THE AMAZON

In this thatched-roof village deep in the jungle of the Peruvian Amazon, a wooden drum signals the arrival of the Rio Amazonas. Two naked boys scurry down the bank and grab a line tossed out to them.

As we go ashore, dozens of other youngsters charge down the river bank like a regiment of ants, shouting “Gringos! Gringos!” All the while their eyes are fixed on our plastic bags filled with chewing gum, suckers, balloons, mirrors, combs, ballpoint pens and other trinkets.

Our guide, Beder Chavez, leads us into a large thatched hut that serves as a community center. He motions our little group, 15 Americans and one New Zealander, to relax on a log.

The village, Beder explains, is populated by two Indian tribes, the Bora and the Huitoto. For thousands of years they enthusiastically feasted on one another (cannibalism in the area was reported as recently as 30 years ago). Since then, Beder assures us that the encroachment of civilization has forced them to make “other arrangements.”

More than anyone, Beder can appreciate the change. Born in the jungle 35 years ago, he left his native village at age 14, went to school in Iquitos, about 150 miles upriver, taught himself English and is writing a book about growing up in the Amazon rain forest.

After he spoke, the villagers broke into a lively dance to the rhythmic beating of a pair of hardwood logs and the chanting of Bora men and women dressed in painted bark skin. At their urging, several of us joined in.

When the dancing was over the trading began for baskets, beads and blowguns. Negotiating was a family affair, involving consultation mostly between mothers and children in a language we didn’t know. Their disarming smiles reduced our bargaining skills to zero.

A few yards from where my wife was trading a mirror for a necklace of paiche scales, one of the dancers, an extraordinarily beautiful young woman with black paint streaked across her cheeks, dropped her bark-skin dress unabashedly to her waist and pulled on an Adidas T-shirt.

With every plastic comb and stick of chewing gum we left behind, weren’t we unwitting accomplices to the corruption of their ancient way of life?

“We’re witnessing the last few years of the Amazon in its present state,” Beder said later. “Farther south, in Brazil, it’s much worse.” He told about how the rain forests there are disappearing at the rate of 5,000 acres a day because of the exploitation of oil and minerals, and how much of it is the fault of Brazil’s government, which has failed to hold unscrupulous landowners in check.

“Four million Indians once lived in the Amazon basin,” Beder said. “Now only about 120,000 remain. Even the birds and animals have to go deeper inside to get away.”

Beder then explained why he was leading us through this 350-mile stretch of the upper Amazon that runs from Iquitos, Peru, to Leticia, Colombia, acting as intermediary between our little group from the 20th Century and the primordial world of the jungle:

“I’m trying to alert the rest of the world to the need to preserve this river,” he said. “Perhaps it will be worth more as a tourist site than as an industrial wasteland.”

For five of us who flew from Miami, this was our first jaunt into the South American jungle. After a night’s layover at the Crillon Hotel in Lima, we flew over the Andes to Iquitos, a bustling river-front city (population 200,000) where the north-flowing Ucayali River turns into the Amazon.

The streets were lined with motorcycle-powered rickshaws. We hired one to take us to neighboring Belen, a floating village where the houses are built on stilts and pontoons. There the river rises as much as 35 feet during the rainy season, but now it was low.

There we caught our first sight of the mighty Amazon. Originating high in the Andes 1,700 miles to the south, its name changes four times before it turns east at Iquitos and flows another 2,300 miles into the Atlantic.

The river is second only to the Nile in length but is the largest in volume, draining 200 major tributaries in an area three-quarters the size of the United States. Its flow is 11 times greater than the Mississippi’s, its vegetation representing almost half of the remaining forest on earth.

During the flood season it discharges 3 trillion gallons of water a day into the Atlantic, enough to supply New York City with water for nine years.

That night we set out from Iquitos on board the Rio Amazonas, one of a fleet of Amazon river boats owned by Paul Wright, 54, a U.S. expatriateand business entrepreneur.

He greeted us amiably in the ship’s dining room wearing a blue Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap and a green “Amazon Camp” T-shirt. He described how he had been a tour operator in Los Angeles, tired of the pressure and fled to Iquitos 20 years ago to start his jungle camp. His wife didn’t share his enthusiasm. “She went back to California with her blow-dryer,” he said.

Wright showed us his ship, a diesel-powered triple-decker resurrected five years ago from the abandoned hull of an 1896 Scottish cargo ship. The 146-foot vessel boasts 16 air-conditioned cabins (each with a private shower and toilet) and an 18-member crew that includes a witch doctor who was once a medic in the Peruvian army.

Four times a month it makes the run from Iquitos to Leticia. Passengers are mostly Americans, Australians and New Zealanders, and thus English-speaking.

On the middle deck we discovered an open-air bar that stilled our apprehension as we set out into the black moonless night. The bar prices were cause for rejoicing: 60 cents for beer, 25 cents for Cokes, 75 cents for pisco sours--a frothy, sweet but deceptive punch.

Early the next morning I stood on the foredeck sipping coffee and watching the sun rise over this uninhabited land. I felt serenely blessed as the jungle drifted silently by, not a soul in sight. The stillness was broken by two squawking macaws in ferocious pursuit of one another.

Human Habitation

Finally we saw human habitation: three or four stilt houses spewing plumes of smoke from breakfast fires. These were the homes of the mestizos riberenos (river dwellers), who slashed and burned patches of forest along the river bank and farmed the soil until it gave out.

