Jungle Time


Doug Sherr


 
© Copyright 2018 by Doug Sherr

 Photo of The Lost City of La Laguna.

The tropical sun glared off the metal roof of La Cantina Del Sol, a wooden shack standing on thick poles jammed into the mud. Three steps up from the soft ground was a covered porch that listed off to starboard. Stacked next to the door were half a-dozen spears. I stepped over the rotted plank that one day soon would disintegrate, but everyone knew where it was so there was no reason to fix it. I pushed through the two swinging half-doors. It was like walking into a fathomless cave. I stood there for a couple of minutes until I could see a few shapes in the lightening gloom. The only sound was the sad groaning of the ceiling fan as it pushed the hot air around the room. It wasn’t cooler inside, but it wasn’t quite as hot as outside. A bar ran down the left side of the room and a few unmatched tables and chairs were strewn about the right side. A gathering of Choco tribesmen leaned against the bar enjoying cold beers. They were small muscular men wearing only loincloths with a front flap that hung to just above knee level. Their thick black hair had a classic cereal bowl cut. They nodded and said, “Buenos” in a high nasal tone. I answered in my imitation of their accent and they smiled because they are polite people and at least I was trying.

There was an old Choco sitting at the bar wearing denim bib overalls and heavy boots. I sat next to him and we started talking. He had some English and I had a little Spanish so we exchanged our stories. I was a filmmaker shooting a project about the people in the Darién jungle and he was the engineer on the banana boat anchored off El Real in the Tuira River. The boat would be loaded by mid-afternoon and he would be off to Panama City keeping the ancient diesel engine running with a few broken tools and a lifetime’s experience of fixing the un-fixable. He wanted to know more about what we were actually doing; he’d heard all the various stories and rumors drifting around. Jungle outposts need rumors to fill in an otherwise dull day. After I told him what we were doing he said he knew of a place that we should film: The Lost City of La Laguna. He pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket, sketched a map and handed it to me. He said it was a cursed village that was under water and protected by demons that didn’t like tourists. It was deep into Cuna territory and they weren’t any more pleasant than the demons. The Choco and the Cuna were not friends. The Choco called the Cuna, “The Silent Ones.” While we talked I felt that we were characters in a Joseph Conrad short story. I bought him a beer and we talked of his childhood in the jungle. He was in his late fifties and had been raised in the old ways. He was rich by tribal standards, but he was thinking of retiring and didn’t know what to do. He really didn’t belong in either world. I bought him another beer and left him thinking about his future and maybe whether he would look silly if he started wearing a loincloth again.

The rough map was my creative salvation. After several months in the Darién I wasn’t sure that I had a movie, or really, what I was doing there in the first place. The jungle does that to you, but now I had a project to find, explore, and film a “lost city.” When I told the story to Bartolo, our Choco guide, he said that some of his people were afraid of the area, but he, his brother and a few of his good buddies weren’t and they would be happy to do anything that would “piss-off” the Cuna. We would have to navigate up the Tuira and then go up-river on the Río Púcuro to the village of Púcuro. Above the village the river has rapids we couldn’t handle so we would have to work our way through the jungle on the only footpath across the Darién. If the inhabitants of South America walked to their new homes from Central America then they walked on that trail.

When I got the assignment to shoot this film all I knew about jungles was what I saw on National Geographic specials. There wasn’t much time or money to put a crew together, but I found Big Bob who had just done his tour in Viet Nam and Young Lee, a big kid who knew something about recording sound: On a limited budget you tend to take anyone who is willing to join your foolishness. In Panamá, as we were packing our gear a young man named Ken Francisco knocked on our hotel door and announced that he could guide us in the Darién. He’d worked there with Christian missionaries, but now he was on his own and needed money. His Spanish was reasonably good and he had a few contacts in the jungle so we added him to the crew. I told him to get his gear and be back in an hour. He said he had all he needed and was ready to go. He was wearing a white dress shirt with a toothbrush sticking out of the pocket, dark trousers of an indeterminate color, and normal leather shoes. That was his entire kit. You have to respect a man who travels light

