Another death reported in Sichuan:

Coming into Kahm

When we bicycled across Tibetan Sichuan on our In Search of Shangri La journey, we passed into Tibetan lands at this stupa marking the first pass.

As we traversed more passes to the west, the Chinese military and national police became much more numerous. We were stopped and questioned almost daily, lest we be on a mission to stir up the Tibetans.

Tension was in the air on the streets of Litang, where we took a few days of high altitude rest. A convoy of 108 trucks filled with troops passed through town to the taunts, and at least a few rocks were thrown.

Now it appears self-immolation is becoming the method of protest against the authorities in the area we crossed on our tandem.

We have fond memories of the Tibetan people, and will be watching.

To read much more, see photos and videos of the people and the area:

In Search of Shangri La

Be sure and play with the clickable slideshow at the right: see an interesting image, click it (be quick) and it will take you to the post or page; instant gratification!

Let us hear you comments.

Bob and Claire

Canyon road beside the Rio Santa in Peru

A pale gray dusts hides loose rocks on the road through the Rio Santa canyon in Northern Peru. A cliff into the river and a nearly vertical desert rock wall are it’s boundaries. Only a one lane tunnel allows passage in thirty-seven places.

One bad rock, one slip, and...

Our narrow tandem tires cut into the dust and bounce and slide from one auto-tire slickened rock to another. We  hope to avoid the shattered and sharpened hidden ones, capable of ruining our day, and one of our tires. We have one spare, and wonder if we should not have brought two. A few times a particularly vile rock (by the second day I was attributing evil intent to certain rocks) would throw the front wheel toward the abyss, necessitating a dual bail out.

After a day on the Rio Santa Road

All this is more than a little stressful. I can’t imagine how difficult it is for Claire on the back of the tandem, not being able to see what is causing the bumping and swerving (and not a little cursing).

Road cutting through the desert Andes above the Rio Santa

The two days along this road were among the most physically demanding of 40,000 miles of touring, and yet I am beginning to let go of memories of aching shoulders and hands, and the mental exhaustion. Claire said I would. And she said I would probably get us into something just as bad in the future. She’s usually right. But maybe not this time. Maybe I’ve learned it’s possible to have an adventure without such a high degree of physical punishment. I think so.

I call on my friends to remind me to come back and read this post, if I seem to be hankering for something absurdly difficult, and not hearing Claire’s subtle hints that it might be over the top. That’s what friends are for.

Stark Beauty of the Andes and the Rio Santa

I won’t forget the stark beauty of the desert Andes and the Rio Santa, our star lit bush camp, the Southern Cross sinking behind a knife edge ridge, leaving us with a cool restful sleep.

Stay tuned for more posts we didn’t have time or internet for in South America.

Miami International Airport Hotel

In case you missed Claire amid our luggage and Zippy

Air travel is not always comfortable. American Airlines is doing their part to make sure we don’t get too soft. We arrived early evening at Miami International Airport. We had to claim our luggage, and Zippy, to go through Customs and Immigration, always a mad rush to get the luggage, sometimes for us a wait at oversize luggage for the bicycle, then wait in line, passport in hand to get cleared.

We ran and got near the front of the line then made our way to the American Airlines desk to re-check our luggage for our early morning flight, now a good eight hours away. It was around 9pm and the desk was manned by one woman. No other customers. She wouldn’t check in our luggage. The conveyor belt was humming away, just waiting for our luggage, but it was, “against the rules.” She wouldn’t even take Zippy, or the exorbitant $200 cost to get him to Tucson. She seemed to enjoy saying no to us, multiple times. American must have special training schools for nose-in-the-air acrid pronunciation of the word “no”.

So we were stuck in the airport all night with all our luggage. No way were we going to order a van big enough for Zippy and put ourselves at the mercy of a driver to find us a hotel, that fit our budget, for a now at best six hour sleep. There was a hotel in the airport, prices starting at $139, but we didn’t even check, anticipating that exorbitant $200 to get Zippy to Tucson.

So we had foot-long at Subway and went wandering with our little cart filled with Zippy and not much else. I was reminded of the street people in most cities, schlepping their worldly possessions all over town in a grocery cart, looking for a comfortable spot to have a lie down, and maybe a little sleep. At least we didn’t have to worry about being told to move on; airport security knows about over-nighters. And of course airports are much more comfortable than sleeping outside, even in Miami in September, which felt cool to us after Guyana.

