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The first was a general absence – Peru’s wildlife has learnt that humans are dangerous and to avoid us. I saw lots of insects, one monkey (heading rapidly away from us in the treetops) and a glimpse of a submerging reptilian head uncomfortably near my canoe. I learnt their Spanish names from the dictionary in the context of ‘what’s for dinner?’ One day, the answer was ‘mono’ (monkey) and another it was ‘lagarto’ (lizard – lizard?!) In the case of ‘lizard’, which looked like white caiman, I’m just never hungry enough to eat something that’s still got big thick scales on it when it hits the plate. They were solid lumps in gravy and all I had was a spoon. I ate the gravy and gave up on the impenetrable meat/bone, but being ill seemed to prevent them from taking offence. In the case of monkey, it’s too close to cannibalism for my tastes.

The insects deserve a special mention – a wondrous myriad from mud-brown to irridescent green, from minuscule to a ‘found my baseball cap to be a cosy fit as a shelter’ beetle. When I got over the shock of lifting the cap from its hook on the wall and finding it underneath – when it didn’t do any scuttling, but just sat there – its sheer size was fascinating. The other creatures were all pets or livestock. During my trip up the Rio Napo into deepest darkest Peru, I also met a kitten, an orphaned baby relative of a pig (furry and rangier than the classic farmyard version), and a tail-less cross between a rat and a squirrel that was really cute.

The main creature I became more closely acquainted with was the water buffalo. The village I stayed in for most of my trip, Tutapishco, had herds of the beasts. The government had distributed some to encourage their use as organic farm machinery, but the locals preferred to trade them like Pokemon cards. Napo buffalo act as a measure of status, a savings bank and silent lawnmowers. Johnny, my native guide and wind-up artist, told me that buffalo can smell strangers and were likely to attack me. I acknowledged the warning with a polite ‘ah’ – they’re herbivores, after all, but I have heard they can get stroppy. Hmmm. Animals sense fear by a combination of smell and body posture – being afraid is the fastest way to encourage aggression, as they think there’s something to fear and get agitated. I decided to treat the buffalo like stray dogs – we’ll coexist by you minding your business and me minding mine.

This was tested one dark night, when biological necessity drove me out of the house to the latrine, 30 metres away. I came down the steps and was confronted with at least 15 buffalo, chomping their way across the grass. Feeling irritable, I simply marched through the middle of them, darker shadows against the black background of night, emitting crunchy wet chewing noises. ‘Nature is calling,’ I thought, ‘and no buffalo is getting in the way of my answer.’ Sure enough, they completely ignored me too – thanks for the tip, Johnny. If you do feel inspired to get to know a buffalo, by the way, tempt them in with salt. Buffalo love salt – they come trotting towards a bag of it, as perky as prancing ponies with excitement. It’s interesting to watch something that big being perky at a fast clip.

All of the brothers of my host family had buffalo, including Romeo and Robin. The former’s name was inspired by Shakespeare and the latter’s by Nottingham’s Mr Hood! The power of TV and books at work in the heart of the jungle. My crash course in Amazonian buffalo husbandry began when Robin swam 3 of his buffalo down river. One of them broke its leg on an underwater obstacle and couldn’t get back onto land, stuck half in and half out of the water. Romeo and Roni (another brother, my host and that year’s village head) helped Robin drag it up onto the riverbank, impressive since it was about 600kg of dead weight. This was late afternoon; overnight the buffalo went downhill and succumbed to its injury at about 1pm the next afternoon.

All my info on buffalo comes from the Brothers R and Johnny, so it must be taken with a pinch of salt in the light of gems like ‘it will take two hours’ (it took five) and ‘buffalo attack strangers’, ‘my dad used to be a headhunter in Brazil’ or ‘it costs 200 soles’ (it cost 50). Some of it unlikely, some of it scary, some of it too late to do any good and some of it very wrong indeed. Another factor affecting the credibility of their info was their very enthusiastic desire to enlist me as a buffalo investor. That it would have been extremely difficult to leave the village without their help gave the sales-pitch an interesting edge. But back to the buffalo that started it…

We had 24 hours to get it to market before it was too rotten to sell as meat. There was a huge lump of dead meat laying on the lower bank, 15 near-vertical feet below the village, and a storm was coming in. They cut the head off and scooped out the innards. About 15 adults, including me, dragged the remaining 450kg up the riverbank on a rope. 20 kids ran around excitedly and a couple of other buffalo tried to wander over, but were shooed away. In SE Asia, it would have been the buffalo doing the pulling, but not in Peru. They did, however, muster a festival ‘we’re all in this together’ atmosphere, which was fun.

The wind had picked up and a plan was made while we covered the carcass with palm leaves. It was a bid to keep the water off, as wet meat rots faster. As the scattered raindrops became more frequent and the palms fluttered in the strengthening wind, a 4am-in-the-madrugada boat trip was agreed. The storm was going full bore while we gathered our possessions at 3.30am. Thankfully, I was not called on to help load the buffalo into the 20-foot boat – I had enough on my hands getting into a rocking boat and covering bags with flapping blue tarps. Twelve-year-old Cabeja perched on the prow, keeping a sharp eye out for floating debris and whirlpools.

The huge river has very strong and chaotic currents and can sweep huge trees along, hidden under the water like icebergs. Roni rode shotgun in the middle and Robin drove from the back, similarly armed. As I sat – swathed in plastic against the heavy rain – next to Roni amidships, he explained the guns. He told me a story about pirates on the river and a bloodstained boat found distressingly empty of its four crew. Speeding through mile after mile of dark jungle, knowing the nearest CCTV camera was possibly thousands of miles away, I could almost believe it. But why didn’t the pirates steal the boat? If it wasn’t pirates, then what else could have happened?

