DAY 54. LAKE UARÁ

What a beautiful dawn! It makes up for all the misery of the night. The mosquitoes got under my mosquito net again and harassed me until the morning. Now, I made breakfast with a view of the rising sun. I also tidied up the boat.

Today I have Lake Uará waiting for me. It is about 65 kilometres away. I hope it lives up to my expectations. I could enjoy both some fish and some sightseeing.

The locals on the river do not respond to my greetings again. I cannot figure out the way it works. On some parts of the river everyone waves back, and on others they just ignore me. It does not seem like a coincidence.

It is now about 30 kilometres to the lake, and I am still thinking about the relative effectiveness of the fishing net in clear and murky water. Apparently, most fishermen go to lakes, where the water is always crystal clear – there is no current that blows up the sand. May it be that the fish sees the net, deems it an obstacle, and tries to pass through the gap? And in the murky river water, it relies on its instinct, completely avoiding collision with incomprehensible objects. If this theory is correct, I will not go without fish on the lake, despite the little experience I have.

As it usually happens, as soon as I started sharpening my rusty machete – the lake is about two hours away, and in the woods on the bank I will need a reliable tool – it started to rain. That is refreshing, but where is the dry season after all?

Another boat left the settlement. The crew spotted an empty canoe travelling by a log. As soon as I sat up in the boat, showing that I was still alive, the boat turned around and docked back. Yeah. I hate to make a big deal out of it, but is it that common for boat owners to go missing around here? Oh, no, I cannot fail to finish what I have started. It has taken me too long to get to this point. I spent almost a year hitchhiking from my home in Siberia to the Amazon. I was turned inside out by mountain sickness, I suffered from thirst in the deserts, I spent up to 7-9 hours on the highways waiting for that only car that would give me a lift. No, I am not going to die that easily, and I am certainly not going to give up.

My hands are itching in anticipation of fishing! This time I have some bait and enough experience for the lake. I can do it. It is only a few kilometres to the spot.

I reach the point on the map where the river from the lake should flow into the Amazon, but there are only a few houses on stilts. Some people are peeking out. I went up to them to ask where the lake was and if I could fish there. They greeted me and explained to me where I should turn round to get there. During the conversation, I observed an interesting sight: a huge pig was standing up to its head in the water, eating a piece of a floating island that got stuck on the house stilts. I asked the inhabitants what the animal does when the water rises even higher. They said it swims! That is right.

I went downstream and saw a river, about 30 metres wide, that flowed into the Amazon. That is where I am going. Despite the calm, barely perceptible current, the fight against it was extremely tiring. The further I went up the stream, the clearer the water became, until it became black and transparent, just like in the mangrove forests.

When the current was completely gone and the sandy yellow waters of the Amazon were left behind, I met a friendly family in a large seven-metre-long canoe. They were planning to buy bananas somewhere nearby.

What surprised me was that the man, the father of the family, did not look like a local at all. He looked like an average European, albeit one who had travelled so far into the wilderness of the Amazon. They were so kind that they even invited me to their house to spend the night so I would not have to sleep in this canoe. I had to decline as I would be spending the next few nights searching for crocodiles. According to my new acquaintances, they are abundant here, and they reach up to 5 metres in length. Sometimes people even hunt the smaller ones.

As I circled around another patch of forest, I finally saw Lake Uará itself. As I expected, the surrounding jungle was flooded up to the tree crowns. That is impressive!

Where should I lead my boat? Where should I cast the net? Where do the crocodiles live? I wandered around on the mirrorlike surface, I poked into different pools, I tried to find some shallow water, but everywhere underneath me the water was at least five metres deep. I got this information by throwing a small weight on a string into the water. It barely reached the bottom, and even that was not a sure fact.

My search could have gone on forever if in one of the backwater pools I had not met a local who was checking his fishing nets. I asked him about everything: how and where I could fish and where I should cast the net. Elmundo – that was his name, ‘Earth’ in Spanish – was very sympathetic to me and told me where the lake was at its shallowest. That is where his nets were set up.

I praised his beautifully painted canoe, which is a rarity for the locals, so he clearly has a taste for beauty, and began to move towards my future campsite.

It was getting dark, and I was winding my way through the maze of trees again and again. How easy it is to get lost here! I cut through the branches, found a place for myself, cast my net. I tried to catch something with a fishing rod – without success. Without the sun, it is always as if all fish go into hibernation. I started to nod off too.

As it got quite dark, Elmundo came to visit me. I had probably made so much noise wading through the bushes that he easily realised where I was. I think he was interested in talking too. I learnt that he lives in a place which is two hours away by motorboat from here, he goes fishing every day because the river makes it impossible to provide a catch, which does not only feed his family but also earns him his living. As we parted ways, Elmundo gave me an incredibly cute gift – a small pacu fish from his catch. It is a kind of vegetarian piranha that feeds on fruit and nuts, as far as I know.

Hopefully the net will justify the effort invested into it. As night fell, I shone my light around looking for red crocodile eyes, but I found nothing. I will spend the next night actively searching for them! In the meantime, I shall rest.

The forest is very different here. It is so quiet that there is even an echo. This silence allows me to feel all the intensity of local wildlife. Every now and then fish splash, and branches break. Sometimes I can see small monkeys, somehow reminiscent of toy monkeys, in the crowns of the trees. All this is accompanied by the trills of birds and insects, which carefully, as if afraid to give away their location, sing their songs. There is life in every sound here.

How nice it is to fall asleep without fear of waves or pirates. It is time for me to take a breather and enjoy fishing without hiding. The last few weeks have been too stressful, and I need to relax.

7 June, ~61 (2355) km covered.