Boiling River Page 3

  “The Mayantuyacu guides are probably still coming out of the jungle. Let’s get something to eat while we wait. That’s the town restaurant over there,” Guida says, pointing to a one-story, weathered, turquoise building built into the riverbank on tall stilts.

  As we walk onto its long, covered terrace, the sound of our feet on the heavy wooden floorboards alerts the owner of our presence. A little old Amazonian woman appears, with an overjoyed expression, and a face wrinkled by a lifetime of smiling. Her Spanish is heavily marked with an Amazonian accent, and when she speaks it is with such tenderness that we feel immediately welcome.

  “Hola, hola! Welcome to the jungle! What can I offer you today? We have Inca Kola, Coca-Cola, or water to drink. To eat, we have huangana with yucca and rice. We also have bagged chips.”

  “Huangana?” I ask.

  “Jungle pig!”

  We order bottled water and the dish of the day. As we settle in to our lunch, a man appears at the far end of the terrace. He wears knee-high plastic boots, stained with reddish mud, and his clothing is faded and frayed. He sits down at a table and stares furtively at us.

  I give a friendly wave, hoping that he may have been sent by Mayantuyacu to pick us up. He doesn’t respond but continues to stare. Guida and I try to ignore him. Before long another man appears on the terrace with a teenage boy. The three whisper to each other, and cast prying glances at our bags.

  I smile and wave again. They don’t return the gesture. I don’t want to assume the worst, but experience working in rough areas has taught me to be cautious.

  The old woman reappears with our food and we hungrily dig in. I remain attentive as I eat, giving them occasional stern looks to let the trio know I am watching them. Their glances grow more subtle.

  As the old woman returns to clear our plates, Guida leans in and lowers her voice. “I am going to follow her and pay inside,” she murmurs. “You can pay me back later. Just watch the bags.”

  Guida helps clear the dirty plates, then follows our hostess inside. Possible scenarios play out in my mind, I consider past courses of action that have kept me safe. Reaching into my left pocket, I feel the smooth beads of my rosary. I press the cross firmly between my fingers and place my hand back on the table. My right hand creeps under my shirt and unhooks the clasp around the handle of a hunting knife that I had hidden around my waist.

  I am very glad Sofía is not here.

  Suddenly, Guida bursts back onto the terrace with a stack of clear plastic cups and two large bottles of Inca Kola. “Hola, chicos!” she exclaims, addressing the trio with a wide smile. “You have not stopped looking at us since we got here. You should have just said hello! Here, have some soda, and I brought chocolates from Lima. We are going to Mayantuyacu to visit Maestro Juan and Sandra.” Everyone on the terrace looks up at her, stunned. “Come on, there is chocolate and Inca Kola for everyone! I haven’t been to Honoria in a long time—I want to hear all the gossip I’ve missed.” The trio, quickly recovering from their shock, give sheepish smiles and accept the soda and chocolate.

  Hearing the commotion, the old woman comes out and is thrilled. She rushes back inside and returns with seven more people—men, women, children, even a stray dog.

  As more people arrive and the gathering turns into a genuine party, I laugh in amazement. Refastening the clasp that holds my knife, I think, If only the conquest had been led by women, Peru would be a very different place today.

  As we finish we hear the sound of a motor. Looking upriver, we spot a pekepeke—a long, thin, wooden Amazonian riverboat that looks like an elongated canoe with a protruding prow. Its russet colors blend in with the Pachitea and the jungle—apart from the vessel’s Peruvian flag, its red and white standing out against the natural colors. The boatman eases it onto the shore. Coming out of the kitchen, the old woman announces, “There are your guides. They will take you to Mayantuyacu.”

  6

  Hopes and Hard Data

  Pe-ke, pe-ke, pe-ke, pe-ke. Our motorized canoe emits a rhythmic mechanical sound as it beats against the Pachitea’s current. Our captain, a little old Amazonian man, sits at the stern and mans the small engine. When he introduced himself to us, back in Honoria, Guida and I could hardly believe our ears.

