On the river

So a slightly over excited and very naive young german girl who we traveled with for a couple of days landed us a trip on a boat with some locals. She had a very idealistic kind of 'talking to these people is great,' all rules go out of the window because I'm meeting these Peruvian people and they're all really backward and naive. They live in the jungle they're not corrupt by modern society, they love talking to people and doing things for foreigners out of the kindness of their heart (I seem to remember that I was perhaps the same when I was in Martinique for the first time. I soon learnt to think otherwise). It's naive and it lands you in shit. I'm not saying you need to sit yourself at the other end of the spectrum, fear all the locals and stick to your insular traveler group. There is a real need to strike the right balance when you are traveling otherwise you risk getting yourself into big trouble or on the other hand, you never really see or experience the place and sample the people who live there, you are just drinking with white people in a slightly different back-drop each day. Two extremes. 

In any case, she landed us a pretty cool, if not slightly uncomfortable and very weird (high tension) boat ride just before sunset. It was peaceful, beautiful, the river with dramatic clouds reflected on the surface, the amazing light of the amazon making everything hyper real, drenched in sun, life, light. It was a visual and etherial feast for the eyes tinged with the awkward reality that we were in a rather small boat with two peruvian pervs. I was complemented about my eyes (green, rare, whatever) and then stared at like a rare piece of meat for a while until I managed to tune-out and back into the coolness of the nature around us. Dipping my hand into the water as we cut through the amazonian water (the Amazon!), letting myself be absorbed by the experience, rare proximity to a force of nature we all know about from school or wildlife programs on the tv. Few people actually visit. We saw one or two river dolphins, one of them was even quite close at one point, the idea of swimming was suggested. I was mildly tempted but far too lazy to deal with being started at and then being wet in the boat once again before getting back on dry land. Also, very much terrified of water that isn't crystal clear transparent and river dolphins for that matter. 

The huge trade off, as if sitting in the confined space of a boat like that being stared at wasn't enough, was that we had to go and have dinner with these people later as a thank-you. Dinner at 8 then. We met on the square and got into a motortaxi to go to some sort of jungle eatery. They didn't have what we were looking for, no fish, or no food, I'm not sure, it was bizarre. We ended up at a road grill come diner thing where we ate the dubiously prepared fish (raw fish, cooked fish free knife exchange, worrying). We then had to go out for a couple of drinks with these men and one of them we getting slowly but surely quite pissed. It was difficult to make it through the polite amount of time before we could pull-out the excuse that we needed to get to sleep early in order to get the boat and sort our boarder crossing the next day. We limped through the evening, I shouldered the worst of it being the one able to speak the most spanish. Was glad that the end was in sight when we left the bar to head home but for me it wasn't over. They happened to be staying in the same hostel as us and I had to endure more awkward conversation with an old, drunk peruvian man. When I finally managed to prise myself out of the conversation and head off to my room, he followed me and at the door offered me 100 dollars. I declined. Insisted no and went to bed. Five minutes later I found my friend for a midnight chat and to off-load. We complained a fair bit about the naive german girl and then went to sleep. Tomorrow Colombia! Very very very excited.