By Rich Chiappone
Special to the Homer Independent Press
Who knew vacations could be such hard work? Just getting from Homer to the Akuani River Lodge in Eastern Colombia meant a drive to Kenai, five plane flights, a day and a half trapped in noisy, crowded airports, (Airport food! Gack!), overnight stays in Miami and Bogota, and a four-hour boat trip in an Amazon Rain Forest downpour that felt like God’s firehose. Knowing that the U.S. State Department classifies the entire country of Colombia as level 3 (Reconsider Travel), and the areas bordering Venezuela as level 4 (Do Not Travel) didn’t help. The particular stretch of the 1,200-mile-long Orinoco River we were fishing IS the border with Venezuela.
All of which begs the question: why would I travel 5,000 miles to catch fish and release them again? Bear in mind, I live a couple hundred yards from Kachemak Bay. I can practically see fish from my living room window.
Well, there are fish, and there are fish. And the fish of the Orinoco are a teensy bit more exotic than the average salmon or halibut. They include the ostentatiously green and gold peacock bass and the ferocious payara, sometimes called “vampire fish,” that look like monsters from under Jack Skellington’s bed.
Peacock bass! Vampire fish! For a guy who grew up fishing for bullheads, carp and eels in the fetid Niagara River of my youth, any fish with the words “peacock” or “vampire” in their name is worth crossing the globe and ignoring the State Department for.
Never mind that U.S. Army Special Forces had just extracted the President of Venezuela, and that Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro looked like he might be the next winner of a free trip to the U.S. For all I knew there could be angry mobs in the streets of Bogota brandishing signs denouncing “Imperialist Fly Fishing Dogs!” Who cared about little things like leftist rebels, narco-terrorists or CIA drone strikes? Hah. I made jokes about anacondas, piranha, poison frogs. My wife was philosophical, pointing out that, whatever happened to me, I wasn’t going to die young. “That ship has sailed,” she said, helpfully.
* * *
My three Alaskan fishing friends and I settled into our digs at the Akuani lodge high on a bedrock bluff overlooking the Vichada River, a tributary of the Orinoco. My old trout fishing pal Dave C. and I took one of the palapa style sleeping cabins, John B. and his wife Lynda the other. The huts had no glass on their large window openings, so, obviously no air conditioning. That was fine. Nights were comfortably cool despite the murderously hot day temps of the South American summer. It was the lack of screens that worried me. I ran my hand over the flimsy fabric of the mosquito netting covering our beds, imagining a horde of giant jungle insects carrying me off in the night. Would I ever be able to sleep?
No problem. After eight hours standing in a canoe under the merciless equatorial sun, I could’ve fallen asleep at a Dyscopians band practice.
We quickly got used to fishing lodge life, learning to give the green tree frog in the toilet time to hop out before peeing, and coming to appreciate the cold showers. Talented Portuguese chef, Andrew, prepared delicious, but very fussy, meals served in the common dining hall. Boxed lunches taken out in the boats with us each day were equally excessive, including roast beef or pork chops and mashed plantains. Again, too fancy for a shore lunch. By midweek, I would’ve traded a fly rod for a sandwich of mortadella and capicola from Alasandro’s Market.
For the first two days we fished in lagoons isolated from the river during the “dry” season when water levels are lowest. We could see the highwater line of stained leaves on the shoreline trees 20 feet or more above us indicating the levels common during the “wet” months of nearly constant rain when the rivers flood through the jungle for miles on each riverbank.
Fishing was great, and we caught two species of peacock bass, among the most beautiful freshwater gamefish in the world: numerous small “mariposa” or butterfly peacocks in the 2-to-4-pound range, and a handful of much bigger Temensis species in the 10-to-15-pound range.
On the third day, we took a break from fishing the lagoons and headed down the Vichada River and onto the much larger Orinoco. Our destination was the Maipure Rapids where the mysterious and horrid looking payara fish live. Dave decided to ride the last mile or so in a 20-foot Lund skiff piloted by the local indigenous Kurripaco chieftain or “jefe.” The skiff was much faster than the boat the rest of us were seated in and shot ahead of us and into the rapids with Dave and the jefe’s two boys onboard. I was horrified to see it suddenly veer broadside in the rapids and flip over, hurling all of them into the river. The last thing I saw as they disappeared around a curve and out of sight was the red hull of the skiff, belly up to the sky, the heavy outboard engine pulling it down into the boulder garden below.
All my hyperbolic jokes about the dangers of the Orinoco — giant snakes, malaria, cartel gangsters, etc. — suddenly seemed as silly as they were. The real threat was the river itself.
Our boatman swerved to shore above the rapids, and we piled out and ran along the bank, convinced we’d lost Dave. A quarter mile downstream we found him and the jefe and his two sons staggering out of a big eddy, soaked, but alive and well. It was a joyous moment, though not one I’d care to ever repeat.
When nerves were calm once again, we settled into the spike tent camp there at the rapids, ate some lunch, and rigged our heaviest fly rods with sinking line and wire leaders that could withstand the fearsome teeth of the vampire fish. Then, with everyone alive and accounted for, we did what we traveled so far to do. We went fishing.
Rich Chiappone is the author of five books, including the Homer based novel “The Hunger of Crows.” His next Homer novel, “Killing Alaska,” will be released in January 2027.
Leave a Reply