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By Jess McGlothlin
It takes all of a day—less than a day—of living in the jungle before I forgo shoes. I wander around the African tent-style lodging of Kendjam, letting my feet go from hot, rough bare sand to the warmth of the wooden boards, and it’s only when we head to the rocky waters of the Iriri River that I knot the laces of my old wading boots and bring them along. There’s the inevitable capitulation to footwear, but it feels like a fair trade.
I’m deep in Kayapó Indigenous Lands, a sprawling reserve roughly the size of the U.K.—or two Floridas—a broad swath of undeveloped rainforest in the Brazilian states of Pará and Mato Grosso, along the Central Brazilian Plateau. This is where the Amazon rainforest meets the savannah, and it looks about like the terrain from the old cartoon version of “The Jungle Book.” Between 5,000-6,000 Kayapó live in this huge space, joined by jaguar, puma, monkeys, giant river otters, capybara, tapir, and enough snakes, spiders, scorpions, and other critters to fill a guidebook. I’m here for the fish, though… chasing the encyclopedia-worth of tropical species which live in the Iriri and will eat a fly.
It’s a job, and someone’s got to do it.
So, when the chance comes to live at Kendjam Lodge, a small outpost three hours by boat from the nearest Kayapó village—Kendjam—I jump at it. And leave the shoes behind.
The first time I spent an extended amount of time in the Amazon it was Peru in 2018, documenting the first stand-up paddleboard decent of the Madre de Dios River. It was an adventure; camping outside along the river every night with a dozen Peruvian whitewater athletes I’d never met. We ran into illegal gold miners. I got dengue. At the end we were surviving on fish and bananas. But we did it.
Kendjam was a nicer experience, and I wasn’t mad about it. The fishing was stupidly good—dry fly fishing in the Amazon, who knew—and with a little work the Kayapó were welcoming to this strange American chick and her cameras. But it’s still the Amazon, and I still have a tendency to need to dive into my med kit on these trips.
Ironically, both injuries this trip come when I’m wearing boots. Maybe I should have just stayed barefoot.
I’m just distracted with a camera the first time, misjudging a leap on the rocks and taking a digger, which leads to a cut on my knee that goes a little too deep for comfort. The second time, days later, I’m focused on getting a clean drift on my gigantic foamy hopper when the rock I jump to is slicker than initially anticipated. I end up with (I find out when I return to the U.S.) a walking fracture to my tibia. Painful, but at least not bleeding. Both times my distraction bit me in the ass… thankfully, metaphorically.
Because actually being bitten in the ass was another problem to consider.
There are a lot of critters in these waters other than the peacock bass, bicuda, pacu, payara, and matrinxã I’m chasing, and while the electric eels, caiman, and red-banded water snakes don’t overly concern me when it comes to blood in the water, the piranha do. (So do the giant river otters, but that’s another story.) Because I see the little silver assholes daily when a peacock bass fights a little too aggressively—they swarm in just like in every little kid’s nightmare, taking chunks out of the fish’s tail and sometimes its body—a wave of silvery bodies and sharp teeth.
I don’t feel overly eager about testing the theory about how much blood it takes to draw their attention.
So I disinfect the shit out of the knee wound, hit it with a sealant spray, and tape it up (Always carry your own med kit, kids.). Infection’s always a concern in the jungle—especially when I’m in the water for hours every day—and sealing the thing up seems to be a good bet (Doubly so when a guide in camp already has an infected leg wound, which we spend a boat transfer squeezing all the pus from one day). I dab some copaiba oil on it at night, a local cure-all that’s supposedly a natural antibiotic, and hope for the best.
It’s a weird sort of science experiment. I mitigate all factors as best I can and wade cautiously, assuring I have a reasonably quick out, or at least a shin-high rock close by I can jump up on. And, with a wound-care break midday during lunch, there’s no apparent issue. The piranha apparently have other targets in mind and—despite nearly stepping on a small caiman while wading deep—I fish the days through completely unbothered. A thorough daily disinfection (I eventually liberate some of the lodge vodka to aid in the effort) and the copaiba oil seem to keep the infection away, and the slice begins to heal remarkably fast. Some jungle juju, indeed.
By the time I emerge from the jungle and find myself lounging at the rooftop hotel pool in Manaus, my legs are dotted with bruises and scrapes, but sport no piranha bites. Apparently they have better things to do with their time.
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