South America & The Middle East: Pants

I'm standing in the back garden of a nice looking house in a suburb of the northern Brazilian city of Boa Vista. It's approaching 9am, it's hotter than it really should be at that time of day, and I've just removed my shorts, when the back door swings unexpectedly open, and a smartly-dressed lady in her twenties gives me the kind of look you'd probably give someone if you found them half-dressed in your back garden. To add insult to injury, this lady is clearly an employee of the Venezuelan Consulate, to whom I will very shortly apply for a tourist card permitting me to enter the Bolivarian Republic via its land border with Brazil. I'm not sure that a view of my boxer shorts will have helped my case.

Ao once again I find myself caught with my pants down in an inappropriate South American situation. This time, however, I fear I may have provoked a major diplomatic incident. In my defence, I can explain. Having arrived at the Consulate straight from the overnight bus from Manaus, hoping to get my visa in time for the noon coach to the border, the large and burly looking security guard at the front of the building took one look at me and shook his head. Apparently, despite the searing heat, the Consul would not admit me to the premises while wearing shorts, and I must immediately put on a pair of long trousers before attempting to enter. It was suggested to me that the garden at the rear of the property would be the best place to facilitate the quick change. Unfortunately someone else clearly tipped off the consular officials as to my presence, one of whom emerged to greet me at precisely the wrong moment. Oh dear.

Amazingly this rather major faux pas seemed to provoke nothing more than mirth on the part of the unfortunate victim. In many respects I was more disturbed by this response than any of the other possible reactions - a woman laughing at you while you are undressing is slightly off-putting to say the least. (No, I've still not got used to it...) Anyway, my semi-naked form was clearly no big deal for the Venezuelan consular authorities, unlike other details of my application. For some reason, I'm not sure exactly why, I was slightly economical with the truth regarding my occupation. Not wishing to explain to the Consul himself (I was, by now, thankfully clothed appropriately) that I am in fact unemployed and homeless, I instead rolled back the months and suggested I might work for Credit Suisse. With hindsight it's fairly obvious that this was an error. While most countries in the world would much rather admit a (supposedly) moneyed and (apparently) respectable bank employee than a feckless wandering youth, the Socialist Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela would I suspect be the exception. A series of pointed questions about what exactly I do (did) for CS followed. Realising my error, I immediately began downplaying my importance in greasing the wheels of global capitalism (not exactly a difficult proposition given the truth), much to the scepticism of the mustachioed official.

Luckily, however, at that moment a very attractive young Brazilian lady entered, apparently looking for a visa herself. Immediately the consul lost interest in me, and invited the hot young Brasileira to his office for a "personal hearing". Shortly afterwards, my visa was granted, and I left as happy as I was surprised. As I walked down the street, however, a voice called to me - it was the original lady to whom I had, ahem, exposed myself. Apparently she'd forgotten to give me some necessary paperwork and had rushed after me to rectify her error. I thanked her before looking at the green leaflet in my hand. 32 pages of warnings and condemnations of Sex Tourism. I guess she had a point - if I had exposed myself in the Venezuelan Embassy who knows what else I might be capable of?

I sit in the bow of a small wooden canoe in a brown creek, holding a primitive cane fishing pole. Monkeys shriek in the trees on either side of the river, pink dolphins frolic in the murky waters ahead, and pairs of colourful macaws fly overhead. I feel the tension grip my line, and yank hard. I pull out another fearsome red bellied piranha, my eighteenth such catch in just over an hour. This is the Amazon alright.

I had caught my first glimpse of the great rainforest from the plane. About half an hour after leaving Bogota, a casual glance out of the plane window revealed the terrain below had dramatically shifted from the usual, well, English-looking, green fields and rolling hills of the Colombia I've come to know, to something entirely different altogether. As far as the eye could see, all was dark. For a second I was flummoxed, thinking the vast featureless expanse below could only be ocean, an impossibility on this landlocked internal flight to the south. Then I realised. The rolling sea below wasn't water, but trees. This wasn't the Pacific, it was the Amazon.

