The Art of Dream Chasing

In Iquitos the rain falls like grenades, drop after stinging drop. No mercy until it is quite finished. And the speed, from a kind of lynching sunshine to the barrage of thunder and raindrops - breathtaking!
So although the wooden planks we stand on are rain-splashed from a recent torrent, although the sky is uncompromising iron and washed in darker towards the horizon, although thunder crackles in the not-too-distant distance, we slip our dresses and shorts and shoes off. The air is ominously still.
And the water is so inviting.
The tributaries of the River Amazon laze towards the unlikely jungle metropolis of Iquitos slowly. In their wake, they carry a fleet of wooden boats, some powered by paddles and Peruvians, some loaded high with tropical crops of bananas and camu-camu, pink and yellow and almost every colour in between, some motored.The rippleless water is content to be bobbed in, evidently, by anything - from a basil-coloured boat to a watermelon rind to a floating swimming pool. Our destination.
It was Enrique’s idea. A Peruvian student turned professional photographer, he spends most of the afternoon floating lazily on a rubber tyre armed with a camera, snapping away. His broken English and my broken Spanish form an easy bridge between the unlikely group of friends.
At first the sides of the floating pool keeps us happy. Sunbaked for hours on end - for there is no concept of a midday sun here, teetering so close to the equator, just a constant badgering heat from dawn to sudden sun fall - the water is pleasantly warm, and even relatively clean, given that it is drawn from the river.
But that would never last, not surrounded by the river itself. One person jumps over the rails and in the next moment we’re all treading the polluted water, draped in river lilies like flower crowns, and laughing and swimming in the Amazon River. My hippy heart, well satisfied.
But then of course, all hell breaks loose.
One drop of water. Another drop of water.
And then the floodgates open.
Back in the neighbouring restaurant we watch our clothes spin downriver in a furious current, along with the now abandoned rubber tyre. The river seems so angry. Well, it is the same river that floods communities and engulfs houses all along its banks. Feared and revered in equal measure.
But not to me. To me it’s the River Sea, and here, today, shivering cold, missing a dress, but laughing so hard, I have reached the end of one dream.