DOWN PERU’S UCAYALI RIVER – A MEMOIR

1959
“When I look back upon those days I cannot but return my sincere thanks to the high gods for the gift of existence. All the days were good and each day better  than the other. Ups and downs, risks and journeys, but always the sense of motion and the illusion of hope……………….Twenty to twenty-five! Those are the years!” From “My Early Life”  Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965

In early June, 1959 my good friend and fellow SAE fraternity brother, Rainey Sellars, and I left behind a year of studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and headed off to South America seeking adventure. At the time Rainey was 21 years old, was preparing to enter his senior year of college, and was scheduled to be married in September. I was 25 and had just graduated from the university. My own future was much more uncertain.

At any rate, the account below of a part our two month journey describes an 8-day, 500 mile boat trip down the Ucayali River from Pucallpa to Iquitos, Peru. It is essentially what I wrote in my diary 47 years ago without attempting to be politically correct. When we flew out of Miami in early June, neither of us spoke much Spanish and no Portuguese, which is the language of Brazil, our eventual destination.

(HK; revised 06.04.2009)

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Aboard the Santiago
Ucayali River
Friday, June 26, 1959

Pucallpa, located on the banks of the Ucayali River in eastern Peru, is not a beautiful town by any means, with its rusty, metal roofs and ramshackle houses. It is, however, typical of the average upriver town in the Amazon Basin. The streets were unpaved, rutted from recent rains, but already dusty. In the gutters raw sewage flowed. You can always tell, because green grass grows wildly along the edges of these ditches, a very pretty sight from a distance.

Our hotel, the Mercedes, had one of the few filtered water systems in Pucallpa. At least the water looked clean. To be safe Rainey and I drank only bottled drinks and later found that our genial host, Sr. Foster Lopez, drew his water from the river just below the point where the local slaughter house dumps its animal waste.

Pucallpa has increased in size from a population of about 500 in 1937 to over 20,000 today; yet the community is still in its pioneer stage and lacks adequate drinking water, sewage disposal, garbage disposal, and electricity. It is not unusual to run across groups of Indians walking single file along the streets, the men mostly dressed in khaki, but the women still clinging to their traditional costumes and wearing discs of silver in their noses.

A large group Americans, some of whom had flown on the plane with us from Tingo Maria, also was staying at the Mercedes. Several miles outside town there is a bi-lingual missionary colony whose members are making a study of Indian dialects found in the Amazon basin. I met several of the missionaries in town, but Rainey and I never had an opportunity to make it out to their facility.

On Tuesday evening, June 23, Sr. Lopez, a Mexican engineer and his wife, along with Rainey and me, all went together to the “grand opening” of the Hawaiian Club down on the riverbank. We really had a lot of laughs, especially when the master of ceremonies announced that “New York has the Stork Club, and Pucallpa has the Hawaiian Club.” Sr. Lopez said that as soon as the rainy season arrived the whole place would wash downstream. I doubt that it will be missed. We all drank enough cold beer to thoroughly enjoy the party. Once the club closed at midnight, I returned to the hotel with the owner and headed off to bed. The rest of the group managed to keep the party going elsewhere until about 2:30 that morning.

Rainey and I had been combing the docks looking for transportation to Iquitos when we ran across the Santiago, an old 1880s Mississippi River paddle wheel steamer that had been taken apart at some point and shipped to South America. It was loaded and ready to leave for Iquitos as soon as the crew could be located and sobered up. With the assistance of Sr. Lopez Rainey and I learned the boat would sail on Thursday, June 25 and arranged for 1^st. class passage.

On Wednesday afternoon a missionary who was staying at the Mercedes and who had made river trips in the past went with us to several stores to purchase supplies for our own voyage. That evening we had dinner with the missionary, two scientists, and an American family from Lima who had come overland by Jeep to Pucallpa.