We weren’t alone in our search for an out-of-the way place to test the carpet padding. We passed several nice looking looking spots before finding a quiet corner for ourselves. Some people were trying to sleep sitting up in chairs; not for me. Give me a flat spot, with just a little padding, something just the right size for a pillow, and I’m ready to get horizontal and sleep. We sort of took turns sleeping and guarding our stuff, for awhile, then realized nobody would know the value of that big long shrink-wrapped thing, so we both slept for a few hours. We almost didn’t wake up in time for our required 5am check in time.

Sleeping in airports is all part of the experience these days if, like us, you go for the cheap ticket, no matter what. But lots of people get stuck for reasons of weather or airline screw-ups, so if you travel much, your day will come. Don’t worry. Just go with the flow and enjoy the experience. You’ll be surprised how comfortable you can get on your own little corner of carpet.

Bet you thought you’d be reading about a yawning sloth and a hungry jaguar. Actually this place is the Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm and Amazon Animal Orphanage, a short boat ride from Iquitos, where founder Gudrun Sperrer gave us a personal tour. Pupating caterpillars just aren’t as photogenic as a sleepy sloth. The sad story is that there is even a need for this place, a place where Peruvian children finally learn that big blue butterflies don’t come from little blue butterflies; shockingly, the metamorphosis of butterflies isn’t taught in school so Sperrer hosts field trips. It’s because of Sperrer’s heart of gold that the orphaned animals have a home here. What else can be done with a pet jaguar who is no longer so charming? Her original intent was to raise butterflies in a protected environment, shipping pupae out to botanical gardens and zoological parks, now Sperrer is scaring up 25 pounds of chicken a day for a large cat’s dinner and paying dearly for vitamin enriched formula for an anteater, some sloths, several monkeys and a tapir. If you take a jungle tour in the Amazon, do NOT “rescue” an orphaned animal from anyone by buying it and setting it free. This just encourages more poaching.

It happened 130 kilometers from the Guyana border in Boa Vista.  We took a no travel day to stock up for the pedal to the Guyana border. We filled the right rear pannier with food and bottled water, and were headed back to our small hotel. We’d just turned into the empty roundabout and headed for the first exit, legally, when we both saw the car headed for us from the right, at excessive speed.

There have been a very few times in my life when time seemed to slow, if not stand still, and this was one. I could see the car headed for us broad side, in slow motion, too late to brake, to late for our acceleration to help.

Thud.

Zippy’s back end went sideways, but we somehow stayed upright. I steered for the center island curb and we dropped Zippy to the curb. I could tell Claire was okay, she was already running for the pannier laying in the middle of the street. Quick thinking: save the food!

The car stopped in the middle of the street, the driver yelling at ME in rapid Portuguese. I ran to the open passenger window to give him what-for in English, Claire arrived seconds later, gesturing to our pannier, and giving him hell too. He was blaming us, but I knew the culprit; the cell phone he had dropped on the passenger seat.

I made a show of memorizing his licence plate, as he drove slowly away, but there was no point is trying to detain him.

Neither of us was hurt, the food sustained minor damage. The pannier was the one we crashed on in Tibet two years ago, and was by now getting accustomed to taking hits. (Thank you Cannondale for making equipment we cannot destroy!)

It was a minor accident, but instructive.

The point of this post is not our close call:

The point is that neither the driver or us even considered involving the police: he because he was Brazilian and has known all his life to distrust them, and we because we had been warned not to involve police in anything, not even an injury accident.

Joe, owner of our small moldy, but relatively clean hotel back in Manaus, told us he had been the victim of a hit-and-run the year before on his motorcycle. He called the police to the scene (someone got the license number) but before they would pursue the motorist, they demanded a bribe. He said often both motorists in an accident are threatened with fines, if they don’t pay up. Joe told us to try and work it out with the driver, if it ever happened to us.

Have you ever considered offering a police officer a bribe in the U.S.?

I grew up knowing I would end up in jail if I did. Most of you did I’d guess. But in much of the world that is not the case.

In much of Latin America, a culture of corruption from above, makes it seem to the minions that it is just the normal way of doing things. The reasons for rampant corruption at lower levels of government are complex.

