Several hours upstream close to a Ticuna settlement, a permanent camp had recently been established, currently serving as base camp for an illustrious group of naturalists from Bogot?, plus a few government rangers, one of whom arranged a Ticuna guide and boat for me for tomorrow.

Not certain what I had signed up for, I harbored concerns about engine noise scaring off wildlife, and shade, as this initial foray would be a day-long affair under an equatorial sun. But if things worked out I would charter it for further exploration and maybe even offer research excursions to the naturalists. If….

The next morning the ranger introduced me to a stooping, toothless fellow who had seen the better part of a century who I assumed was a visiting Ticuna elder until it became clear he was my hired boatman. Then, down at the riverbank, what at first appeared to be driftwood turned out to be the boat - my boat. No motor. No seats. No shade. Nothing more really than the hollowed-out trunk – make that branch - of some juvenile hardwood felled decades short of maturity and not much longer than I was in the prone position. Oh yeah, and two single-blade paddles. I immediately abandoned any notion of bringing my big camera - that would require a second boat. I chose the rear position, ‘senior Viejo’ the front, though once we got seated these were virtually indistinguishable.

Once out there on our own the rivers’ majesty really got me by the collar. The far shore was so distant as to almost be imperceptible. Its silence belied its incomprehensible power and volume. From rustling trees emanated birdsong competing with the screech of marmosets and monkeys, testifying to the jungles diversity. Tiny black finches sporting piercing vermilion wings flitted from reed to reed keeping just ahead of us. High exposed branches of forest giants hosted hawks and fish eagles eager to pounce on anything that dared surface from the rivers murky depths. Viejo knew to hug the very edge where only the slightest currents prevailed. The first few kilometers left me winded while he effortlessly maintained an impossible pace, and when we turned up in to a small tributary where the torrent increased, somehow so did his output. I started thinking maybe it was a good thing I had him along.

At a primitive settlement an hour or so upstream I again glimpsed tribal life not unlike my experiences on the Orinoco with Paoria tribesmen years earlier. And just like then, the same troubling emotions resurfaced. Unlike the culture of excess I was born into, nothing is ever done in these settings without some very practical purpose - there just isn’t any surplus material or energy to waste; on a good day there’s only just enough of each to support the village, and that’s with everyone contributing. There was maize being ground, husks being shucked, a sizable dugout being laboriously hollowed out, laundry being wrung, and traps being repaired - all to support a marginal subsistence, not to entertain some paying outsiders. And a profound sense of community prevailed.

But the most indelible imprint left by this brief glimpse into another world wasn’t the dignity or sense of purpose with which so much work was being accomplished. It was one stunning young woman’s radiant, unsolicited smile, a vision that has and will remain etched in my heart. She was helping some elders with a chore when I entered her periphery when she looked up momentarily, just long enough to acknowledge my stare with sweet intrigue. Her eyes widened with interest, I wanted to believe. I’m not sure exactly what it was I saw in that luminous face – grace, promise, purity - all of these things, and much, much more. After being momentarily distracted by something Viejo was pointing out I was compelled to reconfirm this rapturous vision again, conveying my consuming, if ill-mannered fascination. When her smile broadened it was like a door of light swinging open. Her exquisite, unsullied sweetness in this impossibly exotic setting overpowered my sensibilities in one of those defining moments when you suddenly realize what’s been missing from your life, and what is so agonizingly unobtainable. This whole journey would have been worth that one transcendent moment.

We made our way back to the camp, Viejo still digging and stroking like there was buried treasure somewhere under all that water, and me with a vision in my head which continues to beguile and inspire to this day. He invited me to his granddaughter’s birthday celebration that night in the Ticuna settlement, which was a step up in modernization, though the influence Leticia exerted among this village was limited to canned foods, clothing and hand tools. Most Ticuna found trips to ‘town’ an alienating experience. I’ll never forget the expression on one young girl’s face just seeing pictures of Bogota’s skyscrapers for the first time. She couldn’t comprehend why anything that tall didn’t just tumble right over.

Finding my boat had mysteriously disappeared when heading back late that night I was compelled to wade across a stream separating the village from the camp known to be populated with crocs. But by then I’d been fortified with more than enough jungle grade fruit alcohol to provide the necessary courage/poor judgment.

A week in the camp allowed me to get chummy with the biologists and join their research forays. During excursions on the Peruvian side of the river we never did spot caimen negro’s the specialists were seeking– black crocodiles that grow to 18 feet - but we easily located a plethora of other species that were equally fascinating; pink river dolphins, a sampling of primates, numerous reptiles, countless birds. Too often our secondary objective was to reintroduce animals recently confiscated in Leticia from recently arrested black market smugglers. By the end of that week we had repatriated a reticulated python, a wooly monkey, some parrots and a three-toed sloth.

