Interesting.
If they were Hovitos he would have been dead. Unless he could speak Hovitos.
In 1974, Mr. Mercat and I got on a small steamboat is Iquitos Peru and road on it to Pucallpa Peru up the Peruvian Amazon. Iquitos is lmost 2000 miles from the Atlantic but the river there is still enormous. It was quite an adventure. Just to give you an idea of the accommodations, We had a very narrow wooden bed with a straw mattress and a sink in a tiny cabin about 8’ square if that. If we wanted it, we were fed boiled plantains, rancid fried rice, and salt fish once a day and at breakfast, unsalted unsweetened gruel which might have been oatmeal. Their main cargo going that direction was empty beer bottles. Fortunately we brought some of our own food and at a couple of stops were able to go hut to hut and buy a few food items. No refrigeration anywhere and people who were subsistence farming. It was totally 17th century except that our boat was powered by diesel.
I thought it was Professor Challanger....