There is something definitely unromantic about air travel; namely the convenience of boarding in one hermetically sealed featureless generic airport and arriving in another equally sterile characterless concrete vault, without any conception of the journey, of the gradual transition from one environment to another. Yet the visual perspective from a plane cannot be beaten. Only from the air can the sheer scale of the Amazon even begin to be comprehended. According to the stats on Wikipedia (not a source I quote with a great deal of confidence), the forest itself occupies over 5.5 million square miles, making it larger than every country on earth except Russia. Colombia's small portion of the rainforest alone is bigger than Germany or California, and it really shows from the air.

Such scale is awe-inspiring, frightening in a way, particularly when one is flying over it. Assuming you didn't succumb to the heat, the biting insects, the deadly snakes, spiders, scorpions or big cats, one could walk for thousands of miles through the forest and never come across anything even closely resembling civilisation. Whether or not such a hike would encounter humans of a lightly less than civilised disposition is unclear; the forest is so vast and unexplored that anthropologists believe there are many "uncontacted" tribes still waiting innocently for the modern world to blunder in and destroy them. I find this prospect quite staggering in its implications. Consider for a moment the possibility, no, the certainty that there are groups of people, more or less like you or I, wandering around in the rainforest totally oblivious to the rest of the world. They have never encountered electricity, machines, in all probability, the wheel. They are unaware of the whole course of human history beyond the narrow confines of their own society, unaware of the existence of a geography beyond their own little world, totally unaware of other languages and cultures. Yes, who knows how many Americans may be wandering lost in the forest?

Incidentally, I do not mention the fear engendered by flying over such a vast expanse of wilderness out of mere curiosity; in my final Spanish class I had been priviliged enough to read a compelling article in Colombia´s premier daily newspaper, El Tiempo, about the truly appalling safety record of Aerorepublica, the country´s second biggest airline, who in recent months have had real problems successfully landing on runways. As Aerorepublica flight 7481 hurtled out of the sky into what seemed like yet more undisturbed green jungle, I can´t say I didn´t think about this questionable record for just a second. While I´m always keen for a spot of off the beaten track adventure, the prospect of hacking a new path through a few hundred miles of virgin rainforest did not fill me with much enthusiasm.

Bearing this is mind, fast forward 48 hours and picture the scene: `Jimmy´, our indigenous guide hacks at the undergrowth with his machete, clearing a path through the jungle. I´m dripping with sweat, and more than a little terrified as my eyes scan the path ahead for all manner of savage beast: poisonous vipers, 30 foot anacondas, giant tarantulas, jaguars, any or all could set upon me at any moment. To make matters worse, I´m wearing only a pair of slightly faded sky blue Tommy Hilfiger boxer shorts and an eccentric Indiana Jones style hat. Quite how I came to find myself wandering through a remote stretch of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest clad only in my pants I´m really not sure. I can only say that at the time, having just finished bathing in a delightfully cool forest stream, it seemed logical to allow myself a chance to dry off before putting my trousers back on. Now, however, as insects, birds and who knows what else hiss, hum and shriek all around me, I´m beginning to reconsider. The Amazon is no place for a man without trousers.

All in all I spent the best part of four days exploring the remote regions of the Rio Javari on the border between Peru and Brazil, and an idyllic four days it was too. Fishing for piranhas, catching caimans (an Amazonian species of crocodile) bare handed, forest walks, scaling the canopy to a platform 130 feet up; I did many unforgettable things and saw many incredible creatures. Yet for me at least, the most amazing sensation of all was the feeling of being so deep in the wilderness. Six hours by boat from Leticia, itself 500 miles from the nearest road, this really was the back of beyond. As I lay in bed at night, nothing but a mosquito net between me and the jungle, listening to the chorus of howls, wails and clicks emanating from the trees and admiring the blindingly bright carpet of stars above, I really felt a very long long way from anywhere. In the age of mobile phones, blackberries, and constant instantaneous communication, that is a rare sensation indeed, and a privilege I feel immensely fortunate to have enjoyed.

I must remember to keep my trousers on next time.