Trans-Amazon Expedition
Week 3
Yurimaguas is where we made the transition from bikes to canoes.
It began to rain in earnest as we pedaled the final few miles into Yurimaguas—if we had our canoes we could have had a nice whitewater run through the flooded streets. Instead we pedaled on through 3 to 12 inches of water that rushed down the roadways and emptied into an already flooded Huallaga River.
After a few hours the downpour let up and we spent the day un-nesting our canoes and packing a month’s worth of supplies into dry boxes and bags. The mountain of gear looked huge, but in the morning we were surprised at how easily it fit into our canoes. Wenonah’s Champlain and North Fork have a lot of capacity and we were pleased with how well they handled our load. Caught up by the swift current we waved to the camera crew and reporters on shore and quickly settled into life on the river.
No more flat tires, brakeless descents, or playing chicken with giant diesel-belching trucks. Just us and the Huallaga. Yurimaguas is literally the end of the road, so the sights and sounds of city life were quickly washed way. Family farms dotted the river, and cars and trucks were replaced by smiling fishermen paddling dugout canoes along the banks.
As the equatorial sun rose higher in the sky it felt like we were melting. We slathered our exposed skin with sunscreen and dunked our shirts in the water every hour to ward off the heat. In less than an hour our clothes would be bone-dry and ready for another soaking. The current carried us along at 3 and a half miles an hour. It would have been easy to float with the current during the hottest part of the day, but we found that the slight breeze created from paddling actually made us feel cooler, so we preferred to continue paddling.
Dusk is a phenomenon reserved for the higher latitudes. Close to the equator the transition between day and night is alarmingly fast. Since darkness brings disease-carrying mosquitoes, it is best to be settled in for the night before the sun dips below the horizon.
When we pulled in for the night after our first day on the river over a hundred people were gathered around us as we began unloading our canoes. Over 300 people were gathered to watch our 100 yard portage to the town’s meeting house, where we spent the night. People were most intrigued by our Mitchell bent shaft paddles (which were about a tenth of the weight of the paddles they were accustomed to using), and of course our canoes. One man almost fell over when he picked up the front of one of our canoes, and the people laughed like crazy when we flipped them upside down and portaged them on our shoulders. The dugout canoes that they paddle weight at least two hundred pounds each, and take 3 or 4 people to carry!
As we continued down river we found that we prefer staying on family farms rather than in small towns. The farms are quieter, cleaner, and allow us to visit with people in their homes. Everywhere we stopped along the Huallaga, people opened up their hearts and their homes to us. They would gladly share meals, laughter, and stories with these strange people from a far-off place that landed in their front yards.
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