I was first one up today! I checked my watch and it was 5:30am, so I quietly removed myself and headed to the common room where coffee was already on. Moe followed around 6am, and one of our guides, Tony, chatted us up until close to 7am breakfast time.

Our after-breakfast excursion today was piranha fishing. I caught one early on, and since dehooking was probably equally traumatic for both parties of that transaction, I switched my goal to piranha feeding. In case you were wondering, they are indeed down there, they are plentiful, and they love nibbling meat. Nom nom nom. They’re also delicious, as I learned over a couple of meals on this trip. Fair is fair.

This afternoon I cross-posted the next Charitocracy nominee, RAICES (free/cheap immigration attorneys), across social media. Then Eric, Moe and I played another game of Citadels. I came in 2nd again. I think Jessica and the kids will like this game, and I hear it’s better with 4+ players.

Eric bailed, but Moe and I hit a nearby village on the river for our afternoon excursion. We learned how they fish, hunt, and grow their food, and how they mill their crop into a variety of products like the tapioca used to make the pancake-like things we’ve had for breakfast so frequently on this trip. (For lack of better terminology I’ve called them blintzes in previous blog posts, but they are known as tapiocas.) These Amazon river locals have figured a few things out over the years! Including how to generate enough electricity for 3 hours of satellite TV each evening from 6pm – 9pm.

We visited their gift shop full of crafts they’ve made. I picked up a few items of jewelry for the fam. On the way back to the boat we spotted a baby sloth at eye-height in the bottom of a tree. It was sleeping, and probably the most adorable thing I’ve seen on this trip. Its momma was at the top of the same tree. She was probably coming full-speed down to intercept us from bothering her baby, but alas her movement was imperceptible. The baby woke up a couple times and I got a look at its cute face, but not sure I got a good photo of that because it was in the shadow. But it’s in my memory!

It’s fast approaching dinner time, our last one here at Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge. I’m blogging now since we have an early 5am final excursion, a sunrise contemplation. Moe thinks I’ll be an early riser convert after this trip, but I’m less certain… [Future Benj says: “Nope!”]

Maurice woke me up this morning “quietly” getting ready to leave the room around 5:45am, so I just decided to get up, too. By 7am I had climbed to the top of Belvedere, the name of the observation tower at our resort. Moe was up there, too. But a sign enumerating the rules for the tower includes “Silence!” so I just nodded at him.

My hope was that I’d find a reliable cell signal up on the tower above the tree canopy. I was not disappointed. Full on 3G! Pages load in only 20 seconds! I knew I should be blogging about the 3 new July Charitocracy nominees, but when I set out to start that, I realized I still needed to blog about the June winner. 4 blog posts to do, and 4 days before the July Top 10 would be selected, the same day I fly home. So I had my work cut out for me! [Future Benj says: “You failed to mention to readers who don’t know you, Benj of yore, that you and Jessica run a nonprofit where donors pool their small donations and vote on the best charity to win it all each month. As little as $13/year to join in the fun!”]

In between our two excursions today I banged out all 4 blog posts. What usually takes me 20 minutes to write each took an hour, since I was working with my iPad on a slow connection instead of my Mac on a fast one. But I got it done! June winner (Together We Rise, for those keeping score at home) posted to Charitocracy blog and cross-posted to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and mailing list. Nominee posts for RAICES, Pan-Mass Challenge, and Mission 22 written and scheduled for the next 3 days. 😅

The excursions I was working around were canoeing and dolphin searching. The first was especially fun. Eric was back paddler and I front paddler for our canoe, dubbed Team America by our guide, who was paired with Moe. There was also a Team Germany, an older couple, and Team Brazil, two middle-aged vixens as Jessica would have called them. We were all racing around through the flooded jungle in our traditional Amazon river canoes and squat heavy wood paddles. (The water here is about 30m higher than it will be in October.) Eric and I were showing off by slaloming around obstacles at full speed.

After we got off the canoes and back onto the speedboat that brought us and the canoes to this part of the river, we had the opportunity to swim for a while. Everyone except Team Germany partook. It started raining. It felt really great! The funniest part was each of us trying to climb (or be dragged) back up into the speed boat. It was not graceful.

