Authors: Matilde Asensi
We had a big dinner, and since it was still early—our watches showed a little after eight—we stayed up chatting and enjoying the good temperature. I had never been a boy scout, nor had I ever gone camping, or belonged to any hikers’ club, so that night was the first time I had experienced a conversation around a fire, and I couldn’t say I liked it, because we only talked about the things the three novices should keep in mind so no accident would befall us. In any case, the sky was full of big shining stars like I had never before seen in my life, and I found myself in a completely anomalous and extraordinary situation because of those guys who knew the power of words. I remained quiet while the others talked, and I looked at Marc and Lola’s faces, illuminated by the flames, knowing that they were enjoying themselves, that they loved being there, and that, one way or another, they would figure out how to face whatever difficulties might arise. I, however, was only filled with a rational determination in the face of that adventure in nature. That place, despite being a clearing next to a clean and agreeable sounding stream, was not my place, and of course I didn’t expect things to differ very much from that piece of the Green Hell we’d gone through that afternoon, where everything stung, bit, or scratched.
Finally, around ten, we went to sleep, but not before leaving the provisions in a safe place
and clearing up the remains of dinner so as not to attract any nocturnal visitors. Efraín and Gertrude shared a tent, of course, but I slept with Mark, and Lola with Marta, since Marta and I were not about to sleep under the same roof of plasticized canvas.
At midnight, despite the good weather and the fact we were in the dry season, when we were all asleep or trying to sleep—as was the case with me—, the beautiful starry night turned and without us knowing where the rain clouds had come from, they dropped from the sky a downpour of the kind that makes history, and that was accompanied, furthermore, by a strong south wind that almost ripped the tent stakes from the ground. The fire went out and we couldn’t light another, because all the wood was wet, so we had to remain on guard so as not to end up the dinner of some beast. When it was finally morning and the storm had moved on, away from us, we were completely exhausted, wet, and cold, since the temperature, according to my GPS, had dropped to sixty degrees Fahrenheit, something incredible for a tropical forest, but fantastic for the walk that awaited us that day, Gertrude told us happily.
We had a breakfast loaded with energizing foods and set out walking northeast, clearing the trail with our machetes. That was really exhausting, so to share the effort, we took turns in the lead position. On my second turn, my right hand started to become inflamed, and when it was time for my third, I already had some painful blisters that threatened to burst at any moment. Gertrude punctured them, put some cream on them, and carefully bandaged them, then she had to do the same with Marta, Lola, Marc, and herself. The only one who wasn’t effected was Efraín, who had hands calloused by his recent work on the excavations in Tiwanaku. In these conditions, with the forest still dripping from the nighttime rain, and the ground turned to slippery sludge in which we sunk to our ankles, we barely managed to move forward, with the added discomfort that the insects, perhaps because of the storm, were especially aggressive that morning and the virulence of their attacks intensified as the sun rose in the sky toward midday. Everything considered, the real problem was not the insects, or the mud, or the vegetation, or even the trees, of which there were now a greater variety of species, and not just palms; the real problem we faced were the thin lianas that hung from the branches like Christmas garlands, forming solid viny walls that we had to cut down with our machetes. That was a nightmare, a hell, and by the time we stopped to eat, near a small river that didn’t appear to have any name, although it appeared on the maps drawn in a delicate light blue line, we were completely exhausted. Only Marc gave the impression of being a little more together than the rest of us, and even so, he was barely capable of opening his mouth to say a single word. We sat next to the small waterway, with our hands extended as if we were panhandling. Suddenly, Lola laughed. We didn’t know what brought it on, but for the same unknown reason, we all copied her and began to laugh like lunatics, without being able to stop, from pure desperation.
“I think this has been the worst experience of my life!” Efraín exclaimed, dropping his head onto Gertrude’s shoulder to choke the laughter that hindered his speech.
“I don’t think it,” Marta added. “I’m completely certain.”
“Well, imagine what it’s like for us,” Marc muttered, shaking his bandaged hands in the air to chase away the flies, wasps, butterflies, and bees that surrounded us.
“Now do you understand why we call it ‘Green Hell’?” Gertrude asked.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to take two weeks in these conditions,” I remarked, slapping the nape of my neck to kill a mosquito.
“We’ll get used to it,” Lola bolstered me, smiling. “You’ll see.”
“But we just started!” Efraín pointed out, taking his pack from his shoulders and standing up. “Don’t worry, my friend, people are capable of much more than they think they are. You’ll
see, in a couple of days you’ll have totally made an Indian of yourself.”
