a nearby town, then I will go back to the Ene a fourth time to try and get it finished. I will walk on the Colonos side and avoid Ashaninka communities by cutting inland as necessary. With a bit of luck the next blog will be from the Rio Tambo.

The captain of the boat we had come in on took me to the local Ashaninka community in Puerto Ocopa in order to look for a new guide. I was looking for one that spoke the local language. After about 5 houses of “No”s we arrived at a house with a middle-aged couple and a young boy sitting outside. Ruben, the boat captain, explained what I was looking for and immediately the young boy said “I’ll do it!”. “Fantastic!” I said, amazed that I had found someone to guide me. “How old are you?”

“16.” said Elias.

Elias and I left on the boat a couple of hours later and headed back upriver. On the boat I asked Elias about his family. He explained that the couple were his uncle and aunt and that he was staying with them because his mother had been killed. “I am sorry” I said, “when was that?”

“On Wednesday.” said Elias.

I just didn’t have the fluency in Spanish to talk to Elias about this as much as I would have liked as its such a delicate subject – but it would appear that his mother had died less than a week before I met him. With a nail through the throat.

We returned to Pichari and walked well for 5 days. We passed through the main drugs area no problem (actually 4 shot guns pointed at me at one point but I never thought that they would be used) and then we started to hit Ashaninka communities. I found this quite overwhelming at first as I was the first gringo that some of them had ever seen and it took a while in each settlement to explain myself through Elias.

Eventually we got to a community, Pamakiari, that said “No”. I could not pass. The local people there were visibly frightened of my arrival.

There have been huge problems with horrendous violence in this area in the past and the Ashaninkas on the Ene suffered terribly in the hands of the Shining Path. The government at the time armed the Ashaninka with modern weapons and they fought back violently. A new threat is petrol companies that want to come and extract oil - this is already happening on other rivers in the area. On top of that the Coca invasions (colonial Peruvians taking over Indigenous lands by force or trickery) are closely linked with illegal logging and its no surprise the Ashaninkas look upon every outsider as a threat.

Elias and I had buckets of water thrown over us and I had my face painted red and we were told we had to go to the river, catch the passenger boat, and leave the community. The water was a way of turning a serious subject into a lighthearted one – the people were genuinely scared of us but they were kind and didn’t want any trouble. The only way to pass was by having a permit from CARE, an organization that I am ashamed to admit I had never heard of, that looks after the indigenous communities on the Ene.

In Pamakiari one of the Ashanikas stuck out. She was tall, about six foot, slim and white but her face was painted the same as the others and she has the local jewelry on. “Hi I’m Emily”, said Emily, the only anthropologist to be working in this area, in a plumby accent “Are you English?” she asked.

To cut a long story short Emily has helped me HUGELY and I cannot thank her enough for her help, accompanying me to the CARE offices, and filling in the gaping holes in my knowledge of the history of the Ashaninkas on the River Ene.

Today CARE and CART (the organizations that looks after the interests of Ashaninkas on the Rivers Ene and Tambo respectively) both granted me permission to continue my walk. CARE have been incredibly kind and understanding and have also given me an Ashaninka guide, Oscar, to walk with who knows the local paths and all the communities.

Tomorrow I return to where I was doused with water and continue the walk with Oscar. I am far more prepared this time and am taking gifts of medications, fishing items, and sweets for the kids.

I think, looking back, that I need to be careful to read between the lines when I ask about potential dangers downstream. The fear I felt for many days was largely unfounded I think now in the drugs areas. Perhaps the locals upstream just didn’t want me to continue as they had a vested interest in keeping the area as closed off as possible.

I am no longer scared (and I’m not just saying that!). I am officially authorised by the Ashaninkas to walk thorough and I come with gifts. I can’t wait.