Aboard the Santiago
4 days down river from Pucallpa
Sunday, June 28

At last we are really in the jungles of the Amazon basin, and names which only a few months ago sounded remote and mysterious are now as familiar to our ears as Charlotte and Raleigh. Things have certainly changed since Leonard Clark, author of “The Rivers Ran East” floated down the Ucayali on a raft some thirteen years ago. Gone today are the alligators and other wild game so plentiful in his time. But even so, traveling as we are on an old wood-burning, paddle wheel steamer, the last of its type on the river, is still a unique experience and an excellent way of gaining an intimate picture of Peruvian and native life in the Amazon basin.

Our boat, the Santiago, has three decks, all of which are open on the sides except for the hold below water level where the engine is located. The second deck at water level is used for transporting cargo, cooking, and is the home of the 2^nd. class passengers who sleep anywhere they can find a spot among the chickens, stalks of bananas, sacks of coffee, oranges, hides, etc. The top deck is reserved for the first class passengers and numerous officers of the ship, not one of whom, by the way, can speak a word of English except for the captain. And his English vocabulary is limited to several four letter words picked up on the docks. What a character that fellow is!

From my seat here at the dining table I have a nice view of the pig pen about 12 feet away. Directly in front of me is a huge pile of bananas headed for Iquitos. On my left the wife of one of the crewmen, she looks about 15 years old, is washing dirty clothes in the shower which, by the way, uses river water. A few feet away at the stern another group is cleaning a batch of fish purchased just this morning from an Indian in a dugout canoe.

Behind me one of the passengers, a minor businessman from Iquitos, is as usual relaxing in his sleeping hammock; while on my right the ship’s baker is mixing and rolling dough for today’s bread. Although the sanitation problem is worse here than any place we have visited, both Rainey and I are in excellent health so far except for an infected cut on my left hand. The cut, however, now appears to be healing nicely thanks to sulfa tablets a missionary gave me at one of the many stops for wood along the river.

Our boat, even though it is the slowest, is known far and wide for having the best food on the Ucayali and is the only one which bakes its own bread. Rainey, the sleepy businessman from Iquitos, and I actually eat better than the other 1^st. class passengers, for we three have been invited by the captain to sit at his table during the course of our voyage. Our captain’s name is Casanova. This suits his character admirably in view of his unabated interest in the unmarried women passengers aboard our boat.

Because no one speaks English, I have been unable to determine the names of all the dishes we have been served so far on the Santiago. Names I do know include tapir stew, broiled monkey, papaya melon, fried and boiled bananas, frijoles, salt dried fish, and many kinds of fresh fish. I will never know what goes into all the dishes, and maybe that’s a good thing. The only way to keep from going hungry here is to eat pretty much anything that is set before you, take two Entero Vioformo tablets a day, and hope for the best.

After hearing so much about the “terrible Amazon climate”, I was relieved to find it is actually not too uncomfortable in a damp sort of way so long as the boat is moving. In conjunction with the high humidity we have daily rain showers, even though it is the dry season. Although the temperature hovers around 80 degrees both day and night, a covering of some kind is almost always needed after midnight.

Nights on the river are the worst. Because the water is low, we are unable to run after dark and must tie up to a bank where clouds of mosquitoes quickly rise to the attack. Rainey and I partially solved this problem by buying some netting at one of the wood stops and hanging it across the doorway. Crew members and second class passengers who sleep in the open must have a pretty rough time.

My many camping trips in the North Carolina mountains sure helped me in preparing for this adventure. One has generally the same sort of problems in both places except for the Great Smokies being a lot cleaner and cooler. For instance, none of the basic luxuries of civilization is available aboard the boat. We have no soap, no towels, no toilet tissue, no pure drinking water, and no bottled drinks. Fortunately, the missionary in Pucallpa made sure Rainey and I purchased the necessary supplies before going aboard.