“All I’m making of myself is a fool,” I muttered, absolutely convinced.
Efraín took off his tee shirt and boots, and without thinking twice, with his pants on and everything, he got into the water, thrashing around and splashing all of us. Really, he needed it, because he could easily have been confused with a mud sculpture. It was one in the afternoon and we had started walking at six, but for me, that time had stretched into an infinity. While the others followed Efraín in his fit of lunacy and got into the water to clean themselves and have fun, I consulted the maps and the GPS, and discovered, frustrated, that we’d only traveled a little over three miles. Our location was 14º 17’ south, 67º 23’ west. Not even if we found a highway in the jungle would we arrive tonight at our planned camping spot. Our plan to cover over ten miles a day hadn’t been anything other than stupidity, as was the matter of the extra energy from having come down from the Altiplano and breathing more oxygen.
“Chin up, Arnau,” I murmured, talking to myself. “Things can’t get any worse.”
In the end, since I was also covered in a dry scab of mud that had been accumulating on my skin, I decided I needed a bath. Never in my life had I been so dirty, grimy, sticky and smelly. Of course, it was another new experience that I should learn to bravely endure, but this one did go against my most basic principles.
The afternoon hike wasn’t much better than the morning one, only a little slower, because we were tired and our backs ached from the weight of our packs. Lola also carried a plastic bag in her hand with a couple of snails she had captured near the river, and didn’t seem to mind carrying those two little animals whose spiral shells were only a little smaller than a Mallorcan ensaimada roll. During the hike, we discovered wide columns of ants moving among the bushes. Since each ant was about an inch long, the procession was impressive. The longest column we ran into was made up of some red-colored ants carrying enormous pieces of leaves in their jaws and moving toward an impressive mound of dirt almost two feet high.
“Is that a termite mound?” Lola asked.
“No,” Gertrude said. “Termites are much larger. It’s an anthill. What happens is that sometimes ants make similar structures to better protect the entrances to their underground tunnels.”
Marc let out a long whistle.
“They must be enormous tunnels!”
Dr. Bigelow nodded.
“We’ve probably been walking over them for several miles without knowing it.”
“Are these dangerous?” Marta hurried to ask.
“I’m not familiar with them, but I wouldn’t touch them, just in case. You could spend days with a high fever and in pain.”
Before night fell, we stopped at last in a small space between trees.
“We’ll spend the night here,” Efraín announced, comically stabbing the machete into the ground with a flick of his wrist.
“Here?” Marc asked, surprised. “We can’t pitch tents here.”
“We won’t pitch them, Mr. programmer,” the always energetic archeologist replied. “Today we’ll sleep in the hammocks, under the mosquito nets.”
“In the open?” I lamented.
“In the open. The mud makes pitching tents impossible.”
“Let’s check the ground first,” Gertrude reminded us, “and the tree bark, too. Then we’ll see if we can stay.”
There were ants on the ground, but small ones that moved forward single file and didn’t seem dangerous. We closed our packs well, after taking out the food for dinner, and lit the gas lamps, getting ready for the night. We were exhausted. We also lit a generous fire in the middle to heat our dinner and to protect us that night from wild animals. I remember that I was sort of dazed while we ate, but there was to be no mercy for anyone: when we finished, all of us had to clean our plates, cups, and silverware with water from our canteens, then we had to tie our hammocks to the thick trunks at a good height, parting the lianas and knotting them so they wouldn’t bother us. Then we hung the mosquito nets from the low branches and let them drape over us, taking care not to let any insect inside, and we lay down to sleep. However, despite not having gotten any sleep the night before, and the fact that the day’s hike had been hard, it wasn’t easy for me to get to sleep: how in the hell was I supposed to lie on that net without turning into a painful arc with my lower back in a right angle? And I wasn’t the only one. I could hear the squeak of the ropes of Marc and Lola’s hammocks, rubbing against the trunks as they rocked, their occupants tossing and turning as desperately as I and emitting sharp complaints of pain from the day’s bruises. But I was so tired I couldn’t talk to them. I thought I should stay perfectly still no matter what muscle ached, because that way I would be able to fall asleep; however, in the light of the bonfire, the image my tired eyes saw at that moment when they opened for an instant was that of six white chrysalises hanging over a ground covered in enormous yellow snakes with black rhombus-shaped marks on their backs and small bright eyes. The blood froze in my veins and I jumped in the damned hammock, feeling a thousand needles poke me all over my body.
