good story:
Jul. 31st, 2003 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
electricland"Most people don't take babies to the jungle, Madam."
Travels with a man-cub
When Christina Lamb went up the Amazon - with its snakes, spiders and diseases - her young son went too
OUR plane was coming into land at the jungle capital of Manaus. As we flew low over the mass of milky coffee-coloured water spreading wide as a sea, I pushed my baby son against the window. "That's the Amazon," I said to him in an awed voice that made my husband smirk, "the world's greatest river."
To my delight, Lorenzo smiled and jabbed a chubby finger down at the muddy river. "Bus," he said happily. Sure enough, far below on a red dirt track through the trees, there was indeed some kind of vehicle.
I had pondered the wisdom of taking a 22-month-old on a small boat through the world's largest rainforest. Malaria, yellow fever, hepatitis, cholera, dengue, leishmanias - the list of ailments our local GP had told us a baby could catch read like a tropical disease handbook. That was not to mention snake bites, spiders big as dinner plates, kissing bugs, vampire bats, Indians with poison arrows . . .
My mother had been horrified. Her friends' daughters take their families on holiday to Spain or Disneyland. But I was going to be away for two months in the Amazon researching a book and did not want to be apart from my son for so long. My husband wanted to see the Amazon and I knew from previous trips that, provided one was careful and ate lots of fresh fruit and fish, it could be idyllic.
Restricted by his 14-word vocabulary from expressing his own opinion, little Lorenzo had his yellow fever injection without a tear. Malaria pills were a different matter. However much we crushed them with honey or banana to disguise the bitter taste, he could tell them a mile off, pushing his plate away accusingly.
In the end we gave up. The Rio Negro where we were travelling has far fewer insects than the rest of the Amazon, and we would just have to smother him with repellent. For weeks I trailed London outdoor shops, searching for baby-sized jungle-wear, boots and mosquito net. "Most people don't take babies to the jungle, Madam," explained one salesman patiently.
Eventually we made do with long shirts and trousers with drawstring bottoms and found a baby life-jacket in a sailing shop. We filled a cooler bag with biscuits, Weetabix, and baby milk, briefly wondered if we were the first people to take Teletubbies into the jungle, and off we set.
Only reachable by plane and boat, Manaus is a long way from anywhere, including the rest of Brazil - London is closer to Istanbul than Manaus is to Rio - and in a different time zone to the rest of the country.
We arrived at its airport to be met by Gilberto, our guide: his face fell at all our luggage. The youngest child he had ever taken on the river was nine but it was too late to back out, so he smiled and drove us to the boat that was to be our home for the next week.
Freshly painted for the start of the season, the two-deck Amazon Clipper was a pleasant surprise. My previous experience on the river was on small Indian canoes or vast passenger ferries crammed with hundreds of people with chickens and sacks of food, cooking on deck and sleeping in tiers in hammocks.
All aboard: Lorenzo takes the wheel
This time, we were welcomed on board with a caipirinha, a Brazilian concoction of lime, sugar and sugarcane spirit, and instead of a hammock, we had a cabin, complete with fan and lavatory. Luxury indeed, though my wardrobe at home was larger. Changing nappies would be a nightmare.
Soon we had left behind the floating docks bought prefabricated from England at the end of the 19th century during the rubber boom when Manaus was one of the richest cities on Earth. The era is hard to imagine now, though the Teatro Amazonas stands as a reminder, an astonishing pink and white neo-classical opera house that inspired Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo about an Irishman who dreams of Caruso performing in the jungle.
Within half an hour, we began to get a real sense of being on the world's greatest river. The Amazon may not be the longest (that honour goes to the Nile) but it dwarfs all others, carrying a fifth of the planet's freshwater. At some points it is wider than the distance between London and Paris: near its mouth it holds an island the size of Wales.
June is the end of the rainy season, a time when fish literally swim in the treetops as the river is at its highest, having risen about 100ft, submerging trees and forging channels through the forest. We visited areas normally inaccessible by boat, enabling us to see exquisite orchids and bromeliads as well as monkeys and sloths that would usually be too high to spot.
