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The Amazonas Challenge: 2000 Km by river

My Travel Writing Scholarship 2011 entry - My Big Adventure

WORLDWIDE | Monday, 28 March 2011 | Views [158] | Scholarship Entry

As the smog imbues the boat I become bitterly aware that we will not leave. Breathing is getting difficult; my bags seem to get caught with each of the dozens of hammocks in my way out. I feel beleaguered and in struggling for air.
Outside I wish for fescue fields exuding revivifying petrichor, but ports are not usually, and Masusa in Iquitos is not an exception. Kiosks, people shouting, boats’ loading, mototaxis’ queuing, no place to walk. Exciting it may sound, these, conflate in an unwanted serendipity. It is the 6th night I have spent in the commercial port of this historical city, intensely active and completely isolated in the middle of the jungle, first founded as a Jesuit mission in the 1750s and later developed by the rubber exploitation.
Anguish floods my thoughts. Where is this boat that goes up to the Ecuadorian border by the Napo River? In a glimpse my dream threatens to vanish as an unveiled delusion. Starving for information, I jump from boat to boat. Talking to port authorities and boat owners does nothing but contradict each others’ affirmations. Evidently nobody really knows.
This mighty desire of crossing the vast Amazon jungle solely by river to raze the unnatural imposed borders among countries which nature does not raise - having started in Manaus and willing to finally end entering my home country Ecuador to penetrate into Yasuni National Park, the most bio diverse place on Earth - is now trembling.
I feel overwhelmed and exhausted, with a demanding necessity of sleeping in a comfortable bed and eating properly. Despite the fatal chance of missing an early unexpected boat to the border, these basic human needs, violated in behalf of dreams, take over and I leave the port.

Two days after, the morning blossoms decorated with gossamer long clouds, lilting in the blue sky as pushed by gentle constant blows. In kind of a spiritual awareness I understand the signs... this is a harbinger of good news. I inhale and exhale slowly and repeatedly; I can feel again the generous nourishment the hand of the Amazon forest and its mystical atmosphere left me during those fulfilling and tender days following the wide and smooth shapes of its giant river, the Amazonas. I can only recall from childhood this feeling of inner satisfaction, peace and disconnection. And definitely I want more.
Ebullient and anxious I get to the port. As a kept secret, there is a cargo boat almost full, waiting and heading to the border. The most quintessential meaning of the word happiness invades me. To luck or destiny finally I surrender.
Times in Life when you feel beaten and in anguish always come, but if you see beyond the veil of adversities, if you let love triumph over fear, Life will give you the biggest of rewards, accomplishing what you in your deep inside desired, and make yours something no money could buy and nobody could ever take away.

Tags: #2011Writing, Travel Writing Scholarship 2011

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