The Road to Trinidad, Part 2: The Flying Funeral Party

A little green bird landed on my head, then hopped onto my finger, trembling as it chirped away, trying to tell me something.

On my diary, there was a blackbird trying to sleep, attacking my hand if I tried to turn the page (the little shit). And I was getting wolf-whistles from some of the other birds surrounding me, like they knew I was sexy.

I then heard the señora’s voice. 'Martina!' She called out.

The spider monkey heard her name and went mad. Up until then she’d been tranquil, but now put on an acrobatic display that put her hyperactive mate to shame, that was incongruous to the old-time music blasting from the speakers of this surreal little courtyard.

I didn't want to leave the eccentricities of the Hotel Amazonas, but again I had to. It wasn't the road calling this time, but the skies.

..I'd arrived after taking all that day travelling the 140 kms from Sapecho. It'd taken over an hour of loitering before a truck came to take me away. This one had an even more limited view than the day before. I could only make out fragments of the endless stream of steaming vegetation through the slits in the wooden side paneling, stopping off constantly at roadside hamlets to pick up or drop off people.

Like all the trucks, there was no roof. So when it started raining a little, everybody moved forwards towards the driver's cabin hoping to gain some shelter. A futile exercise – for the skies then properly ripped open and threw down an abuse of water.

Luckily, the driver took pity and stopped to draw the tarpaulin over us. We were safe from the elements, but I spent the rest of the bumpy journey in the gloom, trying to remain sitting stably on the unstable boxes, lost in my thoughts and daydreams.

The rain gave way by the time I got off at Yucomo. It was another no-nothing mud-drenched village thrown up around a fork in the road. I had lunch then went to get a colectivo to San Borja. I was told I had to wait for other passengers to fill up the battered 4x4 van before it could leave – the usual scenario.

So I said sure, no problem, and sat down to wait.

And wait.

Three hours later, we finally had the full quota so all climbed aboard.

A few minutes after that, we had to climb back down – we couldn't go anywhere without a push start.

My assistance wasn't asked for, so I watched some of the other guys push the van backwards up a little slope, then forwards down it. Nothing happened. They tried again, but still no joy.

'One last try,' the driver asked, trying to crack a smile that wasn't reciprocated.

They did, and it finally worked, so off we went. For about 200 metres. We pulled up alongside another van, where we were oddly asked to swap vehicle for no given reason. Thankfully, this van seemed a lot healthier. Plus I had a better view.

So again we set off down the flat, straight muddy road. Gone were the picturesque hills, replaced by flat forest and ranched clearings with all but a few forlorn trees remaining. The flooding was getting worse. Virtually everywhere now was inundated. Grassy pools reflected the dark hulking skies above, mirroring the feeling inside of me.

Again, it was the constant pick-up and drop-off of passengers. We waited over five minutes for a family to carry giant sacks from their farm to the road. The two old men in the front who'd earlier voiced comments in my direction about how all gringos were rich – 'Todos son ricos. Todos' – were now laughing at the poor little girl trudging through the mud, buckling under the weight of her sack. But she managed to continue, beaming with sheer pride as she loaded it onto the van.

The extra weight was noticeable, and the road got worse with bigger holes and deeper puddles. Something was bound to happen. And did.

A loud bang came from under the right side of the van – the suspension had blown and the driver called on the men to help. The young men. The two old fuckers just laughed and went off to pick some fruit – 'You get nice guavas along this stretch of the road, apparently'.

We had to lift the van while a block of wood was wedged into the suspension and fastened by rope. Shoddy, but it did the trick, and we continued the short remainder of the journey to San Borja – albeit at a very slow pace – again arriving just before nightfall.

I checked-in to the Hotel Amazonas after giving up trying to cross the flooded street that separated me from the other hotels. The señora of the Amazonas was sitting peacefully at the centre of their pretty courtyard, enjoying the graceful yet extremely loud music coming from a stereo situated in the middle of a semi-circle of chairs and hammocks.

She happily got up to show me a room. I accepted straight away, despite smelling the thick fungus radiating from the walls. All I was interested was eating, and wasted no time in returning to the little food place I'd spotted outside. I had lomo montado (beef steaks with two fried eggs mounted on top, accompanied by fries and salad – mmmm!) whilst chatting to the owner about crime in Brazil and the price of meat in England.

Afterwards, I wandered around the bustling little town. I arrived at the central plaza just as everybody was coming out of the church. It was obviously the social event of the week. Well-dressed young guys and girls flirted in the centre of the plaza, while scores of motorbikes raced around and around the outside. It was madness. There were all manner of bikes, ridden by couples, friends and solo riders, pausing occasionally for pit-stops or to change passenger. I sat and watched for a while, but the petrol fumes got too much, so returned to the hotel.

There, I was greeted by the señora's husband. He treated me like I were a long-lost friend – laughing, backslapping, banter, etc. Obviously, he was drunk, and invited me to join him for more booze. I couldn't accept as I was dying for a shit and told him so. When I went back to see him later, he was deep in conversation with another old boy. This fella was even more glassy-eyed, only able to slur, not speak. I decided it best to go to my room and face the fungus.

I woke several times during the night feeling surprisingly cold – probably because of the damp – but couldn't be arsed to get my sleeping bag out. Wrong move. I was awoken at daylight by my wheezing chest.

