A Whiny American Bitch in the Amazon: A Primer on Preparation

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Stephanie Morcinek on Unsplash

The wilds of the world aren’t Disneyland

Dear Reader: I have done adventure travel for years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that pre-trip preparation is everything for a safe journey. You might have some extreme moments, but the more epic the location, the more you need to do your research in advance.

The Amazon Basin isn’t just the lungs of the world. It’s the source of vast resources, medicines, and fascinating peoples who are losing their land to countries who want the wealth. That said, there are plenty of good folks whose efforts to protect this incredible chunk of the world are noteworthy. None are more so than Dr. Paul Beaver, about whom I wrote recently.

This is the story of how we met.

The Tahuayo River area is some four hours by powerboat out of Iquitos, Peru. Beaver had built a lodge and research facility, and a good part of the funding comes from tourist activities. As a scientist, Beaver goes to great lengths to prepare those who would join him for the extraordinary environment that is the Amazon, particularly during the wet season.

The wet where you and I live probably isn’t the Amazon wet.

Here’s a primer from Jet Propulsion Labs:

During the wet season, rainfall is greatest from December to May, and can exceed 8 inches (20 centimeters) per month. Over a year, the Amazon Basin averages an extraordinary 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3 meters) of rainfall.

The people who live on the river know how to deal with it; it’s half their year and just a part of life.

Another feature of the wet is that water levels in the river rise, natch, as the snows from the Andes melt and hurtle downstream. Hiking trails that you can use from June to November are submerged, so you paddle everywhere.

The level of the water pushes you through the upper branches since you’re way above ground, and maneuvering through these trees and obstacles is part of the adventure.

Imagine paddling the water at night with your guide, lying on the floor of your canoe, watching the Milky Way through the tree canopies and listening to the sounds of the lively forest at night.

I’ve done that. It’s unbelievable, a true once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Paddling everywhere is part of the adventure.

One more time: the wet is part of the adventure.

I had chosen to experience that extreme wet season. The trick is to come fully prepared. One system I’d learned early on in my adventure career was to pack all my gear in neat Eagle Creek zippered compartments and then stow those in tight Sea to Summit dry bags.

These are not affiliate links, and both have plenty of competition. I’ve found these to be the best-made of all the offerings.

On more than one occasion they have saved my gear as well as my ass when luggage is left in the rain. If your down sleeping bag and down jacket get soaked, and those are necessary for your trip, well, you do the math.

The extra weight is worth your safety.

My other precaution was to buy an adventure camera which would stand up to abuses. Examples abound, but my fave is the Nikon Coolpix. It can withstand complete submersion, being dropped down a mountainside or from the back of a horse, both of which I have done repeatedly.

Attached to it is a scuba handle which floats so even if you’re fool enough to drop the thing in the river or the ocean, you can find it again. I’ve done that, too. Most of my systems came out of the dumb shit I’ve done.

The Coolpix a beating and keeps right on working, superbly, as designed.

No phone will survive the kinds of abuses that I encounter on adventure travel. NO phone will survive being fully submerged or dropped down a rocky mountainside.

Do I need to repeat this? No? Thank you.

Before I headed out to the Amazon, as instructed, I bought and read Dr. Paul Beaver’s hilarious and marvelous book Diary of an Amazon Jungle Guide: Amazing Encounters with Tropical Nature and Culture. If he wanted the tourist to get a bead on what might happen and how to prepare, this was the book.

It was a great read, but an even better fair warning about what to expect.

I read up on the challenges of wet season, packed my best rain gear, put everything in dry bags and set out for one of the last, great, wild places on earth ready to be seriously soaked.

After a long ride on the river with other guests, in 2015 I landed at Beaver’s Tahuayo Lodge, where the guides helped me off the boat and to my room. There I placed my valuables in a small, tight, dry storage cabinet with a lock, wiped off the sweat and headed for the restaurant area. By this point it was dinnertime.

I’m not sure how the American woman found me. Apparently she’d exhausted all the other patrons by the time I arrived. She was about sixty, my age. She’d been out on the water with her husband that day, and she was on a tear for anyone who would listen.

Turns out the woman was from Littleton, Colorado, just a few miles from where I lived at the time.

I was fresh meat. White, her age, American, even a neighbor. Surely I would be an easy audience.

She plopped down across from me and proceeded to dump.

Apparently, during one of the day’s paddling excursions, a water-level branch- and this time of year lots of branches are water-level- had brushed her backpack into the river waters, along with her iPhone. The iPhone had been ruined, understandably. She was furious.

She’d left the phone with the staff to see if it was repairable. As if any of the locals at this remote location knew how to repair an iPhone, right?

She loudly proclaimed over and over SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE. THIS WAS TERRIBLE. THEY HAVE TO BUY ME A NEW IPHONE. THE GUIDE PROBABLY MEANS TO TAKE MY PHONE NOW AND SELL IT IN IQUITOS.

