The ‘Canoa de Carga’ and the Beginning of our Latin American Wait Times
This might sound a bit prejudiced, but if you have ever taken a train in Europe or the US and then travelled to a Latin American country, you have probably realized there is a slightly radical difference between one culture and the other when it comes to the concept of waiting “a little bit” or “being on time.” Let alone not knowing whether waiting will actually turn out successful or not. Throughout these weeks I sometimes took the risk of waiting out of my own initiative, other times I “had” to wait.
Wednesday afternoon was spent trying to get a cargo boat or canoe for our bike to be shipped to Nuevo Roca Fuerte. Getting tickets for the passengers fast boat, as well as having our passports stamped out of Ecuador in Coca (last place with a migration office before crossing the border) that same day, required some good luck. Not that we were lacking it, but most boat companies were still closed for lunch at around 5:00 in the afternoon, with their signs indicating they would close again at 6:00pm, if they actually reopened.
The only people that would not charge us a considerable extra fee due to the “moto gigante” (giant bike) had their canoe scheduled for early Saturday morning, right before a passengers boat. Really? Three nights here? It was the one and only cargo canoe according to the information posted on the dock. “Oops! Sorry, they have just informed me that it broke down somewhere along the river”, the lady tells us. Wait a whole week here, hoping they’ll fix it for next Saturday’s departure, or ride back east, then south into the next country… No, neither of those were options for me.
Miguel was about to finish his beer and get back on the motorcycle. He does not like to sit around. It just isn’t his thing. “There is always a next time”, he likes to tell me when I pretend to visit all the possible attractions we find in a place. I can say we have indeed enjoyed a good second or third time in some cool towns; I do trust him, for sure. Nevertheless… miss out on the Amazonian jungle when it was right around the corner? No way! I was determined to explore it.
It is great when people understand you want out of somewhere rather than hanging out in a pretty, actually not pretty at all, dusty town. Being persistent, combined with a nice smile and definitely talking to the right people, led us to the owner of a company that managed to get a cargo canoe without a broken engine. Good! It would leave early Friday morning, which would give us time to run some errands and get all our paper work done the next day.
Shrimp tacos by the river, after loading up the ‘moto gigante’ just before Sunset the following evening, was our meal before a semi good night sleep. The humming air conditioner was not loud enough to muffle the bustling street outside our window, though it saved us from melting in our own overnight sweat. It was so noisy in the room I had to go sit outside in the corridor, where I also found better WiFi signal, to hold both of my video calls during our stay. An old plastic chair can come handy to place your tablet at eye level while you sit in lotus position on a dirty floor… Work is work (plus mine is lovely)!
“So, where are you at right now?” Some curious clients ask me. Specially with some peculiar backgrounds I tend to have while I travel. I am not a fan of blurring out the background during sessions. If I am hoping for people to be honest with themselves, why would I lie or hide anything about my life? “I am right here”, I reply. “Ready to listen to you”. (Frankly, always very excited too). Plus, why would I take up any of my patients time to explain I am planning for an anaconda encounter in between now and our next therapy appointment?
Ready to board?! I grab a glass of fresh fruit juice, a toasted sliced bread sandwich, a street empanada and some mediocre instant coffee to go. This last drink is not for me. I am picky about the coffee I drink, same as I am with hot chocolate. Did you know the word ‘chocolate’ comes from ‘Xocolatl’ in Nahuatl? Beautiful poetic language used in part of North and Central America before the Spaniards invaded most of the wonderful American continent. ‘Xoco’ meaning bitter and ‘atl’ meaning water. It is said a fantastic drink was prepared with cacao beans, hot water and other spices, mainly in what is now Southern and Central Mexico. During the Spanish colonization of the Americas this beverage was introduced into the old continent, where it became popular once Europeans sweetened it with sugar and got rid off any unwanted hot spices or peppers Pre-hispanics had in their treasured Xocolatl. We now know it as chocolate, tasting it with milk, in tablets, ice-cream and… Yes… instant coffee is what I found for Miguel before boarding.
The military calls out everyone’s name one by one while checking ID’s. We leave a little past 8:00 in the morning, only to return a few minutes later because a local had forgotten to load a package he wanted dropped off somewhere along the way. In spite of the sign saying twenty people maximum for this boat size, maybe twelve metres long by two metres wide, we leave shore again, twenty four of us wearing smelly life jackets. We were all squished on, along with luggage and cargo, only to be turned around once more to pick up a late passenger. Isn’t our captain flexible? I am glad I went peeing prior to boarding this motorized Ecuadorian canoe.
Finally on our way!
I usually like to be disconnected from “the rest of the world” as I explore a new spot on Earth; it gives me peace, a chance to be with myself, perceiving everything and everyone around me.