One of the reasons can be low, or non-existent pay. On our first trip around the U.S. we were told that the Mexican border patrol agents at a remote outpost near the Stillwell Ranch, and Big Bend National park, received no salary. They lived on “fines” levied against poor Mexicans bringing in used tires and other goods to sell in the remote villages near the frontier. It’s pretty hard to argue against them, but what about the higher ups who probably pocket the salaries before they get to the agents?

Corruption around the world is a huge subject, far too complex for this blog to cover properly, but is a huge drain on the cultures affected, and ultimately on the creation and preservation of a strong middle class worldwide.

On our Silk Road Crossing, four years ago, in Western Turkey, we were told by a local business man, that the mid-day black-outs are a normal part of life in Turkey, and cost untold millions in business losses. Corruption in electric power administration is the cause. He also complained that, though he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars in carpet sales each years, that he only pays a few hundred in taxes.

He would rather see a corruption free public sector, pay significant taxes and have a reliable infrastructure.

That won’t happen soon, because too many pockets are lined, in all levels of government, and sometimes in business.

Do we, have we, had corruption in the U.S.?

Yes, of course. But, we don’t have a pervasive culture of corruption. As long as we have a strong middle-class, we will resist widespread corruption.

Would you want to live in a country where you are afraid to call the police?

Just one more reason for Americans to be appreciative of our system of government, our government employees and a culture with reasonably high values. Even though the highest level of our government is in a temporary period of confusion, and political uncertainty is high, we have much to be thankful for.

Zippy on a mini-bus, waiting for the ferry in central Guyana

Georgetown/Letham Road

Sometimes things don’t go as planned and Zippy has to take a ride on a bus, in this case a mini-van packed sardine-like with 12 passengers, on a dirt road across Guyana. It’s always a mini-adventure traveling the way the locals travel. All South Americans seem to like their pop music, and because they like it so much, they play the same top hits over and over again, at speaker-buzzing volumes. I once liked Latin music; no more.

Georgetown/Letham Road and pop music Mini van being destroyed by potholes; 18 hours of this teaches patience and tolerance, or at least it should.

Story telling on a Guyana ferry

Claire in hammock in Guyana. Long sleeves for mosquitoes, not cold!

Jungle Hammock Sounds of the night in mid Guyana

Travel With The Locals

The cramped ride was for 18 hours, but we did have about five hours in the middle to have a nap stretched out in the hammocks we brought from the Amazon barco (boat) portion of this trip. A nice tropical rain made for a deep sleep, and it was back on the road again.

The Georgetown/Letham Road.

A paradise of flowers

botanical garden birds

Georgetown, Guyana Market

Selling newspapers at the market in Georgetown counting her cash

Peppers in basket in the Georgetown, Guyana Market

Not Your Vision of the Caribbean

Beach near an upscale hotel in Georgetown

A common view in Georgetown

Encounters in Georgetown, Guyana

Morning commute across the river in Guyana

Delivery horse in downtown Georgetown

Strong Gun Control Laws, Violence Rampant with Cutlass (Machete)

Almost daily news in Georgetown

View from our guesthouse in Georgetown

Sign at lunchette by day, bar by night, we had the Cook-up at noon.

Place of quiet in Georgetown

Fake palm: metaphor for Georgetown's future?

Guyana is one of those countries on the cusp of some difficult decisions. It’s still mostly third-world rapidly being dragged toward a developing-world role by(mostly) China’s thirst for natural resources. What they will do with increasing wealth will determine what kind of life Guyanans can expect. As we have heard in Peru and Brazil, internal corruption is the biggest threat they face. We were told the maintenance on the Georgetown/Lethem Road was contracted out, and most of the money went into the pockets of government officials and the fixed bid winner, and little goes into the road, at a cost of millions in lost efficiency of travel on the only north south road, and repairs to vehicles.

The pattern is reportedly being repeated in contracts for China mining Guyana’s resources. If they are to become a true developing-world country, they will need to develop value added manufacturing and exporting. Now China (and others) buy natural resources and little else. Perhaps this is due to corruption, or a lack of middle-class education necessary for the development of an entrepreneurial class. Now Guyana is a divided country: we often saw expensive automobiles parked beside crumbling park benches, the beds of the many homeless. The lack of a middle class, and the conditions that produce a middle class, will doom any country to the dustbin of economic history. We currently have a shrinking middle-class in America.

