Postcard From ...The Amazon
Hi Again --
As you know, I am a hiker. But you don't recall anyone using a machete to blaze the trail prior to our walking on it, do you? Well Souza, my Amazon guide does, creating a path in the overgrown rainforest step by step. Slicing, swatting, swooping, chopping, no branch, bush, vine or twig is safe. The hike is one of four daily activities during our 8-day adventure exploring -- yup! -- the Amazon. The other three are communing with birds during an early morning launch ride, visiting villages far removed from civilization, and night-time excursions pitching Souza and his searchlight against the dark horizon, scanning shoreline and trees desperately searching for something eerie to entertain his charges. He generally finds it in the form a caiman in the brush, his whole snout protruding for just a moment before slithering away. Or perhaps instead the light reflects off a kingfisher's eyes, temporarily blinding him so that we could drift in almost close enough to touch. You know, your basic alternative to an evening of Desperate Housewives. This particular day we got to sleep in until 6, still early enough to watch the sun pull itself over the forest, and late enough to feel the already oppressive heat (though overall, the weather is not nearly as yucky as anticipated) seep into my ultra-lightweight, washable. anti-bug-treated screamingly bright orange-colored blouse that no self-respecting mosquito would even think of approaching. We were going fishing.
Watching Souza rattle the water with his pole, I remembered that being quiet was the order of the day on most fishing expeditions. Still, I followed his lead -- make the prey think there's a wounded fish thrashing about -- and within a minute I knew I had snagged the big prize: at the end of my line was the famed carnivorous predator -- a 6" piranha. Not your everyday sunfish. Souza held it up to a tree and used it like a scissors to cut a branch in two. Talk about eerie! Just looking at their imposing teeth, we knew it came by its reputation honestly. Still, piranhas get a bad rep. The truth is unless they're starving, or you're bleeding, we're really not in their food chain. Unless you're a cow, of course. Rumor has it that when they have a herd to transport across the river, they kill off the weakest link and deposit him upstream. Then while the piranhas are feasting, the rest of the herd pass safely across. A heartwarming story. Nonetheless, the fried piranhas we had that night as appetizers were scrumptious, their tiny little bones all crunchy-like and the meat flaky, proving the wise old adage that more people eat piranhas than piranhas eat people -- at least in the Amazon.
Until next time -
Fyllis Hockman is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance travel writer. She writes regularly for The Washington Times, is syndicated by the Copley News Service, and is a feature columnist for several online travel magazines. Ms. Hockman's travel stories also have appeared in the New York Post, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Providence Journal, Halifax Herald, Boston Herald, Gazette Newspapers, Asbury Park Press, New Hampshire Sunday News, Buffalo News and many other publications. She is the author of AAA Guidebook: A Photo Journey to Washington, D.C. and co-author of the Pelican Guide to Maryland. Ms. Hockman is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers and Travel Journalists Guild.
© 2006
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I sat with my Tom Sawyer fishing pole thinking the Amazon's a long way from the Mississippi. I
attached the chunks of beef to the end of the line thinking this was strange bait -- until I
remembered the nature of our quarry. I thought again of my aversion to fishing.
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