We crouched, sweating, in a tent while rain beat through the fabric. I held the napkin with the map on it. It was a little napkin, meant to go with a rum and Coke at a discothèque in downtown Cusco, Peru. The sketch on the napkin depicted a two hundred mile section of river. A single line squiggled out of some stick mountains. The single line became a ball of black scribble and had two words next to it: Los Monstruos, i.e. the monsters, the rapids in the inner gorge. The map did not explain how to run these. At the top of the squiggle, two streams came in on either side of the ink river. At the bottom of the scribble a stream came in on the left and there was a giant boulder with a tiny tree on top of it. From there the single line ran off the bottom of the napkin. I looked out the door of the tent and wondered — how in the hell did I come to be here?

* * * * *

It all began with an innocent drink at the discotheque in Cusco. Marco was an Italian kayaker following the river seasons around the world. Peru’s water was running out, so he was headed north and I was headed to Africa. We had been throwing back rum and Cokes in Cusco when he told me the Tambopata was running. I was curious about the jungle and he needed someone to go with him, so told him I would go. Marco and I were drinking with one of two guides who had been to this particular river. It’s too far, too unpredictable, too hot, too wet; the place will ravage you. Leo had been (though he said he would never go back) and he drew us the map (of the 300ish kilometer section on a napkin). We were headed for a flooding jungle river, spiders, bees, and insane rain, together, and the napkin was our only map. With that napkin in a Ziploc bag, Marco and I headed to Putina Puncu at 3pm the next day. Onion bags disguised our two crafts (a cataraft and a kayak), everything we owned, and food for roughly two weeks.

We climbed on a truck filled with crates, pipes, concrete, vegetables and people for the forty-two hour journey. The pavement lasted about ten minutes, then we endured the endless, pot-holed, bright-orange road. The hours would surely kill us one by one. The truck climbed 15,000 feet over the Andes and descended into the cloud forest. On the uneven edges of the barrels, oars, the folded raft and kayak, I slept periodically, but mostly I marveled at how my body shut down in the thrashing truck despite creaks and groans that put involuntary tension in my jaw. Big white afternoon clouds and glacier-laden peaks tipped across my view until the sky went dark.

In the morning, the sun exploded pink across cloud and we were fully in the jungle. The thick, lush forest rose at a low angle into the clouds. The truck had dropped us on the bank of the Tambopata. I sat in my cataraft, half rigged, waiting for Marco. The Tambopata River rocked my boat. Staring locals surrounded me, first hordes of children, then only men. The bank was littered with garbage. I sat there nearly four hours watching one person after another come down to defecate in the river. Women did their laundry, bathed their children, and dumped their trash. Flies buzzed through the Coke bottles and condensed milk cans.

A man with an official look to him had shown up and told us we needed a permit. Who needs a permit for a river that no one runs? He told us that one of us could go one hour upstream to a town where we could pay… someone… and he would turn a blind eye… maybe. So Marco left on the back of a motorcycle with this “ranger”. He would meet me on river-left, past the last footbridge, a few miles downstream. The ranger told us the river was an easy hour of class I-II riffles to this footbridge. So I strapped on Marco’s kayak and went alone to wait where he told me.

PART 2 >

SARAHLEE LAWRENCE is a river rafting guide and experiential educator who lives an adventurous life running rivers, researching riparian environments, training horses, farming and writing... {more»}