  “Francisco Pizarro? Like the conquistador?” I had asked.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied proudly.

  For half an hour we ride along this watery highway through the jungle. Steep, muddy cliffs fifteen feet high border the banks. Thick green jungle erupts from the clifftops.

  The trees are so tall, and the jungle so thick, that it is difficult to distinguish the topography above the ridge. In places, thatched-roof homesteads sit on lush lawns dotted with large trees and grazing cattle. These patches of domesticated jungle expose rolling hills and ravines.

  “Isn’t it incredible?” Guida says, beaming. “I love the jungle.”

  “It’s beautiful.” I nod. “But I just can’t wait to see this thermal river. Honestly, I’m having trouble focusing on much else.”

  Guida laughs. “Try to enjoy the present a little more,” she says. “The river will come soon enough.”

  We hear a shout from the front of the pekepeke, where our second guide, Brunswick, is standing. He is in his early thirties and is Maestro’s apprentice. “Look over there!” he says, pointing some thirty feet ahead. “There is the mouth of the Boiling River where the hot and cold waters meet.”

  Pushing off Honoria’s muddy red banks, our pekepeke silently drifts with the mighty Pachitea River. The boat’s motor breaks the silence as I enter the Amazon for the first time.

  Finally, the river! My eyes scan the scene. A tributary to our right, wider than a two-lane road, is injecting a significant quantity of flow into the Pachitea. Where the two waters collide, a dusky olive-green plume of water curves into the Pachitea’s chocolate brown. But I don’t see even the slightest wisp of steam.

  The prow enters the plume and Brunswick dips his hand into the green water, signaling to me to do the same.

  I dip my hand into the cold brown water of the Pachitea. The moment we pass into the green plume, the water becomes warm. It gets warmer and warmer as we near the tributary, until finally we glide into its mouth. Here the water is significantly warmer, like hot bathwater—but nowhere near boiling.

  I shouldn’t feel disappointed, but my excitement has gotten the better of me. This “Warm River of the Amazon,” is not the stuff of my dreams. The “Boiling River” has not lived up to its name. I let out a deep sigh.

  Okay, no more speculation, no more expectations. I need to get to Mayantuyacu and let the river tell its own story. Focus on real quantifiable data, not hearsay.

  Expertly navigating the pekepeke, Francisco steers the boat to shore, where steps carved into the cliff’s reddish mud beckon us toward the next leg of our journey.

  I turn on the path tracker on my GPS and slip it back into my backpack.

  Disembarking, we climb to the top of the bank, where we see a thin, muddy trail entering the forest. Francisco pushes off and heads back to Honoria as Brunswick leads us into the jungle.

  The trail is well trodden but uneven. Massive trees with imposing buttress roots shade us from the hot sun. Twisting vines with bizarre forms and textures snake through the foliage. Electric-colored flowers hang above us, so delicate and exotic that I find it hard to believe they are natural. As we hike up and down the undulating topography, hidden animals serenade us. Squadrons of mosquitos stalk us. Our liberally applied insect repelled forms a forcefield where a blanket of mosquitos hovers, just out of reach.

  At the end of a large clearing, near the crest of a tall ridge, I notice a heavily eroded dirt road. I ask Brunswick about it.

  “Loggers came through here many years ago in tractors and took away the big trees,” he answers solemnly. “They were chased out, but the clearing remains.”

  Guida speaks in a pained tone. “Many years ago, I was doing social work with an indigenous group in
the jungles far south of here. I was staying in a village on a large river, and though the area was supposedly protected, the locals were still having problems with illegal loggers. One night I couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk to the river. When I got down to the bank, I heard strange noises. The full moon let me see clearly, though a part of me wishes I hadn’t looked. From end to end, as far as I could see upstream and downstream, the river was full of massive lupuna trees. Men with long poles walked back and forth across the giant floating logs, guiding them downstream. It was clear why they were transporting the trunks at night.

  Deforestation in the Boiling River area is an ongoing tragedy. The large, valuable trees have been cut down and sold (most likely on illegal markets), and the remaining jungle has been torched to make way for agriculture.

