Looking for Adventure? Maybe not this much.
Amazon riverboat trips are often referred to as “Adventure travel” and while that is still the case, in the early days that often meant “un-predictable”. Back in 2000 I worked for the first of the riverboat tourism companies, Amazon Tours & Cruises, and we operated two riverboats that cruised between Iquitos, Peru, and Leticia, Colombia. Every now and then I’d board the 44 passenger Rio Amazonas to take the one week cruise as a little vacation. Meeting the passengers, from all over the world, was fun and I didn’t have to pay my bar bill. To cover the distance in a week we had to sail through the night which is rarely, if ever, done any more.
We were on our second night out when the “adventure” part of the trip kicked in. About 11 p.m, I was suddenly awakened by the boat shuddering to a stop. I knew immediately that we had run aground. I got dressed and went up to the wheelhouse and was told we had run into a submerged sandbar. The pilot tried reversing the engine and backing out, but the bow was wedged deeply into the sandbar. Plan B was then initiated and they tried wiggling the stern from side to side to loosen the bow from the sandbar. That didn’t work either. As the Captain and crew were discussing what a Plan C might be a very large, unladen, cargo boat came into view. The Rio Amazonas Captain radioed the cargo boat, the Rauda III, and asked for assistance.
The Rauda pulled in beside us and up to the sandbar - with their flat hull they weren’t risking getting stuck like we were. The crews used a heavy, braided rope and lashed the bows of the two boats together. Using their two powerful engines the Rauda started backing up, hoping to pull us off. With engines roaring and no progress being made there was suddenly a very loud “bang”, that sounded like a cannon, as the rope snapped. Luckily, no crew members were near by as they could have been cut in half by the severed rope ends whipping about. The sound of the rope snapping finally woke the passengers up and many of them started to come out of their cabins and up to the observation deck to see what was going on.
On to Plan D (it was now about 2 a.m.). This time it was decided to put the two boats stern to stern and lash them together with a thin, old, rusty cable and pull us off the sandbar. Then the fun began as they tried to get the two boats positioned in a straight line. In the best imitation of the 3 Stooges our skiff was used as a “bow thruster” to move the bow of the Rauda into position, but the skiff driver always pushed too hard and the Rauda bow would swing past the center line. He would then go around to the other side and push the bow again, but with too much gusto. Members of both crews were yelling instructions and cussing the skiff driver out. It was at the point one of the Australian passengers came up to me and said, “You’d think they would at least open the bloody bar.” (I went down to the barman’s cabin to ask him to open the bar, but he angrily refused, “I’m sleeping.”)
After nearly an hour they finally got things lined up and we were pulled off the sandbar, which elicited a loud cheer from the passengers. Just then a British gentleman appeared, in his pajamas, and innocently asked, “Oh, are we stopped?”
For their assistance we owed the Rauda a hundred gallons of fuel. So, once again they brought the boats side by side and lashed them together. A pump was set up on our deck near the hatch of one of the fuel tanks and a 3/4" garden hose was attached and we began pumping fuel over to the Rauda, where they had a series of 5 gallon plastic buckets and a crew member who held the hose in one hand to fill the buckets and a lit cigarette in the other. This really freaked out the passengers, but it was diesel fuel and not gasoline (otherwise I wouldn’t be here to write about this Amazon Adventure).
- Scott Humfeld https://www.greentracks.com/
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