By Heide Brandes
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Bad Trip category
As I knelt by the murky waters of the Amazon watershed far west of Manaus, Brazil, I scrubbed furiously at the one single pair of underwear I owned. Clad in only a swimsuit, I treated that pair of gray panties like the treasure it was, washing them for the fourth morning in a row as I hoped the piranha would stay away for the time it took to get them clean.
The sun was still just a fiery orange smear of light on the horizon, so the nasty relentless biting black flies had yet to launch their blood-seeking assault of the day. Only the distant roar of howler monkeys broke the silence of the Japura River, one of the many tributary rivers that link to the mighty Amazon. Somewhere in this jungle, a jaguar prowled. We had seen its paw print in the mud the day before, adding a new danger to the list of “things that could easily kill us in the Amazon.”
I had booked this trip for my 50th birthday. I wanted to experience the legendary Amazon River and jungle the way the explorers of old did. Instead of a luxury, comfortable river cruise that included champagne cocktails, chef-inspired dinners and air-conditioned cabins, I chose a nine-day adventure excursion on an open-air tugboat that required buckets of water to be bailed out of the engine area several times a day. Our “luxury accommodations” were mildewy hammocks strung up by the shores of the river, and each day, we ate whatever we could catch from the black waters, which was more often than not piranha.
I wanted this. I wanted to see the Amazon in its unspoilt glory before industrialization, logging or climate change took away one of the last wild, untamed and, in some cases, unexplored regions on earth. I just didn’t expect to do it without luggage or gear.
I had nine days in some of the most remote areas of Brazil’s Amazon jungle, and losing my luggage somewhere between Sao Paulo and Manaus seemed like another blow in a year or so of losses.I ended a 26-year relationship, moved out of the house we shared for 17 years, downsized a lifetime of belongings to squeeze into a tiny two-bedroom apartment, lost dear friends to pandemic that wouldn’t go away and now I had lost all the clothing and gear I needed to navigate a deep jungle exploration.Yet, giving up the security of a duffel full of clothes and tools in the Amazon made me realize that if I could survive that, I could also learn to live without the security of a home, a relationship, and a predictable future too.
All Plans go Astray
Although my “big’ birthday was in March, the Amazon adventure was booked for September. The pandemic was still raging in many parts of the world in March so I, along with three brave friends who were crazy enough to join me, had months to plan. When I say we were prepared for any conceivable situation that could occur in the jungle, I mean that we packed items like compasses for when we got lost, little Swiss Army knives in case we had to fight off jaguars with our bare hands, enough bug spray to wipe out malaria, water treatment pills in case we had to guzzle that parasite-infested water, a book on guerrilla warfare and jungle survival in case our guides turned out to be part of a secret human trafficking gang who specialized in menopausal 50-year-old women and even a few “witchy” items to ward off the legendary shape-shifting pink dolphins that snatched women into the Amazon.
I also had three Columbia fishing shirts, five tank tops, three pairs of hiking pants, two weeks worth of undies, three pairs of shorts, three different types of hats, a sweatshirt and light jacket for cool nights, numerous pairs of $24 wool socks, three different styles of bathing suits and gear that I couldn’t even remember just minutes after packing them.
I never check baggage, especially on international flights, but I justified it this time because of the knives and the gallons of bug spray. After landing in Sao Paulo, that luggage never made it on the plane to Manaus. We were told it would be on the next flight, landing two hours after we needed to board our “fast boat” out to the tiny little fishing town of Maraa.
All that gear, all that planning, all that stuff – gone. All I had to journey out into the jungle was the sundress I wore on the plane, the hiking boots I wore on the plane (don’t judge me – hiking boots take up way too much space in luggage), a little blue bikini, one light sweater and one set of workout clothes that included a jaunty hot pink tank top and yoga pants.
There’s a certain giddy and resigned acceptance when you realize things have gone to pot and there’s nothing you can do about it. The frantic phone calls and jittery panic-laced energy suddenly die like a swatted mosquito when you accept that nothing more can be done. You have two options: pull up your one and only pair of big girl panties and plow ahead or just give up on the trip altogether and fly home.
Piranha and Pandemics
Every single memory of my adult life revolved around my and my ex’s world together, and my future without him was as mysterious and danger-fraught as this wild place I was venturing into. Like the Mayans of old, I committed brutal sacrifices of the 17 years of junk and stuff that had accumulated over those years in order to fit into a new tiny little apartment and my fledgling new life. At some point, I simply dumped drawers I hadn’t opened in a decade into a box without even looking at the contents. It’s too easy to lose yourself in the memories that come with half-used bottles of shampoo, old cakey eye shadow or keys that had forgotten their purpose, much like I did in that relationship. In the course of a month, 28 years was reduced to a pickup truck’s worth of moving boxes and a few mismatched pieces of furniture that were as unfamiliar as the new ‘me” was.
When COVID hit, the losses kept coming. Decades of friendships scorched and died under the pesticide of political differences. Hobbies, exercise studios and clubs I belonged to shut their doors, and no amount of video “classes” could replace that camaraderie I craved. Friends who I took for granted died.
