|
By Bob Payne
Whenever somebody says, "It can't be done," I think of the two Polish adventurers I once traveled with in the Amazon Basin, and I thank heaven that the pope is Polish.
Jerzy and Zbigniew, both naturalized American citizens, had left their homeland during the Communist era because their staunch pro-Catholic leanings got them in trouble. Then they went on to spend years running every whitewater river in South America they could find. During those years, they'd had many close calls, including being shot at and interrogated at gunpoint by the Sendero Luminoso, Peru's Shining Path guerrillas. "What were the guerrillas like?" I asked. "Oh, not bad guys, once you got to know them."
So I wasn't surprised that they were little concerned about the obstacle the three of us faced following the Rio Negro: Word all along the way was that we would not be allowed to venture onto the Casiquiare, a tiny tributary that ran through the heart of Yanomami Indian country.
On the other hand, I was convinced from step one that the naysayers might be right. But I went along because I was fascinated and annoyed--not so much by their physical endurance (which was considerable) or their ability to persuade (which was even more so), but by their unassailable belief in the power of their Catholic faith to see them through. A nonbeliever myself, I wanted to see them put it to the test.
They wanted to visit the Casiquiare, which played a prominent role in Redmond O' Hanlon's adventure classic In Trouble Again, because they wanted to test its potential for an adventure travel tour. I was brought along because they thought it would be useful to see how a "typical tourist" fared. "If you survive," they said, "this will be good."
In Manaus, Brazil, at the junction of the Amazon and the Rio Negro, the airline wasn't going to let us on the flight to São Gabriel, 600 miles upriver. The twin-engine plane was overbooked and overweight. But Zbigniew chatted up the gate agent, and Jerzy, whose cross around his neck flashed in the sunlight, made friends with the baggage handlers. I worried about whether it would be worse if a drug trafficker learned I got his seat or a gold miner discovered we were the reason his wooden crates were being left behind.
The story was the same in São Gabriel, where a man reluctantly loaned us an outboard-powered canoe and driver, and at a half-dozen military checkpoints along the river, and at the border between Brazil and Colombia. Typical was the captain of the Colombian patrol boat at a little military base across the river from a Venezuelan outpost guarding the entrance to the Casiquiare. The captain, apparently a regular churchgoer himself, said that even though relations between the two posts were not good at the moment (some misunderstanding over a drug-trafficking incident), he would see what he could do. "But
unfortunately, the Venezuelans are less compromising in these matters than my own countrymen," he informed us.
In the end, the captain decided he could take us across the river in his patrol boat. But because he was not permitted to touch Venezuelan soil, he could not land. We would have to jump from the bow of the boat onto the shore. Of course, we immediately accepted his offer, and on the way across I gave him a piece of paper with our names on it, in case someday somebody came looking for us. I decided, too, that I might as well give myself every advantage: Following the lead of my companions, I made the sign of the cross.
As we jumped for the shore, a cry went up, and Venezuelan soldiers swarmed down the bank, clicking rounds into the chambers of their rifles. Things were uncomfortable for a while after that, until the soldiers were going through our passports, two of which contained last names so long they nearly ran off the page. Then one of the soldiers, who from his gym shorts and Reeboks I knew to be of high rank, slowly looked at us, looked at the passports again, and finally turned to a camouflage-garbed subordinate. "Go get Father Kaczmarczyk," he said.
Into our adventure strode the most respected person in the nearby village, a Polish missionary priest who we learned had not seen a fellow countryman in 15 years. It was enough to make you believe in the power of faith.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Illustration by Jason Schneider
|
