Worldwide with Wee-Cheng #15: Trouble in Colombia & the Slow Boat on the Amazon – Leticia, Colombia

By: Tan Wee Cheng

#14: Trouble in Colombia & the Slow Boat on the Amazon

5 Mar 2002
Shortly after my last update that I sent in Leticia, Colombia, parts of this Colombian city suddenly fell into blackout. It’s only today that I read online about the FARC guerilla attack on power pylons, that plunged southern Colombia into darkness.

As I walked onto the streets looking for a non-affected bar, swarms of heavily armed soldiers with machine guns and rocket launchers appeared on the streets, patrolling on foot or on army jeeps. Shopkeepers hastily shut their stores, even if their shops might not be affected by the blackout, and gamblers streamed out of casinos. No one appeared to know what was going on. A guerilla attack expected to take place soon ? Or looting going on somewhere? I decided that the wisest thing to do is to return to the hotel. I don’t intend to get caught in any crossfire or get shot by soldiers for violation of any curfew that I might not be aware of.

The night passed peacefully, and I woke up at 3:45am to take a taxi to Tabatinga, Leticia’s twin town on the Brazilian side of the border. I was supposed to take the 5am speed boat to Iquitos, Peru, along the Amazon. Well, I had thought that the ferry would depart at 5am and it turned out that it was only to leave at 5:30am.

The empty roads also meant that I reached Tabatinga in only 10 minutes, not a wise thing in this supposedly rough town at a most ungodly hour. A few dodgy characters hung around the dock side, and I took refuge outside the quay-guardian’s office. A Native Indian family was sleeping there, with a pet mongrel dog lying beside the little boy.

There were no mosquitoes, but there were some strange beetle-like insects flying around. The Amazon might be a spectacular river, but there is one thing I really do not like about it – there are too many strange insects and illnesses that may give you some unpleasant surprises.

The boat set off at 5:30am, full of Peruvians on border trade or visiting relations across the borders – not an entirely unusual thing. I have met a number of people who have spent time in Manaus, Brazil, or Leticia, Colombia. The communities along the Amazon have more in common with one another than with their capitals faraway across the Andes or along the Atlantic.

The boat crossed to the other side of the river, where I got my passport stamped at the Peruvian checkpoint, where the official asked for a tip, pleading poverty and hunger. I gave him US$2, which embarrassed both of us but caused no further problems.

Unlike the Colombian side, the village of Santa Rosa is not heavily militarized although Iquitos itself is full of military camps and installations. It is easy to forget that South American countries have complex border disputes with one another. Every Peruvian I have met has reminded me that Leticia was once Peruvian, becoming Colombian only after the war of 1933. Ecuador still has claims over the Amazon region of Peru, even though it signed the 1941 Treaty of Rio de Janeiro after its military defeat by Peru, in which it recognized the current borders with Peru. Both nations had three more short wars in the following decades, the last being in 1995. This is not to further mention Peruvian grudges against Chile for taking Arica in the Pacific War of 1879, and Bolivia against Chile for the loss of its Pacific coast in the same war.

The boat sped upstream against the strong currants of the muddy brown Amazon, its water already rising, since it’s the start of the rainy season. By May, peak of the deluge, water levels in this region would have raised by 15 meters or more. That is why many houses here are built on stilts, or are simply floating premises. All the fields would have been covered with water, and locals have to travel around by canoe. At Iquitos, the river is 4km wide now but the entire region would become a vast inland sea by May. This is hardly surprising. One mustn’t forget that the Amazon Basin was once a vast sea bay with an outlet on the Pacific coast. The rise of the Andes millions of years ago cut off the inlet and forces it to flow eastwards into the Atlantic. During the same process, sea creatures like dolphins, stingrays and sardines trapped in the Amazon also became acclimatized to the fresh water, in an amazing process of transformation.