The other excursion was a boat ride out across the archipelago in search of gray and pink dolphins. This would have been exciting on Day 1 in the Amazon. But on Day 11, we’ve seen these dolphins almost every day. It’s hard not to see them.

I won’t even mention that I have dolphins in my back yard at home in OBX. (Oh, snap. I just did.) However, the highlight of this excursion was the boat ride back and forth. This was the first time I was taken on shortcuts across islands in a speed boat. The captain wasn’t particularly careful about it, either. We were banging into and bouncing off trees like it was jungle pinball. We barely fit, and we’re getting branches in our faces. But it was pretty cool, having only done this in slow kayaks and canoes previously.

At dinner there was a tarantula watching us eat from the interior edge of the thatched roof.

Just chilling out, doing his thang. NBD. That’s pretty much the attitude of Amazon wildlife, and I can fully relate.

I awoke at 6:58am after about 9.5 hours in a real bed. There’s a hammock right outside our room, to where we thought Eric might be banished, but that proved unnecessary. All 3 of us are refreshed and ready to attack the breakfast buffet. I enjoyed scrambled eggs with tomatoes and chives, a variety of cheeses, and coffee.

While awaiting the muster for our all-day Rio Negro cruise, I caught up on yesterday’s blogging. Then onto the “big” boat, which is about the same size as the Com te Isaac, maybe a few feet wider and longer. At least it seems bigger, since the entire upstairs is an open deck, without an enclosed cabin in the front half like Isaac.

We headed upstream first, past Nova Airão, the western-most town on the Amazon (Rio Negro tributary) reachable by car from Manaus.

For the 2nd half of the morning we got on the small boat, same as the one we were on last night, to travel back downstream through narrower channels amidst the many islands of the Rio Negro archipelago.

When the guide asked if we wanted to swim, Eric literally jumped at the opportunity. He was in the water before the boat even came to a halt. He set off the man overboard alarm. We all had a good laugh.

Eventually we reached Base I, the only remaining inhabited residence in the National Park, staffed by 2 rangers. As recently as 2 years ago there were 16 rangers spread over 4 bases, tasked with protecting the Amazon from hunters, anglers, and tree harvesters. Due to government corruption, not only has Brazil cut its funding such that only two rangers remain, and their hours/salaries each cut in half, also the international donations from countries like Norway have been diverted into Brazilian officials’ pockets. (This is all according to our guide, but I have no reason to doubt it.)

After signing Base I’s guest book, we got back in the little boat and motored back to the big boat where tables were set elaborately, and lunch was waiting. Delicious fish, rice, steak for those who like it, fruits and mousse for dessert, and extra nice coffee.

After we returned from the big boat ride, Eric, Moe and I played a card game called Citadels. It was fun, but Moe won. So we’ll need a rematch.

After dinner we did a night hike. Long pants, gators, and headlamps. We saw a pretty rad tarantula, a few leaches, and leaf cutter ants.

The best part was when we all shut off our lights and had to make our way the last stretch of the hike through the jungle in the dark. Fun times. 😬

This morning while breaking camp for the last time, we found Moe digging at a splinter in his foot. He borrowed a pin from Erikes and sterilized it with Erikes’ butane lighter. But Moe wasn’t successful getting the splinter out. Erikes gave it a try, digging and poking. He was successful, but not in removing a splinter…

Maurice had a chigger flea that had drilled into the bottom of his foot, laid eggs, and eventually died. Moe’s wife Emily, over text message, researched this and said they’re picked up through walking barefoot in the sand. Something we do basically every day? SO GROSS! In concept and in appearance.

This of course had the rest of us checking our feet. Moe’s “splinter” had bothered him a bit while walking, which is how he noticed. My feet were so dirty, there was no telling what was down there. I cleaned them off with some wet naps, and only saw one spot that was a little tender, but too big for a splinter. It was a dark dot surrounded by a slightly pinker than usual area, like a bit of infection. I showed it to Erikes, and I suggested maybe I just keep my eye on it for a while, no need to be hasty…

Erikes whipped out the pin and started digging. He was simultaneously intrigued and horrified. He had never in his career as an Amazon river guide, nor as a man of Brazil, seen a chigger flea so big. It doesn’t look like much in hindsight, but blood, guts, and eggs is never how you want your day to start.

