Muerto (Death by Mosquitoes)
“Es él muerto?” 
I jump out of my seat and gape at a Peruano man standing in his
canoe in the rain. I brush mosquitoes from my face. I thought mine
was the only boat around for miles, but here’s this man in a canoe
pointing to the front of my boat.
“Es él muerto?” he says again.
He looks worried. He’s standing in the rain in his canoe, pointing. It’s
not just any kind of rain, either. It’s rainforest rain. It’s coming down
harder and faster than you’ve ever seen rain. It’s thick. It has sound.
It’s coming down so hard, it hits the surface with such a splash, it’s
like it’s raining up. I look to the front of my boat, to Mark laying on
the fishing platform in his rain gear. Rain bouncing up off of him.
Where I am, in the relative dryness under the thatched roof by the
wheel, are a million mosquitoes, buzzing about their good fortune of
shelter and food. I’m doing my best to put mind over matter, to kind
of hum at a frequency sympathetic to theirs and confuse them enough
to stop the frenzy. I’ve always tried to make a point of ignoring them
and going about my business. It is not working.
There didn’t have to be mosquitoes. Really. It depends on the
water. Black, tannic acid, no mosquitoes. Clear sweet water, Deet
won’t do it. When we were back in Iquitos planning the trip, we knew
this, but we wanted to come here. We packed the boat, threw the
chickens on the roof, and took off. We meandered around
adventurously and wound up here, with a guy standing in the rain in
his canoe pointing to Mark, laying on the fishing platform in his
rain gear to escape the mosquito fest under the thatching.
“Hey, Mark,” I call. “What’s muerto mean?”
Mark sits up on the platform. “I don’t know. Dead, I think,” he says.
“Why?”
I look back out at the rain falling in an unbroken curtain, like looking
out from behind a waterfall, no sign of the Peruano man or the canoe.
“No reason,” I say. I brush at the mosquitoes.
Tags: Amazon Cruise, Amazon River, Amazon Tour, Dawn on the Amazon, Iquitos Peru, Travel
dawnontheamazon
Hi There,nr That is just one of the many diferrant and exciting trips that I went on with Bill here. You would have to read some more of his stories to really get an idea of what we did and saw there. It is truly a fantastic place everywhere we went in the jungle.nr only we were not in the luxury of the nr Dawn III. It was on a smaller boat that only 3 could sleep end for end under mosquitos nets. A place out of the ordinarywhere you can hear a monkeys last cry and a splash at the waters edge all just outside of that boat. But on the Dawn III you might miss some of those things in the comfort of your own suite in the jungle.