n orphaned rubber boot swirls underneath our canoe, hitting the bottom as we pass over it and echoing in my headphones. We’re slowly revolving in the strong current of a whirlpool near the Kukama Indigenous community of Santa Rita de Castilla on the Marañón River in Peru’s northern Amazon region. Everyone calls it ‘La Muyuna’ (The Whirlpool), but it’s really a series of interconnected eddies that form one large spinning mass of
