#pirahnas

Amazon, 1995, traveling with my life-long friend Jon, the Priest.

We’ve met up with three missionaries from the UK in Manaus, Brazil and the five of us have hired a small boat to travel up the fingerling irapes of the Amazon.

The captain, his wife and child are on their boat with us as we park on the Rio Negro where the water looks like chocolate milk. We board a dugout canoe and float out into the river where we fish successfully for piranha. We're using a rudimentary fishing line of jute twine with a sizable hook knotted at the end, which we’re baiting with chunks of raw beef. The piranha lie in wait just beneath the surface, and hit the beef more often than the hook, as soon as the bait drops below the surface into the murky water. If you jerk up the line, the piranha will more likely than not, flip into the boat and go skittering the length of the canoe, with their teeth snapping. We all instinctively lift our feet and the youngest missionary, Philip, sitting at the back of the canoe carefully grabs the tail and flips the fish back out in to the river. This is not difficult fishing, every drop is a hit, sometimes several fish come up on the bait even though it’s only been seconds.

Once we tire of fishing, we return to the boat and everyone decides to go swimming. This is INSANE. We’ve just fished less than 50 feet away, for piranhas which we know are plentiful, and fast. I question the logic, everyone shrugs and jumps in the water. Jon laughing at my caution, pretends to be an injured animal flailing in the water. His brother has just died at 35 so I caution him, I’m not calling his mom to say that he’s died of stupidity. No one is killed, and everyone is calling for me to join them. With every fiber of my being, I know this is a bad idea, but, the Amazon basin is hot. Really hot and really humid. Hot and humid enough that you feel like your head will explode, and while you're there, you think that maybe it’s okay to be eaten by fish.

I close my eyes, I hold my breath and jump. It’s about a 6 foot drop from the deck to the water and I drop below the surface far deeper than I intend to. I keep my eyes shut as I pull my way to the surface, trying mot to panic. Can fish sense fear? I can feel things moving past me in the water, or I imagine I can. Later we will visit a museum which shows the myriad creepy animals that live in the Amazon that can easily kill you.