The Great Escape

I have always been a huge fan of the classic film "The Great Escape", Steve McQueen as the Cooler King was one of those characters that I as a kid I hoped to grow up to be, minus the jailing in a WWII P.O.W camp. The Cooler King was always calm under pressure, he constantly showed the utmost ability to lead, he was as clever as a fox and never let anyone stop him from obtaining his goals, which in the case of the movie was to escape from the P.O.W. camp. At 20 years old I like to think that I am on my way to living up to the standards of the Cooler King but I have honestly never been tested, I, up until this weekend, had yet to be thrown into a foreign position in which I had to stay calm, think logically and take what was thrown at me. Steve McQueen, prepare to be matched!

This weekend was originally going to be our time to spend a few days in the rainforest, in Manu, viewing all types of exotic animals and fending off malaria but a series of unfortunate circumstances forced those plans to change. Due to torrential rain and flooding in the Manu area SIT was unable to take us to the rainforest and instead they scheduled a trip north to the Amazon River area where we would spend a few days in the jungle city of Iquitos and take a day trip to an Amazon river community called "2 de Mayo" or "The 2nd of May", for a reason I have yet to fully grasp. Friday morning all of the students met at the Cuzco airport to fly through Lima and end eventually in Iquitos. After a slight delay in Cuzco and a 4 hour layover in Lima we finally reached Iquitos where we were shuttled by bus to the extremely basic, but thankfully airconditioned, Hotel Europa. After a quick walk around the stifling city and a meal of chicken and french fries at a local Polleria most of the students, including myself, made our way to bed in order to be well rested for the next days activities. Saturday was spent working with a group of student activists who focused on the rights of indigenous children. We watched various documentaries they had made and finally I got to try my hand at interpretive dance/body motion, which is one thing that I would not subject any of you to watching. The experience was eye opening and made me seriously question what I was doing when I was 15, 16 or 17 years old. At the same age that I was eating boxes on and boxes of Annie's, playing video games, and attempting to succeed in football, soccer, tennis, and XC skiing, not at the same time, these kids are marching in protest, changing the lives of local youths and putting a solid dent in the negative aspects of their country's society. Despite being 4 or 5 years older than most of the kids I was working with I could not help but look up to them and envy their passion and dedication...lesson learned.

The next morning my challenge to the title of Cooler King began. Our entire group was awoke at 5:00am to be on a bus by 6 headed for the river port town of Nauta. A 2+ hour bus ride landed us in Nauta around 8:00, the time that we had planned to hop on a boat for another 2 hour ride to the river community of "2 de Mayo". For reasons that were not quite clear, we were unable to set foot on our boats until between 9 and 9:30, putting us at least an hour behind schedule. The sun was smoldering and the majority of us had gone out to the local nightclubs the night before which created extreme irritation and exhaustion among the 25 college students. Finally we loaded onto the 3 boats, divided into 3 groups, 1 of 10 students (including me) headed by our director Ursula, 1 of 5 students headed by our director Sonia and 1 of 10 headed by our last director Donaldo. We all pushed off from the docks at the same time and began our journey towards "2 de Mayo", or so we thought. This is the point where I will have to split my story between what occurred among my group and what I have heard occurred within the other groups. Donaldo's group set off at a quick pace and was slated to arrive at the community first, my group was a close second and Sonia's group was just slightly behind us. Within 1.5 hours, of what was supposed to be a 2 hour trip, our boats engine had already died 5 times, which meant an average of 15 minutes or repair time for each "death". By this point is was 11:30 and we were already very late for our arrival. Eventually my boat's captain decided to pull over to the side of the river, tie the boat to a tree and attack the engine problem at full speed. 30 minutes of sitting in the outrageously hot weather led to what was believed to be a final solution to the engine problem. We once again began our journey towards the community, but of course the engine was not fixed and it continued to break down various times over the next few hours.

By the time we reached the community it was 1:30, we were 3.5 hours late, the feast we had been planning on attending had been canceled by the community so we were greeted by a number of frustrated locals, mostly children. As we docked and made our way onto land we realized that we were the first group to arrive, but seeing as our engine had died so many times it was not outside the realm of possibility that the other boats had experienced the same problem. We made the best of the situation and set about chatting with the locals, asking questions and getting to know the culture as much as possible. An hour later Sonia's group of 5 finally arrived having experienced the same problems with their motors plus running out of gas and having to switch boats with another local group. With increased numbers we began to interact even more with the locals, especially the children and started up a game of soccer between the 4 male SIT students and all of the local young boys. Outnumbered and most certainly outplayed, we lost the game 8-2 but had a great time as the entire village served as fans, although they only cheered when the gringos made a mistake, fell in the mud or had a goal scored against us. After the game we gathered up the teams and set about diving in and out of the river, splashing around and throwing around a volleyball. It was a great 3 hours or so yet even as we exited the river around 5:30 the third and final group of students had yet to arrive. Sonia and Ursula started to get worried and set about trying to contact Donaldo or find out what had happened to the final boat. Around 6 a heavy ran began to fall and we were all forced to find cover and buckle down until the rain stopped. Since all of our program's food was on the missing boat and since we had arrived too late to enjoy the community feast, the majority of us had gone without food for nearly 12 hours and it was beginning to become noticeable. In the midst of the rain word arrived from some locals that they had seen the final group of students in a different community and that there was a diplomatic problem with their departure from the community. Despite the torrential rain, Sonia hopped on a boat with the community Apu (president) and a few other local leaders and set out for the other community to sort out the problem. This is when my self-described Great Escape instincts really cam in handy, among the nervous pacing, worried chatter and fictional stories of an Amazonian kidnapping, I laid down on a wooden floor and promptly fell asleep.