Guyana is not a tourist destination for most of us. If you have thousands to spend per week at a fly-in high end resort in the jungle, I’m sure it would be wonderful, as large tracts have been preserved for the few. One interesting development is that Guyana is selling carbon credits based on it’s thousands of square miles of jungle. It’s sort of like an export not requiring capital; earning money by letting things alone. Where is the money going? Hopefully into education, and developing manufacturing and infrastructure. We didn’t see evidence of that. It’s a good bet that when China develops a taste for tropical hardwoods, the jungle will be for sale, by the powerful corrupt.

America’s lack of corruption is rare in this world. It’s one of the things a strong middle class doesn’t tolerate. We have much to be thankful for, but I’m afraid Americans are more prone to complaining than thanksgiving.

More on corruption in South America in a future post: If you have an accident in America, are you afraid to call the police?

Claire on the Savannah in northern Brazil

We finally had a great day on the bike, from Boa Vista to Bom Fin on the border with Guyana. I’d always thought all of Amazonian Brazil was jungle, or rather cut down jungle, second growth, but the north is wet savannah, much like the Gulf Country of Queensland, Australia. We saw more birds in one day of 130 kilometers here than we have seen in the entire trip so far, all but one or two new to our “life list.” There were stops every 30 to 40 kilometers with roadhouses, also much like Australia but closer, where we got much needed cold drinks to add to our load of water. It is very hot and humid here just north of the Equator, and we were soaking wet most of the time. Our final stop was nearly an hour so we could cool down to a reasonable level before going on.

The border town in Brazil, Bom Fin had minimal services, but very friendly helpful people. The morning of the border crossing we were escorted to the border by two young people on one bike.

At the Brazilian border the police insisted on taking pictures with us and Zippy. They were trying to make us sad to leave Brazil!

Claire:

Brazilians have a saying: “Sempre tem jeito,” or, “there’s always a way”. The tone hints that their way is not always conventional. For us, it was an appropriate welcome to Manaus, a city of two million people in the middle of the Amazon Basin, where I thought that for once, we wouldn’t need to haul Zippy, fully loaded, up and over the barco’s rail. Surely, this city would have a proper port with a floating dock for more efficient loading and unloading of a boat full of people, plantains, solar panels, and luggage.

I’d been fretting about losing my grip on Zippy on his way onto the boat and couldn’t erase the image of the bike’s large chainring crunching down on the rail as the porters tried to help. It was too high for me to try to lift and Bob was very busy with the front end. My skinned knuckles and bruised shins will heal, but we need the bike to keep working for the rest of the trip. This time, instead of being easier, the way off the boat was harder. We simply rafted up to another barco. We crossed the first plank easily. At a foot and a half, it was wide enough for Bob to walk the bike over the span of water. We had a couple of landings where Bob had a choice of keeping the bike on an eight inch plank and slogging through the soft, ankle-knee deep muddy bank along side or awkwardly pulling the bike from the front.

The way from the intermediary barco onto the dock involved porters reaching and stretching to pull the bike across a three foot span over the water. It’s a real leap of faith for me to let go of the back of the bike when I can’t explain to the porters how unbalanced the load is, even if they do have a solid grip on the front end.

The N/M Sacred Heart of Jesus was originally to arrive in Manaus around noon, but a narcotics smuggler was arrested off the boat the first day, so we were delayed considerably, arriving after dark again in a very foreign city. (On the second night underway, our boat apparently hit another boat, delaying us further.)

Finally ashore, well after dark, we pushed Zippy along narrow pedestrian lanes, through a quickly closing market, dragging behind us the long stares of idle young men. We knew the neighborhood wasn’t an especially good one, an understatement it turned out, but it was close by and I thought we’d at least be able to find a hotel. We did find many which had two or three hour specials–in Brazilian–a love motel. I was so proud that we negotiated for the whole night plus extra, allowing us not to check out until noon. We slept our first night out of hammocks on a rubber coated mattress with rubber coated pillows. We were too tired to watch the “special” Channel 3.

Old Manaus

Bob:

I’d somehow expected Manaus to be just a huge village, like the river towns upriver in Peru. Not so. It’s a large, fairly modern, city, with some bad sections. Cars and large transit busses dominate the streets, not the motorcycles and moto taxis so prevalent since we left Lima.

San Sebastian Plaza is fronted by a huge theatre and many restored homes from the rubber baron era. Elsewhere, the older buildings are crumbling, being replaced by boring glass and steel or concrete construction.