Late in the afternoon our boat docked and we set off by canoe into the flooded forest. On cue a pair of macaws screeched overhead. "Duck," said Lorenzo. Inside the forest, the sun blocked out by the trees, we were silenced by too many impressions, the intense humidity, and a sense of the jungle's life-force pushing out everywhere.
Everything seemed vast and primeval - leaves as big as elephant ears, brown fruits the size of cannonballs, mushrooms shaped like wineglasses, and tree trunks wide as houses, sculpted into folds and pleats like vast skirts hundreds of feet high. It was surprisingly noisy - a loud electric hum of crickets, the chirping of frogs, cries of birds calling "Bem-te-vi" or "Good to see you", and the crazed whoops of howler monkeys.
Soon the forest was so thick that it became hard to move. Gilberto, a sort of Amazonian Indiana Jones, pulled out his machete and hacked away vegetation, sending leaves and biting ants falling onto us. Lorenzo was fascinated, particularly when the boat became wedged between trees. "Stuck," he kept repeating helpfully - one of several new words he was to learn on the trip along with "tree" and "monk" (monkey).
He was not so happy the next day when, having set off amid glorious sunshine in search of giant Amazonian waterlilies big enough to take a child's weight, the sky suddenly blackened and the heavens opened. "How refreshing," we all said in an English way before it turned into chuva branca (white rain), endless sheets that flooded our canoe.
Lorenzo began to cry, then scream. I covered him the best I could but he was soon drenched. We were completely exposed on our little canoe in the middle of the water and it had turned very cold. The temperature can drop suddenly in the jungle. People passed round beers. "Only the English would drink and sing in this situation," muttered my husband Paulo, who is Portuguese.
It seemed like hours that we sat there shivering and it was nightfall before the rain stopped. Back on the boat, feeling terribly guilty, I wrapped Lorenzo in towels and Dona Rosa, the wonderful cook, made him warm milk. But babies are remarkably adaptable and he recovered quickly, particularly when he found a large tarantula to chase round the galley.
Everyone looked a bit shocked by the experience as we gathered for dinner on the upper deck. But Dona Rosa had cooked us up a hearty supper of rice, black beans and tambaqui, a delicious fruit-eating fish that is one of more than 2,000 different kinds that live in the Amazon.
Meals were Lorenzo's favourite times on the boat - he loved piranha soup, the unusual fruits such as acerola that has 50 times more vitamin C than an orange, and cupuacu, an evil-smelling fruit with delicious creamy flesh.
He looked alarmed when we got in the canoe again the next morning, though was distracted by a group of pink dolphins playing round the boat. But his adventures were not over.
Disembarking for a jungle walk, a big black howler monkey suddenly came running up to Paulo and tried to snatch Lorenzo from his arms. I screamed and that attracted more down from the trees.
Lorenzo of course thought this was great fun, but I was terrified they were going to take him off into the treetops, particularly when Gilberto told me that a three year old had been kidnapped by monkeys a few years ago.
It was a relief to be back on the boat and as we got further up the Rio Negro the scenery became more and more beautiful, particularly around the Anavilhanas, an archipelago of about 400 small islands. This is the part of the Amazon perhaps the least changed since British naturalists such as Spruce, Bates and Wallace came here in the 19th century, and for days we saw no other boats and no houses.
When we finally glimpsed a settlement of wooden huts on stilts it was quite exciting. The children rushed out, eager for pens and balloons, and fascinated by the fair-haired, blue-eyed white boy. One beautiful half-Indian girl shyly offered him her pet woodpecker. The women, who by my age (35) all have about 13 children, asked where my others were.
After a few days we had lost our fear of the river, though life on board was very restrictive for a toddler. He loved the open-air showers on the end of the boat, watching the scenery passing by, and we swam in the black water, reassured by Gilberto that though the river was full of piranhas and caymans, nothing would bite us if we didn't bother it.
On the way back down-river, we stopped at a beach of white sand, fine and soft as icing sugar and perfect for a baby to play in. Somewhat disturbingly, there was a cemetery on the beach and another boat moored bearing naked girls having showers in front of two paunchy Brazilians. It was the first other boat we had seen for three days.
One gets accustomed to life on the river, away from mobile phones and television, and arriving back in view of Manaus was a shock. Pointing to the noisy traffic-clogged roads, Lorenzo was clearly relieved his Amazon adventure was over. "Bus," he said happily.