  “Each of those trees was easily hundreds of years old. This was exactly what I was helping the community to fight. I felt so hopeless, and I knelt down and wept.

  “The next day, I relayed what I had seen. The villagers were all too familiar with this sort of scene. They described how the loggers would appear, cut down the big trees, then clear-cut and burn swaths of land to form paths to roll or drag the trunks to the nearest river, using tractors like the one that left the trail we just saw.”

  A wave of anger washes over me. “That’s terrible,” I mutter.

  “But the worst part came later,” Guida continues. “We discovered that most of those ancient trees were being used to make plywood. Plywood! The lupuna is known as the Lady of the Jungle. Their trunks can be more than three yards wide.”

  “They are thought to contain powerful spirits, and in some tribes it is considered a grave offense even to relieve oneself near one. And they are being used for plywood.”

  A depressed silence envelops our small group as we continue our journey through the jungle. My thoughts shift back to the Boiling River. If accounts of the river are true and not merely an exaggeration, there are three possible explanations: it’s a volcanic/magmatic system, it’s a nonvolcanic hydrothermal system where geothermal waters are quickly being brought to the surface from deep within the earth, or it’s man-made.

  This last possibility is disconcerting. What if the Boiling River is just the result of an oilfield accident—an improperly abandoned oil well, a frack job gone wrong, or oilfield waters improperly reinjected into the earth? I know of many cases, in Peru and abroad, where oilfield accidents have caused geothermal features—the most infamous being the Lusi mud volcano in East Java, which has displaced more than thirty thousand people. Accidents of this scale quickly take on significant financial and political importance, and as a result, Lusi’s “true cause” remains a contentious issue. In the Talara Desert, I recently visited two tourist attractions with surprising backgrounds. The plan had been for two old oil wells—wells that were only producing warm, salty water—to be properly sealed and closed up by the oil companies. As the story goes, the locals saw potential in the pools of warm water and pressured the companies to keep the wells open. The oil companies gave in, and the wells were converted into bathing pools. Now unsuspecting tourists pay to relax in the “natural healing thermal waters” while rubbing the “rejuvenating” thermal muds on their faces.

  I let out a long exhale as I realize that this horrible possibility might be the most likely explanation. We are near the oldest oilfield in the Peruvian Amazon—it’s a well-studied area, and a large thermal river isn’t exactly easy to miss. Furthermore, the river doesn’t appear on the Peruvian government’s geothermal feature map—though that 1965 report mentions a “small, warm spring” somewhere in this general area . . .

  Maybe the river was a small, warm spring that accidentally became a boiling river. Maybe the legends came later—I’ve seen it happen in other parts of Peru. Maybe I’m walking into an oilfield cover-up. Accidents are bad for business, after all, and companies paying off government officials to ignore such “minor inconveniences” are hardly unheard of.

  Frustrated, I shake my head to try to clear my mind. I’m so sick of all these uncertainties, I think. Until I see real data I know nothing. I need a solid GPS location to determine exactly how close the river is to the nearest oilfield. I need precise temperature data to figure out how exaggerated these accounts are. Most important, I need to find that stupid 1933 Moran study—it’s the only study done before this area was developed, and the only one left that could mention the river.

  I prepare myself to accept whatever outcome I find. Science is not about the story we want to hear—it’s about the story the data tell us.

  Just then Brunswick stops and points out a thick metal pipe, partially buried, running across the trail. “This oil pipeline once went from the oilfield to Pucallpa,” he says. “They stopped using it years ago and most of it has been stolen now. It marks our property boundary—from here to the river, we are in Mayantuyacu.”

  A sign at Mayantuyacu’s property line tells clear-burners to keep out of their jungle. Curiously, the property line is determined by an old oil pipeline—a reminder that this area was the site of the first oil development in the Peruvian Amazon.

  A large painted wooden sign reads: MAYANTUYACU—ZONA PROHIBIDA.

  “Prohibited zone?” I turn to Brunswick. “Prohibited to whom?”