We left our love hotel just before noon, after availing ourselves of everything but Channel 3 (utterly unnecessary, after a week of absolutely no privacy) and made our way to a less strange hotel closer to the Centro. We knew immediately we were closing in on the Equator when we smelled the moldy room. We are paying more for everything here in Brazil, more than we would in the U.S., the result of our weak dollar and Brazil’s hot economy. Their central bank just lowered their rate to 12%!

The Amazon River here is deep enough to accommodate ocean going ships, and they crowd the port along with the upriver barcos (many sizes and configurations) that we traveled on. We’re not exactly sure of the source of all this economic activity in the mid-Amazon, but it is no longer virgin rainforest; rather, it’s small farms and second growth timber. There is oil exploration, but it is not visible from the river.

Even the small villages we called on in the past few hundred kilometers, had streetlights, a central plaza, football (soccer) field, cell towers and satellite TV. The upper river in Peru is still pretty backwater, less changed and still dominated by small agriculture and fishing.

The internet is painfully slow; difficult to upload photos, or spend much time on Facebook or answering emails. Frustrating, and something they will have to deal with if they expect businesses to site manufacturing or satellite offices here. I’m sure they will. Brazil is hot, and I don’t mean just temperatures and liberal sexual mores, business is booming; worth watching.

Claire dancing the Samba in Manaus

After a dinner of Portuguese pizza and a couple of weak beers, we walked to the plaza to see what the locals were up to in the slightly cooler evening hours. We heard music, unmistakably Brazilian, live music, and found a free concert, attended by a couple of hundred samba crazed fans of a middle-aged performer and his excellent band. As he sang, the crowd joined in, obviously familiar with the lyrics. It was a Brazilian samba love-fest and a joy to be a part of. We began to get a feel for the samba, something of a national dance, and music, for Brazil. We danced along with people on the fringes, and received smiles and applause for our efforts. We would have liked to talk to people, but here in Portuguese Brazil, Spanish is not useful beyond the basics.

We leave soon northbound on one of only two access roads to Manaus. We can find little information about the route ahead, except that there is an indigenous reserve well over 100 kilometers across, where absolutely no stopping is tolerated. We might not be able to cycle that if it is hilly or the road is bad. We saw a video on YouTube before we left of natives throwing stones at a car. So there may be a bus section in our future. We’re looking forward to the highlands of northern Brazil, and Guyana.

Claire was still sick at her stomach when we bought tickets on the lancha Eduardo V for Iquitos; brave, since most of the guidebooks say the food is cooked in river water, and “you will get sick.” Happy to say they are wrong. The food was simple and starchy, rice, plantains, papas, and a little meat, but reasonably prepared and came in generous proportions. We didn’t get sick, and Claire was downing the whole bowl by mid trip. We bought two plastic bowls and metal spoons to eat with.

sunset on rio maranon

“Not for getting clean. For getting the stink off”

There were toilets (no seats) and even a couple of river water showers; a sign, roughly translated said, “Not for getting clean. For getting the stink off.” They were also nice in the heat of the afternoon. I showered twice in shorts and shirt and stood by the rail to drip and cool while enjoying a view of life on the Amazon.

The lancha is a sort of large barge with a motor, two decks and a wheelhouse. The vessel’s purpose is carrying freight; rice, and more rice, scrap steel, fertilizer, cement, bulls, pigs and at least one rooster, none of which were fed or watered during the trip, every manner of household goods and appliances, general merchandise, bags of unidentified stuff, and one tandem bicycle.

The Eduardo V

(This is for James Rovang, my nephew, a marine electrician specializing in exotic navigation equipment in Anacortes, Washington) The Eduardo V has one piece of navigation equipment, that doubles as a depth finder: it is a panga (long open motorboat) the Captain sends ahead with two men when he is not sure of the channel (Peru has no channel markers of any kind). One runs the motor/tiller, the other uses a long pole with depth markings to try to avoid sandbars. This information is not sent back by radio, they don’t have a radio, but the panga charges back to the Eduardo, the depth finder crewman scrambles back on board to tell the Captain where not to go. Very efficient, eh? At night, a crewman stands on deck with not more than a one-thousand watt hand held searchlight; he scans both shores and the middle for about ten seconds, turns the light off for twenty seconds, and repeats. From this the helmsman steers a pretty big ship through the night.

