In September of 2021 I hired two guides to take me through the ‘Igapó’ backwaters of the Amazon on a canoe camping trip, roughly 100 km south of Manaus in Brazil. I wrote a journal — which I thought was lost forever — but recently turned up in my dad’s basement. Here’s some excepts from my trip:
Day 1 — Canoeing to Jungle Campsite
I wake up in the Turtle Lodge after my first decent sleep in days since I stopped drinking and smoking to purify my body for the trip. I take breakfast in the lodge, which is our starting point, then meet up with my local guides Marcello and Daniel at the docks. We pack our large canoe with supplies and then head out through the ‘Igapó’ backwaters, propelled by a trolling motor.
Our first exotic sighting is a massive, Blue Morpho Butterfly with a 12-inch wingspan, which flutters around our canoe curiously.
After a few hours we reach our jungle campsite. The infrastructure is there with some logs thatched together in a small clearing. All we have to do is hang a tarp overhead and put up three hammocks with mosquito nets.
At mid-day my guides are resting and I decide to go on a little trek through the jungle with my machete. I bring no water and get lost for nearly an hour in the thick jungle, which freaks me out. I find a spot with water, splash my face, and then back-track, calling out for Marcello, until I hear him making a ‘woofing’ sound in the distance, which soon leads me back to camp.
Later we head back on the river, looking for animals. We’re paddling through narrow backwaters and the reflections of the trees in the water are magical.
We see some Cappuccino Monkeys jumping across tree branches and toucans, macaws, and parrots are perched overhead.
All the exotic birds are in pairs watching the sunset, just like the Brazilian couples do on the beach. I’m watching the differences between the human and animal kingdoms melt away, as the jungle reveals we are all one colorful collective.
Day 2 — Piranha Fishing
We’re paddling through the river to a spot where Daniel has set a net to catch our food for the trip. Daniel pulls the net to reveal more than ten fish he painstakingly detangles.
He pulls a variety, including pacu, monkeyfish, and a piranha which has crazy eyes and teeth and flops around in the boat like a madman. We later go fishing with makeshift poles with pieces of chicken for bait and I pull up a few more small piranhas.
The sun is going down, and the mosquitos start to eat us alive on the riverbanks, so we head back to camp for dinner.
Daniel fries the piranhas on a skillet and I take one on my plate. The teeth are sticking out like it’s still ready to strike. It tastes angry, but otherwise not bad, as I feel the piranha energy transfer into my being.
Later some iguanas come around our camp, maybe two feet long, with their tongues slithering in-and-out. But they get freaked as soon as they see us, and scamper back into the jungle’s underbrush.
Day 3 — Monkeys and Alligators
I wake in my hammock at the butt crack of dawn, hearing something in the jungle that sounds like Satan Himself. The sound is indescribable and fills the jungle with horror. Ten minutes later, Marcello awakes and tells me it’s the Howler Monkey boss, and his blood-curdling wails can be heard from 2 km away.
Later, we’re drifting around the waterways and Marcello shows me many exotic trees, including a Walking Tree, which has many skinny trunks that it uses like stilts to ‘walk’ across the rivers of the jungle over the years.
Marcello also points out trees, of which the bark can apparently prevent malaria and kidney stones if brewed into some tea by the indigenous shamans. A whole pharmacy in the rainforest!
After dark, we head back on the water looking for alligators with our flashlights and headlamps. Near the banks there’s a small one that Daniel quickly pulls out of the water with his hands. It’s a baby Black Diamond Alligator, just over a foot long, which tries to escape, until Marcello tickles its soft belly, making its hind leg twitch, like when you scratch a dog behind the ears.
The guides teach me how to catch the next one. I spot one with my headlamp, plunge my hand in the water and grab it around the neck with my thumb and index finger, pulling it up into the canoe. I’m sitting with it in my lap in the canoe and meditate. I’m trying transcendental meditation to enter the body of the Black Diamond.
After a few minutes, I’m seeing through it’s eyes and everything seems green and yellow and murky. My eyelids open twice with the double slits — the transparent membrane that allows for underwater sight.
When we come back to camp, I take a quick venture into the jungle with my flashlight and machete. It’s scary as fuck, even just ten minutes from camp, as I’m stupidly wearing flip-flops and looking for snakes below.
An owl is hooting in a tree right at me, something like “Hoot, go back, gringo!” I turn around and return to my hammock. Goodnight jungle.
Day 4 — Swimming and Planning
We’re heading back to the Turtle Lodge and it’s a perfect day, so Daniel asks if I want to go swimming. I’m afraid of the river, since it’s full of piranhas and I have some small cuts on my feet and hands from traveling.
After Daniel jumps in, I say ‘Fuck it’ and follow suit. The river is magical and we swim for half an hour. or so. The Blue Morpho Butterfly (or one of it’s kin) returns to greet us upon our successful return, fluttering overhead.
Back at the lodge, Marcello asks me what I want to do now that the camping trip is over. I ask him if he knows of any Shaman who conduct ayahuasca ceremonies in the jungle. He says he can make it happen, and back in Manaus connects me with a hard-drinking gregarious guide named Armstrong who knows a shaman.
Armstrong says he needs to charter a boat to take me deeper up the Amazon, where he will leave me alone with an indigenous tribe for three days.
I pay the guide.
After three days resting in my hotel in Manaus and buying gear in the market, I meet Armstrong at the docks and head up the Rio Negro, back into the jungle.
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