Extreme Fishing (22 page)

‘Are you sure it’s safe to swim here? What about piranha, caiman or other predators?’

‘Trust me, it’s fine. No one has ever come to any harm,’ he says.

‘In you get,’ says Jamie. My tummy groans, mimicking my emotions. I could really do with giving this experience a miss. I dive in wearing my pants and shirt. I wish I had worn
trousers. Everyone says swimming with dolphins is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and it probably is if you don’t have Igor throwing sardines and sending them into a feeding frenzy with me in
the middle. They thrash the water, violently butting me out of the way. One nuts me square on in the chest; it’s like being at a Newcastle game with my dad. Another takes a bite at my leg.
Referee! He nips my thigh and his friend leaps at me again, so I take a swing and bash him on the pecker. This is supposed to be a life-affirming experience with gentle creatures that heal your
soul, but they’re more like a bunch of Sunderland supporters. But then again, I can’t entirely blame them for wanting to take a pop at me – it’s like someone crashing your
Sunday lunch and jumping up and down on your Yorkshires. If someone did that to me I’d butt them in the chest, too.

I am furious with Igor and Jamie. I want to kill both of them. What fucking expert puts someone in the water with a bunch of dolphins at feeding time? Haven’t I learnt anything from making
this show? Never trust a contributor who says they’re ‘an expert’ when they blatantly are not. It’s like a bloke who feeds ducks in the park sometimes calling himself an
ornithologist. Jamie loves the commotion – ‘It’s TV gold, Robson. TV gold!’ – and my vanity perks up. I waterboard her into submission and refocus on being angry.
However, my ire doesn’t last long – my bottom is in charge once more. I leg it back to the hotel.

Countless explosions later I drown my sorrows in a bottle of wine. It’s going down so well that I have another few glasses. The crew joins me, then I remember I have to be up at 3 a.m. to
film at 4 a.m. and it’s now 11 p.m. I sink another glass and stagger to bed.

After three and half hours’ sleep I feel like hell but the sunrise a few hours later is so spectacular that the lack of rest and the raging hangover evaporate. It’s
far better than the nitrous oxide I used to inhale on the set of
Casualty
most mornings before work. Everyone looks like a bag of shit. Mike is monosyllabic and stooped with morning
grumpiness, like the troll under the bridge. We head out. We are going to find a peacock bass and we’re not coming back until we have.

Three hours later we have nihil, nada, nichts. My patience is worn through, like my bottom, and the red mist starts to rise . . . and wham! I get a bite, but I lose the fish. This happens
several times. Finally, another flipping three hours later, I get a bite and this time I bring home the bass – it’s a two-and-a-half-pound speckled peacock bass. Other subspecies
include the three-bar, popoca and butterfly, which have different markings but they all share one detail in common: on their tail fin is the eye found on a peacock’s feather. The theory is
that predators think that’s the front end and attack, and the bass is able to escape, perhaps with a damaged tail, but with his life. This speckled fish is eating size so we’re going to
keep him. Mike and I tuck in back at the hotel. The bass is seasoned and grilled and it tastes delicious. We’re behind with the schedule, though, so after shovelling up lunch the crew and I
need to get a move on to our next RV point.

Fitzcarraldo

I take one look at the steamboat and want to run. It’s exactly like the one in Werner Herzog’s epic movie
Fitzcarraldo
, where this mad Caruso-loving
wannabe rubber baron with delusions of grandeur tries to get a steamboat over a mountain and everyone suffers or dies.

Jamie is morphing into Fitzcarraldo with the scale of his extreme ambition. He’s not going to take me with him. This boat is meant to be our floating hotel for the next four days. I look
around and it is immediately clear we have a major problem.

‘Jamie, can I have a word?’

He comes over.

‘I just want you to know that there is no way I am sleeping in this rat-infested, drug-smuggling, sailor-spunked-up gambling brothel on water. I wouldn’t have a dog in it. It’s
disgusting. Even Craig agrees it’s terrible and he’s from New Zealand.’

Once again I get on the phone to the production manager and Helen Nightingale.

