World’s Toughest Boat Trips | Peru | Free Documentary

[Music] I'm in Peru traveling down one of the most remote stretches of the Amazon my destination is the historic city of aidos which grew incredibly Rich a century ago during the Amazon's rubber boom today it's the biggest city in the world that you can't drive to Mar rued in the middle of the Jungle getting there isn't easy but it's definitely going to be a great [Music] adventure my journey starts from Yuri maguas at the end of Peru Road Network traveling down river for days through the jungle I finally arrive in the remote city of aitos before returning up River to the spectacular pakaya Samir National Reserve to search for rare [Music] Wildlife situated on the edge of the Amazon rainforest Ur maguis is a busy Frontier Town with a population of around 50,000 people there's plenty of noise noisy traffic here but happily I won't be seeing any more of that for a [Music] while graas okay in terms of getting to aidos this is the end of the road it's boats from here on out 250 Mi down river if all goes well it should take about 2 days the boats from here to aidos don't usually depart according to a regular schedule they just leave when they're fully loaded with passengers and cargo which makes planning a trip in advance tough although I've been given a useful tip okay you could hang around here for days waiting for a boat to leave but not if you're smart you get on the vegetable boat that's the one I'm going for all right this says it's leaving at 5:30 which I believe because look at this all eggs these are never going to last on Deck because let me tell you it is hot here it's about 98° 98% humidity we're going to move fast oh okay hi um uh do we leave what time does the boat leave for sure yeah okay um how much for the trip to aitos okay can I see the cabin see okay all right two options sleep on the deck in a hammock or get your own cabin I'm going to check that out all right okay cabin number nine looking good little this is a metal box it's very very hot in here any possibility I could have the whole place just for me see yes see but I have to buy both beds 150 per bed 300 total so about 100 bucks okay good take it lock up and pay the captain right all right even though it's great to be safe and to be able to lock my stuff up my oven likee cabin might be too hot to sleep in so I want to get a hammock as well they do look comfortable and since I've got some time to kill before the boat leaves in a few hours I head to the Town Market to buy myself [Music] one hello when is this um I need a a hamaka okay yeah air conditioned version 30 okay I like this one yeah 50 that's a little okay yeah deal as well as a hammock I need to buy a few other bits and pieces three meals a day are included in my boat Fair hopefully not including some of the food that seems to be popular here in the market oh but I do need to buy my own things to eat and drink with on the boat right this boat trip is sort of a DIY experience I got to bring my own utensils hi could I buy some um PL good okay all right my own cup not sure what they're serving on board but I'm prepared okay that's it there you go [Music] H hi hi hello is the boat leaving soon yes it is yeah tomorrow yes but I thought it was leaving at 530 no so much for my vegetable Theory so what do you do just hang out yes have hammock I have a hammock but I don't really know how to hang it my problem can you help me okay yes all [Music] right oh okay all right just tie it in a KN yeah all right oh better oh it's a little high a a little high I have to take a running leap into it stretch it's good yeah it's good all right okay see yeah it's cool so much for the vegetable boat always leaving punctually hour after hour well into the night more and more vegetables are loaded on board for the sake of the people in aito he'll be eating them let's hope they stay fresh despite the delay oh well well it's dark and hot my bag's still here so that's good but I think I'm going to head back to the deck all right this is it it is definitely cooler out here but lights are on kids are playing the vegetables are still being loaded I'm not feeling totally optimistic about a good night's sleep but it's better than the hot box we'll give it a try I only wish I brought some [Music] earplugs it's it's been an interesting night my takeaway from the night is there's a particular skill set to sleeping on a hammock on a boat deck in the Amazon I haven't quite acquired that skill set yet but we got through it and um here we go hopefully today sometime like to get moving the boat should have left well over 12 hours ago but at least prospects seem good for an imminent departure from from the look of it no more vegetables are being loaded on board uh pu yeah it's all loaded okay W look at this four to ceiling wall toall vegetables mangos carrots melons lettuce now I can see why it took so long to load this boat but nothing else can fit in here so I think that means we're going to take off soon one thing's for sure though with all this food on board we're certainly not going to starve if this boat happens to break down on our long journey down river through the remote jungle finally the boat really is ready to leave all right the moment of truth they're pulling back