The ferries in these parts always run right on time, plus or minus three hours. I was heading upriver to San Ramone, a town of maybe a few thousand positioned at the confluence of a tributary about a third the big river’s size set on undulating hills laced together with a network of footpaths. The absence of cars added immensely to its charm, as did its central gathering place which served as festival courtyard, plaza, soccer field and market place, often overlapping with amusing results. Misguided soccer balls didn’t mix well with the chickens being auctioned off, even less with their eggs.

I took a room at a rotting old lodge on the rivers edge, its weathered exterior, leaning frame and unsavory rank rendering it the hotel equivalent of a town drunk. Hours after arriving, having conked out in a frayed hammock on its warped porch, I awoke to find a small face silently staring down at me through the mosquito netting. Word travels fast in these parts; strangers in town get noticed, sought out. At almost a whisper he inquired if I needed a guide. Yes, indeed, I responded at an equally low decibel range. Didn’t want to frighten the poor fellow off or let anyone else in on our ‘secret’. I wasn’t going to get far upriver without a boat, not without getting my cameras real wet at least, and around here you don’t get a boat without a guide unless you’re a pirate. Soon comfortable with his unassuming demeanor, I suggested we discuss some ideas I had over dinner.

Born and raised here, Reynos looked about my age, was low key and highly resourceful. To accommodate me he would have to borrow a relative’s boat, a friends’ motor, and yet someone else’s spare gas can. And I’d have to bring lunch and beer. But he knew the terrain and his stoic mannerisms complemented these environs. And his company was to provide me rare insights into life on the river, one so far from my own.

Heading out the following morning, our little expedition embarked in a worm-holed dory powered by a reluctant outboard just potent enough to outpace the current. I was careful standing up for fear of putting a boot through the hull, but at least the seat planks were solid enough to support my monopod for some telephoto shots. We snaked up one spectacular tributary after another until the channel got so narrow it would hardly allow us to turn-round. Reaching a distant settlement I was introduced to the headman and given the grand tour.

I’d been surrounded by whole villages before - and these people had seen white folk - but never just one, and they found this most peculiar. Diplomatically defusing the ‘where’s-the-wife-friends-and-family’ interrogation with inquiries into their culture and their livelihoods, I wondered what they and the rest of those in third world really think of inquisitive, eccentric outsiders, and always downplay what my world is about, which seems to get easier the longer I live in it.

During our return, while preoccupied with a flock of magnificent herons we failed to avoid a wasp nest on a low hanging branch that somehow managed to snag on our bow. Untangling it without provoking the wrath of its volatile tenants proved a futile comedy, the battle scars from which we bore for days.

That evening, Reynos brought me to his home on the edge of town, where the floor planking bowed under our combined weight. No electricity or running water, not that its’ outside appearance would have suggested any, and but a single window. A recent acquisition - a portable radio- held as prominent a place as this humble setting afforded.

I situated myself on the only furniture, a bench, dethroning a scruffy parrot in the process. Reynos may have brought me there to give his neighbors the impression he had ‘important’ clients, or for that matter, any clients at all. Or perhaps he was just trying to make a friend, which by then he already had. But there was certainly no impoverishment of heart here, as evidenced by his bottomless hospitality. He may have had little to offer, but I was welcomed to every last bit of it. As in similar backdrops, guilt welled up inside me regarding my perpetually self-centered pursuits. Guilt, and a little envy at how, under such circumstances these people and all the others along the rivers and towns and shantyvilles I’ve passed by along this way and all the countless other third world venues I’ve tramped through – ever manage to produce the smiles that they’re invariably so willing to share. Certainly it speaks to some inner strength I can only hope to possess someday.

An impromptu and sublime foray transpired one morning when Reynos materialized with a dug-out canoe that we paddled to a perfectly serene lake upstream, where dawn broke exactly as it must have for the past several millennia - saturated with the music of frogs, cicadas, finches and howler monkeys, and the buzz of bees, flies, hornets and mosquitoes, and interrupted only by the profuse obscenities emanating from the bearded foreigner fending them off with hand, hat and paddle.

To take advantage of the evening breezes I opted for lodgings at the top of the most prominent hill in town where the late night non-stop scuffling of varmints inside the walls was not to be believed. The place was grand central rat hole. At first it was all very amusing, but the novelty wore off after the first three or four hours. I fully expected my pack and my rations, if not my flesh, to have been eviscerated by morning, but miraculously nothing had been touched.