The Darién is classed as one of the world’s great jungles. A jungle is the big party that Nature threw when she decided that life was here to stay. It is an all-you-can-eat affair where everything is eating everything as fast as possible and being on the top of the food chain is a matter of timing and luck. In the literature you’ll see the Darién described as The Gap; the gap being in the Trans American highway the travels from Fairbanks Alaska to the tip of South America. However, there are no gaps in the Darién except the one footpath and the rivers and streams that run down from the cordillera that is the dividing line between Central and South America. These milk chocolate colored rivers are the thoroughfares for all commerce and commuting as well as a source of water for drinking, bathing, washing and waste disposal. If the water flow is high enough it seems that these uses are compatible.

The primary conveyance, called a piragua, is a canoe 8-to 20-feet long hollowed out from a tree trunk and propelled by 10-foot long poles. One man stands on the bow and uses a pole to fend off from the banks while the man at the stern provides most of the up-stream propulsion. It is a beautiful exercise of balance and stamina. For weeks we had carefully loaded our gear and eased into these tippy craft as Bartolo, his brother Eduardo and a varying crew of their friends moved us up and down the Río Pirre to film whatever took our fancy.

The Río Pirre was a stream with a steady flow and banks that varied from water level to six feet high. On the outside curve of some bends in the river there was a dwelling or a small settlement. Children would come running, folks would shout greetings and Bartolo and friends would shout back. Some times we would stop and have the jungle equivalent of a nice cup of tea and shoot a little footage. Everyone was related and we were accepted as friends of relatives. Some of the settlements were the result of divorce. People married by saying that they were married. They divorced the same way, but the woman got the “house.” The man built a new dwelling next door and life went on.

The dwellings consisted of a series of poles, 8-to-10 feet tall and 6-to-8 inches in diameter sunk into the ground. About three feet off the ground a series of horizontal poles inlet into the uprights supported a floor of planks split from large logs. A notched log was mounted as a stairway up to the floor. A peaked roof of woven palm fronds kept the interior dry even in a tropical downpour. There were no walls or partitions and everyone slept in hammocks. The cooking fire in the center of the hut was a large log kept burning with smaller branches and twigs placed on some flat rocks to keep the coals from burning through the floor. Like native dwellings everywhere, they were perfectly matched to the environment.

With our wrinkled map of the “Lost City” in hand, we were now heading back into the jungle. Our destination of Púcuro was a good distance off so Bartolo arranged for two cayucas, which are hollowed out logs about thirty feet long powered by an outboard motor hung off a transom nailed to the hull. We loaded our gear into the cayucas and headed up the Tuira. After weeks of traveling with the gentle flow of piraguas we were now traveling in the hot rods of the river. The outboard motor moved us easily against the current. Unlike the occasional river traffic of the Pirre, the Tuira was a continuous flow of cayucas, piraguas and even one large aluminum launch. Most everyone waved although we did get a few suspicious looks. Clusters of dwellings sat at regular intervals on the riverbanks. Some were typical Choco construction, but further up-river there were shacks of packing crate and tin roof architecture. A couple of dwellings were real houses. We made the village of Boca de Cupe the first day.

Boca de Cupe was once the terminus of a railroad that serviced the gold mines of Santa Cruz de la Cana. At different times the mines had employed as many as 16,000 workers who extracted tons of gold. The last working mine had closed just before we arrived at Boca. Cana had experienced the boom-bust cycle of mining for over three hundred years so they must have gotten used to it. We strolled around looking for a place to stay for the night, but the vibe didn’t feel good. We may have looked like an easy target to some of the out-of-work miners lying around. Finally we went to the edge of town and slung our hammocks for the night. We kept an all night watch, changing every two hours, to keep the locals honest. Maybe it was the general feeling of gloom in Boca, but I needed to give myself a pep talk to stay optimistic that this whole project was going to be successful. Maybe it was just the jungle wearing me down.