The rest of room, having been subjected to this, was bored. She bored her angry eyes into mine, expecting me to leap to her defense.

Surely another American would understand, right?

So I asked, not unkindly:

• Did you read Dr. Beaver’s book? No.

• Did you research the conditions before you came? No.

• Did you read the packing list and instructions before you came? No.

• Did you review what you’re responsible for? No.

• Did you review the “at your own risk” list? No.

• Did you bring any kind of waterproof gear? No.

• Did you consider using the dry, locked storage cabinet in your room? No.

• Did you bring any kind of waterproof container, even a ziplock bag for your phone? No.

  (At this point she was seething)

• Was your backpack waterproof? No.

• Does it even occur to you that no local guide can afford the gas to get to Iquitos in the first place, and nobody is going to buy a ruined iPhone anyway? No.

By this time, her husband, who was sitting nearby, could see where I was going. He was also pissed, and abruptly stood up to leave.

His wife, however, wasn’t finished with me.

THEY COULD HAVE DONE A BETTER JOB. THEY’RE GOING TO BUY ME A NEW $900 IPHONE. THEY ARE…

“Ma’am,” I interrupted. I always call people ma’am and sir when they are being asshats. Military training.

“You chose not to come prepared. You chose not to read the book which gave detailed information about one of the wettest places on the planet. The wet season here is no place for a piece of expensive, water-sensitive gear like an iPhone. YOU chose not to bring anything to protect your equipment. YOU chose not to use the dry, locked storage cabinet in your room. YOU chose. None of this is their fault. It’s yours. They don’t owe you an iPhone.”

Both of them stalked noisily out of the room barking about how they were going to ruin Dr. Beaver, and write terrible things on TripAdvisor.

Being a journalist, I wasn’t done. I sought out the guide and heard the story from them. The staff were horrified and hurt by all the insults and accusations.

No question. The whole thing was unfortunate, but it wasn’t the guide’s fault.

That couple went on to travel more, attacking Paul’s outfit online, writing horrible reviews. So I wrote my own reviews on Trip Advisor to counter theirs.

I also reached out to Paul, who lives in Tampa these days.

The couple was so focused on punishing this small, Peruvian-run outfit that this apparently was all they could focus on. It likely ruined the rest of their time in Peru, which is one of the most gorgeous places on earth. But not if you’re seething with anger and focused on doing harm.

Paul and I had formed a connection through the onslaught of these two whiny, aggrieved Americans who didn’t bother to show up informed and prepared. They expected Paul to foot the bill for their lack of preparedness.

After the couple got back to Colorado, they sought out Tom Martino, who has a terrific reputation for bringing justice to the aggrieved.

Martino was their last, best hope to prove me wrong, prove Dr. Beaver wrong, and demonstrate to the world their power to punish those terrible Peruvians and their crappy weather. Tom Martino was their Avenging Angel.

Only Tom did what they didn’t do.

Tom did the research. He reviewed the pre-trip preparation, warnings, recommendations and all the information provided to the couple well in advance.

In effect, albeit I’m sure it wasn’t worded this way, Martino told them

Tough shit. You were fully informed. You didn’t take the obvious and most basic recommended precautions. This is your fault.

I can just imagine the steam exploding from both their heads. To this day I’m sure they’re still bitching to anyone who will listen that Paul Beaver’s guides should have paid for their $900 iPhone.

Some of the best-won lessons come of such experiences. To wit: I didn’t start using that Sea to Summit and Eagle Creek system until I was in the Amazon before the Tahuayo. I found myself in the kind of torrential rain which alters your perception of precipitation. I had a cheap raincoat and everything I had took days to dry out.

It was funny. I was trying to paddle in a canoe that was filling up with water so fast that I could barely keep up. In fact it was hilarious. It was also was terribly important in my own education.

I sure as hell didn’t blame my local guide for all the wet clothing and gear.

Years ago my beloved safari operator, a Wyoming-born man who lives overseas and runs trips up Kilimanjaro, said

“We don’t understand wild.”

Too many of us think that the world’s most extraordinary, remote and dangerous places should be tamed and be like Disney World.

I think such people should be kept in small, hermetically-sealed boxes in large cities and never let out in the wild except on a leash. But that’s just me. Just read Tourons of Yellowstone and you’ll get my drift.

Because of such people we are losing the wilds of the world, when we desperately need more of us to fight for them.

For my part, I went back to write about the Tahuayo, the river communities and much more. But those are for another time.

Meanwhile,
Let’s play.

Photo by Adam Śmigielski on Unsplash

I hope this tale is valuable for anyone heading to places like the Amazon, which are fierce, and wonderful because they are untamed. We are the ones who must learn to accommodate the wild, not the other way around. If this was useful to you please consider

I also strongly recommend Beaver’s Lodge, you really are immersed in the Amazon, no air conditioning, night sounds, the real thing. We are losing such places. Please go soon. If you know someone who is considering the are, please consider

Either way, please travel responsibly and safely.