Kootenayman: Amazon Fishing Adventure

Saturday October 20, 2012

Forgive me Father, for it has been at least a week since my last confession... Not too much to confess! The monotony of getting up just after 5 am and getting home around 7 pm has all but overtaken my sense of adventure. I do have the benefit of Saturdays off and today I was able to meet with my Aussie Amigo Chris and our Brazilian interpreter Peter and we went fishing at the confluence of the misnamed Clearwater River and the misnamed White River, both of which would be better named Muddy River No. 1 and Muddy River No. 2. They do however flow on to join the Amazon which ends up in the Atlantic Ocean which is about a thousand kms northeast of here.
For those who don't know about the Amazon River, and in the interest of improving your education, the Amazon is the second longest (but has the most volume) river in the world. Do know that the Amazon is between 1 and 30 miles wide (over 50 miles wide where it flows into the Atlantic and up to 120 miles wide in high water!), with an average discharge into the ocean of more than the next 7 biggest rivers combined. The volume of water flowing through the Amazon accounts for 1/5th of the fresh river water on the entire planet. It is 4200 miles long!

Anyhow, I got up early and after some much needed bicycle maintenance including air for the tires and chain lube (I don't fill the tires up with just any air!), I went over to the other hotel where we waited for an hour and a half for Waldo to bring the pickup back. You can imagine how many people we asked, "Where's Waldo?" just because it was funny everytime we said it. Finally he returned and we headed south (I was nominated to drive, hence not so many pics) on a dirt road for about 30 kms through "slash and burn" areas, until we finally hit a river bottom which was natural for the most part. I bought myself a bamboo fishing pole this morning and used hooks, sinkers and line that I brought with me. Unfortunately, and notwithstanding the mosquitos, our only bait was kernels of sweet corn and try as we might, we didn't get a bite.

To add to the adventure, we decided to add the prefix "Amazonian Killer..." to the name of any animal we saw. This included Amazonian Killer Iguanas, Amazonian Killer Turtles, Amazonian Killer Parrots, Amazonian Killer Cows, Amazonian Killer Blue Winged Hornets and several herds of wild Amazonian Killer Dogs and Wild Amazonian Killer Cats!

After a bit, Peter's buddy Bruno joined us with his girlfriend. Bruno was saying he shot a leopard right near our fishing hole just this week. He also said he hunts crocodiles (actually Caiman) in these very rivers for meat.