Pieces of Sky

News Bulletins

Don Willi - King of the Jungle

Don Willi was in his mid 60´s and was the head of the household at San Antonio. There was only one family that lived there but it was a big family. As Don Willi offered us a third jam jar of grapefruit juice, more and more heads would pop up from around corners and out of the fields to see who had come to the 2 house village. We hadn’t seen another person in several weeks and now it felt like we were being surrounded by crowds, all wanting to shake our hands and laugh at our strangely spoken Spanish. We felt overwhelmed, both by the number of people (only 15 or so) and the open hospitality.

It was around 11.00 o’clock and as we rounded yet another endless bend in the river we’d come across one of Don Willi´s daughter-in-laws washing clothes in a dugout canoe moored up to the far bank with her two sons in tow. She looked up from her work at the strange vision of 2 pasty white people coming towards her in a little blue canoe. Clearly she was just as unsure of us as her two sons were, who were now fighting between the compulsion to hide and the curiosity of young kids. We drifted over, smiled and said 'Hello', which probably sounded a bit lame on reflection. She smiled back at us and then cast an eye over our blue canoe. The smile then turned to a wide grin with gold-capped teeth that said something along the lines of 'Can’t you afford a proper canoe?' We gave her our usual vital statistics - where we were from / what we were doing / where we were going and how long we’d been paddling down the river. She nodded, the kids giggled and then she took us to meet Don Willi.

Now here we were. It felt surreal sitting here drinking something that didn’t have silt in it. Our water filter had given up the ghost on the third day on the river and we’d been using a silk sleeping bag liner ever since. We had a map on the table and frantic hands pointed at different parts of it as we all disagreed on where we were. Finally we all agreed that we were on the Rio Manuripi and we left it at that. Leaving our map on the table we were then given a VIP tour of San Antonio. Don Willi´s family lived comfortably and there didn’t seem to be too much that they would want beyond what they had. There was a healthy herd of 20 or 25 cows, a well that gave them fresh, clean water. Chickens, pigs and kids everywhere. There was even a small schoolhouse that had been funded by the WWF many years ago but there had never been a teacher unfortunately. The two-house village was at the top of a small hill on a bend in the river that’d formed a small lagoon and the hill formed a small island in the wet season when the river rose by upto 10 metres above its current height. It was a beautiful place to live.

We made our way back down to our canoe with most of the village as word spread about the fact that it wasn’t made of wood and everyone consequently poked and prodded it as if they were contemplating buying a new car. Everyone wanted to know where the outboard motor was and when we told them that we only had paddles they were stunned. We thought Don Willi was going to have another stroke he was laughing so hard. No one ever goes more than a mile or so in a canoe in the Amazon using just a paddle these days. We’d been going for weeks and they thought it was hysterical.

For the next hour or so we watched just about everyone take our canoe up and down the river to see how it performed and most thought it was pretty crap to be honest. We’d overloaded it with so much gear that it wallowed in the water and would never go in a straight line. By comparison, their dugouts glided along. We’d been pretty happy with the little blue canoe though. It hadn’t sunk under all our gear and it did what we needed. Admittedly, rather slowly, but it did it.

We were invited to stay at the village so we carried a few bags up the hill and moved into the disused school. Everything else we just left where it was on the river, moored up beside the other canoes. All the way along the Rio Manuripi there is such honor amongst people that you could happily leave the Crown Jewels on the riverbank for a week and no one would take them. They would look after them but never take them. That evening we shared a meal of shredded chicken, corn and rice with four generations of the family and 2 Government surveyors who were coming up the river to measure topographical elevations as part of the ongoing conservation and research of the area. It was a strange evening of discussing the virtues of our plastic canoe paddles over outboard engines and comparing our GPS with the survey equipment of the Government surveyors. A sense of humor is evidently not in short supply on the banks of the Manuripi. The conversation eventually turned to our search for Manchester. At this stage we still didn’t know if the old market village founded during the rubber boom still existed or not. We weren’t even sure where it was. Our research, such as it was had lead us to believe that it was on the Northern side of the river half way along its length and in all probability on a hill. That was all we knew. Don Willi confirmed that the village still existed and told us that it was on the banks of a lagoon half an hour up an off shoot of the main river. He said it was 6 days paddle way from San Antonio. That night we lay on the hard school floorboards in amongst the dust and spiders wondering why we hadn’t slept outside in our hammocks but excited in the knowledge that Manchester still existed.

The next morning had us up early as Roberto, one of Don Willi’s six sons wandered around the school shooting any careless birds that were big enough to put in the pot. We ate a breakfast of eggs and rice and then we were off with the surveyors to measure local elevations. Aldo and Romara came from a far more modern world than the one we were in now and we talked about the complexities of conservation against local social issues and the efforts to protect the area for most of the day. It was good to hear that rather than the local people of the Manuripi fighting conservation and hunting any animals of value or logging the hardwoods, they treasured the forest and everything in it. It had always been their home and they loved it the way it was. They actively worked with the Government to protect their land from the loggers and poachers. Over the months as we traveled down the river it was vary rare that we ever came across people who were hunting monkeys or anything else other than fish. The slog though the jungle with Aldo and Romara was hard work but it was nice to have someone else doing some of the machete work for a change and we trudged up and down small hills taking levels for most of the day. At one point we were making our way around a small swamp and gave a basking anaconda a very wide birth. It was around a metre wide and well over 20 metres long. Not something to get too close to and by far the biggest snake that either of us ever saw in two and a half months in the area. Of course, life is sometimes unfair and we didn’t have a camera with us. Some photographers we are.

We spent a few days at San Antonio recharging our bodies, relaxing and going fishing for piranha before getting back to our search for Manchester. With a boatload of grapefruit and an impromptu canoe race we left Don Willi and his family behind knowing we’d been taught a thing or two about what hospitality really is.

As it turned out Don Willi´s estimate of 6 days to Manchester was in fact several more weeks of canoeing and searching. But yes, we found Manchester and that is another story all together!

Our adventures continue once again tomorrow as we begin the next stage of our journey. I won´t say here what that is apart from to say it’s not in a canoe and it involves crossing the Andes from Amazon Basin to the Pacific coast. Once again it may be a while until we have Internet access but we will send another update when we can.