Pain Below the Equator Read online

previous week. Luis/Gabriel told us that when the river is at its nominal level there are about 175 separate falls, but that at the present there were as many as 250. I would have been as willing to believe five-hundred. Water was falling everywhere.

  Luis/Gabriel had the savvy to schedule our boat ride for the end of the day. He pushed us forward to fill remaining seats on an earlier trip—of course he wanted to go home as much as we didn’t want to wait. They load you onto an open bed vehicle like a troop transport and drive through the jungle for about ten minutes. A guide carries on a narrative of what you might see, but of course with a hundred or so trucks passing through each day the only wild life one will ever see are the enormous spiders that make their webs just over the heads of the tallest passengers. The boat handlers are so jaded they don’t even talk to the people—they just push and stick your limbs through the straps of the life vests. The seats are too low to see over the heads of the other passengers, but seeing isn’t really the point. It’s getting wet. The view from the base of the falls is not as good as from the viewing platforms. When the boat approaches the falls the spray blinds everybody including the pilot. He makes the approach by Braille, comes around and kills the engine. The boat rocks and the waters inundate everything and everybody. They issue heavy rubberized bags for shoes and cameras, and there really is no photo opportunity, it’s strictly a thrill ride.