mercurial moisture of the rainforest, she had shrugged, then wondered sheepishly, âIsnât it a bit, I dunno, cliché?â
âIt wonât be cliché for long,â he said grimly. âIt will be gone.â
âThatâs what I mean,â she said. âItâs like weâre peering in at a dying, caged animal, isnât it?â
âMaybe,â said Paul in a way that suggested he hated himself, âthere is a way of helping.â
He looked like he wanted to stick forks in his eyes, so Beth agreed. Paul had a friend who had been through the region with an NGO and gave them tips and details: what to bring, whether to tip or haggle, which immunizations to endure and delicacies to sample, that sort of thing. They were to spend two weeks in the Amazon basin, in Cuyabeno National Park.
The trip had been literally breathtaking, fourteen days and nights when Beth spent whole minutes trying to teach herself to breathe again. Was it the humidity or simply the intensity, the drama of it all? They called it the worldâs pharmacy, an Eden: sweet balm and scourge, the innocence and viscera of new beginnings. But it was also something more sinister and random, something cloying, squawking and stealthy. To say it was unlike anything Beth had ever experienced might have been inaccurate â there were woods in northern Ontario whose fog of blackflies and sneering impenetrability maybe came close. But where the native people of her northern province had been decimated or interned or suffocated by white manâs guilt, these jungle lands were still inhabited by their original denizens â men and women with wide, implacable faces and smooth, rubbery skin who clambered up the banks of the river with regularity and ease, clutching plastic jugs of gasoline, babies strapped to their backs with long strips of cloth. Miguel, their tour guide, was such a man. Short and compact in body, barrel-chested, with a few uneven black sprigs of hair for a beard, he had a thin, rosy scar along his jawline and the haircut of a more urban, moneyed man. When he smiled, Beth noted his strong, small, pointy teeth.
This was in a café in Lago Agrio, waystation for travellers, frontier town for the desperate and entrepreneurial. She and Paul had been waiting a long time on a patio, clinking their cups of Nescafé against their saucers.
âDo you think thatâs him?â Paul pointed towards the street, where a mocha-skinned man was pulling a trolley towards their patio. They were to expect a guide who spoke five languages, a war veteran, friendly and âuninhibited,â the eager teenager who booked their trip had reassured. But the man with the trolley was not the right man, and neither was the man cradling a basket of fresh mangoes. When Miguel appeared, it was from within the rendezvous restaurant; he was everything they might have expected and nothing they had anticipated. His arms made his T-shirt bulge with their baseball-sized biceps, and he was sporting cheap orange flip-flops, which he continued to wear for the duration of the journey, exposing his long, yellowy-tough toenails and making the rest of the tour group, in their beige, super-tread hiking shoes, feel subtly, wonderfully mocked.
On the bus to the oversized, motorized canoe that was to take them to their campsite, the dust from the window made Beth cough, and the rutted roads caused the bus to jump. The inside of her head was all jangly with priorities and survival, and she felt sunburned although she had not been sitting in the sun. She nodded to the two Germans who had joined the group, and then pushed past Paul, who was nodding off, a thin line of spittle reaching downwards from his bottom lip to the strap of his day pack, which he had, wary of pickpockets, left attached to his back.
âDo you mind?â She motioned to the vacant aisle seat next to Miguel.
âNot at all,â he said. âYou are
âIt wonât be cliché for long,â he said grimly. âIt will be gone.â
âThatâs what I mean,â she said. âItâs like weâre peering in at a dying, caged animal, isnât it?â
âMaybe,â said Paul in a way that suggested he hated himself, âthere is a way of helping.â
He looked like he wanted to stick forks in his eyes, so Beth agreed. Paul had a friend who had been through the region with an NGO and gave them tips and details: what to bring, whether to tip or haggle, which immunizations to endure and delicacies to sample, that sort of thing. They were to spend two weeks in the Amazon basin, in Cuyabeno National Park.
The trip had been literally breathtaking, fourteen days and nights when Beth spent whole minutes trying to teach herself to breathe again. Was it the humidity or simply the intensity, the drama of it all? They called it the worldâs pharmacy, an Eden: sweet balm and scourge, the innocence and viscera of new beginnings. But it was also something more sinister and random, something cloying, squawking and stealthy. To say it was unlike anything Beth had ever experienced might have been inaccurate â there were woods in northern Ontario whose fog of blackflies and sneering impenetrability maybe came close. But where the native people of her northern province had been decimated or interned or suffocated by white manâs guilt, these jungle lands were still inhabited by their original denizens â men and women with wide, implacable faces and smooth, rubbery skin who clambered up the banks of the river with regularity and ease, clutching plastic jugs of gasoline, babies strapped to their backs with long strips of cloth. Miguel, their tour guide, was such a man. Short and compact in body, barrel-chested, with a few uneven black sprigs of hair for a beard, he had a thin, rosy scar along his jawline and the haircut of a more urban, moneyed man. When he smiled, Beth noted his strong, small, pointy teeth.
This was in a café in Lago Agrio, waystation for travellers, frontier town for the desperate and entrepreneurial. She and Paul had been waiting a long time on a patio, clinking their cups of Nescafé against their saucers.
âDo you think thatâs him?â Paul pointed towards the street, where a mocha-skinned man was pulling a trolley towards their patio. They were to expect a guide who spoke five languages, a war veteran, friendly and âuninhibited,â the eager teenager who booked their trip had reassured. But the man with the trolley was not the right man, and neither was the man cradling a basket of fresh mangoes. When Miguel appeared, it was from within the rendezvous restaurant; he was everything they might have expected and nothing they had anticipated. His arms made his T-shirt bulge with their baseball-sized biceps, and he was sporting cheap orange flip-flops, which he continued to wear for the duration of the journey, exposing his long, yellowy-tough toenails and making the rest of the tour group, in their beige, super-tread hiking shoes, feel subtly, wonderfully mocked.
On the bus to the oversized, motorized canoe that was to take them to their campsite, the dust from the window made Beth cough, and the rutted roads caused the bus to jump. The inside of her head was all jangly with priorities and survival, and she felt sunburned although she had not been sitting in the sun. She nodded to the two Germans who had joined the group, and then pushed past Paul, who was nodding off, a thin line of spittle reaching downwards from his bottom lip to the strap of his day pack, which he had, wary of pickpockets, left attached to his back.
âDo you mind?â She motioned to the vacant aisle seat next to Miguel.
âNot at all,â he said. âYou are
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