It left a hole that looked and felt sore as if I had previously stepped on a nail. (Not the sharp pain of the actual nail step, but the lingering mild soreness.) I applied lots of Neosporin and a waterproof band-aid, and socks and shoes. I feel so violated. [Visions of Benj crying naked in a bath tub with the shower pouring down on him, but nothing can scrub the trauma from his memory.] Okay, I’m over it.

A little behind schedule, but off for breakfast at the same place in Presidente Figueiredo. I had cafe pure and a Brazil nut tapioca. Excellent! And I had the foresight to download a couple of albums while we had a network connection in town. Now, with Belle & Sebastian’s “The Boy With The Arab Strap” blasting, we’re off to the final attraction, the big show, the #1 waterfall that all tourists visit, the one we saw advertised at the airport.

Like the Griswolds arriving at Wally-World after an epic journey, our 9 days on an Amazon Mystery Tour was about to reach its grand finale! Drum roll please… 🥁

It’s closed for maintenance today. Sorry.

That’s okay, we’ll catch it next time we’re in the Amazon. Instead, we drive directly to Manaus for Plan B: to check out the vast marketplace downtown. Again, we subject ourselves to the public menace that is Erikes’ driving. Having survived it for the last time now, maybe in hindsight it will fade in my memory to be just another scary driver. But in 43 years I don’t think I’ve been knowingly that close to death by vehicle. Best of luck to all the other drivers and pedestrians who continue to share his road. (We love you regardless, Erikes. Everyone has to have some character flaw.)

The market was really neat. We learned about different uses for the tongue and scales of the giant fish of the Amazon, everything from jewelry to exfoliation and nail files. I got a photo of piranhas, finally. And lots and lots of bananas, still on the vine/branch. I can imagine bustling marketplaces like this one dating back millennia. The only one I’d seen previously was with Pieter Bekker in Leads, England. But I could tell the items for sale at this market hadn’t traveled thousands of miles to get here. It was all from a day’s boat ride away.

After a stop at the Manaus Opera House, Erikes dropped us back at the Tropical Manaus hotel where we stayed our first night off the plane. 👋🏼😘

With real LTE internet for an hour before our next shuttle pick up, we got our FaceTime calls in back home. Cup: refilled. Glad to hear how much fun the fam is having back home, and all the fun I have to look forward to rejoining upon my return. It’ll be an abbreviated summer, just a couple of weeks in Massachusetts before heading back south. But I’ll make it count!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! 2.5 hour drive in a nice shuttle van over less-than-nice roads to Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge. We were given water halfway, and then 2/3 of the way we stopped at a cafe where I picked up some juice and cookies and peanut brittle candy.

It wasn’t until after I drank the juice that I realized, reading the bottle closely, that “concentrado” didn’t mean from concentrate, but just concentrate. My little bottle of caju (cashew) juice concentrate was supposed to make 3.5 liters. Zing!

Our eco-resort was at the end of a long dirt road off the highway. Unlike other dirt roads, this one was sliced right through the jungle, sort of like their were jungle-height vertical hedges on both sides of the road. I wonder how they keep that trimmed so nicely?

This resort is all-inclusive of food and excursions. Buffet style dinner was really excellent. There are always pescatarian options here. The Brazilian peanut dessert was lovely, as was the coconut mousse. Yum! And after dinner our first excursion: night boat ride in search of wildlife. We saw a sloth father and child, caimans, interesting birds, a big frog, and a garden boa constrictor. Lightning in the distance stole the show at the end. Just beautiful!

Best part: I’m writing this entry in the morning, because I fell asleep clean and exhausted at 9:30pm and didn’t wake up until 7am. No snoring from Eric except in hammocks I guess?! Sweet.

