Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

For the next two hours they drove from store to store, from one end of Chachapoyas to the other gathering together the supplies they needed for jungle travel: bottled water, basic food, thick-soled boots and bush hats, heavy-duty torches and batteries, fire-making equipment, insect repellent, malaria tablets, water purifier tablets, a parang machete for chopping vegetation, and finally a pair of compact but powerful binoculars. Everything was stowed into Ben’s bag and a second lightweight rucksack, and cans of spare fuel were thrown into the back of the Toyota.

An hour after that, Chachapoyas was already far behind them as they headed rapidly northeastwards along the highway, passing by landscapes that would have blown anyone’s mind but Ben’s, totally focused as he was on his goal.

Nico seemed to have remembered the route well. After a long stretch of highway that became progressively less busy the further they got from Chachapoyas, Ben turned off onto a series of unsealed roads so potholed that it was like they had suffered artillery bombardment. On one narrow mountain pass, where nothing but the crumbling edge stood between them and a thousand-foot drop to the forest below, the road had been half swept away by an avalanche. Some way further on, as the road dropped in altitude into a verdant valley, they had to thread their way past a broken-down bus. More people than it seemed possible to cram into the dilapidated vehicle were crowding the roadside, many of them barefoot, some in rags, others in brightly-coloured and heavily embroidered tunics and ponchos. They were surrounded by luggage, children, dogs and a pair of noisily braying goats. A horde of excited nut-brown youngsters chased the Toyota as it passed by, looking as though they’d happily clamber on board and cling to the roof.

Ben drove on. The road continued to drop downwards, the mountain scenery long gone behind a screen of thick jungle. Even with the air conditioning on full blast the humidity was all-pervasive. The occasional glimpse through the endless green canopy overhead showed that the sky was darkening; clouds were gathering ominously. ‘Should be getting near the river station,’ Nico said, studying the map.

By the time they reached the boat station on the Potro River, the storm that Ben had been expecting for some time had finally been unleashed. The rain was more than torrential. It churned the ground into cascades of mud and lashed the surface of the river and the few sorry-looking craft moored up to the boat station. As they ran along the flimsy boardwalk for the shelter of a row of warped wooden huts, Nico pointed out the red-and-white single-engined floatplane bobbing unsteadily on the water by one of the jetties. ‘That’s our baby,’ he yelled over the downpour, but his words were drowned out by the rolling crash of thunder that made the water-filled air tremble.

They stood under the streaming canvas awning of the boat station and watched as the storm quickly gathered power. A violent lightning display filled the sky. The rain lashed down with ever more incredible force. The brown river water seemed to be rising before their eyes.

‘This can’t go on,’ Nico said.

Ben wasn’t so sure. Neither was the flying boat pilot they talked to half an hour later, who shook his head emphatically at the notion of taking his plane out in this weather and told them in rapid-fire Spanish that he’d lived and worked on this river man and boy and seen these storms go on for days at a stretch.

For a wild moment, Ben seriously considered offering to buy the plane so that he could fly the damn thing himself. There had to be some way to get the funds transferred, even out here, and he’d flown all types of light aircraft in the past. But even as the idea was churning over in his mind, another violent streak of lightning knifed through the clouds and struck the tall trees on the opposite bank just a quarter of a mile downriver with terrible force. He gritted his teeth. It seemed there was little choice but to sit it out.

The storm kept on. Ben was pacing the boardwalk when a young guy in worn Levi’s and a ZZ Top T-shirt appeared by the huts, apparently unaware of the torrential rain, and came over with a broad grin and an easy swagger to introduce himself in English as Pepe. Despite his youth, Pepe happened to be the proud owner-operator of what he claimed was the fastest boat in the region – and for the right price was only too happy to take them upriver to San Tomás, storm or no storm. This was nothing, he boasted with a dismissive wave at the lashing downpour. If they didn’t get hit by lightning they’d be in San Tomás in four or five hours, give or take.

Ben agreed. The deal quickly settled, Pepe ran off to bring his boat round to the boarding point.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Nico asked. ‘I’ve seen some of these river boats.’

‘It’s better than wasting time around here,’ Ben replied. But when Pepe’s vessel came into view a few moments later, he almost opted to wait for the aeroplane instead. The fifty-foot wooden river boat might have been ferrying passengers up and down the Amazonas waterways since the time of the Conquistadors. Its long, flat-bottomed hull was so patched with repairs that little of the original planking remained, and sat so low in the water that the rain streaming through the holes in the makeshift canvas roof seemed quite capable of sinking it entirely before they’d gone a mile. But Pepe’s flashing grin as he stood at the helm in the tiny wheelhouse radiated nothing but supreme confidence and he gesticulated at them to board. Ben cursed to himself, grabbed his bag and rucksack and walked out into the deluge.

The storm was still raging violently as the boat station vanished from view round the first bend in the river, and continued unabated for nearly two hours afterwards. By the time the clouds eventually parted and sunlight dappled the choppy waters, it was far too late to turn back.

For most of those long, hot hours they saw little but unbroken jungle. The air was stifling and thick with insects, a situation that was relieved only when the heavens opened for another downpour. At some points the winding river broadened to a vast lake; elsewhere the looming greenery either side of them blotted out the sky and the mud banks constricted their passage so tightly that the boat’s hull scraped its sides to get through.

Over the constant chatter and screech of birds and monkeys, the hypnotic burble of the engine, the soft rush of water along the hull, came the sound of Pepe’s voice. He talked incessantly in the same cheerful tone as he steered the boat, apparently delighting in regaling his clients with tales of the dangers of the river. He didn’t much seem to care whether anyone was listening to him or not. He was a quarter Quechua Indian from his mother’s side and had been navigating these waters since the age of eleven. This had been his grandfather’s boat, then his father’s, until the mean old bastard had fallen overboard eight years ago and been eaten up by a caiman.

The caiman story had Nico glancing nervously at the river banks, where clusters of the reptiles eyed them lazily from the mud, occasionally slipping into the water at their approach and disappearing into the murky depths, or floating like logs with just their eyes and scaly backs above the surface.

Encouraged, Pepe laughed and pressed on with an obviously favourite anecdote of a Dutch missionary he’d once ferried down this stretch of river, who heedless of all warnings had fallen prey to the dreaded willy fish while taking a piss in waist-deep water.

‘The willy fish?’ Nico asked with a frown. Pepe explained how the tiny fish, a kind of eel called a candirú that was invisible underwater, liked to take advantage of careless urinators by swimming counter-current up their urethra and hooking itself inside with its sharp spines so that it could feast, vampire-like, on their blood.