At dawn, I lay in my hammock rehearsing again the role of an expedition leader. Most important, you have to appear confident and in control or things can go bad. If things do start to go bad you must quickly make decisions that are not completely stupid. You can’t complain. No matter how ugly it gets, you have to appear to be having a good time, or at least endure the situation with quiet dignity. I knew that I was in way over my head, but things were not going badly and perhaps the “Lost City” would prove to be the element we needed to have a successful project. I rolled out of my hammock and said, “OK, it’s Show Time!” and we moved out right after coffee.

At the confluence of the smaller Río Púcuro we shifted our gear back into piraguas. I have no idea how Bartolo arranged this in advance. As we moved around the first bend the river narrowed and the jungle closed in. In some places where the muddy banks were near level with the river the locals had worn footpaths for quick trips that didn’t need a boat. Some of those paths were probably ancient when the Inca were still applying for building permits. At the edge of these paths was a tangle of Spanish Oaks, climbing bamboo, banana trees and a variety of plants that included every possible shade, variation and interpretation of green. Towering over this wall of green were giant cativo trees that grew to well over a hundred feet. Orchids covering the spectrum from white to purple clung to trees. Birds flitted, soared or just stood on limbs and complained to each other about our intrusion. Howler monkeys generally agreed with the birds and bitterly complained about our presence. The jungle is not a quiet place.

Everywhere you looked something was slithering or darting out of sight. I spotted a frog crouched on a leaf that was such an intense yellow it looked like it was plugged into a power source. I read once that if a creature chose to be a very bright, unlikely color that it was probably highly poisonous. I decided to turn down any offers of yellow frog soup.

It hadn’t rained for two days and in the early afternoon we were really feeling the heat. The heat in the jungle has weight. It pushes in from all sides and squeezes out ambition and any notion of hard work. People in the tropics aren’t languid; they’re comatose. Around a bend we came to a waterfall dropping from a high cliff to our right. The right bank was vertical right down to the river so we pulled up on the left bank. Because the current was fairly strong we walked about fifty yards up-river before we jumped in to swim across. The waterfall was cold and delicious. I just wanted to stay there and forget all of that jungle exploration business, but the show must go on. After a good wash and shampoo we swam back. I stayed in the river a bit longer just to enjoy exercising all my muscles.

When I got out I had a number of small blue fish attached to me. They had tiny mouths so they couldn’t take much of a bite, but they hung on tenaciously. My loyal crew certainly enjoyed the sight. Big Bob walked up and pulled them off. I made a few chuffing noises, remaining as macho as possible. He said that there weren’t enough to feed everyone. He said something about throwing me back in so we could collect enough fish for lunch. I said something unkind and poured rum on a rag to cleanse the little holes in my chest and belly. I took a drink from the bottle to prevent infection. We had rice and bacalau for lunch and moved on.

Púcuro was quite different from the informal Choco settlements we had visited. It was neatly arranged with a number of pole and woven thatch dwellings surrounding a large open space of packed dirt. There was one large two-story house that belonged to the Sahila, the chief of the village who controls an area that is determined by tradition. Whatever was going to happen in this patch of jungle was only going to happen with his permission. Unlike the Choco, who are the Libertarians of the jungle, the Cuna have a well-organized society The Sahila is elected by a tribal council in which each man and woman has a voice and a vote. Major decisions are made in the same democratic process. If a chief isn’t doing a good job he can be replaced. This concept of popular democracy was ancient when the first Europeans arrived to claim land for King and Queen. Some of those early Euros wrote of this strange practice and, perhaps, provided a bit of inspiration to the revolutionaries of later centuries.

We had Ken act as our emissary because using Bartolo would have been an insult. It was clear that the Sahila was not happy that we had arrived in his village. He was less happy that we wanted to go to La Laguna. The lake was near the mountain Tacarcuna, which was still held in sacred awe by the Cuna. However, a reasonable sum of money might make the gods and demons less grumpy. Even in a remote jungle the concept of “pay the priest” is the way to salvation.

