79.
Every few hours the boat ties up to the shore and men unload cargo like bags of cement and cartons of Chicklets chewing gum.
The Canadian couple and I go ashore to explore the sun-faded villages.
The village inhabitants are dressed from a Sears catalog and the houses have plank walls with thatch roofs. There are no regular streets and no vehicles except an occasional Honda 50 motorbike plowing through the mud. It’s a long way from Ventura Freeway.
The Amazon becomes very wide and the sunset very like a Kubrick’s “2001” time tunnel. The pink, yellow and blue sky mirrored perfectly by the flat water horizon.
At midnight the boat ties up at another village. The Canadians and I are attracted by the blaring music and lamplights of a village cantina and go ashore. As we guzzle a couple of warm beers a kid tries to sell me a baby monkey, which shits in my hand. Everybody gets a big laugh out of that!
A canoe-load of oranges arrives and the passengers buy out the lot in minutes. Though there are millions of mosquitoes, the evening is pleasant. I sit on a cardboard container to watch the unloading: more cement, more Nestle canned milk. The workers try to warn me about something, but before I can figure out what they are saying, the caustic soda leaking from the case I am sitting on eats my jeans! Goodbye old friends!
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2 comments:
I love the photo! It's adorable. The first section kind of caught me off guard. You have a wonderful mix of sounds there. I wonder if you do this knowingly or if it comes naturally?
"Cargo, cement, cartons, chicklets, chewing, Canadian couple" --what a mouthful!
The caustic soda moment was also pleasant. Great read.
Hi Angela:
The baby monkey WAS cute. I enjoyed remembering it and drawing the cartoon.
The mix of sounds you noticed were just words I thought would communicate what happened. I didn't notice myself all the ca--ca--cas--but I am glad you noticed and pointed them out to me.
You would make a good writing teacher!
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