racks at the backs of the taxis, “and that monstrosity is your hotel, the Dorado Plaza. Go freshen up, take a nap or something, and I’ll meet you right out here at, say, four o’clock, after things have cooled down. I’ll give you a quickie tour. I’d go inside with you in case there’s any problem at the desk, but they’d never let me through the door.”
At this stage of their journey, none of them looked very appetizing, but Phil was in a class of his own. He was, to put it mildly, not a man greatly concerned with outward appearances. His come-again, go-again, pepper-and-salt beard was three weeks on its way in, and his lank, thinning gray hair looked as if it had seen its last pair of clippers six months ago. In addition, he was dressed in his standard travel apparel: a tired T-shirt with a sagging neckline, baggy, multi
pocketed, knee-length khaki shorts, scuffed, sockless tennis shoes that did nothing to enhance his skinny legs, and a faded On the Cheap baseball cap with a sweat-stained, curling bill. Gideon knew that in his backpack—Phil’s first rule of travel was never to take anything that couldn’t fit into a backpack—were duplicates of each item of clothing that he wore and a few necessities such as toilet paper (you never knew), toothpaste, insect repellent, and a pair of flip-flops. That was it. He would be dressed exactly the same every day of the trip. And he would spend a lot of time washing clothes in his bathroom sink.
“You know,” he said, shrugging into the backpack for the short walk to his own hotel, but hesitating before starting, “it’s not too late to cancel your reservations here. You can still get a couple of rooms at the Alfert with the rest of us.”
“Why would we want to do that?” Gideon asked.
“Because it’s sixty bucks cheaper, and also because almost everyone else on the cruise is there, but mainly because it doesn’t have air-conditioning, and minifridges, and TV, and all that crap that you tourist types go for. What’s the point of coming down here at all if you’re going to live the way you would in Seattle or New York? The Alfert is a real Iquitos hotel. It’s the kind of place the
“Phil,” Gideon said with a sigh, “I am a real person. Even John is a real person.”
“Damn right,” agreed John. “Wait a minute—”
“To appreciate a certain amount of material comfort,” Gideon continued, “does not mean you are not a real person.”
Phil shook his head sadly. “And you call yourself an anthropologist,” he said, dripping contempt, as he had on similar occasions in the past and was sure to do again in the future.
***
PHILwas right about the afternoon heat. Even at four o’clock, supposedly after things had “cooled down,” the thermometer in the lobby of the Dorado Plaza read thirty-seven degrees centigrade. Approximately ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit. And the relative humidity was even higher, according to the humidity sensor: 100 percent. The air couldn’t hold any more moisture if it tried.
Gideon’s crisp, fresh shirt went limp even before he and John were all the way through the revolving door to the plaza, where Phil, also apparently in fresh clothes (although, who could tell for sure?) was waiting. From there he led them on a walking tour of the highlights of Iquitos: the moldering once-grand, porcelain-tiled houses of nineteenth-century rubber barons on the Malecon Tarapaca; the strange Iron House, made entirely of engraved iron plates (it looked like a house made of tinfoil), designed by Gustav Eiffel for the Paris exhibition of 1889 and shipped to Peru by one of the barons; and the floating “village” of Belen, a swarming, astonishing, malodorous marketplace hawking everything from native medicines to capybara haunches, smoked monkey arms, and fresh turtle eggs.
By five-thirty even John was drooping from the heat, and they were all ready for a cold beer and something to eat. Gideon suggested the Gran Maloca, a nice-looking restaurant they’d passed, with white-shirted waiters visible through the windows and Visa, Master-Card, and
The food was good enough, however—there were Peruvian dishes
as well as burgers—the beers were cold, and the real people were colorful. By the time they finished they were relaxed and contented, and very much ready to call it a day. Phil headed for the Alfert and John and Gideon walked back to the Dorado Plaza. On the square, they found a crowd of at least a hundred people watching a remarkably good Michael Jackson imitator go through his routines to the accompaniment of a boom box. Gideon and John watched too, for a good twenty minutes, while the young man with fedora and single sequined glove gyrated and tapped and moonwalked.
“How does he do it in this heat?” Gideon said, shaking his head.
“I guess you can get used to anything,” said John.
They each left a dollar in the can he was using for donations and went up to their rooms.
Thirty minutes later, exhausted, lying in his bed with the air-conditioning turned up to high, Gideon could still hear the boom box going.
SIX
THERE are no roads into or out of Iquitos. A few supplies come in by air, but the great majority of its goods come and go via the river. As with almost every settlement on the Amazon, however, it has nothing resembling a working port or pier or dock. This is because every year the river rises forty to sixty feet in flood season, and then, of course, sinks again six months later. To build a commercial pier able to handle that kind of elevation change is beyond the resources of these jungle communities.
Thus, this being what is laughably called the dry season on the Amazon, John and Gideon got their first look at the