I woke up at 5:39am. This is the recipe for getting more done by 10am than you do all day when you only wake up at 10am. We were sleeping in hammocks slung under a pavilion at Erikes’ friend’s campground a bit north of Presidente Figueiredo. Here’s the sand pitch we played soccer in yesterday.

First we noticed the flat tire when driving away from camp. Pushed the car to a flat spot, jacked it up, off with the flat, on with the spare. Leaving camp, take II.

Next we stopped at a restaurant (which all tend to be outdoor picnic table affairs) for breakfast. I had omelette simples (no meat?) and a cafe pure (black?). Erikes joined us halfway thru and ate our leftovers. He’d already gotten the flat repaired! Then he gave me 50 cents to use the pay toilet near the restaurant. There was no TP in there, so I recovered some barely soiled TP from the trash can and made due. Already important life decisions being made and it’s barely 7am!

I really dug this bas-relief mural across the street from the breakfast place in Presidente. I wish they had it in postcard format.

We drove an hour to another friend’s private property, and hiked an hour, nearly 3 miles, to a spectacular waterfall. (What had you accomplished by 10am?) Yesterday’s was wide, but today’s was tall. Yesterday’s was crowded, but we were probably the only ones to see today’s waterfall for weeks in either direction. On our way in we saw a good-sized spider monkey jumping tree to tree in the rainforest canopy. Also several macaws on the way out. And a cute tiny 3-legged frog. Harry would be excited, except no darts.

We hit lunch at a roadside restaurant at noon, where I drank Fanta and ate a whole fish. Delicious on both counts!

Then to a serious cave system, Caverna do Maroaga. Here they supply the guides, so Erikes took a break from babysitting us. 😘 Our guide didn’t speak English, so we used universal gestures and smiles, and that sufficed. It was the usual, roughly 1 hour hike in. The caves were dark on the inside, but I took a very Blaire Witch video of us inside by the guide’s flashlight. Looking backward at the last bit of daylight, I could see the silhouette of bats swooping. All very cool. Then we hiked around to the other side where there’s a nice grotto shower, Gruta da Judéia, we could splash around in to cool off before the return hike.

Eric had had enough fun for the day and wanted to get back to our camp, so after a quick FaceTime between Moe, Emily, and Ada as we drove through Presidente Figuereido’s brief cell tower coverage, we returned to camp. It wasn’t even long enough to download a single song, never mind the album I was hoping for: Chris Pureka’s Driving North. (Radio has been hit or miss, and we’ve spent a lot of time in the car lately!)

I sat in the river drinking beer and reading my book (Everything Matters) for the rest of the afternoon. I’m nearly done, maybe one more sitting to go… Still loving it!

Tomorrow we’ll hit one more waterfall early, then drive back to Manaus to begin part 2 of our trip at the eco-resort. It’ll be hard to say goodbye to Erikes. He’s been with us since we stepped out of the airport, and he is Brazil to us! 😭

Let me just start by saying my day began playing Civilization VI. I bought it for my iPad a few weeks ago when it went temporarily on sale at 60% off. I started a tutorial game last night around 10pm and forced myself to quit at 1am.

Eric lent me his Bose noise-canceling headphones to see if that would make his snoring more tolerable. So at 1am, on a boat in the Amazon, I stopped gaming and put on white noise — of the brown noise variety for those curious. I could only hear the crescendos of his snoring where he’d wake himself up, but the headphones totally took the edge off, and by 1:30am I was out cold.

5:30am came to soon! The boat was awake with dawn’s early light, and sunrise arrived shortly thereafter. I couldn’t resist a few photos, but then tried to eek out another hour of sleep. Then it was breakfast (eggs, goat cheese tapioca blintz things, watermelon, and sweet tea) while we motored one more time back to where we first boarded the boat.

After tipping the boat crew and loading our belongings in a pickup truck and trailer hitched behind, we set off for 6 hours of driving to President Figueiredo, Amazonas’s famous waterfalls.

But less than an hour in, our truck lost power, and the engine started knocking badly. Erikes and his father-in-law, who we didn’t realize was in the back of the truck, looked under the hood but didn’t see anything obvious.