Since negotiations in the tropics happen at the pace of everything else we would have to wait a day or two or three for an answer. One of Bartolo’s crew knew one of the villagers so this poor guy became responsible for our housing and food. He was not happy about this, but he was a good host. We slung our hammocks near the river and ate with his family each day.

The village was an eerie place and now we knew why the Choco called the Cuna, “Silent Ones.” The children did not laugh and run around. People didn’t gather in the common area and talk. I asked Bartolo if everyone was hiding because we were there, but he said that this was normal. He shook his head when he said normal. We settled in and I had Bob and Lee inventory our provisions and supplies while I tried to calculate how far we would have to walk to get to La Laguna and figure a total time for this trip. The map I had showed Púcuro, but not the lake and none of the locals had any idea what a map was or how it worked. They understood the direction of the rising and setting sun, but north had no meaning to them. The closeness of the jungle must have kept them from using the stars and no one traveled at night anyway.

I took a few shots of the village and just one roll of still film. The Cuna clearly wanted us gone. We waited three days for the Sahila to decide on the price of his cooperation. There is an inverse law at work in remote places: The further away and less desirable a place is the more arrogant the local power broker can be. On the other hand no one had invited us here. At this point I did something really stupid. Over the years I have developed a pattern of getting out of situations I didn’t want to be in by committing a dumb act and then letting events unfold from there. I do not suggest this practice to anyone. I like to throw knives, axes, machetes—anything that will fly through the air and make a satisfying “thunk” when it sticks into something. I had been flinging my machete at trees, especially banana trees, for the time we had been in the jungle.

Next to our camping site the villagers were finishing up a beautiful piragua for the Sahila. It was fashioned from a large espavé, a wild cashew tree, shaped by several weeks of precise work with axes. A piragua is perhaps the most important possession of a jungle dweller. It provides the same freedom that a car does for people in more developed places. On the forth morning of our stay in Púcuro a rooster started it’s rasping announcement long before I thought it should. I rolled out of my hammock and threw my machete at it. The bird was standing on the piragua and fluttered to safety as the machete thunked deep into the soon-to-be launched vessel. While no one seemed to be up, nothing happens out there that goes un-noticed. Before we had finished morning coffee the Sahila and a few of his buddies came down and checked the piragua. He fingered the fresh slice in the hull and looked at me with more contempt than any of my ex-girlfriends. At midday we were told that the Sahila was ready to talk to us. The price of cooperation would be a large chunk of my budget. I couldn’t immediately say no to his proposal because it would be impolite and if he sensed that I was nervous he could put much more pressure on us. I told him I would think about it and give him an answer the next day.

That night when I climbed into my hammock my inner voice was yammering at me: It’s over. I’d pushed as far as I could. Giving up was something that came hard, but whatever power I thought I had to make things happen just wasn’t enough. Also, there was a crew that had every right to expect that I wouldn’t make a stupid decision. Failure can be endured as long as you live to tell the tale. We couldn’t continue without his help so the next day I thanked the Sahila for the village’s hospitality, gave him eighty bucks for the cost of food and lodging and indicated that I would never come back. He seemed pleased. We loaded our gear and headed downriver.

When we switched back to cayucas we got a new crew of young guys that we didn’t know. They approached our trip down the Tuira as if a trophy were waiting at some finish line up ahead. At first it was fun to feel the breeze as we roared along. It was like a carnival ride as we screamed around bends and dodged the great snags of fallen trees. I don’t know if our driver had ever driven that fast before because his boat handling wasn’t precise. I was getting nervous when we came to a sharp bend and our boy didn’t make the turn. We went into a side channel and stuck fast on a mudflat. No body moved. I jumped out on the left side thinking that the water was shallow. When I put my weight into pushing the boat I stepped into a hole and disappeared under water. As I was coming back to the surface something large, alive, and probably hungry bumped into my leg. I kicked hard and it moved away. I broke the surface yelling for help to move the piragua. Bob and Lee slid into the water on the high side and we were off in one push.