A short while after passing the marine checkpoint, the boat stopped in the middle of nowhere and a small canoe slipped by. The captain and his assistant greeted the two guys on the canoe, and the latter transferred a number of carefully wrapped boxes onto the boat. “Contraband cigarettes,” a fellow passenger whispered into my ear. The whole operation began and ended in just two minutes, and the canoe slipped away just as suddenly as it came by. For the rest of the day, similar loading and uploadings occurred at least twice at other spots along the river. Another facet of border life, I suppose.

About five hours into the journey, the engine died down suddenly. The captain and his assistant tried to restart it but failed, and then rowed the boat to the bank of the great river, where they spent the next two and half hours repairing it.

Ugly black river vultures encircled our boat, while we were covered by clouds of mosquitoes, like halos over the heads of saints. Huge butterflies the size of human palms flashed across the river banks in their bright yellow and orange slashes, and two pink Amazon dolphins swam close, making a strange mocking cry at these miserable human intruders into their million-years-long habitat. Dragonflies the size of huge hummingbirds (of which I had seen a few days ago) flew past, together with occasional pairs of bright green parrots yupping away. The latter reminded me of those John Simpson, the BBC correspondent, said tasted bland and slithery. Don’t think I would love them, but it would be good to taste them anyway.

In his book Strange Places, Questionable People, Simpson also wrote about monkeys (like eating babies, with the gamy flavour of an old guinea fowl), tapirs (taste like fatty venison), cayman (a kind of crocodile which is white and watery), peccary (a kind of jungle pig, pork-flavoured cardboard), tortoise (tastes like chamois leather) and intestinal worms from jungle tortoises (which he never tried). Simpson doesn’t seem to like the stuff he ate in the jungle. What a pity, like Woody Allen said, nature is one big restaurant. I only wish they don’t all disappear…

Tree trunks floated down the river, together with debris like plastic water bottles and flips-flops. A few natives rowed past in their dugout canoes. These suntanned locals of the Yugua and Ticuna tribes were dressed in faded secondhand T-shirts (I spied Incredible Hulk and Oregon University) and torn shorts.

In the old days, these were great warriors who used their formidable blowpipes to kill neighbouring tribal enemies and invading white men, and made shrunken heads from them. They cut the heads of slain enemies, removed the crushed bones from the neck while keeping the hair and skin intact, boiled and treated them with soil, grass and magic portions, until they are smaller than the size of a human palm. Nice things to hang on your doorway.

These days, they entertain the odd tourists, hunt occasionally and plant some jungle potatoes. When I visited their villages a few days ago on the jungle tours, they changed quickly into traditional grass skirts and tribal headdresses. The women, who had scarcely anything on apart from a G-string, quickly put on bead-necklaces made from seeds of jungle fruits, to cover their bare chests. In other words, the men dressed down and the women dressed up when outsiders visited. Thereupon they performed a dance and tried to sell tacky souvenirs. Some backpackers call this “visiting the human zoo”. Hey man, they need to make a living, and hopefully enhance their standard of living. From the sales they made, I figured they did quite well. We all receive something in return.

The passengers were getting impatient, but most found ways of entertaining themselves. The only Asian on the boat, I stuck out like a soar thumb in the crowd. People speculated to my origins as most could not figure out where is “Singapur” (Singapore in Spanish), and what the heck is a Singapureï¿½o, who is neither a Japonese nor a Coreaï¿½o, is a kind of Chiï¿½o but not from China.

In the end, someone decided that I should be called Fujimori, the former ethnic Japanese Peruvian President, who fled to Japan last year after video tapes were found of his intelligence chief bribing the entire elite of Lima. “Fujimori, Fujimori, Fujimori,” the little boy who sat behind me would shout for the next 8 hours or so.

The boat was finally repaired, but it was no longer a speed boat but a limping old hag. There were two occasions when it actually stopped and had to be restarted. Not an encouraging thing when the skies suddenly burst into storm in the horizons, and the sharpest, whitest lightning I had ever seen in my life struck over the jungle canopy. The Great River was probably about 5km wide at this point – almost a lake – and the other half was deluged in heavy rain while our half remained calm and blue. Bravo Santa Maria!

We had expected to reach Iquitos at 5pm but only reached the pier at 10pm. What a journey!