The Waiting

Map nerd that I am, my plan to travel from Iquitos to Machu Picchu by boat sprang from perusing the National Geographic Atlas. And optimist that I am, I assumed that where there is a large river there will be boats, and the people driving those boats will be happy to take me with them. But not everything works as neatly as we map nerds would have it. My harebrained scheme bore fruit only after 10 days of stewing in the jungle.

From Pucallpa, tired of slow cargo boats, I took a puddle jumper to Atalaya. Efficient Aero Andino employees packed eight passengers into a fuselage the size of a large water heater. A ninth sat in the copilot's seat. I felt like a tinned herring, but at least there was a great view. The jungle was not the uniform emerald expanse I'd expected. The Ucayali's geologic-time hegemony over this landscape was in evidence as far as the eye could see. The oxbow lakes (including a heart-shaped one) were only the most obvious signs of the river's wanderings, scourings, and leavings-behind. Huge tracts of jungle appeared to have been raked by the claws of a gargantuan bear: curving parallel stripes of differentiated vegetation, the ghostly outline of an ancient river's march across the landscape.

When I first arrived in Peru a month ago, Peruvians immediately struck me as louder and more enthusiastic than the stoic Ecuadorians. On the passenger boat from Atalaya to Sepahua I saw the other side of this coin: Peruvians as complainers. Never in Latin America have I seen such an uproar over any form of transport leaving 10 minutes late. The complaints were vicious; my ears burned in sympathy for the boat driver. Even when we got under way he was not spared umbrage: the old-but-still-vital man posted in the bow to watch for logs and plumb for depth shot bullets aft with his eyes whenever the driver didn't follow his directives with alacrity.

The flora was unchanged from what I'd seen between Iquitos and Pucallpa. Although I didn't know their names, I'd grown familiar with these trees and shrubs. I particularly liked the tree that looked like a bouquet of moustaches on sticks, something you might see for sale on the street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, if people there were anywhere as opportunistic for street commerce as South Americans. The geology, however, and consequently the river, were distinctly different here on the Urubamba than the placid Ucayali. It seemed more stern and deeply powerful in its downward push. Here and there were areas where the greater steepness of the riverbed had broken it up into 10,000 choppy wavelets, the water sucking out from under itself and lending the surface the popcorn-stitch texture of the palms of hand-knitted mittens.

Sepahua, a town which enjoys electricity from 6 to 11 every evening, was where my boat hitchhiking was to start. However, the only opportunities that presented themselves in two and a half days were a pathological liar whose boat's motor was in disrepair and a woman from a fly-by-night environmental organization who got a free beer out of me before declaring she would have to charge me twice the money I had to go a single day's journey up the river. The only things keeping me from abject disillusionment with my trip during this time were volleyball games with a kindly local family and rereading "As I Lay Dying," which was much better the second time around.

On my third morning in Sepahua I was considering beating an ignominious retreat to Atalaya, even though I was seven dollars short of what I would need to do so, when I met Pedro, aka Chikipala. Chikipala worked for a municipal electrification project called CSERACRUS. The project had camps up and down the lower Urubamba where workers lived while they macheted paths through the jungle and hauled concrete poles and spools of cable along them. He offered me a two-day free ride, camping and food included, if I would pitch in as one of the guys. Thus, in the space of five minutes I went from moping with a blank, hopeless gaze to carrying sacks of cement down steep steps to the CSERACRUS boat, as happy as a clam.

My CSERACRUS sojourn ended up lasting ten days. I macheted and hauled concrete poles with the guys, laughed at their dirty jokes, ate greasy-but-delicious food in the mess hall, slept in a "Klimber" brand tent which almost allowed me to stretch out corner-to-corner, watched movies like "Terminator" on generator-powered DirecTV at night, and enjoyed being called "Mister" a thousand times a day. Every day various men assured me that "tomorrow" the guy who pays them would come, and I could continue upriver with him to Ivochote, then in a truck to Quillabamba. "Tomorrow," of course, began to shed its semantic identity with something like the impassive relentlessness of the Urubamba's flow. I'd thought I was a patient, unflappable person, but this Waiting for Godot situation showed me how much maturing I have to do. In the meantime I spent an afternoon with an Ashanika Indian family, drinking manioc beer, watching a solar panel-powered DVD of evangelical songs in the Ashanika language, and listening to the patriarch's boasts about his brave exploits as an Army soldier and in wars against enemy tribes.

Finally the pay guy appeared, and I was only subject to one last toying with my emotions: a morning downpour that threatened to delay me for one more day.