  “Loggers, hunters, squatters. We are trying to do good work in Mayantuyacu—healing people and giving them traditional natural medicines. We get our knowledge from the plants and the grandparents.” He pauses, looking up at a large, thick tree.

  Brunswick gently places his hand on the tree trunk. “The spirits leave when the land is cleared.”

  Pointing to the sign, he adds: “Mayantu for the spirit of the jungle, and Yacu for the spirit of the water. Here we heal by working together with both spirits.”

  His words, spoken with profound respect, strike a chord in me. I resolve to keep my hypotheses to myself—even healthy scientific skepticism about the river could be misinterpreted as disrespect.

  We reach the top of a second great ridge crowned by massive trees, guards of the surrounding jungle, and rest a moment, Guida and I taking deep ragged breaths. Our two-hour hike in the heat has taken the energy out of us.

  “Almost there,” Brunswick assures us.

  As our gasps subside, I hear something in the distance.

  “What’s that sound?” I say. “It’s like a low surge.”

  Brunswick raises his eyes to me and smiles. “The river.”

  7

  The River

  I stare at Brunswick and Guida in amazement. Fatigue forgotten, I rush to the edge of the hill to catch my first glimpse of the river, but I can’t see anything through the foliage. Brunswick laughs and points down a steep path into the jungle below, urging me, “Go!”

  I bolt down the dirt path, and the low surge grows louder. Through the trees I can make out a clearing where a few wooden buildings stand. Scattered wisps of white vapor rise above the treetops. I make my way around a building at the end of the path, and I am met with a stunning view. Turquoise waters rush past thin banks of ivory-colored rock. Giant trees rise to form walls of green flanking the river. Where the current crashes against the rocks there are patches of whitewater, indicating the force of the water’s flow. I step onto the edge of a small cliff overlooking the river and scan the scene. My eyes follow the river bend as it disappears into the jungle ahead. The afternoon sun beats down on me. I am sweating. My heart pounds with excitement. Veils of white vapor drape the river’s surface, playing in the breeze as they rise. These waters must be very hot to be steaming at these air temperatures, I think, breaking into a grin.

  Upstream, a small, steaming creek bisects the Mayantuyacu community before cascading over the cliff into the river below. Beyond this waterfall, a sinewy form is visible through the mist—a strangely shaped tree, ten yards high, dark and haunting. If all the snakes in the jungle had entwined their bodies to form roots, a trunk, and branches, it wouldn’t look too different from this tree. Its tru
nk is wrapped in thick, woody vines, and its branches spread like serpents from a Gorgon’s head. It grows from the edge of the rocky cliff, its roots clinging to the rocks like great tentacles as it arches over the river.

  I make my way to the twisted tree and spot a painted sign at its root that reads EL CAME RENACO. This attempt to mark the tree’s significance seems superfluous. The Came Renaco’s very shape—like something from a fairy tale—seems naturally significant: the home of a great spirit, perhaps, or the prison of a wicked one.

  Below the mysterious tree I find steps hewn into the cliff, leading to the river’s edge. As I descend, the river’s roar grows louder. I feel the heat and humidity thicken around me as I step onto the limestone blocks that form a walkway next to the water’s edge. Carefully, I lower myself onto the rocks and find them hot to the touch. The vapors roll and wrap around me. Between the river and the sun, it feels like I’m in a sauna inside a toaster oven.

  I take off my backpack and unpack my thermometer, which I had protectively wrapped in clothes and plastic bags. I look at the river and say, “Moment of truth—let’s see if you’re really boiling.” I begin the measurement. The thermometer’s meter resembles an old Game Boy: a fat, clunky plastic box with a small display screen and a few buttons. I screw a two-foot cable ending in a thick gray thermometer to the base of the meter. Next, I calibrate the tool and slowly begin to dip the thermometer into the river. The current pulls it horizontal, but I continue carefully lowering until it’s fully submerged. Holding my breath, I watch the readings equilibrate on the thermometer’s screen.

  Mayantuyacu’s iconic guardian tree, the Came Renaco. Locals believe its medicine is made more powerful by the Boiling River’s vapors.