Our shower pours forth dark brown river water, but it is not too bad if one uses plenty of soap. River water, slightly filtered, is also used on the table for drinking, but Rainey and I always purify ours in our canteens with Halazone tablets. To be on the safe side we brought aboard a case of bottled soda water, a large bunch of bananas, a sack of 100 oranges, several cans of meat, and a box of stale crackers among other things. I gave most of the oranges to the woman missionary who treated my hand last night at a wood stop. Anything else left over at the end of the trip will be passed on to the captain.

Because we have no refrigeration aboard, all meat has to be carried alive in the animal pen. The contents of this pen change regularly as the inmates – chickens, ducks, pigs, turkeys – are carried downstairs by the cook to be slaughtered. Replacements are purchased in small villages along the way. This morning I awoke about 5:00 to the squeals of a pig that was in the process of having its throat cut. About the only food I actually have rejected so far on the river is broiled monkey. Even Captain Casanova refuses to choke down this unpalatable dish. According to some of the passengers monkey meat is similar in taste to human flesh.

One very useful item picked up in Pucallpa was a quart bottle of alcohol. It has since proved invaluable to us, and I would hate to have to be on the boat without it. Washing with alcohol is the only sure way of sanitizing your hands before eating or your feet after going barefoot in the shower or cabin. The possible consequences of going without shoes were illustrated to me yesterday when I watched one of the crew clean out the animal pen, shower, toilet, and finally the cabins – all with the same broom. Alcohol is also useful for applying to cuts and mosquito bites, for cleaning tableware, and for washing raw fruit before eating it.

It was pure luck that Rainey and I found the Santiago at Pucallpa. These river boats run on very irregular schedules, and the prospective passenger has to take whatever happens to be sailing. There are currently only two vessels running between Pucallpa and Iquitos. Ours is the better of the two.

Aboard the Santiago
6 days down river from Pucallpa
Tuesday, June 30

Last night we saw our first alligator of the trip. It was well after dark, and the helmsman was sweeping the riverbank with his spotlight looking for a place to tie up when we all saw two orange discs glowing back at us. It was just a small ‘gater, however, and swam away as soon as the anchor was dropped.

A few minutes later a dugout canoe with three Indians crouched down in it glided silently up out of the darkness and tied onto our boat. By the light of the craft’s small kerosene lantern I could see that it was laden with bananas, green peppers, and papaya melons, all of which were soon sold to the passengers and crew. Earlier in the afternoon our mess steward bought 50 live fish from another Indian who had just netted them in the river. They were still splashing around in the bottom of his dugout.

Hardly a mile passes without our seeing one or more Indians paddling along in a canoe. In the Amazon basin where roads are almost non-existent the dugout is the universal means of transportation among the Indians. They also employ balsa rafts to float goods down the rivers to Iquitos and Manaus. In Tingo Maria I was told a story of one balsa raft on the Huallaga that was caught in a whirlpool and orbited there for seventeen days before the crew finally escaped.

Last night the Ucayali rose suddenly, probably from heavy rainfall somewhere upstream, making it possible for us to cast off at 4:00 a.m. today. This was two hours earlier than usual. During the rainy season big boats run both day and night, but low water and treacherous sandbars most likely will keep us on the river for a total of 8 days.

A sight that never ceases to amaze me is that of the wood boys carrying huge bundles of kindling onto the boat. Because our furnace requires a thousand sticks an hour, we have to tie up for a fresh supply sometimes three times a day. All the wood is cut by hand and stacked by the river in cords of 200 sticks with 10 sticks to a layer. Each piece is about 3 to 4 inches in diameter and 32 inches long. One of the boys in the crew is able to carry about 65 sticks at a time, no small accomplishment considering their weight and bulk.

Most of our wood stops are made at obscure villages hardly noticeable from the boat except for the presence of dugouts tied at the foot of the bank. Some of the villages are attractive in a primitive sort of way with their bamboo and straw huts built on stilts in little glades surrounded by the forest. In most settlements several types of fruit grow right in town, and one has to step only a short distance from his/her door to pick bananas, lemons, oranges, or papayas right off the trees.