Motoring on through the storm, I watched the night and mulled over scenarios involving giant crocs, monster fish and rogue waves. For once, it was my turn to cope better with what Nature was throwing us. It must have been the excitement of an armed dash through a storm at night in a wilderness. The exhilarating wind and 30 years’ experience of British weather stopped me from feeling the cold. Roni, despite being much bigger than me, really suffered. In the game of ‘testing the gringa to see how tough she is’, score one for me.

The storm eased off just before dawn and we floated through patchy mist into a chilled, grey Mazan, the puerto de petroleros. The town sits on the narrow neck of a huge loop in the Napo, with its 2-mile, 2-lane concrete road saving about 75 miles of boating. I saw no sign of the industry its subtitle would suggest – Mazan is a supply depot and stopping-off point on workers’ journeys to the city. The town centre was an unremarkable concrete monument surrounded by a few concrete buildings, including the pharmacy we visited. Around this hotch-potch was the main town, clustered on the Napo side of the isthmus alongside the concrete slipway and embankment. The vast majority of the houses, shops and restaurants were wooden. They are generally on stilts to cope with flooding and full of breeze gaps to reduce dampness. Some are pretty, but most look either unfinished or tumbledown.

Robin and I waited in a wooden shack by the river while Roni did logistics, chatting to their friend about geopolitics and drinking Coke. I watched them haul the buffalo up a 20 metre 25 degree slope and onto a motocarro at waist height. After years of forestry, their physical strength could cope with manhandling the heavy corpse. It made the journey to the other side of the port on a three-wheeled motorbike with a wooden cargo tray at the back. I travelled with Roni and our luggage in a motorised rickshaw version of the motocarro, while Robin and Cabeja stayed with the boat. The sun started to come out while we barrelled through some really lovely countryside. Some parts were wooded, others were fields or grass lightly scattered with trees and wooden cottages.

An enjoyable and beautiful journey ended at the little hub of Amazonian commerce on the Iquitos side of the isthmus. Using the word ‘port’ to refer to about 20m of wooden piers, a couple of big shacks and unpaved parking for 25 motocarros seems like gilding the lily somewhat. I noticed 10 pigs tethered at the water’s edge, under the left-hand home-cum-storage-depot (a matching pair with the road and parking in the centre). There were sacks, boxes, bags and people everywhere. Lots of people, waiting patiently, chatting, dragging baggage about, loading, unloading, eating, drinking… I saw one little boy on the riverbank near the pigs, washing in water so brown it would surely sooner make him dirtier than cleaner. I also saw him wash his mouth out with it – what an iron digestive system he must have.

After about an hour, the launch had all its 30 feet filled with people and luggage, so we set out. There’s a very definite line in the river, with dark water on one side and paler brown water on the other, that marks Iquitos waters. Soon we reached the city and everyone scrambled to get off. The butcher arrived just as they finished unloading and 15 spectators gathered to watch. On the covered wooden balcony of a house that was also an integral part of the pier at the Puerto de Productores, corpse became meat. After a lot of chopping, with Rambo the dog the happy recipient of some scraps, 202kg of saleable meat remained. We had made it to town before the buffalo rotted, it was butchered and on its way to the meat market. A palpable feeling of relief came from Roni as we went off to find some breakfast.

We stayed overnight at the family house in Iquitos, owned by their parents and occupied by sister Monica, her sons and whichever relatives were passing. Hauling all the water you use out of a well by bucket certainly makes you appreciate plumbing. The following day, news came that the buffalo had been sold. We waited for two hours at the agent’s house, but he never turned up with the money. Several phone calls later, Roni irritably agreed to wait until next time he was in town and we headed back to Tutapishco.

We did the same journey in reverse and sunny weather. Roni and I met Robin and Cabeja on the Napo side of Mazan. The much slower trip upstream was beautiful, chugging past a spectacular variety of plant life. I noticed bushy trees, tall slim trees with white trunks, palms with fronds bent 45° at their tips, bushes, banana plantations… Sky, river and an explosion of lush greenery. After an orange and gold sunset, we arrived at the village an hour after dark. Roni told me how proud he was of the village’s streetlights, as they came into view round a bend in the river. On days there was fuel for the generator, between 7-9pm, Tutapishco switched on its symbol of status and mastery over Nature, illuminating a mile of the riverbank and its scattered houses.

Soon enough, the subject of buffalo was back on the table. Apparently, the boys had money worries and thought that me buying them some buffalo would be an excellent solution. I was very aware of my position – at their mercy in the middle of nowhere – as they pushed me to invest. Roni correctly identified there being four sub-species at large in the Amazon – the Mediterranean, the Carabao from Philippines and the Murrah and Jafarbadi from India. They are calves until the age of two and live to about 25. They can have up to 10 calves in a lifetime, but three or four is better. They can breed until they’re 15, but their prime is ages three to eight. A corral lasting five years would take three men a week to build. There are costs for ropes, butchers and the meat market.

We naturally moved on to transport. We discussed times upstream and downstream, with their differing costs in petrol, oil and berthing. Out of his own mouth, Roni told me by how much he’d overcharged me for transport. After a brief delay, he realised what he’d done, then remembered urgent business elsewhere. That was goodbye and good riddance to the hard-sell of the investment idea. I’m sure they’re endlessly fascinating to zoologists, farmers and animal lovers, but they were a passing curiosity for me.

First published in the newsletter of Spain & Latin America SIG. Published in VISA 95 (Feb 2011).