The boatman calls himself Nature Boy. He rows standing up in the stern of his colourfully painted wooden skiff, on the look-out for a boa he saw yesterday that was resting on the pale and twisted branch of a bloodwood tree. I am seated on a damp bench in front of him. The river disappears around a bend, curtained in on both sides by a jumble of liana vines, contorted mangrove roots and the mysteries of swamp and forest. For the most part the journey is silent and uninterrupted, save for the occasional cries of mangrove cuckoos, a jaco parrot somewhere high in the canopy, or the splash of a barracuda on the prowl in the dark margins of the brackish river.

The Indian River lies below sea level and is tidal. Right now the waters are receding and the river banks ahead of us expose dark, dank mud flats where soldier crabs emerge and herons wait with baited breath. A kingfisher darts across the river ahead of us and Nature Boy emits a hoot of joy, no doubt relieved his tour is producing the goods. The afternoon is late and the low sun casts our long shadows across the sparkling water, revealing shoals of elusive mountain mullet and the rotting carcasses of tree trunks on the bottom.

My mind wanders to European sailors who anchored in the generous natural harbour of Ouyuhayo, later Prince Rupert Bay, and who ventured up this river in their less colourful yet more powerfully armed rowboats to unravel this magnificent and as yet undiscovered and unexploited country. Ahead of them were the foreboding volcanic peaks of Morne aux Diables and Diablotin, dense swathes of impenetrable rainforest, and to each side the unforgiving confusion and peril of Glanvillea Swamp. And what did the Kalinago think as they spied these strangers from the darkness ?

Nature Boy pulls up along side a damp and rotting wooden jetty, indicating a bush bar and the opportunity to drink. I swat sand flies from my ankles and follow him into the forest.