By the time I awoke an hour later Sonia had yet to return and because she had taken one of our 2 boats we were unable to leave the community due to a lack of sufficient space on a single boat. By 7:30 it was extremely dark and we as a group had made a decision to prepare to spend the night in the communities school house since we could not leave the island, had no idea if Sonia was returning and did not have a clue what was going on with the other group of students. By this time a few of the men in the community had become sufficiently intoxicated and were making the environment slightly more hostile especially towards the women of the group. The 4 male students were contracted by Ursula to keep a watch out and run interference between the drunken men and the female students, despite how capable the SIT women are. So for the next 30 minutes or so we stood around in the dark discouraging a few drunken men from bothering our group. Around 8 o'clock we saw a pair of lights in the distance and rushed to the river shore to welcome our remaining students and directors back to the community. The boat docked and as we stood waiting to cheer, clap and in some cases hug, 3 local men exited the boat followed by no one. This was not our fellow students or even our directors and the local Apu but instead it was a captain and his crew who had docked and were prepared to attempt the voyage with us back to Nauta in the pitch black. It was rumored that Sonia, Donaldo and the other students had reunited and had already made it back to Nauta where there would catch a bus to Iquitos. Our group had the option of attempting the boat ride back or sleeping for a few hours and leaving at the crack of dawn. A group meeting led us to the decision to stay until the morning and make the voyage back between 4 and 5 in the morning. Without 100% certainty that the captain was reliable and would actually be back in the morning we were shuttled towards the school house to begin our night on the hardwood floor. Before we could fully settle into our "bedroom" Ursula was called over to a 1 community telephone and all of the students were moved out of the school house and towards the telephone as well in order to distance ourselves from the substantially more intoxicated local men.

The phone call between Ursula and Sonia was short and bittersweet, it consisted of Sonia telling Ursula that although she had found the other students they had actually not left for Nauta and were still waiting at the other community and that we were to as quickly as possible load onto the two available boats and meet them. Ursula rushed us back to the schoolhouse, we rounded up our things and made our way to the boats where the male students were divided between the 2 boats and I was for some insane reason put in charge of one of the boats. By 9pm we had left "2 de Mayo" and were headed for a community which was only 10 minutes away by boat. Due to the complete lack of visibility our boats were forced to travel extremely slowly and on top of that my boat ran out of gasoline about half way through the journey and was towed the rest of the way. After an hour of boat travel we finally reached the other community were reunited with the rest of the students, loaded up our gas tank and made our way towards Nauta. Over the course of the ride the story of the missing boat was recounted to us in Spanish by Donaldo, so although I did not catch every detail, the basic story goes a little something like this...

On the way to "2 de Mayo" the third boat became lost on the river and eventually ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. While the captain, the one-man crew and Donaldo tried to figure out what to do, the students sat in the boat, snacked on the SIT food and eventually dove into the river where they got a chance to swim with the local river dolphins, something that I would have willingly been stuck on a boat in order to experience. After about 4 hours of sitting on the river a few locals came by and offered to tow them to their community where they could gas-up the boat and return to their trip. Happy as can be the group of students began to sing and cheer for their "saviors". Within the hour they had docked at the local community and were prepared to quickly acquire some gas and get on their way, and then issues arose. Apparently the entire region of communities on this section of the river had made a pact to keep tourists, and in general gringos, away from their area and out of their communities. The reason for their general hostility was that in the past the only gringos who had come to their communities had been representatives of the oil companies who had attempted to bribe their leaders, exploit their natural resources meanwhile the dumped the waste from the crude oil into their river, killing the fish and therefore seriously depleting their food source. I can not be sure whether or not the community thought that these 10 college students were undercover oil workers but in order to be cautious they refused to allow the group to leave until they proved that they were not a threat to the communities health and way of life. This could of course not be proven by anyone except the regional president Alfonso who lived in "2 de Mayo". When Alfonso finally arrived at the community with Sonia in took over an hour to explain that these were students on a trip to learn about the communities not to harm them. Sonia made a grand statement that we were there to learn so that one day in the future maybe one of us would return with the power and influence to help fight with the locals against the oil companies. Despite a general lack of faith in foreigners as well as the potentially corrupt local leader, which Alfonso certainly was not, the community finally decided to let the gringos leave, and that is when we finally arrived to meet them.

A slow trip back, with yet another stop for gas and a number of engine problems, landed us in Nauta as a full group at about 2 o'clock in the morning, 8 hours later than expected. Luckily a bus was there waiting for us and 2.5 hours later we arrived at our hotel in Iquitos where we promptly passed out on in our beautifully airconditioned rooms. Although we attempted to stay awake from 5am-7am in order to catch the morning continental breakfast, my roommates and I were asleep in minutes and woke up around 10:30 having not eaten in more than 24 hours. The rest of the day was spent reflecting, eating as much food as we could afford and lounging in our beds watching the Jersey Shore marathon on MTV and the tear-jerking movie Dear John, it was a very productive 8 hours.

For all that we went through on the Amazon river, for all the exhaustion, hunger and frustration I actually learned more about myself and quite a bit about local community dynamics and how much of a mess big international companies are causing. I now know that the negative effects of oil companies can reach into even the most remote regions, that my stomach cannot go more than a few hours without eating, that I can sleep in even the most uncomfortable positions and that I have a few things to teach Steve McQueen.

alpaCasey