The Orinoco River is the colour of milky coffee. My kayak glides by thatched huts, hung with hammocks that sway and bulge with shifting limbs. Evidence of settlement disappears and moriche palms, their trunks a wall of grey, shadow my winding route. Vast carpets of grass and leaves creep out from the bank on a mission to cover the river. The vegetation army crawls forth; oldest members shore up defences, while bright young leaves endeavour to stay upright as they crowd into the current. Chirps, twitters and screeches accompany me from dawn to dusk. The bright yellow head of razor snake looks alertly left and right as it wriggles its way across the river.
The twists and turns of the river isolate me from my tour group. A brave explorer of the Venezuelan waterways, I am gloriously alone, like the courageous hunter described by Luis, our indigenous Warao guide, in his rendition of the tribe’s beginnings as People of the Sky.
The hunter in the land in the sky shot down a magnificent bird and discovered a hole blasted where the dead bird fell. Through the opening, he saw green land far below teeming with animals and veined with sparkling waterways. He tied a long rope to a tree, sent the rope through the hole and descended to paradise. The hunter invited his community to the new world, so one by one the tribe climbed down the rope. A pregnant tribe member inserted her bottom through the hole but got stuck and blocked the route to paradise forever.
“Pregnant women are cursed,” Luis said.
“Cursed with children,” said Thor, the guide from our hostel, eliciting a chuckle from Luis, me and the three boys also on the tour.
Warao means the ‘Boat People’ and Luis gets an opportunity to demonstrate his proficiency with the canoe. I slip my paddle inside my kayak and eat an energy bar while admiring a falcon perched in a tree. The boat jolts slightly, wobbles, then rocks. A vigorous current has captured my kayak. I seize my paddle, too late, and careen around a bend into a tangle of vines. The current spins me sideways so the stern as well as the bow is trapped in the tree’s clutches. The two boys in a double kayak shout and I glance over my shoulder. Their kayak speeds straight toward me. Thump! Their bow slams into mine, then they drift parallel. Arms flail as they try to fight the vines off; I duck the swinging paddles, shouting, “Luis!” The boys brace their paddles against my kayak and thrust.
I nearly flip into the water. Fuming, I sweep their paddles off my kayak so they tip toward me. We glare at each other. Luis paddles back up the river in a few strokes and machetes us free of the tangle.
The next day I start early to escape the clumsy boys. I am still alone when the sonorous growls begin, like a horde of giants arguing high above the riverbank. Butterflies fill my belly. I drift like a leaf, innocuous. Finally I spy the tiny brown lumps that are creating the din – howler monkeys perched in a line along a palm branch, a reminder of last night’s campfire discussion about cultural taboos. After a tribe member dies, the Warao place the body inside a canoe, deep in the jungle. They believe the dead person becomes a mammal of the jungle, hence the taboo on hunting mammals – they may be harming one of their ancestors. I imagine the howler monkeys as reincarnations of the ancestors most skilled at arguing and blustering.
Their howls fade as I navigate around a bend. A young girl waves from the lone hut shading the riverbank so I paddle over.
“Jakera,” I say and she replies with the same Warao greeting. She offers me some of the river bean pods piled on a mat in front of her. We chew in silence together then I ask her in Spanish what else she has on her mat. The girl holds up a silver fish about the size of my hand.
“Lunch,” I say. She nods then shows me what looks like sugar cane.
“Heart of palm,” she says.
“Moriche?”
“Of course.” She glances back up the river then rises from her cross-legged position with a grin. Luis leads the rest of our bold explorers over to the riverbank and greets the girl, “Sister.” We join her for lunch.
After the meal, my kayak is a little tight around my belly but the route to paradise is still wide open, so I paddle off, into the Orinoco.