the little gang plank there we go finally taken off say goodbye to land two 2 and 1/2 days we'll make it to the city of aitos all goes [Music] well out of the more than 200 people making the trip to aidos aboard our boat there are a handful of foreign Travelers but the vast majority of passengers are local peruvians at just $25 in a hammock for the 2 and 1/2 day Journey it's a cheap way to travel especially when you consider that three meals a day are included in the price [Music] [Music] the captain jumped in his little boat went out to a village came back with that the biggest catfish I've ever seen and now the chef's preparing it it'll serve dozens maybe a maybe a hundred people for dinner very [Music] nice not all of the um Critters on this vessel are for eating these are pets they seem hungry cuz they're trying to eat my fingers very sweet [Music] huh there you [Music] go outside on Deck The View remains unchanging hour after hour making it easy to forget that we're making any progress at all and forward progress really is slow due to the extremely flat landscape the river meanders in big Loops back and forth through the Amazon jungle initially we're actually traveling down tributaries of the main Amazon River to start with we're traveling down the waga River before joining a bigger tributary the Maron finally for the last part of our journey will'll be on the Amazon itself although it's to 50 m in a straight line from Yuri maguis to aitos the distance we actually traveling is more like 500 Miles due to all the river's twists and turns the waga River we're on today although wide isn't nearly as easy to navigate as it looks its Meandering route creates frequent shifts of the main navigable Channel and in some places it's very shallow with treacherous sandbanks as a fellow passenger explains to me now what are they doing out there up there they are measuring the depth of the river because it's quite low there that's why they using the longest stick to be checking the deepest part where this uh I mean ship can be navigating down river this is a heavily Laden boat right now so if we go over a shallow we just basically run a ground yes sometime sometime not often but sometime when this I mean kind of boats can stuck in the Sand Bar it can stay depending for one month or a month yes yes or two months until the water can start coming up that's a new season isn't it a new season yes that's not an option what's our second option the second option it is we can take a lot of these you know caros out and so the ship can float up and move the other way how typically we do here is wait for other ferry boat that can be coming up or going down river that they can help us to pull the boat to the deepest part so this really happens sometimes yeah this really happens sometimes we have to be prepared for surprises and Adventure on the Amazon exactly okay yes all right just be prepared [Music] okay I'm trying really hard not to swing but I keep banging into my neighbors here nobody seems to mind though we's see how it goes [Music] although most of the cargo and most passengers on our boat are staying on board to aitos the boat does make quite a few stops at villages on route for a few people to get on and off and for small amounts of cargo to be off loed or brought on the villagers also take the opportunity to sell us some of their local Delicacies what do you have there ooh can I have one on Soul mhm okay all right we've got some grubs from a village girl she brought them on board breakfast they're from palm trees and they're sort of big fat formerly squiggly grubs that have been cooked in palm oil I might not have another but it's good to try one it's only a short stop but while we wait on board for cargo to be loaded or offloaded in this case plantains coming on and rice being taken off we've got time to spot some of the Amazon's unique Wildlife river dolphins there's a huge one right there we've stopped oh see those Dolphins we've stopped at a Confluence of rivers and there's slower moving water so that's why the Dolphins hang out here because there's fish oh look at them see them surfacing right there it's so strange that there's dolphins in a river isn't it [Music] wa here in the Peruvian Amazon there are two different species of dolphins most of the river dolphins here are the more commonly seen gray ones but we also get a couple of tantalizing glimpses of the unique and rarely seen pink river dolphin which is found only here in the Amazon oh there's a pink one pink out of nowhere a pink one right there as we travel down river most of the time we're surrounded by jungle but throughout the day we continue to pass a number of remote villages usually We Carry On by only stopping at the larger Villages where there's enough cargo to be taken on and off our boat so as to make stopping worthwhile this boat is actually flagging us down Mid River telling us they want to come on board the thing is with the smaller Villages they have to board while we're moving we don't stop for them they've got empty barrels and they want to put them on board send them to a ketos where they'll get filled with fuel or sugar cane rum or something and eventually they'll come back to this local Village all right that was a tricky Landing it's a real art form