THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

PERU - AMAZON
Despite the picture painted by numerous TV documentaries, the Amazon is not one single river. It's a
collection of many rivers across several countries spread out like a vast tree root, channelling rain water
from a huge swathe of tropical rain forest to the west of the Andes, all of which empties into the Atlantic
Ocean via one huge outflow which is the River Amazon close to Macapa in Brazil.
In rod and line fishing terms, few
people actually fish the Amazon itself.
It's too wide, too deep, and often too
murky. Most Amazonian angling is
done on the smaller tributaries outside
the rainy season which causes the area
to flood, and in that regard, my
Amazonian experiences are no
different.
Dawn Williams battling a Pacu
We initially flew in to Lima in Peru,
and from there on to the old Inca
capital of Cuzco up in the high Andes
where the plane door was left open on
the small runway for passengers to get
on and off.
That was my first taste of high altitude. As the door was opened, it sucked all the pressurised air out of
the planes cabin, and not being acclimatised, for around half an hour or so we sat there gasping for
breath. Then it was on to the low altitude small jungle frontier town of Puerto Maldonado on the
Tampobata River close to the Bolivian border to be picked up by our guides Marcel Gondenneau and
German Valazquez De Silva.
Though we didn't know it at the time, German was a newly retired admiral, and had been chief of
military staff to the Peruvian government, a fact that would only become apparent later on. For despite
being well inland over on the far side of the Andes, because of its geographical position, and with rivers
being the only navigable highways in the region, Puerto Maldonado had a naval base from which crews
in small boats would patrol looking for drug smugglers, and everywhere we went with German, sailors
would inexplicably stop, stand to attention, and salute.
Puerto Maldonado is a sprawling ramshackle town with small compacted soil roads, market stalls, and
lots of motor cycles which are used by everybody, even as taxi's. There were also a few battered old tuc
tuc's, plus the occasional car, but not that many. This is frontier gold prospecting territory, and later, we
were to see many prospectors working along the river itself.
Everywhere there seemed to be little kiosks trading gold, which was bought and sold by weight. I bought
my wife a pair of gold ear rings with pearls from mussels taken from the local river, and again these
were sold by weight. But more importantly, because of the isolation of where we were ultimately
headed, my brother-in-law Eric wanted to buy some beer and spirits, which despite all the small bars,
in the market area was difficult to find.
Wading through stalls stacked with live fish, strange fruits, and cactus pads, we eventually found an
'off license'. The down side was that this made us a couple of hours late in getting away aboard a large
outboard powered canoe laden with fuel, food, and other supplies for our base nearly a hundred miles
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