Lost in my thoughts, I remember sitting in the T.V. room at home at a young age. We had one T.V. and one T.V. room only. This would contribute to our family members actually talking to each other, at least to agree on the one programme we’d watch that particular night, rather than isolating everybody from everybody in their own bedroom with their own screen. I always thought it was weird to have one in the kitchen or dining room turned on during meals. This “meal-T.V. on” situation never happened in my house, I witnessed it in some of my friends’ or boyfriends’ homes. You can guess these relationships did not last very long. No judgment, I was just brought up differently. My family likes to talk. One of my cousins even speaks over subtitled cinema movies. She says she prefers them to dubbed ones so that she can gossip as she reads what goes on in the film. Last time I went with her, more than a decade ago, was exactly that: The last time I went with her to “watch a movie”.
Occasionally, my memory whispers to me that I have longed or planned for something that actually takes place in my life later on. It is amazing. I am not promoting the theory of ‘materializing your thoughts, be careful of what you ask for, bla, bla, bla’; however, it has come about to me. Just like now. I previously mentioned the T.V. because I am recalling watching a show from Discovery Channel. Being a little a girl, I was impressed by the audacious people photographing wild animals down the Amazon River and narrating their attempts to get in touch with remote tribes living in the rain forest. They seemed so courageous and brave that I had then wished I could go on an adventure similar to theirs myself. Wow, I guess I am heading into one right now. How fortunate! I never thought I would make it down here on a motorcycle though. Well, a motorcycle and several different boats. I will write about how I started travelling on the back of a bike later on. It implies a considerable amount of trust and a very special person to share with.
It has probably all been good stuff I have longed for, no doubt. I do not recall attracting any miss happenings that I can think of. Why would I? Perhaps I have forgotten having done so, or I have no complaints about my life so far. I would not change anything from my past. Let me explain this a bit better: If I were to be reborn as my same own self, considering I’d be aware of it, I would probably correct some “mistakes”, make other decisions, yes; which is not the same as having regrets about my past. No, no, no, keep going forward. Life is now!
Whack! The whole boat shakes putting me off my thoughts! Do we have signal still? I see my partner had not quite disconnected himself from the phone. He had been chatting with Geoff, the one friend who initially suggested that we visit the Amazonian rain-forest instead of continuing our road path south. So of course he wanted to know how we were doing. Better to send guinea pigs first, right? Except Geoff did not know until now that there were actually two of us in this experiment, not just Miguel. My chico was never on his own. We began together, laughed, suffered, enjoyed, survived together, hee, hee, hee. It was all brilliant. We took care of each other, supported each other, even tolerated one another when it got tough (he was probably better at this than me). We did great team work whatever circumstance or emotion we came across in this part of the world. We always do!
Taking into account that I would not like to take credit away from anybody’s writing and that my partner was typing like crazy to describe this whole first incident to his friend as it occurred, l will take advantage of his texts and tell you all about it in Miguel’s own words:
“We start off kinda slow then soon enough we were zooming down river at 60 KPH. It reminds me of a jet boat ride. We travel side to side of this very wide, but shallow river avoiding the bottom and other stuff we can see floating, like trees. The river is very brown with lots of sand bars. You can’t see anything under the surface. The boat turns so sharply one side is under water as we skip sideways along the top. Then immediately we turn sharply to the other direction just like the jet boats do to avoid the rocks. The captain was demonstrating the best skill I have seen, until all of the sudden we hit something big, something under water. The engine quit and we all let out a yelp as we stowed abruptly. We all knew this was not good.”
While Miguel texts and takes some videos, I look around curiously to check out other passengers’ reactions and facial expressions. One lady is sleeping through it all! Either she is dead tired or has a very clear conscience. Nobody really seems to care nor stress about any of this. A friendly man on the seat behind me says hello. “This might take a while, huh?” I ask him. “Yep, probably a little bit”, he replies. I wonder whether that is a long or short “little bit”. “If it is a long wait…”, I tell him, “we might as well start getting to know each other”. “Certainly”, he smiles back at me, “by the time we get going again, we will all have had a chance to listen to each other’s life stories. We might even get to speak twice.” What?! I knew it… this certainly means a long “little bit” of a wait.
What an amazing experience it could turn out to be though, I think to myself. Isn’t this what I wanted? To get to know Peruvians very well (since we are the only tourists on board anyway)? This idea makes me think of my women’s sharing circle some years ago. How I miss it! I say “mine” because I had got it going and organized, on a weekly basis for a two hour session each time, but not because I actually led it myself. A circle is a circle, no head, no tail. We each took turns to either share out loud or keep silent while everybody else’s attention was focused on each one of us. I truly loved it. There were various topics we talked about. It was a moment of peace, of reflection, unity; in a matter of minutes, we would be like sisters, good loving sisters (well, my own sister is a very special and dear one, impossible to compare her to any other).
