Boca Do Valeria

Today, we arrived in Boca Do Valeria.

Billed as an opportunity to experience life in a genuine Amazonian indian village, Boca Do Valeria never fails to divide passengers. Throughout the year, there are about half a dozen or so cruise ships that stop by and visit the village, bringing gifts and 21st Century values and prejudices to an existence that, to all intent and purposes is quite basic. Or is it? When ships stop by, inhabitants from all the neighbouring villages drop what they are doing, switch off their satellite TV sets, pile the family into their small boats and congregate in Boca Do Valeria, dressing up their children in bright, traditional clothes and bringing art and craft to sell. A fair exchange, I think…

There are questionable elements to this, though, with children parading sloths that would rather be keeping themselves to themselves in a tree somewhere, and parakeets that have had their feathers pulled out to prevent them from flying away. The children hang around the bar that has been constructed for visitors expecting to be given free drinks and sweets (many passengers are happy to oblige whilst others, quite rightly, try to discourage them).

The natives are happy for you to take a guided tour of their homes, or have you take photographs of their children and pets, providing you cross their palms with a crumpled dollar. None of which feels like exploitation; or if it is, one might ask; who is it that is being exploited?…

Whatever ones feeling about the place (and there are some passengers who quite adamantly refuse to go ashore at all because they believe that is something inherently wrong in doing so), the uniqueness of the location cannot be denied.

For Tracey and myself, having visited there on 5 previous occasions, we have seen many subtle changes over the years. This year, the villagers have built some new wooden stalls from which to sell their crafts (which have also improved enormously over the years), and the practice of dozens of small boats crowding around Marco Polo’s stern, which we’ve always witnessed previously, was notable by it’s absence this time around.

I think new visitors to Boca Do Valeria are often slightly overwhelmed by the amount of attention they get from the villagers, particularly the children, when they first step ashore from the tender boat. Small hands reach out for you, and want to guide you through their village. Many passengers soon find themselves holding the hands of 3 or 4 children, all of whom are expecting some sort of payment for their apparent affection. People who have been to Boca Do Valeria before know to keep their hands high and out of the way, or in their pockets. Even without trying, however, Tracey and I found ourselves with two adopted teenage boys who stuck closely to us as we walked around their village taking photographs. In fairness to them, they weren’t too overbearing or clingy, and actually engaged in conversation with us. For the occasion in which they prevented us from stabbing ourselves on some sharp vegetation, for finding us a particularly interesting species of insect which they proudly held out on their hands for us, and for having a great sense of humour, we rewarded them at the end of our walk with a dollar each.

One of the highlights of every visit to Boca Do Valeria, as far as we are concerned, is a 30-minute, five-dollars-per-head, trip on one of their small boats, that never ceases to satisfy the craving for something more than crafts and giant fish on a lead. Our boat driver took us along small tributaries, to see homesteads some way from the busy hub of Boca Do Valeria, and was happy to slow down for photographs, or home-in on places that we found particulary interesting. Many of these small boat trips take passengers to another village, where they show you around their large new school, of which they are very proud; on this occasion, we didn’t do that part of the trip, but having seen it about three times before, we were perfectly happy not to.

Back at Boca Do Valeria, we had a refreshing drink in the bar and a final wander around the village before catching the tender boat back to the mothership.

Boca Do Valeria may divide people, but we rather like it, and look forward, hopefully, to visiting it again soon…