March 14,1996

Maps of the Amazon trace close to 3000 miles of meandering stream. The guide on the riverboat in January sold me a detailed map of our trip, colored in by his wife and kids, for 10 bucks.

National Geographic's map shows the Rio Maranon and the Rio Ucayali being the largest rivers running into the Amazon above Iquitos. My travel partner, Harry Pearson, contended the headwater was way high in the Andes. I maintained the river headed at the junction of the Maranon and the Ucayali.

The disagreement made a lot of sense sailing along in an expanse of water so wide, the treetops on shore were barely visible under a powerful set of binoculars. Harry said, "I know I am correct, because The National Geographic carried a story of a rafting expedition starting at a trickle high in the Andes to float all the way down to the Atlantic side of Brazil."

Right then, he lost. I countered by a run of logic that'd have turned the dynamic John Calhoun and Henry Clay debate into a cheap sidewalk argument by a couple of loafers: "If the National Geographic Society is so smart," I retorted," then how come they spell 'Mertzon' with an 's' instead of 'z' on my copy's label?"

And computer error isn't an excuse, I went on to say. "The first thing my Uncle Goat Whiskers did when he came back from college in 1929 was join the National Geographic Society, and their circulation department had 40 years to learn to spell Mertzon right."

One attraction of the trip was watching for pink dolphins. Dolphins roll and disappear fast in the flood waters. After a couple of swims in the river and a few cold showers in river water pumped aboard the boat, pink dolphins look commonplace as your skin and hair change to the same hue. Shaving in a lavatory full of cold muddy water didn't take lather. I'd just mud up my whiskers and scrape until my skin showed through the pack.

The guide told us also not to worry about piranhas attacking on a swim, unless we became wounded and bleeding from a crocodile's bite. As rusty as our skins became, the piranhas and the crocodiles probably thought we were logs floating in the river, instead of swimmers.

Jungle people believe dolphins, pink or grey ones, are spirits. At one place, the villagers were mighty upset over a dolphin killed by their net. Later on a walk, Harry and I found the dolphin's teeth, lying close to the river by a post. We didn't have to be told to respect the people's customs. Firearms are illegal in Peru, however, a puff of air through a blow gun can sink an arrow several inches into a meddling gringo's short rib.

We chugged along for days going upstream, but the current downstream sped us back toward Iqiutos. One night on the return trip, we tied up at Nauta, a town of some 3000 citizens. Over a hundred people gathered on the shadowed plaza, staring at the only TV set in town. Stores looked like trading posts in the old-time island movies. Wooden kegs of rice and big burlap sacks of potatoes covered the floors. Across the square, a vulture roosted on a cross on the church's steeple, validating the third world scene. On the corner, a saloon overflowed into the street with rowdy drunks, fueled by a raw rum distilled a short distance up the river and a brandy called "pisco" that ignites the revelers into high flame.

Harry and I shopped for spices and herbs ground into medicines from sidewalk stands. Folk medicine is no joke in Peru. For example, a German doctor, researching jungle plants, claims the bark off the catclaw vine cures some kinds of cancer. Druggists in Iquitos had the German's medicine for sale, as did the one in Nauta. Called "una de gato," the vine is not the same plant we have in Texas.

Harry stocked up on malaria pills for 25 cents a tablet, some $4 a pill cheaper than stateside. I bought a packet of anato seasoning at about a 1000 percent discount over a U.S. source. Street lighting came from the windows and doors of the small stalls and shops. Flute music, Andean in tune, whistled from the bar. The biggest danger was stepping in a pothole on the dark sidewalks.

The landing back at Iquitos coincided with the docking of the other four boats the outfitter runs. Departure was as impersonal as leaving a ferry boat. Harry rushed to catch a plane home and I was booked in a downtown hotel to continue the trip the next day. We parted without saying goodbye. To this day, the question on the headwater of the Amazon is unsettled.