The world outside our circle-talks would become quiet, still, almost non existent; all that mattered was us. We spoke openly and frankly, fearlessly. An interesting fact consisted in there being no actual feed back at all. We would not comment on what any other women had said. It was pure listening. We were there for one another. When I started learning about this sharing or communicating method, my Swede teacher noticed I got a bit anxious before my turn came up the first time we practiced it. I guess she could see my hands sweating or my face beginning to blush as the woman next to me finished talking. Our facilitator advised me not to be afraid, but to merely speak from the heart. “No person cannot not listen to you when your words come directly from within. People will listen, feel, if not understand, respect and be there with you, just flow from your heart.”
She was right. Besides magical, this turned out to be true each and every time. Speaking from the heart can open heavy doors, brightening up dark spots in our beings. It liberates you, sets you free. Taking part in a sharing circle-talk was as if all of our emotions felt safe to converge and expose themselves in one same place. It was deep. Is there anything deeper than a woman’s heart? The ocean? Having our planet’s rivers all flowing into it? Including the Amazon and… Yep, I have interrupted the beginning of our Napo river adventure for just “a little bit”. Let me go back to Miguel’s narration of it:
“The captain restarted the engine hoping it would run again; he was able to limp us to a sand bar. He turned the boat up stream and planted the bow into the sand. Then he told the on board mechanic to jump in and pull the transmission. To our surprise they had a new rebuilt transmission and prop all ready to go at the front of the boat. It was passed back to the mechanic as he and another person were busy with tools removing the damaged one. They were working in about sixty centimeters of water with expertise… Like this was a common experience. I’m guessing it must be common since they have spare parts.”
“Everything once again was going as the captain expected, the old transmission was removed and set back on the boat, the new transmission was in the hands of the mechanic and then….. I yelled out to the captain in the back… ‘We are leaving the sand bar!’ He looked at me, with a don’t worry face and arm wave. The mechanic set the new transmission down in the water on the sand bar quickly when he realized what was happening. The nose of the boat started twisting in the current as the mechanic grabbed the back of the boat. He was not strong enough to hold the boat. The captain grabbed a rope and tried to toss it to the mechanic, the first try yielded a massive ball and landed just outside the boat. The second try made it almost to the mechanic but he had to move out to deeper water to grab it… two guys on the boat held one end and the mechanic up to his chest in water tried to pull us up stream backwards… Nope it did not work. The captain dropped the rope and grabbed an oar. The other guy helping with the rope also grabbed an oar. They both paddle up stream as hard as they could… Yep we are now moving down stream, without a transmission. Another passenger takes off his clothes getting ready to jump in and help, but ends up only grabbing the oar and helps the tired captain, running around in his underwear.”
I would like to mention here that I felt relieved when this other passenger offered to help. Miguel is a very helpful, well intended man. He is constantly willing to lend a hand to anybody we find along the way. I admire this, yes, though I stopped him from doing so more than once, out of my own concern of him getting hurt, during this undertaking. The water was so murky I could not see the bottom at all. There were no other boats around, just us. Any hungry caimans or poisonous water snakes? I did not want to find out. “Please, please, do not jump in”, I practically begged. “ You are not jumping in”. He has a talent for fixing anything. I knew his help could probably get us out of trouble much sooner than we would without his skills, but… I was planning on keeping Miguel in one healthy, good looking human. I admit it, I did not want to jump in after him either in case of emergency (though I would have done so for him).
“We now change to paddle down stream and across the river towards another sand bar. It takes a bit but we manage to miss all the trees and come close to the sand bar so the captain and the passenger jump in and secure the boat, while the captain very quickly installs the old transmission with just a few of the amount of bolts needed, but he did put on a prop on so we could at least move upstream and retrieve the mechanic and new transmission we left stranded. Finally we get the new transmission and prop installed and everyone back on board, also back in their pants. We continue down the river at sixty kilometers per hour.”
“As I’m writing this, there are two guys in the back rebuilding the old transmission. They are pounding on new bearings installing a new shaft… All of these spare parts are being handed back from the front of the boat one passenger at a time. This is not a very big boat; four passengers are shoulder to shoulder across the width.”
“The captain has stopped a few more times because something did not sound right. He asked the mechanic to check the bolts and look for an oil slick. But so far the boat keeps speeding down stream. We should have a newly rebuilt spare soon. Only 3hrs to go!”
Three hours did indeed go by, just like my partner said. We all ended up relaxing as much as that lady snoozing thorough it all. The sound of a running engine turned out to be soothing as we navigated in this “fast passenger boat”. As long as we kept moving forward I felt that we would eventually get there.
About half of the passengers, including the doggie, got off at a small village by the entrance of the Tiputini river, a tributary of the Napo. It was safe land, plus the only stop before our first destination.
Nuevo Roca Fuerte, here we come!
