not all south americans are born to tango

Campbell is belting a Bruce Springstein remake and stepping to the beat, double time. His arms are flailing. Of course, I have to join in.

In a discoteca in Pebas, Campbell, my dance partner, and I are the life of the party, hands down.

All the stools around the dance floor are filled. But no one else is dancing. I don´t even see feet tapping under the tables. Most of the shadows lurking by the tables aren´t drinking. They just come in to sit and smoke since there´s no cover charge.

My Peruvian dance partner takes off his shirt and does a back flip. Then he stops and points to me, as if to say, ¨Now show me what you´ve got.¨ Well, I can´t top that. I dip back, limbo style, and throw in a shimmy. He gives me a thumbs up. Ok, I think I passed!

This place is cheesy. There are drawings of flourescent women in thongs on the wall, lit up by blacklights. And there´s a painting of a tick. It takes up half the wall, and it´s creepy. The music is pumped up to max volume, and it´s crackling.

And then it all stops at 11 o-clock sharp. That´s when the electricity shuts off in Pebas, we learn. The building goes black and everyone shuffles out. Now it´s just Campbell, Julie, and me, and a random middle-aged woman that we somehow picked up on the way here. We sit in the dark bar, alone, pouring Pilsen beer into flimsy plastic cups.

Pebas shocked me when we arrived here a few hours ago. I expected it to look like Brillo Nuevo, but bigger. But instead of embarking on a muddy bank beside a wooden house with a palm-leaf roof, we unloaded our boat at a floating gasoline station. Inside, a mother and son were watching a murder mystery on TV. It was nightime, but the town was lit up with lightbulbs and flashing ¨hostal¨ signs. There were even a few motorcycles cruising over paved roads. Sensory overload.

Only 1500 people live here, but this town is pretending to be something more. It wants to be the center. It is where small-town folks from communities like Brillo Nuevo meet to drink, buy clothes and sell lumber or meat.

I try not to overanalyze the situation. A pàrt of me is dissapointed to see such overdevelopment. But the other part knows that I can´t judge these people for wanting stores and bars. I also like clean clothes and iced-cold drinks.

It is what it is.

We are just passing through from Brillo Nuevo to Iquitos. We only have one night here in Pebas. And we´re determined to make the best of it. We dance and laugh, and then grope our way back to our beds in the darkness.