Pongo de Mainique

The downpour finally let up and our party set out. It was still raining steadily, gradually soaking through my ancient REI rainpants, but my enthusiasm couldn't be dampened. The feeling of moving onwards has no equal for the traveller. The seven of us in the boat fell into a mesmerized silence. Thoughts evaporated into the patter of the rain on top of the deep rush of the river. Scrappy bunches of neutral gray cloud stretched void-like over the layers of jungle, appearing as a flat absence, as if someone had taken an India rubber at random to parts of the scenery. These erasures only enhanced the beauty of the rain-soaked forest.
Eventually the rain tailed off and our silence broke. The main payer, a man with a downturned mouth like a medieval samurai's mask, expounded to me on the beauty of the Pongo, calling it a "cathedral of nature." My excitement to see this place, a transverse gap in the first long ridge to rise out of the Amazon Basin, had been stoked by my long wait at the CSERACRUS camp into a silent roar in my consciousness. Now I read phantom ridges in the cloud colorations to the south, unsure of what I was seeing until finally the true mountain asserted itself darkly through the parting clouds. It looked like Sideling Hill in Pennsylvania, an even, gently striated rise with no end in sight to the left or right. But dead ahead there was a notch, like Greenland Gap in West Virginia: the Pongo. When we were almost there, the payer cracked a beer and poured it into the river as an offering.
In we plunged, steep green walls rising up on both sides, pouring in an almost continuous pantheon of waterfalls. The river leaped and dove, swirling off rock formations jutting out of the canyon walls. The driver deftly ferried through the rough stuff in the middle from one side to the other, hugging whichever bank offered the tamest flow. The rapids were exciting, but not as scary as I'd expected, and any fear I might have had was overpowered the sublime power of the scene. This was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been.
Occasional patches of flatwater allowed uninterrupted contemplation of the rich feeling of awe which consumed me. I have no idea how long the Pongo actually lasted before we came out on the other side of the ridge. No-time. My life, the self I felt was me before entering the Pongo felt incredibly distant, and at the same time the running of it had seemed like a flash. In reality it was perhaps a kilometer in distance and fifteen minutes in time. Given the opportunity I would spend days in the Pongo, but perhaps part of what made the experience so special was the impossibility of stopping, the ungraspable fleetingness of its sublime beauty.
Above the Pongo the Urubamba was a different river. There were rapids that were bigger and scarier than those in the Pongo itself. It was restless throughout, as was the landscape around it. Layers of rock on the river bank leaned at every angle. Low mountains hung all around in random patterns like a parachute settling onto the ground. Small pastures opened out of the forest here and there, and I was reminded of West Virginia. The rain started back up, but as before it had no effect on my high spirits.

Nothing lasts forever, of course. When we got to Ivochote the truck from the municipality that had been scheduled to meet us was nowhere to be found. Logistical dysfunction not being a complete surprise, my companions settled readily into a long afternoon of beer drinking to pass the time. The conversation followed a predictable arc: civilized conversation led to dirty joke-telling, which in turn gave way to an impassioned argument that was eventually resolved with drunken hugs and expressions of mutual admiration. We ended up spending the night. When the truck still hadn't arrived the next morning, we took an all-day bus to Quillabamba. When we arrived I was ready to look for a hostel, but one of the policemen in the group, a dour man who bore a faint resemblance to Saddam Hussein and looked like he wouldn't begrudge an opportunity to use the gun on his hip, insisted that I spend the night at his house. His kindness was as genuine as his aspect was offputting. His wife and daughter were also very sweet. They were Mormons (although he was not) and were very excited to introduce me to a young Elder from Arizona doing his mission in Quillabamba. "Speak English!" they insisted. It was the first English I'd spoken for three weeks.