Yura village, Cashpajali River, Manu National Park. Have probably been in Manu for a day or two. Finally arrived at the Cashpajali village late in the afternoon, just as evening was setting in. This is probably the most isolated area that I have ever been in. Strange arrival, too. As usual, I was lagging behind, slogging back and forth across the river (flowing downward now, as we passed the "divortium aquarium" sometime yesterday). Early in the morning I had asked the Yura when would we arrive, and as usual, they pointed at a spot on the horizon and said, "When the sun gets there." The only trouble was, they had been saying that since yesterday. The sun had already gotten there and then gone away, and then the moon had come up and then the sun again. We passed another rubber camp this morning, as well as an old Yura village that still had stumps where their houses had rested on stilts. The Yura really seem to know this area well, and their pace has quickened.

In the afternoon, we finally came across what they called the Cashpajali river. I knew then that no matter what happened, if I just followed this river, the Indian village lay at its base, where the Cashpajali joined the Manu River. For most of the afternoon, I walked by myself -- the Yura were long gone and were eagerly looking forward to the food that was sure to be offered in the village. Funny how relative everything is. Jose and I were so thirsty at one point yesterday that we were dreaming of entering a Yura village and being given big gourds of masato, a fermented manioc gruel made by women who masticate the root, then spit it out into a pot. It's actually a pretty good drink, and Jose and I must have drunk three or four gourdfuls when we finally got to the village today.

In any case, hour after hour I kept walking, not bothering to try and find the jungle "short cuts," but simply following the river around its winding bends. The sun sank lower and lower, and still, no sign of a village, footprints or any sign of life. Finally, as dusk was arriving and it was getting hard to see, I looked ahead and saw an Indian sitting in a canoe and looking at me over his shoulder. An Indian whom I had never seen before.

I walked up and stopped, and the Indian said the standard greeting, "Ma mee oowee mun?" ("You have come?").

I replied, "Yes, I have come," and then I put my pack in the canoe and we pushed off. So strange! About a half an hour later, we arrived at the village, which was set high up on the river bank. I noticed a band of people waiting there up on the bluff, silently watching. Feeling nervous and not knowing where the others were, I walked up, noticing that there were only men and that the women and children were nowhere to be seen. (They were hiding.) I walked up to the group of men, and there was an old man with red achiote paste in his hair, and a string of white beads through his nose and hanging on each side of his cheeks back to his ears.

The men looked at me silently. I knew that they had seen white people before, but certainly never one who showed up on a canoe coming down the Cashpajali River. I said simply, "Mer oowee" ("I've come"), and the old man said, "You have come, yes?" Just at that moment, someone threw a gourd of water from one of the houses on stilts so that it splashed to the ground. Knowing that they had had problems with diarrhea since their contact, I quickly said, "Cheesoo, ichapa mun!?" ("Boy, there's a lot of diarrhea around here!?")

The old man looked at me, as did the other men, then looked at me some more, then finally said very slowly, "Cheesoo ichapa mun?" and began to laugh. The old man said the phrase again and laughed some more, then the whole group began laughing and repeating the absurd comment over and over.

So that was it. A weak scattological joke and I became an instant hit. Billy Crystal couldn't have done it any better. In a heartbeat, I was offered a hammock, a gourd of fermented masato (delicious), and a plate of boiled wacawa (a 100-lb. catfish). The one thing that I will say for the Yura is that they love a good laugh -- even from a stranger who comes out of the middle of nowhere.