Random River Thoughts
I mentioned in a post some months ago that I aspire to be a writer who travels rather than a travel writer. My current visit to Peru has done nothing to change that view.
One leg of our trip, a spectacular one in fact, was an Amazon River cruise. Among our fellow travelers on this cruise were both a seasoned writer for traditional (archaic?) travel guides like Fodor’s and Frommer’s and a young blog writer for a popular US-based travel website. I’m going to leave the travel writing—the where to go, what to see, where to stay and eat, etc.—to these professionals. I do, however, intend to share here my thoughts about and from my travels that I feel will inform my writing.
One observation from our four days on the rivers of the Amazon Basin was about the very nature of such travel. Each of us who undertakes such trips does so with a sense, and a hope, of discovery. But none of us will ever set foot on a spot that no one else has ever stood upon. We will never see anything not already seen by many, many before us. In fact, the ubiquity of digitized information readily available to us now, greatly reduces the ability of any place to surprise us. We’ve seen it all before, in photos and videos.
This Amazon cruise is one that hundreds of people take each year as a part of National Geographic Expeditions. We are not on such a tour, having booked our own trip directly with the Peruvian boat operator, but the experience is the same. It’s discovery of a sort, a personal discovery if you will, one of finding one’s self in a strange environment and learning something about ourselves, rather than the novelty of the place.
A few thoughts from the rainforest:
- These trips are misnamed. The cruises are not on the Amazon itself, and for very good reasons. The Amazon River here is wide and difficult to navigate, with little opportunity to get close to the flora and fauna along its banks. Sticking to the rivers and tributaries that form the Amazon is not a compromise, but a smart move. There is much more to see, hear and experience. I guess that some marketing consultant has advised that calling these cruises anything other than “Amazon” would not sell as well. Maybe they are right. I think something like “Amazon Basin River Expeditions” would work just as well and be technically accurate.
- So-called “soft adventure” trips such as this one offer many under-estimated benefits, e.g., 1) the sometimes unsettling serenity provided by the absence of TV, radio, phone, internet, and social networks, 2) the personal insights provided by interacting with locals—seeing our place in the world and how dramatically different (as opposed to better) our lives are compared with others, and 3) also seeing our place in nature—how this immense rain forest generates a huge fraction of the earth’s O2, yet it is fragile and threatened by us.
- Why do we call the spot where a river discharges its fresh water into the sea its mouth? If the metaphor is of a body (perhaps a snake would be most appropriate), then wouldn’t it be more fitting to label the beginning as the mouth, where creeks, springs and mountain run-offs feed the beast, and call the point at which this stream and all the detritus it gathers along its way dumps into an ocean, the anus of the river? Just sayin’!