We figured it had something to do with the quality of the gas that his father-in-law had just siphoned (by mouth) out of another vehicle. Seemed to me like maybe it had water or something in it? Erikes tried to continue driving it for another 20 minutes. The road was just one big hill after another, and we’d go 5 mph up the hill in lowest gear, then as fast as possible down the other side, trying to build momentum into the next hill. With the painful knocking and backfiring sounds, it was like riding the start of a roller coaster. Click, click, click, click, …… wheeeee!

This would have turned the remaining 5 hours into the next 2 days if we kept at this pace. Another deep consultation under the hood, joined by another boat crew person who apparently had been riding in the trailer the whole time. It was like clowns coming out of a Volkswagen. How many people were riding back there in the luggage trailer?! Among other things, they inspected and cleaned wires leading to the spark plugs, and that seemed to resolve the issue long enough to burn off the rest of the shitty gas and pick back up the pace.

I’ve said it before, but Erikes’ driving, bless his heart, is the only danger we’ve encountered in the Amazon. Other than the vegetation. Every plant here wants you to die and rot away right above its root system. The animals on the other hand are total sweethearts. And the humans are kind, generous, quick to smile, and can I just say unrealistically attractive? Young, old, women, men, in the city or in the woods: Brazil, you are HOT! But damnit, Erikes, it’s okay if we get to the waterfall 30 minutes later… I hope the 130kph in an 80 zone isn’t just to entertain the Americans! 😬

Just FYI, we’re at about 2° south of the equator.

We did survive the trip to the first waterfall/grottos, after swapping the truck and trailer for the little car halfway, and having Brazilian BBQ for lunch. (It’s a lost branding opportunity if you ask me, but they just call it BBQ here.) The caves adjacent to the waterfall were formed when this part of the Amazon was under the ocean. Jurassic Park meets Waterworld is all I can conjure in my head. Which is good because Jurassic Park theme song is already stuck playing on repeat in there. Question: Does Waterworld have a theme song? And, is Waterworld one or two words? Answer: Who cares? [Future Benj: Nobody does, Benj of Yore. Nobody does. But it’s one word, and does have a theme song.]

Tomorrow requires another 5:30am wake up to squeeze in our last day of Amazon Mystery Touring at Presidente Figueiredo. So I better get done blogging and get started gaming!

The tapioca blintz things this morning had something like feta cheese in them. My name is Benj Lipchak and I approve this message.

Today we hit the river and steamed as fast as we could (or dieseled?) back to the nearest village on the river so we could watch the Brazil vs. Belgium World Cup match. First Moe gifted the soccer ball we brought along to the friendly tykes I juggled with yesterday. I took a few photos of the beautiful fog, and then back to the hammock! I completed a preposterous number of black belt KenKen.

We arrived in “town” (one “road” with about a dozen houses, only accessible by boat) during halftime. Brazil was already down 2-0. We walked up to a residence where a bunch of people were watching, and they set out some extra chairs for us, and even moved the television outside so we’d all have a good view. We drank a lot of beer, which helped us cheer in one solitary goooooooooooooooal. Every time I put my beer glass down between sips, one of our crew topped it off. We killed a lot of liter-sized bottles of beer in just 45 minutes! Brazil had control of the ball 95% during this 2nd half. If only we had shown up before the damage was already done! Things would have gone differently.

We had a decent signal heading into and out of town. I texted Jessica that I’m safe and sound. She texted right back that she pulled the car over and wanted to FaceTime. It was only 2 bars of 3G, but it worked pretty great! I gave the fam a quick virtual tour of the boat and a view of the river. What a great moment. I can’t wait to see them for real in another 9 days! I haven’t seen those kiddos in about 3 weeks!