And if that little episode wasn’t bizarre enough, a group of Slovak herpetologists showed up, the most forlorn fellows I have ever encountered. Only one spoke English, and only in the most morose tones, each response to any query starting with the qualifier “Not very good…” in perfect Bela Lugosi baritone, pretty much summing up his assessment of virtually everything, including the Slovak government, the university where they all taught, his love life, and the state of herpetology in Eastern Europe. Aside from their teaching posts they all held second jobs and the five of them together were on a tighter budget than I was alone. They had scrimped for years to save up for this expedition, but so far their sightings, collections, insights, hypothesis, and conclusions were “Not very good…”. I bought them all dinner that night. They all looked like they could use a good meal.  I didn’t ask what they thought of it.

I returned to the camp at Amacuyuco to find a stunning English woman had arrived during my travels north. An accomplished linguist on sabbatical, she was slowly working her way down river from Ecuador to Manaus - another thousand miles downstream - and proved an superb exploring partner, stout of heart and up for anything the jungle could throw at her. Her pageant queen appearance belied a deft agility on slippery moss covered logs crossing high over rocky streams, her indifference to the mutinous ants, mosquitoes and leeches, and an uncomplaining fortitude when the weather swung in mere minutes from sweltering heat to torrential downpours on arduous hikes. Out on the trail one extremely gusty afternoon we both learned firsthand that strong winds present a serious peril deep in virgin rain forest as branch after massive broken branch crashed down around us crushing anything in their path creating an unnerving gauntlet known to instill fear even in the hearts of local tribesmen.

I watched with mixed emotions as her ferry pulled away from shore days later. There was no denying the mutual attraction that had developed between us, but at the most basic level we clearly had divergent agendas and the good sense to pursue them undistracted.

Not long after her departure a young television crew led by a distinguished mentor made camp. They were winding their way up and down the river capturing the local culture, customs and art forms for a Columbian equivalent of the Discovery Channel. While the peoples of this region are essentially all Ticuna, individual clans had each cultivated specialized traditional skills, be they carving, music, culinary specialties, whatever. The kids were all fresh out of film school, and their jefe, in his early sixties, had stories that kept me absolutely mesmerized, a favorite of which included his surveying team getting lost in this region some forty years earlier – the very first government sponsored cartographic expedition. “Sometimes we had no idea where we were for weeks, but we had to produce something to account for the time and expense. The final border locations down here reflect our undeniable disorientation”. And as I examined a detailed map this became quite clear. Only the areas’ sheer remoteness, and possibly a lot of Cuervo Gold at the negotiating table, could have resulted in Peru, Ecuador and Brazil agreeing to the final jig-sawed outcome.

But another of his tales painted a profoundly darker picture, one that summed up the helplessness that all Columbians share to some degree in these times. It involved narco-trafficantes who had literally muscled the magnificent 3500 acre ranch away from him and his brothers’ families. “They landed a shiny twin engine plane in our pasture one day, said they really liked the place and had their own ideas of how to use it. And at gun point they gave us an hour to vacate. We were lucky to get off alive” he continued, head down, sighing deeply. “My brother and I had spent seven years and every penny we had on that place”. He had absolutely no hope of any legal recourse given the payoffs or threats the police and officials had certainly received. Until I heard this story and saw the defeated look on this mans face I naively believed such blatant injustices only happened in Mexican action movies.

Eventually I made my way back down to Leticia, this time to arrange explorations further south. Once again, an ambitious local materialized unsolicited at my four-dollar suite. He could guide me far up a small Peruvian tributary of the big river, where we’d camp close to a Coboclo family, facilitating a glimpse of a culture that lived off the land.

Each boat I chartered seemed to get smaller with each foray and this latest one didn’t exactly buck the trend. Filled to the gunnels with provisions, Ruiz navigated while I had my hands full keeping the precious stores aboard. The long trip down river was a good chance to get to know each other, and I soon lost track of which river bank was which country, but it hardly mattered. No one would be checking passports out here.

The Coboclo homestead was up on a knoll between the Chiaquero river and a lake behind forest so dense it remained hidden for several days though only fifty feet away. Mammoth fish that struck me as way too large to come from any river simmered on their hearth as we arrived. Looking out over the water, I wondered what else might be lurking out there.

We slung hammocks in a tree platform just down stream from the family, their nearest ‘neighbors’ an hour away by boat. They had some poultry and a little vegetable garden but relied extensively on resources off the branch or from the river.