to come on board do this exchange all without stopping we are moving moving [Music] moving the languid pace of our boat the endless unchanging View and the heavy humid heat makes me and seemingly most other passengers on the boat really doy I sleep through the heat of the day for hours and wake up only just in time for dinner where dinner is okay what's for dinner we've got some rice there's a lone fried egg I think that might be mine I'm a little bit late for dinner looks like the chicken soup is all gone this man has to cook for 300 people sometimes in the small kitchen so this is impressive very nice gracias [Music] thank can't believe this spot isn't taken you can have dinner anywhere you want on this boat but this is the place for me [Music] having slept through much of the day I'm now wide awake and looking for some evening entertainment first things don't look promising but then I'm in luck yeah you want to show me okay at the back of the boat hidden behind some vegetable boxes I find the captain and crew playing poker a little Blackjack yeah one okay all right all right who's all right this is not how they do it in Vegas people cut the deck Captain cut the deck all right am I dealing this version of the game seems to be played one against one without face cards and from what I understand the rules are that you win if your cards add up closest to the maximum 21 okay four all right you know I didn't expect you guys to be so easy any up everybody I'm feeling [Music] lucky this is great you [Music] guys he's playing I'll match your five and I will raise you I think he's fluffing okay [Applause] 14 read it we read it we okay's go to say I always sleep better with a little fresh cash in my pocket sleep like a baby tonight first thing on what should be our final morning of the journey we wake up to something that I hadn't expected at all dense fog we must go in slowly otherwise maybe can crash with s bank you know so that's the reason we just leave the goat move by the current that's experience of the the boat driver yeah so we already left a day late and now this fog it probably means significant delays couple hours at least yeah or more maybe the way continue it could be another another day another day this is like the the definition of you have to go with the flow right yes it's a whole philosophy around this trip we've come into Shore again they're not comfortable being in the middle of the river because if you go in the middle is so fogy so you can be lost sometimes lost yeah lost not lost I mean can't you just go down river sometimes when you are not looking the bank you cannot see the direction yeah so I maybe you think that is maybe on the left you can go on the left but sometimes doing a circle maybe you can be going Upstream again this is getting more complicated so it's better we just stay close to shore close Shore not so faster so slowly no drama no no drama yeah okay we stay be calmed in the fog for a couple of hours or so but then the heat of the day gradually kicks in and the sun burns it off luckily we haven't been delayed too long and should still be able to reach a kidos tonight before we get there however our long journey down river has finally reached a pivotal moment and this river that we are living behind that is the mara river that river that you can see that is the ukali river we are exactly here in the Confluence of the two river that forms the mighty Amazon so this is it this is the spot this is where it begins officially yes uhhuh how far to the Atlantic about 2,000 Mi to the Atlantic Ocean unbelievable it's a huge amount of water I read somewhere that if you added up the next eight biggest rivers in the world all of the water in those Rivers it wouldn't equal the amount of water in the Amazon yes it's not make that it's [Music] astonishing the main reason for the extraordinary amount of water in the Amazon is of course rain the rainy season has just begun here the storm behind me may or may not catch up with us but if it does look out because when it rains here it pours as it turns out we escape the rain for now with just a few hours to go before we get to aitos I used the time to get up to speed with the city's remarkable history just over a century ago when it was at the center of the Amazon's rubber boom it's an amazing story a few rubber Barons it seems became incredibly Rich selling natural rubber to the world as the best quality rubber could only be obtained from trees growing in the Amazon the Region's rubber came to be worth a fortune once bicycles motorcycles and cars were invented all running on millions of rubber tires how ironic that today aitos is the biggest city in the world that you can't even drive to [Music] [Music] after so much time on the river I'm excited to almost be in a kidos another hour or so and we'll be docking and I want to figure out more about the rubber boom history here because after all that's why such a huge City exists in the middle of the jungle finally we see the lights of aitos in the distance remarkably despite being so isolated in the jungle hundreds of miles from the nearest connecting Road the great City we're about to arrive in has a population of around half a million [Music] people we are sliding right in threading the needle into this port