I was tired of losing things, and when we arrived in the tiny dusty fishing village of Maraa, the last “town” on the Wild West frontier of the Amazon jungle west of Manaus toward Columbia, I scrounged what I could from the resale shops just so I could have “something.” I bought a flimsy pair of flip flops, a stained bright orange long-sleeve fishing shirt, a baseball cap and a somewhat cozy, outdated pull over sweater.
I also bought a packet of underwear and some cheap socks, but neither fit. They were as useless as all those old memories that plagued me worse than the clouds of biting flies that no amount of bug spray could defeat.
Looking back, I was more free in that moment than I had been in more than 30 years. By day three in the jungle, I was barefoot and feral, fishing out toothy piranha with a cane pole while running shoeless on the shore. I ducked the lethal Brazilian Wandering Spiders and bullet ants and drank coffee boiled from that dirty river.By day four, the biting flies didn’t torture me anymore. Instead, they were an accepted nuisance that no amount of bug spray would deter.
We learned to bathe in the river as fast as possible, jumping into the river and jumping out as fast as possible. We washed our stinky bits with bar soap and scrubbed the sweat and grime from our hair (this was a good time to clean your one pair of panties too) and then jumped back in the river, only to scramble out in a panic. It was a never ending race to beat the curious bloodlust of piranha and caiman alligators.
In those uncomfortable days, we stayed with Mr. Jose, the last remaining member of the Katukina tribe still living on Parica Lake, a massive body of water so remote it was only included on maps a few years ago. On his humble “plantation,” we learned to harvest Acai berries by shuffling up the tree with ankle ropes made of vines. We canoed out to islands and hiked in the footprints of jaguars. We heard stories of the old gods and mysterious men with hair of fire and backwards feet who prowl in the shadows of these jungles.
Mr. Jose stayed behind on that lonely lake when the rest of his family left for the “big city” of Maraa for an easier life. He was 14 and suddenly alone, and for 40-plus years, he built his life around groves of Acai trees and little gardens of pineapple. He built the hut he lived in out of jungle wood and he killed a jaguar with only a knife and his bare hands when the beast ate four of his dogs.
At age 50, he visited his mother in Maraa and came home with a quiet, learning-disabled woman who would become his wife and companion. On the way back from town, he wondered if he made a mistake, if he had ruined this predictable life he’d built alone in the jungle.I asked myself that same question – had I made a mistake leaving all I knew behind too?
As Mr. Jose shared that tale of how he found a wife at age 50, we ate fish with square human-like teeth and drank the Acai juice we harvested, all the while eyeing those deadly Brazilian Wandering Spiders that lurked on every wall of Mr. Jose’s home.
One night, I jumped into the shallows of that lake to rescue a small caiman alligator from a fishing net, blindly diving in despite the unknown dangers that lurked in the dark. I did it with abandon and excitement, feeling more alive in that moment than I had in years.
On day five, we ran out of fresh water.
On day six, the rain battered down as if God was sending another flood to follow the damned plague that wouldn’t go away.
On day seven, I simply stopped wearing undies. No amount of cleaning mattered at that point.
On day eight, we took the overnight “fast boat” back from Maraa to Manaus, only to wake up at midnight to stare down the barrel of an assault rifle as the local law enforcement scoured the public boat for drugs being smuggled from Colombia.
On day nine, the hotel shower in Manaus didn’t work, and for the first time since all these losses, I cried.
I was quickly given another room and took the first shower I had in nine days, a shower that made me believe maybe life really was something beautiful and hopeful and worth looking forward to. It was by far the best trip of my life.
I wish I was able to say with all the silly melodrama of a writer that those nine days of dirty adventure and lost underwear washed away all the fear and melancholy about my uncertain future, but that would be a lie. Instead, that experience seemed to solidify the fact that changes and loss were still coming, biting and incessant like those evil black lake flies, and no amount of planning or money or pure stubbornness would make it stop.
I came home with scabs and blisters and probably a parasite or two to an empty apartment, but I was now something new and strange in my new and strange life. I still wore fear and sadness like that orange tattered fishing shirt I picked up somewhere in Brazil, but they weren’t as constricting and awkward anymore. I’d “grown into” those uncomfortable feelings, and like Mr. Jose, sitting alone for 47 years on a lonely lake, I knew I could adapt into this new me.
This new me is happy now, months later. I’m not the scared woman who entered that jungle with one pair of panties and a bruised life anymore. I’m a woman with a clean slate, a list of new adventures to take and a whole drawer full of clean panties.
~
Heide Brandes is an award-winning journalist and editor with more than 20 years of published work. As an investigative reporter for numerous newspapers and for Reuters News Service, Heide now freelances full time for such publications as The Smithsonian, Southern Living, AAA, AARP, National Geographic, BBC Travel, Roadtrippers, Sierra Magazine, ROVA, Travel Awaits, Fodors, Outdoor X 4, Garden & Gun, Cowboys & Indians and more. She also has bylines in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Hemispheres and others. Heide earned two Society for American Travel Writers’ Lowell Thomas Awards in 2019 and 2021 and has numerous gold, silver, bronze, and honorable mention awards from The North American Travel Journalists Association. She serves as past president of the Society for Professional Journalists Oklahoma Pro-Chapter and is a guest lecturer at regional universities and schools. Besides freelancing full time, Heide is an avid traveler, medieval warrior, hiker, professional bellydancer and bellydance instructor, and kind of a quirky chick who lives in Oklahoma City.