Admittedly, we failed to resist the temptation to lie in hammocks by the pool, sipping caipirinhas. But no one is perfect. And, to be fair, we occasionally looked up to watch the local squirrel monkeys and white-fronted capuchins and to make the most of high-speed wi-fi on our laptops.
Besides, we were recovering from New Year’s Eve. We hadn’t drunk too much, unfortunately, but we were struggling to cope with a combination of jet lag and hazy memories of a dark beach on the shores of the Rio Negro surrounded by jungle, with a huge bonfire, a firework display to rival the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, a motley collection of biting insects, pink champagne in dainty little glasses, and a blur of singing and dancing.
After a lot of debate and soul-searching, we managed to convince ourselves that our serious lying-down time was a productive and essential part of the jungle habituation process.
Eventually, a couple of days and a couple of dozen caipirinhas later, Stephen was almost ready to be released into the wild. We decided to start by getting wet.
The worst thing about swimming in the Amazon isn’t what you might expect. It’s certainly not crocodile-like caiman, which are large enough to eat the smaller members of a film crew, but rarely do. And it’s not bull sharks, which rather alarmingly leave the open ocean and make their way as much as 3,700 kilometres (2,310 miles) upriver, past Manaus and far beyond.
Stingrays, admittedly, can be slightly worrying. They lie flat on the river bed, waiting for you to step on them, and then give you an almighty sting that is so excruciatingly painful you have to run, not walk, to the nearest doctor. But if you shuffle your feet in the muddy or sandy shallows, rather than marching like a trooper, they are more likely to get out of your way than get out their secret weapon.
It’s certainly not piranhas, and it’s not even two-metre (six-foot) long electric eels or anacondas the length of minibuses.
No, the worst thing about swimming in the Amazon is the tiny candiru fish (pronounced can-dee-roo). Otherwise known as the toothpick fish, vampire fish or (more disturbingly) the willy fish, this is a parasitic freshwater catfish just a few centimetres long.
Eel-shaped and translucent (so it’s virtually impossible to see underwater) the candiru has a voracious appetite for blood. On a normal day it seeks out unsuspecting larger fish by following the flow of water from their gills. It dives underneath the gill flaps, opens its umbrella-like spines to lock itself in position and draw blood, and then drinks and drinks and drinks. It may consume so much blood that its body visibly expands, like that of a leech. Eventually, the little sponger unhooks its spines and sinks to the bottom of the river to digest its meal.
If you happen to be swimming in the Amazon, and peeing, the candiru fish will happily follow the flow of your urine back to its source. Before you can whip up your trunks it will swim straight into your penis and inconveniently lodge itself right inside your urethra. The pain, apparently, is spectacular.
If you are unfortunate enough to be candirued, the best option is to get to a hospital before infection causes shock and death, or your bladder bursts. Failing that (a likely scenario if you happen to be in a remote corner of the Amazon), the next option is to chop off your penis.
Stephen undergoing an essential part of the jungle habituation process.
Alternatively, there is a traditional cure that requires the use of two local plants: the juice of the jagua tree or the pulp of the buitach apple. These are supposed to be brewed into a hot tea that apparently dissolves the skeleton of the fish within a couple of hours (a synthetic version of the brew has been used in the past to dissolve kidney stones). Be wary of some survival books that rather unconvincingly suggest you insert the buitach apple into the affected area.
The main problem with such traditional cures is that, if you’re anything like me, you won’t have a clue a) where to find a jagua tree or a buitach apple, or b) how to know if you actually do. But if you think you’re capable of calmly flicking through a field guide, inevitably written in Portuguese, with a candiru fish and its open umbrella firmly lodged inside your penis, and then organising a nice little campfire to brew a piping-hot cup of tea with your correctly identified traditional plants, then you might just be okay.
The only good news is that, despite rumours to the contrary, it’s perfectly safe to stand on the riverbank and pee into the Amazon below. A candiru fish cannot, no matter how hard it tries, leap in mid-air and work its way upstream like a salmon.
I digress. We weren’t about to swim in the Amazon just to see if we could avoid penis penetration by a fish with a spiny umbrella. We wanted to swim with a blushing dolphin.
The pink river dolphin, or boto, is the kind of animal young children paint at school. A particularly naïve teacher might relegate the exuberant splashes of dazzling pink, the chubby cheeks, the gratuitously long beak crammed with crushing teeth and the gargantuan designer flippers to a wild and fertile young imagination. But pink river dolphins are real – a celebrated Amazonian speciality.
Their pink colour is caused by blood flowing immediately beneath the skin. It becomes even pinker when they are excited or aroused, and as they get older.
We found ‘our’ dolphins surprisingly easily (actually, they found us), tucked away in a quiet backwater far from the hubbub of the lodge. They were used to being fed by local villagers and, as soon as they spotted the boat, started leaping about excitedly. And blushing bright pink. They raced one way, then did a handbrake turn and raced back the other way.
Unlike most other dolphins, which have fused neck vertebrae (enabling them to swim fast and turn without breaking their necks), Amazon river dolphins have flexible necks that can bend remarkably well, as an adaptation for swimming in the flooded forest and weaving between all those submerged roots and trunks.
Stephen is rarely short of something to say, but for a few moments, admiring the dolphins around the boat, he was speechless. Then his remarkable powers of observation returned.
‘They’re unmistakably dolphinous,’ he remarked. ‘If there is such a word.’
Indeed.
We squeezed into our smelly, damp wet suits, rinsed out our snorkels, spat in our masks, climbed down the steps of a floating platform anchored in the middle of the river and stepped into the lukewarm waters of the Rio Negro.
The visibility below the surface was dreadful – less than half a metre (20 inches) – and when I stretched my arm out in front of me I could barely see my fingertips. It was virtually impossible to tell what, if anything, was down there. I glanced across at Stephen, goggle-eyed and smiling as much as he could with a snorkel rammed into his mouth, as he stared into the gloom. The dark, tannin-rich water made this alien underwater world surprisingly red in colour and, for a moment, he looked like an astronaut recently landed on Mars.
Men overboard