‘I’m not travelling on this vessel. It’s not river-worthy, for a start, and whatever’s happened on this boat – let’s just say I don’t think they missed
out a sin. The marks of all seven are here and some have been done to death.’

‘But it’s the only boat available in the area,’ says Helen on the phone and Jamie in unison in my ear.

The captain comes to see what the commotion is about. He couldn’t look dodgier if he’d spent six hours in make-up, fraternising with Abu Hamza. And then there is Arianna. Dear, sweet
Arianna, the cook who comes with the vessel – a podgy twenty-eight-year-old with a pretty face and an eagle eye for the fellas. She winks and smiles at me saucily and when that is ignored I
find her staring at me, communicating with her twinkling eyes that she wants to ride me like Seabiscuit. I am not alone in this strange compliment – she wants Craig, Peter and Jamie as well.
She wants us all.

Having no other choice, we set off on HMS
Shitpit
. I take the diary camera around the rooms of this floating hovel with its sweat-ridden beds, stained sheets and toilets to rival the one
in
Trainspotting
. The engine is like an MRI scanner and we’ve got to sail five hours into the night to Jaraua. The sun is setting and I film a piece to camera: ‘Well, this is as
bad as it gets . . .’

Suddenly there is a klaxon. It sounds again. We all look panicked. What’s happening? People are boarding the boat. Suddenly we are eyeballing half a dozen soldiers pointing large guns at
us. We put our hands up and they want to know who we are, what we’re doing. They want our paperwork. They arrest the captain of the boat, who is led away in handcuffs. The vessel is not
seaworthy and they are not happy with his documents. We are ordered to leave the boat immediately so we grab our stuff as quickly as possible and start to pile it up on the bank. When the last of
our bags are unloaded one of the soldiers pulls up the anchor and sails the boat away. Another smiles, waving.

‘Welcome to Brazil!’ he shouts.

We are left stranded on the riverbank, the sun setting, wondering what the hell we are going to do now.

A little way up the bank is Arianna, surrounded by all her pots, pans and utensils, which, by the way she’s looking at us, she doesn’t just like to use for cooking.

‘I’m not going to leave you,’ she says reassuringly.

She grabs my hand roughly and looks at it: Are you married?’

‘Yes, happily.’

‘Cabrão. Cabrão!’

‘What?’

‘I believe it’s Portuguese for bastard,’ says Peter coolly.

I can’t confirm this as our translator, Alessandra, is tucked up in a hotel in Manaus because Helen Nightingale doesn’t think a boat, with all us boys, is the right place for a young
lady. Looking at Arianna we all strongly disagree – we need her here to protect us.

Jamie is straight on the satellite phone to Alessandra to work out a way of getting to our destination. But Craig, Peter and I have other ideas of getting the fuck back to
Manaus and hitting the bar. Eventually we get the fixer to rustle up a tiny speedboat with a local from Manaus who can navigate us up the Amazon at night to our destination. So the whole team,
along with psycho Arianna, who keeps asking me to take my wedding ring off, head into the night, embarking on a seven-hour journey to Jaraua.

São Raimundo do Jaraua, Mamirauá

We arrive at the Jaraua Reserve in the pitch-black. Our first concern is where are we going to sleep? A kind lady vacates her hut on stilts and the whole team piles in,
proceeding to install hammocks so we can swing ourselves to sleep. This will be our abode for the next four nights. Five blokes snoring, farting, gurgling, dreaming, fidgeting, and all acutely
aware that Arianna could jump us at any moment.

Arianna is really pissed off she can’t share the same hut as us and she’s not going to bed without a protest: ‘She is cold and lonely in her hut.’ We ignore her and
slowly all drift off to sleep when suddenly I become aware of a warm sensation by my ear.

‘I can’t sleep. Can you?’ Arianna whispers seductively.

‘I could until you woke me up. Go back to your hut, Arianna.’

‘Come with me, Robson.’

‘No,’ I say, turning my back on her as best I can in a swinging hammock. Silence descends once more.

‘Jamie?’ she mummers.

‘Mmmn?’