these guys really know what they're doing [Music] landfall the ketos after quietly floating through the remote Amazon jungle for the past 3 days it's an astonishing contrast to be on the streets of aitos surrounded by crowded rock as nightlife oh yes10 me this sound of that rain it is pouring out but that I expect I am in the middle of the rain forest but what I didn't expect was what my hotel looks like I mean check this out this is rubber boom era money at its finest he's got these huge High ceilings and chandeliers and the tiling down here is gorgeous it's inside and outside and it was all imported from Europe at Great expense way back then but the real kicker is right here this bed as much as I loved my hamic on board was pretty happy to see this last night [Music] with its population of around 500,000 aitos today is bigger than ever but its Heyday was undoubtedly during the rubber boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries back in the old days when all the world's Motor Vehicles so badly needed the Amazon's natural rubber the kitos grew hugely wealthy from the rubber trade and today all the grandest and most beautiful buildings in aitos date back to that time I'm given a tour of the city's extraordinary rubber boom history by a local American expat Scott humfeld this is one of the more ornate buildings in aitos it's the colon company they were exporters and importers they exported Rubber and imported other things from Europe the building was made with tiles imported from Portugal and Italy yeah very intricate you know the intricate steel work uhhuh and now it's a grocery store it's a grocery store huh and a good one one of the better designed grocery store yeah An Elegant grocery store nearby on the main square is the city's most unusual rubber boom building the so-called iron housee said to have been designed by Gustav eiel in Paris it was assembled here in 1890 after being shipped piece by piece from Europe so you can see how this is indeed iron oh yeah and it's no longer a rubber Warehouse which the bottom was it's a pharmacy where they do sell rubbers but rubber had an incredible amount of uses from waterproofing to tires to gaskets and help allow the the Industrial Revolution to really take off so it's an incredible valuable product and at the beginning it was all here ESS all here yeah so that's why this whole region went yeah it was a huge boom a few people made a lot of money the rubber Barons would send their laundry back to Europe to be laundered because the river water is considered dirty here they would bring over canned foods from Europe because they weren't used to the fish and the other products that are eaten by the local people so they kept sort of their own version of Europe here rather than adapting to the local conditions maybe not all wise decisions I mean an iron house in this climate cool Hardy very hot the most famous of all the rubber Barons in aitos was Carlos Fitz caral who was the inspiration for the 1980s movie Fitz coraldo one of the interesting things about Fitz caral was he was looking for an area to tap rubber that hadn't been exploited beforehand and he knew of an area but it wasn't accessible by river that he knew of so what he did was he hauled his ship over a mountain in the movie they drag the entire ship over the mountain in real life he took the ship apart he enlisted a large number of indigenous people and by enlisted I mean he had rifles and threatened them with death and a number of people died in doing that but he was able to get the ship in pieces over the mountain and then from there he found a river route to bring the rubber down to a ketos where it was shipped out to Europe and the United States success I don't think the indigenous people would see it that way but for Fitz Carl it was and he made a fortune Carlos Fitzgerald was very wealthy but the richest rubber Baron in kitos was probably Julio Arana whose Anglo Peruvian Amazon rubber company was listed on the London Stock Exchange here we have ARA's Bank MH it's now the Amazon pastro which is a a French Belgian restaurant that was unusual right that one of the rubber Barons had his own bank I mean they didn't all have their own bank no I believe he's the only one that did have his own bank uh and he had it centrally located here on the waterfront area cuz this was where the rubber ships came in carrying the rubber from the outlying areas where it was collected putting it on the bigger ships to ship back to Europe into the United States this was a very busy area with boats coming and going all the time can this all be water we're still we're just at the beginning of the rainy season so the river is still low right now so water comes all the way up here water comes all the way up to the bottom of this wall today more than a 100 years after the rubber boom only a handful of the hundreds of Steamboats that once hauled rubber along the Amazon to and from aitos still survive thankfully Dr Richard bodmer an aidos space conservationist has helped preserve some of the last remaining steamboats he's turned one into a historic boats Museum this is a aapor uhhuh iur was built in uh Hamburg Germany in 1906 uhhuh what happened in the rubber boom is that the rubber Barons had so much money every time this boat