'Splain yer handle

[rionapo]

Several folks at the Jackson M&G asked what rionapo meant. Here's an explanation; chime in if you have an esoteric handle and want to confess what's behind it.

The Rio Napo is a major tributary of the Amazon. It flows from the Ecuadorian highlands, draining most of that country east of the Andes, and joins the Rio Ucayali just below Iquitos, Peru to form the Amazon proper. In 1541, it was the route of the original transcontinental journey across South America in an accidental expedition led by Francisco de Orellana.

Orellana was part of an expedition led by Gonzalo Pizarro, half-brother of Francisco who conquered the Inca in Peru. He forgot his orders to explore the Rio Coca, which would have required rowing up mile-wide Napo, and turned downriver instead. Since 3000 natives and 140 Spaniards had already died on Pizarro's watch out of 4000 and 220 original members, respectively, one could assume Orellana thought he would be better off heading east to the Atlantic Ocean.

Long story short, he and his few surviving troops were the first Europeans to travel the Amazon, which was originally known as the Rio de Orellana. (The name was changed thanks to the Dominican Gaspar de Carvajal's chronicle of the journey and its description of certain female-led peoples along the way. It was a long, lonely trip, you know.) Contrary to Euro-centric myth about tropical peoples, they found several large civilizations along the way, living in cities stretching for miles along the river's banks with significant agricultural operations. (Anthropologist Wade Davis says the Amazonian population numbered in the tens of thousands at the time of Orellana's visit. European diseases and slavery took care of most of them.) None of the communities welcomed the group with open arms, however.

My adventures on the Napo weren't nearly so grand, never encountering any Amazons for example, but they're aged enough now to have some of the patina of Orellana's exploits. Since our SMB represents a modern dugout canoe, seems like rionapo is a good enough handle for future explorations. And now you know.