We parked the boat for tonight about an hour or two back away from civilization. We all jumped in the water. It was shallow and sandy, with the obligatory dolphin swimming nearby. I’m wondering if they’re assigned monitoring duty by the dolphin high council. These dolphins are everywhere we go, in plentiful numbers. After splashing around a bit, I went to grab my biodegradable body wash and shampoo, purchased originally for Maurice’s and my Allagash river canoe trip, and got myself really clean for the first time on this trip. Eric borrowed my suds, too. (Maurice abstained, since it hasn’t been 6 months yet since his last washing.)

Eric was kind enough to propose I try his Bose noise cancelling headphones tonight so I can get a full night’s sleep. I already tried them out. His snoring stands no chance against my white noise pumping through these cans. Thanks, Eric! Zzzzzz

Today I woke up in the jungle. It was still dark out, maybe 5:15am, when I heard an intense fluttering in the 2 feet between my mosquito net and rain tarp, zooming back and forth through my no-fly zone for a minute or two. There was enough light that I was expecting to see the outline of one or more bats, the same ones that chase after the dragonflies both here on the river and back home in OBX at dusk. But I saw nothing. Maurice later proposed that it was probably a hummingbird, because we’ve seen plenty of those, too. And they strike me more as early risers. Wish I could have seen it!

My iPad was still on my lap in the hammock from blogging and watching Netflix last night. Since I’m one of the few humans out here in the first place, I must single-handedly be boosting Michelle Wolf’s ratings in Brazil’s Amazon river valley. But it’s really good! [Future Benj: Netflix cancelled her. The show’s crew found out on Twitter. 😭]

After breaking camp and hiking it all back down the hill, we had breakfast of watermelon and these blintz-like things made of tapioca, cheese, and some local orange root vegetable. [Future Benj: they’re simply called tapiocas.] I’ve also been drinking a mix of hot chocolate and coffee in the cellophane destruct-o-cups. Reminds me of whatever Dunkin Donuts used to call this combination. Dunkachino maybe? Except if it were a Dixie cup size instead of the XL I used to get.

Then we hit the kayaks, and did about 2 hours in the blazing sun downstream to the next camp site. Lots of weird plants, starting with ones clearly inspired by fellow Wainwright walker Ealish Wilson’s fiber art…

… another plant that wants you dead…

… these cute things…

… and these ones, by Dr. Seuss.

The butterflies were especially friendly today! A brown striped one landed on my big toe. And not the well-adjusted, perfectly healthy big toe. It was taking a liking to my funktastic half-claw. There’s no accounting for taste.

But the light green butterflies preferred my paddle or my neon green OBX Triathlon shirt. So they’re not all dumb.

The boat, whose name is Com te _____, and I can never remember the last word, which is a person’s name, passed us while kayaking and was docked at a nice property with cattle pastures, 4 border collies, and strange creatures I refer to as duck chickens. (They are sort of domesticated like chickens, sleeping under the camp houses, but look like ducks. Ugly ducks.) The multi-generational family who lives there ranged in age from about 7 to 60. It was kind of them to share their home!

While Eric did his best St. Bernard impersonation…

… Moe and I were guided on a walk across their giant pastures, through some (home-made) logging roads into the jungle which by contrast showed just how much work clearing the scores of acres of field must have been, and finally through plain old jungle.

The destination was a very cool (literally and figuratively) waterfall. This close to the equator, cold water as a concept is forgotten to us after less than a week. Not as cold as this waterfall, though. We went all in. And then to keep us relatively cool, it rained most of the way back to camp.

Two boys, maybe 7 and 12, were juggling a soccer ball back and forth, and Erikes suggested I join in. I watched them for a while, but then couldn’t resist. Football, the common language… along with smiles, laughter, moments of pride and embarrassment in equal measure. I held my own, but 20 minutes of that had my heart rate higher than any of the hiking or kayaking we’ve done all week!

A thumbs up to the boys, then I headed back to the boat with warm fuzzies. (As Jessica would metaphorically say, my cup was full.) And then Erikes handed me a margarita, also a cup, also full. [Future Benj: she actually says “my cup runneth over,” but maybe so does my margarita-filled Dixie cup.]

I finished another KenKen and another margarita (remember: destructo-Dixie-sized) and then dinner.

