An American Pimp in the Amazon
You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!
An American scientist doesn’t pay attention when everyone else does
In 1980, a young researcher named Dr. Paul Beaver found himself in the Amazon Basin to study zoology. At the time, there was little, if any, tourist activity in the area. The locals told him about the remarkable diversity of flora and fauna along the Tahuayo River.
The Tahuayo is some fifty miles or about four hours fromo Iquitos by motorboat. Remote, beautiful, unexplored by most Whites, the river is dotted with small villages, mostly very poor locals.
Beaver explored the Tahuayo, realized its extraordinary potential and decided to introduce the region to White travelers. What evolved out of that effort was hilarious, but first, a little context.
Beaver’s intentions were to educate Americans about this extraordinary place as well as provide wages for the local Indigenous populations. That effort grew over time into research stations and much more, a journey that he describes in his rollicking, wonderful book Diary of an Amazon Jungle Guide: Amazing Encounters with Tropical Nature and Culture.
If you book with Amazonia Expeditions, you’re invited to read the book before you go. I strongly recommend it for a variety of reasons, above all, visit the well-run facility which truly delivers the full Amazonian experience.
Today, Beaver is considered one of, if not the preeminent authority on the Amazon, which continues to humble him deeply in its breathtaking richness. That is just one reason he is determined to help preserve it.
After a less-than-wonderful trip of my own to the Amazon in a different part of Peru, I tracked Paul’s outfit down and booked a trip in 2015. The experience was magnificent beyond all expectations. Back in America, I later located Paul, who had by that time moved back to America and lived in a suburb of Tampa, Florida.
Paul and I spent an afternoon together. During that time he regaled me with his celebrated time as a pimp in a part of the world which hadn’t yet experienced certain voracious female appetites.
Paul had begun to invite White tourists to experience the Amazon in all its glory and diversity. Adventurous people said yes. Soon he was taking all kinds of folks on trips in this dangerous part of the world. Some were entranced, others, not so much. Apparently, being immersed in one of the most spectacular places on earth left them a little bored.
Paul was also finding out just how foolish and foolhardy uneducated tourists can be.
But some were savvy in ways he didn’t see coming. Behind his back, Western female tourists were finding fun in the tents at night with his local guides. Marital status made no difference to either; the trips were a naughty opportunity for married Americans to play and for naughty local men to cheat on their wives.
This was all going on under Beaver’s nose. He was utterly unaware that once the lights were out in his tent, the orgies began in everyone else’s.
Word got around that this well-educated young zoologist was running sex trips. In fact, the gossip, of which Beaver was blissfully unaware, went on for some time not only in the communities up and down the Tahuayo but also throughout Iquitos, where the trips began.
Word had also spread among some women in America for whom hot, sweaty, sexy nights under the Amazon stars sounded like one hell of an adventure.
Meanwhile, Beaver continued to run educational excursions for tourists to eye the local fauna, when most of the eyeing going on was between tourists and male guides.
Wives in the river communities were not amused. My guess is that if the Western husbands found out (as surely they would eventually) they weren’t amused either.
Finally, someone took mercy on Dr. Beaver and told him what was really going on behind zipped tent doors. The young researcher was shocked, and promptly put an end to the activities, but not until he’d gotten quite the reputation for pimping out the local Indigenous men to American women, neither of which was complaining about the setup.
Not the zoological discovery he’d intended, but most assuredly an education in animal behavior.
It took a while for Beaver to recover his standing, re-staff and redirect his business. In an interesting but perfectly predictable twist, some years later when Beaver’s wife Dolly began inviting village women to sell their weavings at their Retreat, their husbands accused them of selling their bodies.
Of course they did.
However in this case, the women really were selling their gorgeous baskets and not their bodies, to the chagrin of the husbands. I was there when they formally opened the huge crafts house in El Chino, which features all the wares from women up and down the river.
In fact, these craft sales often made more money than their husbands, which allowed the families to send their kids to school and enjoy additional upgrades to their lives which had never been possible before. The best of the husbands now help find and dye the reeds which their wives weave, and many also work for Paul.
Things have come a long way, for today, thanks to Dolly’s efforts to help create income for these families, El Chino also now has a high school and a medical clinic. But that’s for another story.
These days, the sweaty nighttime shenigans of Paul Beavers expeditions are long in the past, but his days as the river pimp still remain a favorite tale of the early days of Amazon exploration.
And before you ask, if any babies were born as a result, nobody’s talking.
Author’s note: Paul shared this story because he thought it was funny at his expense. It is, but it’s also another example of people from colonizing countries taking advantage of the locals, with far-reaching implications for the locals’ families and possibly more. I am not a fan and I most emphatically don’t condone it for obvious reasons. The story is also forty years old, which simply goes to show not much has changed.
Let’s play, but let’s play respectfully. We are guests overseas.
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