Amazon Christmas, Waiting for the Boat to Porto Velho

Post date: Dec 25, 2010 3:05:31 PM

Forro, pronounced “fohaw,” has some dances I’ve never seen before, that is sure. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Brazil has the best dancers I’ve seen. If only I had some video of some of the moves. It’s very much a couple’s dancing type of music that sounds like a country, Caribbean, polka, pop, rap music. The instruments? One drum, one triangle, a bass, an accordion, and a singer. It’s happy music. I went there this week with a cleaning lady from the hostel who was two days shy of being married. She speaks zero English, and I did not know she was engaged when I asked her to take me to a forro show. She was friendly and polite, but didn’t really say much, even though I can understand a wee bit of Portuguese if spoken slowly in a Spanish accent! I loved the music though. It must be forro I heard the last time I was in Brazil, on a boat headed for an island off the coast.

Christmas Eve I should have been on a boat. Note: should have. I bought the ticket on Tuesday, 3 days prior to departure. I arrived at the port as scheduled, and I didn’t believe the security guard when I heard him say the boat wasn’t here. I figured I misinterpreted him. He pointed down the road, telling me to check there, and so I went. Some guys waved me down to sell me a ticket, but they ended up helping me by calling my boat. I was told to return to my hostel to meet the guy who sold me the ticket. I met the guy there after a 40 minute wait, only to find that the boat was cancelled due to low occupancy. The captain would lose money, he said, so he cancelled the trip. The guy says he can put me on a cargo boat tomorrow, which I accepted after complaining about the wait and need to pay for another night here. He then paid for my hostel this night. Whatever.

Later I bought a frozen pizza to celebrate, but the stove didn’t work. Me and some guys eventually got it working hilly billy style (too long to explain), but it then ran out of gas. So I moved it to the toaster oven, and it did the trick.

Dreams. I almost never dream of people in my life, but the first two months of travel I dreamed nightly of friends and family. Occasionally celebrities make it to my dreams. It used to be Arnold Schwarzeneggar, but last night was my first with his Twins movie cohort, Danny Devito. Somehow I meet him and his little car. By little I mean 5 feet long and 3 feet tall- the size of a bumper car. It is shaped like a porsch and he points to the dial, bragging about how it goes to 100 kph, or about 60 mph, which he boasts is way faster than my motorcycle. I clarify that my motorcycle reaches 160kph. He goes, “Oh.” Anyways, I get in his minimobile and take off to the maximum speed, and just down the road I hear a bleep. A second later I hear it again, and see a flash in front of me. It’s a cop blocking the road and stopping me for speeding in Danny Devito’s supercharged bumper car. I decided to leave the dream at that point. Later, Malcolm Reynolds from the late great sci-fi series “Firefly” tapped my boots as I slept on the ground. It was time to get going, he was saying, but I let him rummage about some office because I knew there was no real hurry.

I had one present to open this Christmas morning, one that I’d been adamantly instructed to keep wrapped until midnight on Christmas morning by the gift-giver, Vicky. Well, the wrapper was torn and ragged from travelling for a month, but I kept it covered all this time. When I opened it I was greeted by a teddy bear and a pair of pajama bottoms! I guess Binkie will have to share.

Old MacDonald deserves a note here. Donald, a 70ish Scotsman who immigrated to the states back in the 50s, is a retired Johnson and Johnson manufacturing line engineer. For 7 years now he’s been travelling the world, and he has the softness, all-the-time-in-the-world attention, and kindness that only a wisened-by-age life can bring a person. His smile seldom leaves his face, in spite of his professed Latin American pooh blues (intestinal infection). His dark eyes sparkle like a baby’s. He wears his thinned, gray hair casually combed back. He warned me that it may be difficult to stop travelling, especially since I’ve already learned that I can get a job and live in one place outside my home country for a sustained period. He expressed admiration of my trip, and although I hear that stuff just about every day, coming from him it meant something. I bid him farewell moments ago as he loaded into the van that will take him to his boat bearing for Tabatinga. He replied with similar traveler’s luck wishes and added, “Now is the time and place to be bold.” Sometimes it’s best to just grin, nod, and silently reflect.

It is Christmas Day here and I have not heard a single “Merry Christmas” or “Feliz Natal” or “Feliz Navidad” since I awoke 3 hours ago. And it doesn’t even bother me. I wonder if it should.

I’m more than hoping to connect with a true Amazonian catfish when I reach Porto Velho. I have been told that lots of catfish collect beneath the Teotonio waterfalls a short drive from the town, and that one can rent boats right there. This is by far the best opportunity I’ve chanced upon yet. I just hope my tackle holds up. To give you a taste of what is burning in my blood, a note from one of my heros, Otis Smith:

Planning a trip to the Amazon isn’t as difficult as finding an outfitter who knows about catfish. The late, great catman Otis “Toad” Smith reveled in telling of his adventures on Bolivia’s Rio Beni:

“I don’t know how to tell you what it’s like. One minute it’s civilization and the next minute you’re there—a jungle river; and it hits you, this is it, the Beni, a tributary to the Amazon, a river so immense, so wild, so remote, so unexplored, that less is known about it and the fish that swim there than is known about the oceans.

“You look around again, at the jungle, the river, and you understand what the natives have been saying: Fishermen come here to fish for namby-pamby stuff like piranha and dorado. They don’t understand—the little rods or the fishermen who use them. Why would someone fish like that for those little fish?

“But you are here to fish for their fish—giant catfish. There never has been a fisherman here to fish for them. They tell you that giant catfish have never been landed on a rod and reel. They add that there probably never will be, at least not a good one—a 200- to 300-pounder—and obviously are amused that you think you can do it.

“But imagine you are there as I was, ready to cast a side of fish flesh into this jungle river. The stories are there with you, too: Stories of humans eaten by giant catfish. Stories of Indians drowned when the rope they use to fish for cats tangles around a leg and they are torn from the boat. Stories of fingers lost to loops of line, and stories of trees uprooted when trot lines are tied to them at night.

“Suddenly my bait has settled, but hasn’t settled, and I instinctively set the hook. And it’s impossible, incredible, I just have time to realize that in 30 seconds I won’t have any 50-pound test line left on my Garcia 7000.

“Miscalculation: Twenty-two seconds later, minus 150 yards of line, I am relieved to still have a rod and reel with a functioning drag. I count my fingers and other appendages. Next time we’ll start the boat and follow the fish.”

“My biggest cat that first day is a 50 or so. Of course, most of the fish just leave when I set. Pretty soon I don’t have any tackle left.”