They made me a special veggie potato curry sort of dish, amazing! “What did you make for the rest of us?” Moe asked. “Meat,” Erikes said. I told him he should rename his company to Amazon Mystery Meat Tours.

Once it got dark, Erikes came back from canoeing with our first caiman, despite trying every night thus far. He was a cutey! Moe sent him back into the water after we all got some quality time, hugs and kisses, etc.

And now back to the hammock here to give you all the low down. Tomorrow afternoon there’ll be some civilization on our itinerary! And in completely unrelated news, Brazil plays Belgium tomorrow afternoon! ⚽️

Today is July 4, Moe’s 40th birthday, the reason we’ve all gathered here in the Amazon.

I woke up feeling groggy and off, like I was still full from the night before, and I couldn’t keep a train of thought going. I popped a multivitamin, which I’d forgotten all about so far, but barely touched breakfast.

In the end it turned out all I needed was a good shot of adrenaline.

The 1st four hours of the day were scheduled for kayak exploration of 2 nearby “lakes.” Eric got a 20 minute head start, and we didn’t run into him at all out on the water. He must have hit the other lake first. Moe and I hit the south one, more like a tributary river, and followed it until I spotted a cool “tunnel” through a passable wall of trees to another section of lake/river. Moe followed, as a Moe does. (“Moe-cuts” are his specialty!)

We kept exploring well beyond the point where Moe asked, “Benj, what is the probability you’ll remember our way back out of here? My memory’s not that good.”

“100%” I assured him.

It was a valid question. The river had turned into a pinball machine of bushes, I guess you could call them, that we navigated around while maintaining our same rough direction. [Future Benj: We thought maybe one of the bushes was the canopy of a Brazil nut tree, with the “lids” still on the tree, but turns out to be a relative, Eschweilera coriacea, known as machimango in Peru. Brazil nuts don’t live where it floods.]

Some twists and turns later, we reached what we considered a dead-end even by our low standards. More importantly, we were due back at noon, and it was almost 10am. We had been kayaking since about 8am.

I confidently marched us back through the turns and twists, back through the pinball bushes, and straight down into some other river. Maybe 20 minutes into it I finally admitted to Moe that nothing looks familiar. (I had been thinking those words for a while already.) Moe agreed, noting that the long grass dangling from the trees here was new to us. It clung like Velcro to your clothes, and according to Maurice the micro-barbs also cut skin. So we realize we’re lost on the Amazon while tangled in human-devouring grass.

Mind you, we had no maps, no internet to get maps, no compass, and our one survival tool, a machete borrowed from Erikes, Moe had accidentally dropped overboard. It was a total Blair Witch moment. “I kicked the map into the creek!” The water here was deeper than 10m: that’s how much the water is up now from it’s low season. [Future Benj: The Amazon is 320′ at its deepest. The Jatapú tributary is indeed 30+ feet deeper in the wet season than dry. But since we were lost over “dry” land, it’s not easy to say for sure whether there was 30′ of water below us. We could have been over a hill. All we can say for certain is it was deeper than Maurice’s paddle!]

But what I had done is taken a screenshot on Apple Maps of our farthest point, the dead-end, before we turned around to go back to camp. That map was very low-detail, not showing us on water at all — thanks to the wet season we were kayaking through the treetops of what’s dry land the rest of the year — but we could use it for comparison to at least get back to somewhere we’d definitely been. And far away from razor-grass town, please. Consider it a dot on a map where we’re lost, but don’t know it yet. This should save us, right?

Moe stayed perfectly calm, at least on the outside. We agreed on the general direction of our farthest dead-end point, and figured we’d head back to it, trying alternative directions, or really more like different off-ramps, from bushy pinball land. Off ramp #2 looked promising, but 15 minutes down that one we weren’t recognizing anything there, either. And then, you guessed it: more razor grass! Survey says? XX

The third off ramp we tried from bushy pinball land looked the same as the others initially. And to be honest, nothing I saw was recognizable beyond doubt. And we had so much doubt at this point. Part of it is we were seeing everything from the other direction on the way out. But I also kept looking back for some glimpse of something, anything I remembered from the way in. Instead, it was all beautiful green generic jungle along the banks. But no razor grass thus far, so Maurice and I were content to give this 3rd attempt the benefit of the doubt.