“Efraín,” I called, with the calmest voice I could muster.
But Efraín was snoring softly, sleeping the sleep of the just, and he didn’t hear me.
“Gertrude,” I insisted. “Efraín.”
“What’s going on, Root?” Lola asked, turning like an egg roll inside her hammock, to be able to see me.
I didn’t say anything. I just pointed at the ground so she would look down and understand. Then she opened her mouth, horrified, and an endless high scream came from her throat, causing a thousand noises in the jungle, a thousand shrieks, caws, roars, trills, chirps, whistles, and howls. But hers was the loudest of all.
The sudden exclamations of fear from those who had been woken up joined the cacophony.
“What’s going on?” Gertrude yelled, while Efraín, still half asleep, took his hat off his face and threw a hand out to his machete, which he’d left stuck in the trunk, inside his mosquito net.
Lola kept screaming and Marc kept spitting curses too strong for any human ear. Marta was the only one who, although awake and alarmed, didn’t lose her cool.
I kept pointing at the ground like a sleep walker, with a mechanical movement of which I was not even aware. When Gertrude looked in the direction I was pointing, she at last saw the creatures that carpeted the floor of our bedroom, spiraling and zigzagging around the bonfire.
“It’s okay, It’s okay…” she said, very calm. “Everyone calm down.”
“But shit, what the hell is going on?” Efraín exclaimed, trying to keep his eyes open.
“Calm down, my love,” she told him. “A family of pucararas has come to warm themselves by the fire, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Marc bellowed, scared.
“Look, Gertrude,” I added, “the situation doesn’t look good, understand?”
“Of course I understand. Take a good look at them because you should learn to get away without startling them if you meet one of them on our walk. They’re the largest venomous
snakes in existence, from the same family as rattlesnakes, although pucararas don’t have a rattle, and they’re the source of the antivenin I’m carrying in my kit. But they only eat small animals, not human beings. The heat has attracted them. We should leave them alone. When the fire goes out, they’ll leave.”
“The jungle is full of them,” Marta confirmed with great calm.
“Yes, full. So you guys don’t worry about it. Just don’t step on them when you’re walking; don’t bother them. Now we’re safe in the hammocks. Last night they also certainly came to camp, and no one noticed, right?”
“Good thing we didn’t!” I exclaimed miserably.
“When the fire goes out, they’ll go away. Believe me.”
“Alright,” Marc said, “but then come the pumas, the lions, the hyenas….”
“There are no lions here, Marc,” Gertrude told him, looking again for a comfortable position in the hammock.
“Does that mean there are hyenas?” Marc asked, alarmed.
“Shit, just go to sleep already,” mumbled Efraín, who was already a chrysalis again.
With the pucararas slithering around below my back, I didn’t get any sleep that night, either. Which made two nights like that. I had never felt that close to danger. Until that moment, all the situations of risk that I’d run into in my life had been previously planned, and their hypothetical consequences (a fall in the waste water pipes of Barcelona’s sewer, or a computer virus) didn’t carry a mortal threat. But I was so tired that my mental resources weren’t working and I felt panic oozing from all of my pores, and my sleepwalking brain wouldn’t stop producing frightening images that kept compulsively returning again and again.
The bonfire burned down and the pucararas really did leave, but during the two hours left before dawn, I remained in a nervous half-sleep, subjected like a torture victim to the most absurd ideas that my imagination could come up with. I wanted to go home, I wanted to be with my grandmother, I wanted to play with my nephew and see my brother. All I longed for were those small things that, from that hammock, seemed distant and very precious. When you reach a limit and are facing the abyss—or you think what’s in front of you is the abyss—everything superfluous disappears, and that which really matters gets bigger and becomes clear like light. I analyzed the order of the things I wished for: first, my house, which is to say, my space, my place, the projection of myself, the refuge where I felt safe, where my books were, my favorite music, my video game consoles, my movie collection, my garden; then, my grandmother, the most special person in the world, who I considered to be my direct root in life and in my origin, skipping over the sad link of a silly, superficial, and weak mother; then, my nephew, that funny and intelligent pig-headed little boy, who somehow inspired tenderness and affection in me for no particular reason, just for being my nephew and little more; and, last, my brother, my idiot brother, for whose sanity I was capable of lying in that hammock in the middle of the jungle. Was it because we shared a good part of our genes? My fatigue didn’t allow me to delve too deeply into the reasons I could have for loving him despite everything.