Handmade articles commonly found in these settlements include fish spears, dugout canoes, paddles, pottery, community bread ovens, wood mortars, and other wooden machines used for the crushing of sugar cane, coffee beans, etc.

A common sight at most stops is that of tiny children, handsome in most respects, but with enormous pot bellies – a condition I suspect is caused by a poor diet or maybe worms. For some reason none of the adults I saw had the protruding stomachs.

Several times a day we saw fish-like creatures swimming in schools and occasionally breaking water. The captain calls them dolphine (or bufeo). Whether they are fish or mammals I haven’t been able to determine. But based on the fact that they rise to the surface leads me to believe they are the latter.

On the Ucayali River
July 1, 1959

Rainey and I just received our bill for the eight day trip on the Santiago. Each of us was charged 185 Peruvian soles including meals, or about $7.00 in U. S. currency. Up to now we hadn’t really known what we would have to pay since we two were occupying a 4-berth “stateroom”. This cabin I hasten to add was only about 7 feet square and barely accommodated the two of us with luggage.

On the Amazon River
Thursday, July 2

This morning our craft reached the point where the Ucayali and Maranon join together and form that greatest of all South American rivers, the Amazon. If the boat continues on schedule, we should reach Iquitos by 3:00 this afternoon. I noted that people who live around here call this section of the Amazon “El Rio Solimoes”, and it appears on some maps by this name.

I neglected to mention earlier that Rainey’s twenty-first birthday fell on June 29. We were unable to put together much of a celebration that day, but Captain Casanova did bring out a bottle of pretty awful wine in Rainey’s honor at breakfast while I contributed another not much better at dinner. Sr. Sellars’ greatest surprise of the day came in the form of a giant bear hug of congratulations delivered by an evil looking fellow passenger we call “the gangster”.

Three types of fresh fish served to us during the past several days are known locally as Corvina, Gamitana, and Paiche. In Captain Casanova’s opinion the most tempting part of any fish is the head. This is left attached during the cooking, along with the tail, scales, and fins. One day when the cook placed an unusually big fish on our table the captain immediately cut off the head for himself – it covered his whole plate – and ate every possible bit of meat on it, including the eyeballs. He was welcome to it. Rainey and I were quite happy for him to choose that great delicacy for himself and leave us the remainder. As an experiment Rainey did eat a couple of fish eyeballs once, but they were well cooked and actually didn’t look too bad.

The lack of sanitation in back country South America simply cannot be comprehended by the average American unless he/she has been there to experience it. On our boat soap is an unknown word. All tableware is rinsed in river water after each meal. This is all the cleaning it gets. Because the four of us at the Captain’s table use the same cloth napkins for the entire eight days, and no napkin is assigned to a particular person, it’s always a game to guess who used it the previous meal.

There is an interesting sign in the filthy bathroom which requests that passengers “Please throw toilet paper through the window.” I imagine the request was put there for fear that the newspaper ordinarily used as toilet paper on our boat might not make it down the pipe. Unfortunately, quite a bit never even makes it through the window, and much of that which does lands in the small ship-to-shore launch tied just beneath.

Hotel Amazonas
Manaus, Brazil
Sunday, July 5

Upon arriving in Iquitos last Thursday Rainey and I learned no river boats would be sailing for Manaus in the near future. It was only with the greatest difficulty that we were successful in booking passage on Pan Air de Brazil’s weekly Saturday flight. Iquitos is not a bad town, and because of its strategic location, will doubtless grow to be an upper Amazon metropolis some day. Right now, however, any large shipments of merchandise or raw materials destined for Lima or visa versa must be sent all the way around by way of the Panama Canal because of the great Andean mountain barrier to the west which up to now has not been breached by a major highway.

Our hotel in Iquitos, another in the Tourista group, was the best in town and turned out to a gathering spot for English-speaking people in the area. Our room cost $6.00 a night. A steak dinner with wine set each of us back about $1.25. After spending 8 days on the Ucayali River such luxury was greatly appreciated.

Next stop: Manaus, Brazil