would go out for one month collecting rubber it would come back with about $2 million in today's value in its Hull 2 million my gosh and so that's how lucrative it was so they were able to buy the top-of-the-line boats the best boats built none of this could have happened without the steamboat correct that's right none of this because the currents of the river are so strong that you couldn't go up River without the steamboats and when they first came in the 1850s everything changed here right and for the first time you can have commercial activities in Amazon the steamboats built EOS given the time of year we have to clamber down to where the aapa is beached in the mud but with the rainy season begun and the Amazon just starting its annual rise of more than 30 ft it won't be long before the area floods and the iura floats again this the whole Helm of the iur with many of its original features uhhuh over here we have a whole steam horn every time the I pool would come back to Port it would let everybody know that it's full of rubber and so they blow the horn please if you'd like to blow the horn give it a go here give it a [Music] go that's nice that's a nice sound sound of rubber money huh that's a rubber money so here's a little exhibit on the aapor you can see how they're loading up rubber onto the aore those are the rubber balls that's right they would weigh about 50 kg each and you'd put them in the hole of the boat because that's where you want the weight it's much uh fancier than I expected you know it's a working boat right I expected it to be a little bit more I don't know auster or something yeah it has been restored a little bit and this would have been the area actually where they would have kept the wood for the boiler that's why in the Amazon you find that towns are very evenly spaced those towns are evenly spaced because that was a collection point for the timber like getting their gas tanks refilled that's right so this whole room would have been filled with timber in order to make it to the next Point can't run out that's right if you run out that's uh what you call running out of steam yeah there you have it lots of working boats fed rubber to aitos in the world Beyond but the really hard work was done by The tappers Who collected the rubber out in the jungle here we can also see the different utensils used by the rubber tappers for example how they cut the trees here we have a few small rubber balls mhm given that the Amazon's indigenous tribes knew the forest better than anyone many were recruited as rubber tappers there was cases and especially on the pamaya River where atrocities were discovered against the indigenous people and it was on the putam Mayo where you had the rubber Baron around oh yes I've heard about him and there was a Canadian traveler hardenberg who went down the puto he discovered the employees of AR were mistreated indigenous people there you can see he's a photograph of indigenous people in shackles one they enslaved them and he reported whippings and actually burning people alive and killing people did it change anything peruvians investigated and the British investigated because the company was registered on the British stock Market ah when they investigated they had a court case in London the result of the court case was Julio Rano was found guilty but he was only find one penny Justice not served then I'm interested to hear the native people's side of the story early the next morning I meet up again with Scott who's taking me on a short boat trip from makitos to the nearby Bora Indian village of San Andre [Music] from makitos we head up River along the river Mamon a tiny tributary of the [Music] Amazon just half an hour or so after leaving a ketos we arrive at San Andres [Music] here's a small set of drums so we can announce to the village that we are arriving it's the polite way to do it we're here they know we're here as it turns out we're not the only visitors today benefiting from the proximity of aitos the bora make a decent living putting on dance shows for tourists who like us come to visit them from the big city [Music] [Applause] much enjoy the dancing very much hello much H hly H this is the the chief of the tribe Raphael rapael this is his son Walter Walter Raphael I'm interested in the rubber boom history I'm wondering if you could talk to me about that is there um any uh personal stories from um Rafael's great-grandfather or something that he might know for this was AR's man who did this and are there any rubber trees around here can I look at one [Music] what is rubber tree in the local language for hard to believe this is what it was all about all the blood liting was about this quiet white liquid that's dripping over here Liquid Gold it really is shocking to think how badly the indigenous people were abused during the short 30-year span of the rubber boom many thousands suffered and died today the beautiful old buildings of aitos are the rubber Baron's most obvious Legacy but for the all too many workers who were enslaved and abused to make the rubber Barons Rich the collapse of the rubber boom couldn't come soon enough the rubber boom ended in 1912 but the beginning of the end was some 35 years earlier when the British smuggled 70,000 rubber tree seeds out of