Bob said, “You sure seemed upset at getting a little wet.”

I said, “You have no idea.”

Back in the main channel our driver didn’t slow down. Bob turned around, laid his machete on the kid’s shoulder and smiled. The rest of the trip went smoothly.

Down river at Boca de Cupe we picked up two hitchhikers. They were young and pretty girls from Yavisa who were in a beauty contest. They carried clipboards with a list of names. The girl who collected the most names was the winner of a two-week trip to Panamá City. I didn’t ask what the runner-up got. We signed both of their lists and dropped them off at the little settlement of Pinogana to get more signatures. At this point our cayuca drivers decided that they had urgent business up-river and left. Bartolo arranged to borrow three piraguas and we continued on.

The crew was clearly relieved that our journey was near the end and everyone relaxed and started to relive the adventure before it was actually over. As we set up our last camp the Choco painted their bodies black with juice from genip tree berries. They highlighted the black color with red slashes across their cheekbones made from achiote seeds, which is also their main cooking spice. They did this in honor of our departure. That night we didn’t party heavily.

The next morning we were up before first light and built a fire for coffee. Our three Choco guides hunkered close to the fire holding their coffee gourds as if they were religious artifacts. They looked like finely chiseled sculptures in the flickering of light and shadow. No one talked. Finally Bartolo grunted, stood up, tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and pissed on it to put it out. We all contributed to the stream and then went down to the piraguas. It was a quiet journey for the last few miles into El Real. When we arrived in front of La Cantina del Sol we said goodbye to Bartolo, Eduardo and the rest of our Choco crew. We shook hands and looked into each other’s eyes for a long time.

We said, “Muchas Gracias por todos.”

They said, “Por nada, amigos ” and went into the cantina. I have never been with men I respect more.

We talked the Guardia into lending us a 6x6 military truck to haul our gear to El Real International Airport. At the airfield we waited under the thatch roof for the plane to arrive. The pilot buzzed the field and we waded out through cow dung to drive the cattle off the runway. We loaded our gear and the Piper Aztec bounced and careened into the air. After the closeness of the jungle where a view of a hundred feet was a vista we were now looking out across the same vast green mat we had seen months ago. Just being able to see a great distance was a revelation, as though your mind was opening up. I knew that I was a different person than the young smartass who landed in the unknown not long before: With luck, better able to handle the next adventure.

We landed on a dirt strip at La Palma on the Golfo de San Miguel. Two geologists came out and loaded several hundred pounds of rock samples next to all of our gear and climbed aboard. The temperature was over one hundred degrees. It didn’t seem likely that this over-loaded plane would be able to take off in the heat-thinned air. Along the runway a good-sized crowd of villagers gathered. The pilot taxied into the scrub beyond the end of the dirt runway, spun the plane around, set the brakes, and pushed the throttles to maximum. The engines roared and the plane vibrated and rocked. Then our captain released the brakes and the plane lurched forward, rolling, bouncing and slowly picking up speed. The engines sounded like they were going to blow into bits and we weren’t gaining much speed. Our crowd of spectators seemed solemn as they followed our progress down the airstrip. Finally we ran out of runway and bounced into scrub at the far end. In one final bounce we were over the edge of the drop-off to the bay. The Piper’s engines were giving every thing they had and we stopped falling. Slowly the bay retreated below us and we started to breathe again.

Settled into my seat, the engine vibrations began to massage away muscle tensions I didn’t realize I had. Thoughts of what we had just gone through mixed with the realization of how lucky we had been. Yes, we had pulled it off, but any little shift in timing and circumstance could have added us to the list of lost explorers. It always comes down to luck. I was basically a lucky guy, but I knew a number of people who were clearly unlucky. What was the difference? The old Greeks said we were the toys of the Gods, the Fates and the Furies. That’s probably as good an explanation as Chaos Theory and certainly more poetic.