well-and-truly aground

The Amazon and its tributaries carry a heavy load of silt, and the channel is constantly changing. Being a riverboat captain must be a very difficult job. I thanked the Captain for his hard work one morning and he told me (with bloodshot eyes) he had been at the wheel all night. We were stuck a few times that night; you can tell because the ship lurches up and sideways, and the engines labor and speed up. I wondered how many extra days it would take us to get to Iquitos if we were well-and-truly aground. A rescue ship would be two days away. No worries, we had a year’s worth of rice on board, and a dozen emaciated bulls.

view from a hammock

hammock is where you sleep

Passengers are an afterthought on these life-lines to Iquitos and many small villages along the Amazon’s banks. You buy space, bring a hammock to hang crossways above the deck, vying politely for some personal space. The hammock is where you sleep, and sit during the day. We became very familiar with our hammocks over the 48, mas o menos, hours it took to Iquitos.

evening light on our hammock home

a new baby

We also met and “talked” to our close (very) neighbors and crew. One family was returning to Iquitos with a new baby, either four weeks old, or four months, we couldn’t discern, not being very expert in such matters. We did however enjoy smiling at the baby, and having her smile back. The parents are very proud. I thought the father was going to cry as he told me how happy his baby made him. I told him (somehow) that his baby was making everyone on our ship happy; true.

our neighbors

One young man was so proud of his position in the cavalry of Peru’s military he showed me his military ID. Claire said he wanted to talk to me because of my military style haircut. I can be a good listener too; even when I don’t understand much.

radar, depthfinder and GPS panga

stumbling, quiet cursing and occasional vomiting over the rail

One group of young men nearby got drunk on some clear liquor, but they didn’t last long, crashed in their hammocks long before midnight. There was a kerfuffle sometime in the early morning hours, when one of them awoke and discovered something important of his missing. He was blaming his compatriots and very upset. Flashlights searched the decks, hammocks were turned upside down, bags searched, all with considerable stumbling, quiet cursing and occasional vomiting over the rail. We looked carefully beneath our hammocks. You see they had a large, live snapping turtle tied up in a plastic bag with them, probably as a celebratory dinner gift for their welcome home dinner. We worried it had managed to wander off, and our butt laden hammocks were inches from the floor. I know what a snapping turtle can do with its beak! My father and grandfather ran a “trotline” in the Coal River; don’t let a snapping turtle get near any tender parts!

a friaje

We slept well each night except one. A heavy squall hit us hard one afternoon, raining hard for two hours, bullets streaking the brown water and shaking the ship. The riverscape, usually pudding brown, selva (jungle) green, and sky blue, was now an even shade of streaked gray blue, and animated,  a fury of sound and motion. The constant meandering of the river meant a short fetch, and held the waves down. I wondered why the downstream current, against the wind usually, didn’t get choppier that it did. It was fun to see some real weather. We’ve had sunshine almost every day (except flat fog on the coast) for six weeks, and the storm was a treat. However, the weather system left some very cold air in its wake (locally called a friaje), and I almost wished we hadn’t already mailed home the winter gear, stuff we mostly didn’t need in the Andes. Claire complained of a cold butt, pressed against the hammock, and my toes took until noon to recover. We knew it could get cold down in the Amazon Basin, but it was only something read in a book. Now we know, really know, in a way you can only know by feeling it on your skin, in your bones.

exotic fruits, cakes, handicrafts and parrots

At most village stops, women and children clambered on board, selling everything from gaseosas (sodas), to exotic fruits, cakes, handicrafts and parrots. The mud banks are filled with them vying for position to make the first round of the passengers hoping for a sale. Iquitos and Yurimaguas are very far away, and we few passenger/customers are delivered to their very doorstep. No wonder they are in such a hurry to get to us.

yelps and whistles of excitement and encouragement

We arrived well after dark in Iquitos, and had to navigate the hoards of moto taxi drivers and tour touts, while we loaded our gear on Zippy. We managed to fight our way through the hotel bound traffic in darkness, receiving many yelps and whistles of excitement and encouragement from the moto taxis, even as they seemed to nearly run us down. We survived again, found modest accommodations, slept okay on the funny flat bed, and are learning our way around Iquitos, a most fascinating city of 400,000, deep in the Amazon. It’s time to pinch myself. We are indeed here in the middle of nowhere, yet again. How do we keep making these crazy plans?