The headman of the Village of Poison Water leads the dance. In 1976 I did the Amazon. Recent ly, I came upon pictures of that great adventure and relived a small portion of that three–month experience. I had flown to La Paz, Bolivia, taken public transportation to Pucallpa, Peru, the first navigable port on the Amazon with hopes of taking a boat the last 3,000 miles to the Atlantic Ocean.

I walked through the dusty mud of Pucallpa, pushing aside vultures feeding on rotting f ish to reach the boat docks on the Urubamba River. No such luck. The r iver was too low. The spring floods had not yet come. My only of fer came from an Indian who said a week of paddling would get us to the next town down river.

I f lew to Iqui tos, now the center of Peru’s oil industry. Thirty–four years ago it was a delapidated colonial town with a huge village built on stilts in the river. My friend, Bill, and I wandered from bar to bar asking for rides down the river. At night we sipped our beer and watched the local militia parade into the plaza and lower the national flag to the accompaniment of thousands of swallows.

Warner joins in the dance with a woman carrying a sleeping baby. The fourth day in Iquitos, we struck gold, so to speak. Paul appeared. He had been hired by four weal thy men from California to set up a canoe trip from Iquitos to Leticia… and for a small fee, he would take us along.

Paul loaded the motorized 40–foot canoe (lancha) with supplies, food, and drink and went to collect his clients from the airport. He returned with a veterinarian, a real estate magnate, a celebrity psychologist, and a millionaire businessman. They happily welcomed Bill and me like lost sons. (I was younger, then. And poor.)

Miguel, a multilingual Peruvian, joined us as guide and interpreter along wi th a dr iver, a motorman, a cook, a wai ter, and a guard armed with a machete. It was a full boat.

The driver steered from the front . The motorman operated the 25–horse Johnson from the rear. The seven passengers sat on narrow benches along both sides in the portholed cabin. The flat roof covered the entire boat and could be reached by climbing out the windows and swinging a leg up and over. The 4–by–4 bathroom with chemical toilet hung over the water behind the motor.

The 500–mile trip was supposed to take seven days, it took nine. We motored from dawn to dusk and parked at a village during the night. We slept in hammocks and ate like kings: eggs and toast for breakfast, sandwiches and beer for lunch, and dinner with the local Indians almost every night.

I was in Explorers Heaven. Everyday was an adventure. The toi let broke the first day, but it felt like a throne and provided a great view of the magnificent Amazon.

At Pevas, the first town established by the Spanish on the Amazon, we found no fabled Amazon women but were led to the famed Village of Bor ing Worms abandoned due to an epidemic. It was eerily quiet, no animals, no birds, not even insects. I felt uneasy and began to itch.

At the Vi l lage of Poison Water, we observed the men working in the fields, the women sewing on antique Singer machines, and children running everywhere. The headman, sensing our smel ly condi t ion, showed us to the bathing place. Picture eight dirty old men in a Turkish bath surrounded by butterflies, biting flies, and sniffing dogs.

The night was wonderful. We were invited to stay for a dinner and dance. Barely clad women served us veggies, frui t , and large rodent hind–quar ters. Men of fered us large pungent cigars that made the scene foggy and the mind fuzzy.

The headman narrated the dance and Miguel translated what turned out to the major themes of their l ives: plant ing, harvest ing, courtship, and marriage. During the finale, the visitors were escorted into the dance by bare– breasted women. After the traditional dance, our hosts disappeared only to return in modern dress with disco music. This t ime we were of fered chuchuasa, a local hallucinogenic dr ink made from chewed bark. I don’t remember when the dancing ended, but the next morning I awoke with a giant headache.

Other adventures along the way included an al l igator hunt , an encounter with the Amazon Queen, a cruise ship wi th 30 cabins ful l of UCLA women on an “academic field trip,” and a visit to a leper colony run by the Catholic Church.

The most dangerous night was when we were stopped by the Peruvian Coast Guard by shots over the bow. They forced us ashore at gunpoint , examined our papers, and took away cartons of cigarettes and bot t les of Scotch Paul had stowed away just in case.

I could tel l you about the terrible storm that almost sunk our boat or when we stopped to bathe in the r iver and were attacked by piranhas or Monkey Island where we discovered a refuge for monkeys, macaws, tapir, alligators, and Victoria lilies… but I’ll save that for another time.