Snakes And Smelly Armpits Lots Of Things Will Kill You Before Amazon Headhunters Do

Certain things in life you only do once, and wandering deep into the Amazon rain forest to hang out with “headhunters” is one of them.

I arrived in the small town of Leticia (where Brazil, Colombia and Peru intersect) looking for some jungle adventure. A local tour guide said he wouldn’t take me deep into the jungle because he makes more money shlepping wealthy adventure tourists to Monkey Island, a tiny isle a few hours up the Amazon sporting a “jungle lodge” with every modern convenience.

He told me the Monkey Island “natives” will shed their T-shirts and Reeboks for traditional costumes and let the adventure tourists take their pictures for $5 a shot. This didn’t sound like quite the adventure I was looking for.

I wanted to rent a boat and head up the Amazon by myself, but the gas alone for a week-long trip would be almost $400, way out of my price range. And it required at least that much gas to get well past Monkey Island and into virgin jungle. As luck would have it, Peter, from Denmark, and Claudia, from Germany (the only other travelers in town) decided - after several hours of persuasion - to join me and split the cost.

After considerable bargaining, we landed a week’s boat rental and gas for $500. The boat owner insisted that a driver come along for security - not ours, the boat’s - and to fix the motor if things went wrong. He gave us a map that looked like a used McDonald’s placemat and pointed to a few spots where we might run into Jaguar Indians and possibly some headhunters. He wished us luck and walked away.

After eight hours trolling up the Amazon in our 50-horsepower wide-body dugout canoe, we made a right turn onto a tributary, the Ataquari, and stopped at a jungle village. We were greeted by a swarm of people who not only wore T-shirts but entire Umbro soccer outfits.

The village was called “7th of October,” the date of a revolution no one seemed to remember. From what I could tell, the 7th of Octoberian men played soccer all day while the women farmed, cooked and took care of the children. You might think the men got off easy, but playing soccer wasn’t all they did. They also played volleyball.

While Claudia helped the women prepare “yucca,” which tasted like it sounds, Peter and I (both a head taller than the tallest villager) set a new 7th of October record for volleyball spikes.

The following day, some Octoberians took us on a jungle hike in exchange for a bag of rice. This was a great opportunity to try out my machete. At first, I thought the object was to take a swing at every branch I passed. After 30 minutes, my arm was too tired to cut anything, so I just ducked under the branches like the Octoberians, who’d figured this out long ago. They also wore snake-proof boots. We didn’t. Every step through the chest-high grass was like playing a round of Russian roulette; we would die from any snake bite before we could get back to the hospital in Leticia.

Before leaving for the next village, we gave the Octoberians several bags of salt as a token of thanks. You’d have thought we were handing out gold nuggets. They fought over every grain, then said a tearful goodbye and asked us to come back soon. And by the way, they warned, beware of headhunters up river.

We made it as far as a village called El Sol (The Sun), where we were greeted by people who were, for the most part, naked. Well, they didn’t exactly greet us; they just stood there and stared as if we were space aliens. We didn’t really know what to say. “Hey, you must be the headhunters!” We just started handing over bags of salt and rice until the chief stepped forward and offered us a place to sleep.

Except for the chief, the Solians only spoke Cetchua. At first, the chief thought we were spies, then missionaries. He couldn’t understand why we’d come all the way up to El Sol for no apparent reason. He wasn’t the chief for nothing.

He said we were the first whites to visit the village, which explains why the villagers were always watching us. I mean, always. A small crowd watched us eat and sleep. People followed us to the toilet, which in the rain forest is anywhere you please. They kept asking us, via the chief, to tell them about the Amazon village we were from.

We told them that in our village there are buildings many times taller than their tallest tree, the most popular activity is sitting in front of a box, and some villagers eat sour cream and onion “yucca” until they’re too big for their hammocks.

The next day, after catching some piranha with a simple fishing pole, we went swimming right in the same place! I was a bit apprehensive about this. On one hand, I’d been sweating myself to sleep for four days and smelled like a barn animal. On the other hand, this seemed like an incredibly stupid thing to do. But the chief said as long as I wasn’t bleeding or thrashing around, there was nothing to worry about. Unless, of course, there was a crocodile in the vicinity.

On the fifth day, the chief assigned a man to take us hunting - with 5-foot blowguns and darts laced with lethal poison. We put on all available clothing to protect us from jungle hazards; our guide was not wearing shoes or pants. Before setting out, he painted our faces. After cutting up some red tree roots, he mixed the sap with saliva and smeared the goo on our cheeks and foreheads. There were no mirrors around, but I imagined myself looking like a fierce jungle warrior. Or a typical Washington Redskins fan.

We cut our way through the dense jungle for several hours. Despite all efforts, we made too much noise to get within the same zip code as any wild animal. My third-grade spit-ball skills proved useful, however. Using the blowgun, I believe I wounded three yucca plants.

That evening, the chief hosted a party for us, complete with drums and a handmade flute. Peter ran out of cigarettes and slipped into a funk. Everyone else got drunk on cheecha - fermented corn juice that tastes worse than sucking beer out of a sponge at a fraternity house.

One of the villagers had a bit too much to drink and, about 3 a.m., decided to play what I could only guess was a really funny Amazon headhunter joke. He woke me up by touching the blade of his machete to my nose and screaming like a pig passing a kidney stone. As you can imagine, this is not an ideal way to wake up, even compared to some early morning DJs. After screaming for about five minutes, he wandered off and, hopefully, fell into the river and was eaten by a crocodile.

We left for Leticia the next morning with our heads still firmly attached. The chief never mentioned anything about headhunting and we never got up the nerve to ask.

We were quite frank about our accomplishments; in six days we’d achieved in the field of social anthropology what Anna Nicole Smith has achieved in the field of rocket science. But we had succeeded in seeing some untouched rain forest, experienced genuine Amazon culture, and handed out more salt than the Culligan Man.