HTML heavy; The Amazon

We head out into the night. I think to myself that my view would make a fantastic Imax cinematic experience, but I tell myself to stop thinking too much about what would be good and just take it in what is great, amazing, Amazonian, right now. The Rio Negro is 3 or 4 miles wide at this point, and stretches to the horizon out in front. I’m in a long motorised canoe with my fisherman, Sentana, zooming along in triangle formation with Big J and fisherman BigHat to my right and Calveson, alone, on point. Huge lines of lighting in the distance give an erie sense of scale of the river and the occasional flash closer to us lights up the boats, showing us for a split second exactly where the others are. The perspective from the front of the boat, with the warm wind in my face and lightening show maxing out the amount of info my eyes can process, really is fantastic. I feel more like a special forces soldier on a secret Amazonian mission than the description of ‘semi-nerdy scientist on a jolly’ which a friend had recently made with uncomfortable accuracy. My favourite moments are the 2 or 3 minutes where there is no electrical light at all and I can let my mind drift and try to consolidate the memory of the journey to the first discus fishing trip.

Sentana and BigHat: smoking during a refuel!

We were lucky to get here. We hired our boat and crew yesterday lunch time, loaded up the boat with supplies and equipment and arranged to set off that evening. We could see the local river beach situated on an island a short ferry trip away, so headed off there to while away the afternoon. We checked out the Fio Dental on display, swam in the river, and A German guy who had tagged along with us took some cool photos of us chilling in the shallows. Check out the bearded scientist (right)

On our return to the mainland we discovered our boat had sank. It had filled up with fuel, driven off the pontoon and something caused one of the hull planks to give way. We’re still not sure if it was some sort of explosion, or if drive had just hit something in the water. Either way, the boat keeled over, the three people on board jumped off, and the boat sank to the bottom. Luckily for capitano the bottom was only a few metres away, so he was able to get a tow to the shore and the next day pump out most of the water and save his livelihood. The photo shows the hole that caused the floating issue (photographed the day after during repairs).

To say the least, our bags were somewhat damp. My rucksack, that I had so meticulously packed had weighed 22Kg a the airport. Now I could barely move it, yet alone pick it up. All our sterile equipment; sponges, tubes, syringes, pipettes, and, for that matter, all our other equipment had taken a really good dunking. We nervously laughed as we checked whether or not we could save anything. We spread it all out to dry- it looked a bit like a pile of recovered things from an aeroplane disaster.

A day later we had salvaged what we could, borrowed some items from others and set off in boat number two. A few hours up river and the absolute wilderness made us rediscover the jokes we had had the evening before, most following the ‘what the fuck would we have done if the hull had given way here’ line of reasoning.

'Drown' seemed the most likely answer.

Boat #2 at camp 2


Calveson setting fishing nets - he was a lot better at it than me


A rainstorm at camp 1 (ill be amased if this works...)

The trip was a wonderful adventure, and while extremely tiring at times, it lived up to all of my expectations. We fished at night- an hour of so driving from our various beach camps and then paddling around the small tributaries until the day began to break. We returned to the hammocks and slept like dead men for 5 or 6 hours but then woke as the heat became too much. The days were relaxed in the extreme. We swam, set nets for piranha, watch the river dolphins cruise around the main channel. Later on we eat piranha, chilled out in our hammocks, took pictures and read. I tried a different Amazonian fruit every day for two weeks, including cashew fruit (as in the nut - you can see it in the picture), which i didn't even know existed. My favourite thing of the whole trip was the routines of doing the same things every day, things that ill probably never do again. I didn’t miss the city life at all- telephones, computers, tv, prepared food, rushing to do things- all of these were forgotten in an instant. I adored the time spent on the river, it was a simple existence, but one that my mind and body cheered for every day.