Travels with a man-cub
When Christina Lamb went up the Amazon - with its snakes, spiders and diseases - her young son went too
OUR plane was coming into land at the jungle capital of Manaus. As we flew low over the mass of milky coffee-coloured water spreading wide as a sea, I pushed my baby son against the window. "That's the Amazon," I said to him in an awed voice that made my husband smirk, "the world's greatest river."
To my delight, Lorenzo smiled and jabbed a chubby finger down at the muddy river. "Bus," he said happily. Sure enough, far below on a red dirt track through the trees, there was indeed some kind of vehicle.
I had pondered the wisdom of taking a 22-month-old on a small boat through the world's largest rainforest. Malaria, yellow fever, hepatitis, cholera, dengue, leishmanias - the list of ailments our local GP had told us a baby could catch read like a tropical disease handbook. That was not to mention snake bites, spiders big as dinner plates, kissing bugs, vampire bats, Indians with poison arrows . . .
My mother had been horrified. Her friends' daughters take their families on holiday to Spain or Disneyland. But I was going to be away for two months in the Amazon researching a book and did not want to be apart from my son for so long. My husband wanted to see the Amazon and I knew from previous trips that, provided one was careful and ate lots of fresh fruit and fish, it could be idyllic.
Restricted by his 14-word vocabulary from expressing his own opinion, little Lorenzo had his yellow fever injection without a tear. Malaria pills were a different matter. However much we crushed them with honey or banana to disguise the bitter taste, he could tell them a mile off, pushing his plate away accusingly.
In the end we gave up. The Rio Negro where we were travelling has far fewer insects than the rest of the Amazon, and we would just have to smother him with repellent. For weeks I trailed London outdoor shops, searching for baby-sized jungle-wear, boots and mosquito net. "Most people don't take babies to the jungle, Madam," explained one salesman patiently.
Eventually we made do with long shirts and trousers with drawstring bottoms and found a baby life-jacket in a sailing shop. We filled a cooler bag with biscuits, Weetabix, and baby milk, briefly wondered if we were the first people to take Teletubbies into the jungle, and off we set.
Only reachable by plane and boat, Manaus is a long way from anywhere, including the rest of Brazil - London is closer to Istanbul than Manaus is to Rio - and in a different time zone to the rest of the country.
We arrived at its airport to be met by Gilberto, our guide: his face fell at all our luggage. The youngest child he had ever taken on the river was nine but it was too late to back out, so he smiled and drove us to the boat that was to be our home for the next week.
Freshly painted for the start of the season, the two-deck Amazon Clipper was a pleasant surprise. My previous experience on the river was on small Indian canoes or vast passenger ferries crammed with hundreds of people with chickens and sacks of food, cooking on deck and sleeping in tiers in hammocks.
All aboard: Lorenzo takes the wheel
This time, we were welcomed on board with a caipirinha, a Brazilian concoction of lime, sugar and sugarcane spirit, and instead of a hammock, we had a cabin, complete with fan and lavatory. Luxury indeed, though my wardrobe at home was larger. Changing nappies would be a nightmare.
Soon we had left behind the floating docks bought prefabricated from England at the end of the 19th century during the rubber boom when Manaus was one of the richest cities on Earth. The era is hard to imagine now, though the Teatro Amazonas stands as a reminder, an astonishing pink and white neo-classical opera house that inspired Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo about an Irishman who dreams of Caruso performing in the jungle.
Within half an hour, we began to get a real sense of being on the world's greatest river. The Amazon may not be the longest (that honour goes to the Nile) but it dwarfs all others, carrying a fifth of the planet's freshwater. At some points it is wider than the distance between London and Paris: near its mouth it holds an island the size of Wales.
June is the end of the rainy season, a time when fish literally swim in the treetops as the river is at its highest, having risen about 100ft, submerging trees and forging channels through the forest. We visited areas normally inaccessible by boat, enabling us to see exquisite orchids and bromeliads as well as monkeys and sloths that would usually be too high to spot.
Late in the afternoon our boat docked and we set off by canoe into the flooded forest. On cue a pair of macaws screeched overhead. "Duck," said Lorenzo. Inside the forest, the sun blocked out by the trees, we were silenced by too many impressions, the intense humidity, and a sense of the jungle's life-force pushing out everywhere.