That afternoon’s swim was not without incident. Hours earlier we had fished from the boat just off shore, frustrated catching only piranha. After pulling back in I decided it was about time for a bath, so to protect the family jewels and get my pants washed, I went in with them on. And just as I was melding into that relaxed euphoric state I usually have to come this far to experience, some god-awful creature swam half way up my right pant leg where it lodged, unmovable. I forcefully attempted to push whatever the hell it was back down, resulting in paralyzing pain and profuse bleeding – just what I needed in piranha-infested waters. The struggle back to shore was an agonizing ordeal that seemed to take forever. Once there I ripped off the pants to find a firmly embedded hook fish – a species with huge, barbed dorsal fins that the locals use as an effective combination bait and hook; once swallowed it will simply spread its fins anchoring it into the walls of its captor’s throat. In trying to push it back down my pant leg I had forced its ice pick-like fin tip deep underneath my own kneecap with all my own strength. It was all I could do to even stand up the rest of the day, and for the next week I exhibited the peculiar hobble a corncob enema might induce.

Underneath the Coboclo’s stilt house was a recently captured Ocelot on a leash, snared on the fourth straight night it had taken advantage of the live chicken dinners being unintentionally offered. It appeared well treated, despite captivity. I would spend much time contemplating this superb example of exotica from just beyond the length of its tether. Maybe there was something to learn about the world it inhabited or maybe even the God who created it. But the temptation to cut it free wouldn’t leave me, even having drawn my knife out of its sheath one afternoon only to be interrupted. Perhaps they’d eventually release it back into the wild across the river after seeing how much precious food it required.

Also being kept essentially as a pet and not much more manageable was an adorable juvenile spider monkey that ‘permanently’ bonded with whoever most recently held him for more than a few minutes. Any attempts to separate him after that resulted in howls of anguish that would shatter glass at fifty paces. The insecurities expressed in his little face are painfully apparent in the picture I got of him hugging my boot for dear life shortly after I had become his latest parent.

Following a fishing foray one evening Ruiz, the family padrone, Seka, and I made a shore hike into the forest not realizing we were in gator nesting country until Seka almost stepped right on a very protective mother at her nest. Seka recoiled straight backwards as if blasted out of a circus cannon, toppling Ruiz and I who hadn’t realized what was happening until we looked up into the gaping, irritated jaws of mother. Gently retreating backwards on all fours, we didn’t dare get up until well out of range. Then we hauled ass.

We spent one day bouncing from the Peruvian side of a tributary to the Brazilian to the Columbian, and then back again, and somewhere in between trekked to a place where Ruiz had difficulty trying to explain what was of interest there. We finally arrived at a pond carpeted with lily pads the size of tabletops – gigantic things that looked like something from a movie set, so massive they could easily float a child. I kept looking over my shoulder thinking that if this giant mutation theme carried over to other species we might soon be fending off mosquitoes that show up on radar.

Back in Leticia a week later I ran into the film crew again who begged and cajoled me to accompany them upstream back to the camp where they’d spend their last week filming. Their infectious enthusiasm was not to be denied. While there I encountered an incredibly charming dental school student taking a brief break from her requisite community tour of duty in a distant village. All Columbian medical students are required to spend a year providing care to the disenfranchised segments of the population - those in areas designated ‘rural’ (read impenetrable valleys, forests or swamps). Unfortunately we were heading upstream and she soon had to return to her outpost, though I sensed she would have appreciated some company. God knows I would have loved to have gone with her. As with all my others, this journey had become a series of crucial decisions; who to go with, which road or which river to take - a perfect metaphor for life.

Filming continued in the rain and the heat. We lived out of a chartered boat, and met with and delved into the customs and skills of several villages. The local folk were invariably cooperative and rightly proud of their traditions, bolstered by our capturing every detail of every skill and art form they happily demonstrated. I provided some still shots to supplement the live action aspects of the programming with. I found it no small irony that most of the folks being filmed had never even seen television.

The brightest film student, Ricardo, and his girlfriend Danielle and I became fast friends. It was they who won the heated argument of who I would spend my last few days in Bogot? with. I’m sure my decision was influenced by their shared passion for life and each other, reminding me of a time when I too was madly in love, the future was infinite, and the world was young. But young and enthusiastic or not, it would not be an easy road coming of age in these times. Already there were de facto autonomous zones in the mountainous regions, as the government ceded more and more local authority to highly organized insurgents. Though virtually an armed camp, Bogot? offered little protection for a determined assassin’s target, as at least one ominous statistic made so clear: Columbia currently has the highest murder rate on earth. I would have never guessed, given the countless inspirational experiences I had had in my six brief weeks here.

And so several days later, amidst the clutter of downtown traffic on a bright November afternoon the kids dropped me off at the airport where I ended this odyssey, my initial reservations and concerns long replaced by revelations that only intimacy affords. Making my way past guards and through the metal detectors positioned at every entrance to the terminal, I proceeded deep into its bowels where the mesh of other travelers swallowed me up, and walked slowly and reluctantly out of their lives and back to that other world I had left behind, back to that other life I had put on hold.

The following are John's previous articles for the magazine:

• Adventures In Surinam ~ Into The Jungle
• More Adventures In Surinam ~ Explorations