‘I can’t sleep.’

The whole hut is now awake.

‘Go away, Arianna – bugger off!’ we grumble collectively.

The next morning, after little rest because of Arianna going bump in the night, we try to film our first sequence: my counterfeit arrival in the village. I step off a small
boat looking like a sexually molested hobo in desperate need of lager and therapy.

‘There’s no one here. I wonder where everyone is?’ I say.

Well, I know bloody well where all the men are: they’ve gone out fishing and we’ve missed them because we overslept. Unable to have the meet-and-greet he planned for, Jamie decides
to see what the local Jaraua women are up to, and that’s when we discover a scene given by God. They are playing football, of course, and Jamie asks me to join in their game. They are happy
for me to do so and I need no encouragement. The girls are lovely and fit, with a kick like a frigging mule. I run round trying to play like a professional: I fall dramatically at tackles, call for
the referee and run around with my shirt over my head – well, that’s what the paid ones do. I pass the ball to a very cute Amazonian lass and she fucking belts it into the back of the
net.

‘GOAL!’ I jump around hysterically inviting us all to hug and kiss but there are no takers and with the way I’m behaving there is no way I’m going to score! Arianna
watches from a distant hut, arms folded like a jealous wife. She stomps inside and continues to poison our lunch.

Eventually a few guys return from their morning’s fishing, including father-and-son team Fernando and Juma. Fernando, I’m told, is sixty-five but has the body of a ripped
thirty-year-old gymnast. Juma is charismatic and good-looking and, I’ve heard, the best fisherman in the village. I hate him. Our objective is to catch tea for Fernando’s wife Alija so
she can cook and feed her family. Thank God Juma is with us, then, because by the way I look and feel there is no way I could catch supper on my own.

We set off in search of a Jaraua favourite: the silver arowana. The Japurà River channel is bustling with activity. The waters are alive with small fish feeding – I’ve never
seen so many – and we all know that small fish signify predators. As we hum up the water-way, I see black caiman, alligators that can grow up to fifteen feet long. In front of us, a
500-strong congregation of white egrets takes flight, cormorants dive for fish, a barrel of squirrel monkeys call in the trees, and a wake of black vultures on the banks inter the remains of a dead
animal into their lead-lined stomachs.

I am busy observing one snapshot of nature and missing the next – there is so much to see. In front of the boat there are thousands of small fish jumping out of the river, splashing back
down like an ornate fountain. They are only a couple of inches long but can leap about five to ten feet and some land in the boat. I pick one up; it’s iridescent silver and gold. Fernando
suggests they are escaping predators but he doesn’t know what they are called and neither do I. (Possibly marbled hatchetfish – answers on a postcard, please.) I go to put the little
chap and the other fliers back in the water.

‘No! For the soup!’ says Fernando, preventing me.

However, these small acrobats pale into insignificance when compared to the mighty flying fish of the Amazon, the arowana. This fish loves to leap out of the water to devour insects. It is a
long, silvery compressed fish with a strange oblique mouth and a large gape to swallow its prey. Fernando drops anchor and we start to roll out a gillnet, vertical walls of netting set across the
Japurà. We are working in tandem with men in smaller boats a quarter of a mile upstream, who act as beaters, driving the fish down towards the nets like driven pheasant across the line of
guns. When our net’s in place they slam their paddles on the water to flush the fish towards our trap. Within minutes the gill-net starts twitching and I haul up half a dozen silver arowana.
I pick one up; it’s an extraordinary-looking fish with the power to fling itself two feet out of the water. And what a mouth! It’s like the top of a pedal bin. It reminds me of Janet
Street-Porter – only this must be her cute little sister!

The arowana is classified as
Osteoglossum bicirrhosum
. In Ancient Greek
osteoglossum
means ‘bone-tongued’ and
bicirrhosum
means ‘two barbels’, which
are found under its lower lip like a couple of Rasta dreadlocks. These are thought to house the taste buds of the fish to help them search for food in the murky water. The arowana, like the
arapaima, crushes its quarry with its bony tongue to eat it . . . I’m thinking Janet S-P again.