Plus there was a surprising amount of squawking going on considering it was supposed to be the centre of town. Through bleary eyes, I was startled to see dozens of pet birds in the courtyard that must've been concealed by darkness the night before. Even more surprising, were the two large and very strange looking monkeys in the far corner.

Spider monkeys. One jumped and swung all over the place, while the other sat very still and looking at me intently. They were very friendly, but so human-like it was scary. The mad one grabbed my finger and pulled me towards it – its touch like that of a child's – while wrapping its padded tail around my arm, screaming and rubbing its stomach as if it were hungry. The señora explained that that was the male, while the quiet one was a female. Quiet until her name was called.

This was just all too good. I just had to stay for the day – especially as I'd managed to change my room.

I walked around the town, taking in newness of everything. Not that it was modern, it was the opposite in fact – dirty and rundown – but in the sense of that it didn't have much history. A frontier town relatively recently thrown up amongst the vast untamed wilderness. Similar to the Brazillian Trans-Amazon Highway I'd journeyed down a few years previously, yet contrastingly peaceful. No guns, no aggression. (I was unlucky/stupid enough to have also caught the rainy season then, spending almost a week wading the ravaged highway.)

At lunch, I got talking to four hookers down from Santa Cruz. They told me to not bother trying to go by road, it was impassable. Shit. Afterwards, I went around town again asking about buses, trucks and 4x4s, but nothing was heading eastwards until the rains died down – which could take months. Fuck.

Then I remembered the girls said they'd flown in from Santa Cruz on a private plane. That was my only option now, so walked down the long modern road to the little airport. Sadly, the prices I was quoted were too high for my meagre budget.

Just as I was contemplating visiting the knocking shop to get the number of the whores' pilot, the bloke behind the counter told me to wait a while, went off, then returned to tell me I could fly to San Ignacio for a very reasonable sum. Excellent news.

'Is there a flight tomorrow?' I asked.

'Tomorrow? He laughed. 'No, now. You have about half an hour. There's probably nothing else for a few days.'

Damn. My mind raced, then I did. Back to the Amazonas on a motorbike taxi. I got my stuff together, said hurried farewells, then jumped on another mototaxi back to the airport, rueing that I wouldn't be able to spend the night drinking with old folk and playing with monkeys.

I stood near the hangar with three women who were waiting for one of their husbands. It was up to him to tell me how much it'd cost, as he was hiring the plane. When the short, skinny bloke turned up, he was far from happy to see me. He had brushed-back grey hair and wore dark glasses which partially masked that one of his eyes was small, sunken-in and had no pupil. His good eye gave me a filthy look as he turned to go back to the hangar. But then he stopped and returned to whisper something to the women about the 'gringo' – which made them all laugh while he walked away all smug.

What a cunt, I thought. I gave his womenfolk a what-the-fuck-are-you-laughing-at stare and they immediately looked embarrassed. When One Eye returned, he of course tried to charge me more – but twice as much? Now that was taking the piss.

'What?' I exclaimed. 'You think I'm a gringo?' And trotted out my usual blag about being Brazillian. It worked, with them all of a sudden becoming nice to me and greatly reducing the price. Instead of the cold shoulder, I was now getting banter and friendly questions about Rio. The fuckers.

Anyway, as we were all friends now I enquired why everybody was dressed in black.

'Because they've just been to their papa's funeral,' came One Eye's stern reply.

Oops. How was I to know? It's not like they were formally dressed – the youngest woman was wearing black and pink cycling shorts, for Christ's sake.

Luckily, the plane arrived to cut the tension, but I was shocked to see it was only a 5-seater when there 7 of us (including the pilot and another bloke). I was somehow squashed into the back with the many bags and one of the women.

The plane shakily made its way down the grass runway, with its engine sounding far from healthy. We then turned around and bombed back down the strip, rattling like crazy, sending the women into a panic of cries and cross-making. But with one swift move we were up, up and away. Into the heavy skies. Climbing rapidly. The airport disappearing beneath us, the town bleached by the glare of the lowering sun.

Craning my neck from my cramped position, I could see the forest stretching out to the dark horizon. The flooding was widespread, the solitary highway deserted and completely submerged for large stretches at a time. Streaks of sunshine broke through the cloud and ignited the hundreds of white specks – herons or flamingos – that filled the giant swamps below. It was mesmeric.

Then the turbulence hit.

The tiny plane was having enough difficulty battling against the ridiculously overstuffed load, as well as its own advancing years – the last thing it needed was to be roughed up by the elements. I was worried. The women were hysteric. Further crosses and prayers weren't going to help us now, though all the water and trees might soften a crash landing. (And of course made a beautiful place to die.)

Luckily all the sobbing and wailing (theirs) made for much needed laughter and comic relief (mine), and it wasn’t long before we were descending safely into San Ignacio.

As I un-wedged myself out of the plane, I saw that the women were still crying their hearts out and snotting into tissues. Was it because of our brush with death, or the actual death of their father?

And what was I supposed to do with myself now? There was almost a hundred kilometres of flooded forest separating me from Trinidad.

Water. Air. It's not for me.

All I wanted was the ground beneath my feet. The road.

Was that too much to ask?

#sapecho #sanignaciodemoxos #bolivia #losyungas #hotelamazonas #yucomo #sanborja #spidermonkey #southamerica #latinamerica