Everything seemed vast and primeval - leaves as big as elephant ears, brown fruits the size of cannonballs, mushrooms shaped like wineglasses, and tree trunks wide as houses, sculpted into folds and pleats like vast skirts hundreds of feet high. It was surprisingly noisy - a loud electric hum of crickets, the chirping of frogs, cries of birds calling "Bem-te-vi" or "Good to see you", and the crazed whoops of howler monkeys.
Soon the forest was so thick that it became hard to move. Gilberto, a sort of Amazonian Indiana Jones, pulled out his machete and hacked away vegetation, sending leaves and biting ants falling onto us. Lorenzo was fascinated, particularly when the boat became wedged between trees. "Stuck," he kept repeating helpfully - one of several new words he was to learn on the trip along with "tree" and "monk" (monkey).
He was not so happy the next day when, having set off amid glorious sunshine in search of giant Amazonian waterlilies big enough to take a child's weight, the sky suddenly blackened and the heavens opened. "How refreshing," we all said in an English way before it turned into chuva branca (white rain), endless sheets that flooded our canoe.
Lorenzo began to cry, then scream. I covered him the best I could but he was soon drenched. We were completely exposed on our little canoe in the middle of the water and it had turned very cold. The temperature can drop suddenly in the jungle. People passed round beers. "Only the English would drink and sing in this situation," muttered my husband Paulo, who is Portuguese.
It seemed like hours that we sat there shivering and it was nightfall before the rain stopped. Back on the boat, feeling terribly guilty, I wrapped Lorenzo in towels and Dona Rosa, the wonderful cook, made him warm milk. But babies are remarkably adaptable and he recovered quickly, particularly when he found a large tarantula to chase round the galley.
Everyone looked a bit shocked by the experience as we gathered for dinner on the upper deck. But Dona Rosa had cooked us up a hearty supper of rice, black beans and tambaqui, a delicious fruit-eating fish that is one of more than 2,000 different kinds that live in the Amazon.
Meals were Lorenzo's favourite times on the boat - he loved piranha soup, the unusual fruits such as acerola that has 50 times more vitamin C than an orange, and cupuacu, an evil-smelling fruit with delicious creamy flesh.
He looked alarmed when we got in the canoe again the next morning, though was distracted by a group of pink dolphins playing round the boat. But his adventures were not over.
Disembarking for a jungle walk, a big black howler monkey suddenly came running up to Paulo and tried to snatch Lorenzo from his arms. I screamed and that attracted more down from the trees.
Lorenzo of course thought this was great fun, but I was terrified they were going to take him off into the treetops, particularly when Gilberto told me that a three year old had been kidnapped by monkeys a few years ago.
It was a relief to be back on the boat and as we got further up the Rio Negro the scenery became more and more beautiful, particularly around the Anavilhanas, an archipelago of about 400 small islands. This is the part of the Amazon perhaps the least changed since British naturalists such as Spruce, Bates and Wallace came here in the 19th century, and for days we saw no other boats and no houses.
When we finally glimpsed a settlement of wooden huts on stilts it was quite exciting. The children rushed out, eager for pens and balloons, and fascinated by the fair-haired, blue-eyed white boy. One beautiful half-Indian girl shyly offered him her pet woodpecker. The women, who by my age (35) all have about 13 children, asked where my others were.
After a few days we had lost our fear of the river, though life on board was very restrictive for a toddler. He loved the open-air showers on the end of the boat, watching the scenery passing by, and we swam in the black water, reassured by Gilberto that though the river was full of piranhas and caymans, nothing would bite us if we didn't bother it.
On the way back down-river, we stopped at a beach of white sand, fine and soft as icing sugar and perfect for a baby to play in. Somewhat disturbingly, there was a cemetery on the beach and another boat moored bearing naked girls having showers in front of two paunchy Brazilians. It was the first other boat we had seen for three days.
One gets accustomed to life on the river, away from mobile phones and television, and arriving back in view of Manaus was a shock. Pointing to the noisy traffic-clogged roads, Lorenzo was clearly relieved his Amazon adventure was over. "Bus," he said happily.
