[jopperm2]

And now for the number one reason not to endorse eco-tourism...

After a long nap we went on an Indian Embarrassment tour. We hiked ten minutes through the jungle to a muddy clearing. Here the tour company had paid members of the once-fierce Yagua tribe to build a traditional communal house. It was fifty-foot long, twenty-foot high, loaf-shaped construction thatched all the way to the ground. It looked like a big pile of leaves. THere were no windows. The inside looked the the inside of a pile of leaces, too, sort of vegetable dirndls. They had streaked their faces with Max Factor, donned fish-bone and parrot feather necklaces, and stuck Indian-type things in their hair. THe women covered thir breasts with something that resembled a large baby's bib, made of cotton and not, I think , part of the original Yagua dress code.

We were supposed to "trade" with the Yagua. The tour-company brochure had been firm on this point. We were encouraged to bring "trade items" such as clothing, fish hooks, pocketknives, and the like. But er weren't supposed to try to give the Yagua money. "Money is not of much use on the river" said the brochure in a palpable untruth. We consulted among ourselves and discovered we'd all brought stupid T-shirts. I'd gone to my local gun-nut store and gotten some with big Stars and Stripes across the fronts and mottoes such as TRY TO BURN THIS FLAG, <expletive>! The yagua brought balso wood carvingd and decorated gourds and various items of jewelry from parts of animals that hadn't been, our brochure was careful to assure us, killed or anything like that. "they do not kill animals for this purpose," said the brochure, "but use the leftovers from their kitchen."

The Yagua were bored. So, for that matter, were we. Michael grew up on the Texas border and speaks Spanish, or used to. He said his vocabualry had evaporated with years of living in New York and using his Spanish for nothing byt readint the cigarette and hemorrhoid medication ads on the subway. Maichael told a half-dozen small Yagua children that Tom and Susan and Shelly and I were "bestias--no humanos." He said the could tell because we were so big and old and still could not speak one word they could understand. We came from a frightening place with little bitty rivers ("poquitos mini-rios"). It was very far away and filled with T-shirts. And we ate--nouns failed him--cigarettes and hemorrhoid medication.

One man had pulled out all the stops in the authentic-dress business. He had a grass skirt so elaborate that he was lucky he hadn't been declared an endangered ecosystem from the waste down. The old man produced an wight-foot blowgun and some darts made from thin wooden splinters as long as a hand, with little cotton wool wrapped around one end and the other end dipped in a poison frog--devil's Q-Tips. The blowgun itself was crafted from a think, rule-straight sabling that had been split and hollowed and bound back together with rattan. The old man took the blowgun, aimed it at a tree, and missed six times. Tom said he'd like to try and hit the tree on first puff. Then we were truly embarrassed. I only hope the Yaguas cheated us hugely on the
T-shirt deals. As we left, the children lined up and waved happily "iAdios, no humanos!"

We walked around the corner to where thej INdians really lived--in wood and tin houses like everyone else. A radio playing mariachi music was hooked up to a car battery. They were all wearing stupid T-shirts.

That about sums it all up for me. From what I have heard, no matter how satirical his narrative is, Mr O'Rourke hits the nail on the head with this one.