the region they took them to Malaysia and started plantations now compared to here where trees were scattered all over the forest plantations were easy to manage and had a much bigger yield so it took a few few decades for those trees to mature but when they did the market here evaporated prices plummeted by 90% And the Amazonian rubber boom was over buildings like the one behind me never built again it's now time for me to move on from makitos for the last part of my Amazon River Adventure I've joined up again with conservationists and historic boat Enthusiast Dr Richard bodmer for an exp I deep into the remote heart of the Jungle where he's helping to conserve the Region's spectacular Wildlife from makitos we're heading a 100 miles or so back up River to the vast pakaya samiria National Reserve where we're joining Richard's research team on the Samia River at the mouth of the Samia River Richard's historic research vessel the clavo is waiting for us hola just hop off huh get on the cloud H nice to meet you these are my quarters I love all this wallpaper all right heading deep into the national Reserve [Music] built in France for the Peruvian Navy back in 1876 the clavo is incredibly historic originally used to explore and defend the country's Amazonian Frontier during the rubber boom today it's said to be the oldest boat still navigating the [Music] Amazon as the largest protected area of seasonally flooded Forest anywhere in the Amazon the pakaya samiria National Reserve is a vital refuge for many animal species that depend on this unique habitat around 50,000 indigenous people also live in the reserve allowed to hunt and fish on their traditional lands in return for helping co-manage and preserve the [Music] wildlife one such co-management project Richard is helping with is the conservation of the reserve's turtle population we'll check in with the park guard here uhhuh and arrange things for the release of the baby turtles have recently hunched from the artificial Beach that they have here from the Guard Station we collect nearly a thousand baby turtles that are now old enough to be released into the wild to take them up River to the designated release spot we're using the Cavo small launch [Music] so this is a good place to release the turtles okay so we can start yeah how do we do it might be easier to lift a whole bucket off okay should we do that we have a lot of turtles to release Here look at that oh they're excited so you go ahead and grab a turtle mhm and put in the water and it swims away there's over 900 of them yes big job 900 and 76 I think 976 they aren't hunted as adults are they in the past they were but now for the people to get involved with the turtle program they can no longer hunt the adults and they can no longer take the eggs if the local people are taking care of the environment are taking care of the endangered species on the forest then they're allowed to sell some of these baby turtles in the pet market and that gives them an economic incentive to do all that conservation it's been very successful for the local people and particularly successful for these River Turtles oh okay so in 8 years time these Turtles are going to start to reproduce and then you're going to have larger numbers here it's nice to have a good news environmental Story coming out of the Amazon I mean this is 976 little bits of potential swimming off into their future that's right each one baptized by Holly yeah [Music] [Music] it's the last morning of my trip through the Peruvian Amazon and I wake up to a spectacular site Swimming All Around the boat are lots of the rare and unique pink dolphins which I only got tantalizing glimpses of earlier in my trip the full jungle experience has really come to life you could hear the Dolphins rising and blowing and the birds are just everywhere it's truly amazing it's time to leave the Cavo behind to start my long return journey home but Richard says we've got one last chance to see some more pink dolphins back at the mouth of the Samia River there's often a lot of fish at the Confluence so it's a favorite place for the Dolphins to feed as it turns out we're really in luck oh there's another two oh yeah look at that oh my gosh they're beautiful oh look at that strange Behavior you see that tail how it's moving that's very rare very rare that's dolphin's maid and we only really see it at the mouth Feld during this season and you can see how they're just moving around the Tails coming up and they're rolling their bodies over there that's really interesting really rare to see what an unbelievable way to end my trip mating pink dolphins now there's something I wasn't expecting to [Music] see my journey down the Amazon has been kind of Epic first making it all the way to aitos then experiencing the jungle and all its crazy biodiversity and majesty and I've loved exploring the human drama last Century's rubber boom and in today's interface of people in the environment the Amazon is truly a unique place and I feel lucky to have gotten even a glimpse of it [Music]

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 653,530

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre)

Id: sQisJQgDv8Q

Length: 51min 13sec (3073 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 09 2024