In what sounds like a Tintin adventure, two South African photographers exploring a tributary of the Amazon River have been captured by Indians and rescued by Brazilian police.
Speaking to Sapa by telephone on Sunday, Johan Dempers said he and Joe Brooks — aerial and wildlife photographers respectively — were on a sponsored expedition to photograph the Jurua River, a little known tributary of the Amazon.
They set off two months ago.
Determined to do no harm to the environment, they were travelling in a canoe that they paddled themselves. They were travelling from Peru to Brazil, their destination the town of Thaumaturgo, to get medical attention for insect bites that had gone septic.
The police later told them that their route was one much used by cocaine smugglers.
On August 28, they were intercepted by a party of Ashenika Indians, ironically enough in a motorised canoe.
The Indians were unarmed, except for one with a bow and arrow. They tied the South Africans’ canoe to theirs, and towed them to their village.
Dempers and Brooks decided not to resist. Once there, they were not allowed to leave, and were held for six days.
Dempers said they were stared at by both children and adults much of the time.
”I know what it feels like to be an animal in a zoo and looked at all the time,” he said.
Dempers said the Indians spoke some Portuguese, which was how Brooks was able to communicate with them. The South Africans were fed local food, but received no medical attention until the third day, when a woman arrived with a western-style first aid kit and gave them some help.
Dempers said he had 28 open sores from the insect bites.
Dempers said he and Brooks considered trying to steal one of the Indians’ canoes to escape in, but decided against it. He said there are no roads in the jungle. ”The river is the road.”
Later on the third day of their captivity, the Indians said they would take them down the river to Thaumaturgo in a canoe of their own, but once at the river bank they changed their minds, and said the South Africans could not leave.
Somehow word of the photographers’ plight reached the police in Thaumaturgo, who arrived by boat on September 3 and freed them.
They were taken to Thaumaturgo, and then flown to Cruzeiro do Sol for medical treatment.
The Indians kept the photographers’ canoe and a tape recorder, but the South Africans were able to keep the rest of their equipment.
Dempers said they intended to continue their expedition next week, and hoped to fly out of Sao Paolo on December 1 as originally planned. – Sapa