Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the travel from the joint report and the materials of his confidential communications to
Baron Rio Branco. He would later have a broader mediation and policy prescription for
ousexperienceofthediscoveryofthe
varadouro
betweenthePurúsandtheUcayaliwas
transformative for him.
From here forward, the channel begins to inflect to the south and continues in two almost impercept-
iblecurvesforaboutakilometer. . .thensuddenlyitenlargesintoitslastimpound,anirregularcircle
about 30 meters in diameter, deep, excavated from the hard scree of the river terraces. The great river
expands at exactly the moment when the explorer imagines it to be ever more strangled between the
river cliffs, bifurcating and diminishing at the final sources of the headwaters. Imagine yourself end-
ing up at this diminutive lake, and how above arches the clear and open sky, this after emerging from
the half shadows of the Pucani. One has at first the impression of arriving at the culminating point
of one's travels. But this is not a foothill of the Andes, nor yet a knoll whose proportions one might
exaggerate after advancing across 3200 kilometers of almost invariable flatness. Encountering this
rise, one most notes the clearing for a trailhead, about a meter wide, sharply inclined, at a slope of 28
degrees.
It is the
varadouro
.
At its edge are four
tambo
s of paxiuba palm, which is what the
papiris
, or palm huts of Amazonia,
are called here, where people take shelter and store rubber and trade goods. All around are strewn
empty tins of every kind of canned food, bits of tools, tatters, all scattered widely about, indicating
the stopovers of a regular and constant trade. The
varadouro
begins in a southern direction on a steep
hill, but in five minutes ofenergetic ascent one arrives at the highest point—the parting ofthe waters,
the
divortum aquarum
, of two of the largest rivers on earth,
Unfortunately the forest canopy limits the view and doesn't help one, at that point, to take in the
surrounding lands. One just notes that that unimpressive mound, with a relative height of maybe 50
meters, reigns over all the places below it: the Purús to the northeast, the Sepauá and the Urubamba
to the west, and the farthest tributaries of the Madre de Dios rising to the southeast.
From there continuing always to the south to the Sepauá valley are the farthest branches of the
Ucayali. The slippery clay soil with its superficial polish reveals the effects of constant dragging of
ubás
over the land. Except for the cutting of one or two trees, one does not see evidence of the min-
imum effort necessary for conserving and maintaining such a critical passage. At occasional points
some logs are aligned for an imperfect rustic bridge, or to correct the unevenness of the land, and
over six erosion gulches some randomly felled trees served as precarious bridges, requiring alert and
careful crossings. The descent is much longer than the ascent on the Pucani side, and is completed
by crossing three large flats separated by narrow and deep ravines. In half an hour one can travel the
entire
varadouro
of some 1.5 kilometers. Rectifying the distances of the undulating lands against the
horizon, one sees that the distance that separates these enormous watersheds is less than a kilometer.
This escapes the scales of most maps. The Purús and the Ucayali are almost united at that point, a
place from which they embrace a fifth of Amazonia, in an unmeasured expanse of the continent that
completely takes in the basins of the Tefé, Coari, Juruá, Jutaí, and Javari. . . .
Consideringourmap,youcanseethatthesametraveler,inthesameboat,cantodayinaveryshort
time pass from the waters of the Purús to those of the Ucayali through the Isthmus of Sepauá, and
from this to the Madre de Dios via the Isthmus of FitzCarrald, thus completely resolving all the dis-
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