I was pleased to know, barring any more stupidity, that we would both be returning home to our families (eventually) once I saw that sweet, sweet tunnel through the jungle wall straight ahead. And we still had an hour left before lunch, so we started exploring another branch. 🤠

Freedom! We made it back to camp.

And just in time for this surprise: a birthday cake made of couscous (some finer Brazilian variety, apparently, but yellow like cake), frosted with something chocolatey, and sprinkled with coconut. How sweet of our crew?! We sang to Moe and he blew out a candle. Happy birthday, Moe, and happy birthday, USA! May you both prosper in the coming year and learn from mistakes of the recent past.

After lunch was a nice long siesta in hammocks on shore, since our boat hammocks, where we usually sleep, were being set up in the jungle. I’ve read over half my book, Everything Matters, a gift from my friend Matt about 3 years ago that I’m finally prioritizing. (Love it!) Mid-afternoon I was served a coconut with a hole drilled in it and one of those flimsy plastic cups. Delicious, as always!

Late afternoon we packed up and kayaked over to the same trail head we hiked yesterday, except this time, after dinner, we hiked up to find our hammocks hanging higher than usual over the ground, and with mosquito nets and rain tarps over them. That’s where I’m blogging now. We saw a tarantula hanging out in an armadillo hole on the way up.

Moe had an epic birthday. Mission accomplished!!

Last night the snoring was real bad. Who knew Eric had it in him? I tried watching Netflix (The Break with Michelle Wolfe I downloaded while back in civilization) for a while, but the snoring only got worse. It began to pour around midnight, but Eric’s snoring drowned it out. Even when the crew came up to batten down the hatches, headlights a-blazing, Eric snored through that, too. Uncanny! I don’t remember sleeping at all. Just dreaming of ways to smother Eric… Maybe I was sleeping while dreaming of that?

After breakfast, which included fresh papaya, we set out in our kayaks. I had picked up a flexible tripod that can clip onto anything, like the edge of a kayak. But it broke to pieces in my hands as I tried to clip it on. Luckily my camera wasn’t attached yet! Suffice it to say, no cool kayak POV time lapse videos on this trip. 😢

We explored a side-stream which is everything kayaking in the Amazon should be: narrow, full canopy overhead, not so much light sifting down to the bottom. Ma would love kayaking here, a lot like the mangrove swamps in the Keys where it’s fun to pick your way around and find critters (or ancient vehicle carcasses, which there aren’t a lot of here).

Several dolphins followed us in from the main part of the river to see what we were doing. The dolphins here are curious, playful, and abundant. One even did a full on vertical jump like you’d see at an aquarium show. I didn’t know they pulled stunts like that in the wild!

We had lunch, including a yummy Matricious (sp?) fish, Erikes’ favorite. Super good. Just watch out for those harpoon bones!

After lunch we had some down time.

Then at 2pm we set off for our afternoon adventure, a hike in the rainforest. We collected sneakers, socks, long pants, and long sleeve shirts. All I had with long sleeves was a rain jacket from Budapest (another trip Maurice happened to go on), so I put it on. All the rain would happen on the inside. I was sweating like Pat in The Silver Linings Playbook, jogging with a trash bag on. But we hiked up to the highest point in this region with a great view of the Jatapú valley, and saw some impressive spiders and a dead monkey along the way.

Back down near the river, we tested out a natural sunscreen made from little berries that you squash between your fingers. Moe went overboard, as usual.

Now we’re looking for caimans in the water next to tonight’s camp, a friend’s house, Renaldo’s I think. (Apparently he’s in town collecting his paycheck for providing emergency medical service on the river, but probably also watching World Cup.) If you shine a light out into the water, their retro-reflective eyes beam right back at you. They’re out there! Erikes is trying to catch one as dinner is simultaneously being prepared.

Word on the street is that tomorrow we’ll be setting up camp off the boat, in the rainforest. Wheeee!