Even in daytime there was little traffic on the river. Tiny children, barely old enough to walk, frantically pursued our ship in a hand-hewn dugout until it turned over in the water. Once we encountered a collectivo, a grungy-looking ferry boat with wooden kegs strapped to the top, a loose chicken or two on the deck and people sleeping in hammocks or leaning glumly over the rails.

Each day on our river cruise we stopped at a village. At Bora, where we watched the dancers, I learned something of the terrible history of the Huitoto people--how they were abused and slaughtered by European rubber traders at the turn of the century.

Near another village we visited the river-bank farm of a mestizo. The 81-year-old owner was harvesting sugar cane when we arrived. He laid down his machete to greet us and led us into his house, where his wife was squeezing pulp from a cassava root into a bucket.

Not until we reached Pevas, a Jesuit missionary village near the mouth of the Ampiyacu River, did we encounter outward signs of the white man’s world. A stucco steeple with a cross on top presided over a cluster of thatched huts. An Evinrude-powered skiff zoomed out from the river bank in search of more converts.

First Jungle Foray

Late in the afternoon we made our first foray into the jungle’s hot interior. A thick canopy of foliage filtered out the sunlight. Spider webs and termite nests the size of footballs clung to the seemingly infinite vegetation. Rope-like vines, straight out of a Tarzan movie, hung 40 feet from the tops of trees.

The massive roots of the mora tree reached out in all directions, impeding our progress. Ants and chiggers crawled beneath our feet. A few hours later our little group emerged, sweat-drenched but otherwise unharmed.

After dinner, fortified by pisco sours, we set out in a motor launch to look for caimans (Amazon crocodiles) on the Cochaquinas River. With the motor off we drifted quietly in the pitch dark listening to the whoops and chatters that emanated from the jungle. Then in the beam of Beder’s flashlight we saw the beady red eyes of a caiman.

Beder crept cautiously out of the launch and reached down to grab the caiman by the tail. It slithered away. Later, as we headed back to our ship, the radiant sheen of the Milky Way reflected over the water. We were four degrees below the Equator, and the stars seemed close enough to touch.

The next morning we went piranha fishing along the Atacuari River. I had heard about how piranhas, at the smell of blood, could rip a man to shreds in minutes. But down here, Beder assured us, “Piranhas don’t eat people; people eat piranhas.”

Another river excursion took us to a lagoon covered with giant Victoria Regia water lilies. Their pads, we were told, grow up to six feet in diameter, strong enough to support a child. We stepped on them to test the claim while a kingfisher with dark blue wings gazed down at us from an overhanging branch.

We ended our cruise at the river-front town of Leticia where the borders of Peru, Colombia and Brazil meet. Known for its populace of smugglers and outlaws, Leticia has all the charm of a made-for-TV Western. Hard, tattooed men and rosy-cheeked women glared at us from verandas and saloon doors as we made our way from the harbor to the airport in a battered VW van.

A few hours later we were back in Iquitos, where we spent the last night of our jungle adventure at Paul Wright’s Amazon Camp. Surrounded by jungle, all the buildings were thatched and on stilts and connected by a long, kerosene-lit walkway.

Bilingual Parrots

Each room had its own bathroom and kerosene lamp. In the camp’s thatched-roof bar, two bilingual parrots (whose vocabularies consisted mostly of “hello” and “ vamos !”) kept up a running commentary about the patrons until a wooden drum called us to dinner.

On our last day we ventured from the jungle camp to a nearby village, where we met a Yagua Indian with a blowgun. He handed me the instrument, along with a toothpick-thin dart wrapped in a kapok wad. I inserted the dart, aimed at a tree and missed. Meanwhile, my new friend lit a cigarette and here, deep in the Amazon Jungle, blew smoke rings.

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Adventuring on the Amazon, once the domain of the rich, is now within the grasp of many. The piranhas don’t bite, the cannibals are gone and the fabled Amazon warrior women were never here in the first place.

But there are some things to look out for:

The mosquitoes. Don’t forget to pack insect repellent (with Deet) and a supply of malaria pills.

The rain. Afternoon downpours are frequent and you should dress accordingly. A light jacket or poncho will do, also lightweight slacks (not shorts), a cotton shirt and tennis shoes or sneakers for hiking in the jungle.

It’s hot and humid all year. Temperatures range from the upper 80s in the daytime to the low 70s at night. Bring lots of talcum powder if you don’t like to sweat.

The water. Everywhere you go, stick to the bottled variety. And when you’re in the cities, don’t eat food from vendors cooking in their omnipresent pushcarts. Sometimes even the locals get typhoid fever.

You don’t need a visa to get into Peru, but don’t be surprised if the customs agent in Tabatinga, Brazil (just across the border from Leticia, Colombia), wants to see one. It doesn’t make much sense, because you’re just going there to catch a plane back to Peru, but why take a chance?

Other tips:

If you spend a few days in Lima, as we did, beware of pickpockets and thieves. Don’t wear expensive jewelry on the street. And hold your camera or handbag firmly under your arm.

Finally, don’t go it alone. Peru is a country largely overlooked by tourists, so let a tour operator who knows the territory make the arrangements for you.

Travel Plans International offers a nine-day “Amazon Expedition” each month (except April and May) that covers just about everything--the river cruise, jungle camp, meals, transfers, a first-class hotel in Lima (the Crillon) and two days of sightseeing in Lima, climaxed by a farewell dinner at the magnificent La Rosa Nautica on the Pacific Ocean. Cost: $2,154 per person from Los Angeles. Five-day extensions are also available to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, the Inca ruins high in the Andes.

For more information, contact Travel Plans International, 1200 Harder Road, Oak Brook, Ill. 60521, or call toll-free (800) 323-7600.