World of Wonders - The Floating Zoo

Like worker ants, the men scurried back and forth with disproportionate loads on their small, wiry shoulders.

Iquitos, in the Amazon basin of Peru, is a bustling tropical city of half a million people, and the largest city in the world without road links. You can fly in, but if you have less money and more time, the best way to travel is by riverboat, like the locals.

The Amazon basin is criss crossed by thousands of tributaries snaking their way to the mighty river itself, each stream providing a vital transportation artery.

In Iquitos the Amazon River is already nearly a mile wide, and while great shipping vessels visit this port we are more interested in the cargo boats that ply the Amazon’s tributaries and supply jungle communities with their link to the world.

These cargo boats pull up to a muddy riverbank known as the port. As the cargo is loaded over gangplanks there is a frenetic pace as men scamper between boats with incredible loads – timber or crates of food – on their backs.

This activity is an overwhelming sight as we are shown to a boat to Yurimaguas, a jungle town about 800 kilometres south of Iquitos on the Huallaga River.

This is primarily a cargo boat, which takes passengers. Sweating profusely in the tropical heat we are directed up ladders to a deck where we can swing our hammocks.

Confronted by sea of humanity, over one hundred people and hammocks packed in tight, like sardines, we blanch at the already accumulating odours.

Less enclosed than the sardine tin below we choose to hang our on the top deck from where we absorb the scene. Sellers clamber onto the boat selling watches, toilet paper, hair clips or any possible item you might have need for in a journey downriver.

The expected departure time of the ship passes, and yet there is a jovial, carnival atmosphere among passengers as the men relentlessly continue to carry arduous loads onto the boat.

When the winking lights of Iquitos are behind us and the boat’s engines hum comfortingly, the motion of the boat and the gentle sway of our hammocks drift us to sleep.

For the four-day, three-night trip, meals included, we are paying the equivalent of $20 Australian, though we do have to supply our own hammock and food bowls!

The next morning we line up in the packed lower deck and our breakfast ration is sloshed into our bowl: sickly sweetened porridge-like gruel. We make coffee with boiled river water, given to us begrudgingly by the cook.

By the time the boat pulls up at each palm thatched village a reception committee of about half the village is waiting, with men, women and children lined up on shore.

Vulture-like vendors, carrying food in plastic buckets above their heads, offer a wide range of local delicacies: fried banana, sticky rice in palm fronds or baked fish.

There is no need for on-board entertainment here. This half keeling boat, over laden with timber and people, all living closely together, feels like a living entity, and once the locals overcome their shyness, they are friendly and welcoming.

A vendor sells fried crocodile and a teenage girl and her family snap up pieces of this delicacy, offering it to us with great pride.

My mother munches on crocodile as these idyllic villages glide by, the naked children running along the riverbanks and waving as the boat goes by.

We get drawn into the other passengers’ confidences. A seventeen-year-old girl mysteriously beckons us over to her bundle – inside is a turtle, maybe several years old. She explains that it will fetch a good price, when it is sold for a local treat, turtle soup.

A young man takes us deep into the dark hold and proudly pulls out an anaconda which will probably sold as a delicacy, making for him a considerable price by local standards.

The animal trader carries with him hundreds of tiny green parrots that he feeds to the anaconda. Other passengers are apparently so sorry for the small green birds that many of them some to take home as pets!

The animal trader shows us several species of monkey, and explains that there are many hunters in riverside villages that catch Amazonian animals, to sell to people like him. He doesn’t seem to comprehend that trading in these Amazonian species would be considered illegal in many parts of the world. It is simply his livelihood.

In these days of hazard consciousness, the boat’s on board kitchen and food preparation is as shocking as the trade in live animals.

The toilets are located next to the kitchen, and we become familiar with six bedraggled chooks strung miserably together by their legs. Later in the journey the cook has the entire toilet area covered in wet feathers, and it’s not a surprise what is dished up for lunch! By any means, the chicken was superior to the fish heads served up the previous day!

Our voyage is tranquil, yet filled with excitement. We doze in our hammocks in the indolent sultry breeze, and when a shout goes up we crowd with the rest of the passengers to see what is happening on shore.

An anteater is paraded back and forth, with its strange duster like tail; children carry monkeys; and a crowd fights with a five-metre anaconda, possibly intended for sale.

Later, a huge fish, bigger than a shark is hacked up on deck with an axe so that it can be fitted into an ice chest for travel downriver.

At every stop goods are loaded on the ship. In one village two men struggled to load bags of stinking salted fish onto one boy’s back, who then carries them onto the boat, staggering under the load.

Though this boy has just turned eighteen, his muscular shoulders already stoop from the loads he carries. He explains that though this is heavy work, he must do it for there is many other children at home in his family.

No one minds when we arrive at Yurimaguas, a charming jungle town, a day late. For foreigners like us, we have had the incredible chance to view life in Amazonian villages at close quarters. And moreover, on our floating zoo, we have been close to more Amazonian animals than on organized jungle tours!

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