The flight to Panama City took about an hour. When we landed we threw our gear into two air-conditioned taxicabs that dodged, honked and intimidated through traffic to the Hotel Continental. Green-liveried porters with gold epaulets hurried our gear up the wide stairs. Our sweat-stained clothes were still splattered with jungle mud and cow dung. In the large marble foyer a crowd was gathered around a television set. We jostled our way in to get a look as Apollo 11 burned through the Florida sky on it’s way to a moon landing. Bob, Lee, and myself just stood there as the crowd started to drift away. There was nothing clever that we could say. Finally, the sign “Cocktail Lounge” got our attention and we eased into the soft stools and shivered slightly in the cool air. I don’t remember what I ordered, but I remember the ice cubes.

Before dawn that morning we had coffee in a gourd with men who were comfortable in the Stone Age. Then in the late afternoon we saw fellow humans blasting away from the home planet into the terrifying blackness of the void. Now I had ice cubes tinkling in my glass. When we started on this project many months ago, I had expected an adventure, but we had just lived, up close, most of human history in less than a day. In my own life I had worked on a project for NASA and I had lived with Bartolo and his friends in a very unforgiving jungle. Our native guides were clever people who lived a decent life. I believe that Bartolo, with the right education and opportunities, could have been an astronaut. The original NASA crews trained with Choco Chief Antonio Zarco so they had the knowledge to survive if their capsule crashed into the jungle.

At this moment the Stone Age and the Space Age co-exist and both cultures are reasonable ways to live. My Choco friends couldn’t understand why I would leave the jungle and return to the madness of a city. I’ve come realize that the gift of travel is the knowledge that there is no one correct philosophy or way to live. Since the Darién, I have lived in some great cites and places remote from civilization: I have missed living in civilization fewer times than I have missed living in wild places. In time, I came to understand the dilemma of the old Choco engineer. Once you start adventuring you really don’t fit in back home. People may invite you over for dinner to hear your stories, but you are no longer, “one of them.”


Jungle Time



The tropical sun glared off the metal roof of La Cantina Del Sol, a wooden shack standing on thick poles jammed into the mud. Three steps up from the soft ground was a covered porch that listed off to starboard. Stacked next to the door were half a-dozen spears. I stepped over the rotted plank that one day soon would disintegrate, but everyone knew where it was so there was no reason to fix it. I pushed through the two swinging half-doors. It was like walking into a fathomless cave. I stood there for a couple of minutes until I could see a few shapes in the lightening gloom. The only sound was the sad groaning of the ceiling fan as it pushed the hot air around the room. It wasn’t cooler inside, but it wasn’t quite as hot as outside. A bar ran down the left side of the room and a few unmatched tables and chairs were strewn about the right side. A gathering of Choco tribesmen leaned against the bar enjoying cold beers. They were small muscular men wearing only loincloths with a front flap that hung to just above knee level. Their thick black hair had a classic cereal bowl cut. They nodded and said, “Buenos” in a high nasal tone. I answered in my imitation of their accent and they smiled because they are polite people and at least I was trying.

There was an old Choco sitting at the bar wearing denim bib overalls and heavy boots. I sat next to him and we started talking. He had some English and I had a little Spanish so we exchanged our stories. I was a filmmaker shooting a project about the people in the Darién jungle and he was the engineer on the banana boat anchored off El Real in the Tuira River. The boat would be loaded by mid-afternoon and he would be off to Panama City keeping the ancient diesel engine running with a few broken tools and a lifetime’s experience of fixing the un-fixable. He wanted to know more about what we were actually doing; he’d heard all the various stories and rumors drifting around. Jungle outposts need rumors to fill in an otherwise dull day. After I told him what we were doing he said he knew of a place that we should film: The Lost City of La Laguna. He pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket, sketched a map and handed it to me. He said it was a cursed village that was under water and protected by demons that didn’t like tourists. It was deep into Cuna territory and they weren’t any more pleasant than the demons. The Choco and the Cuna were not friends. The Choco called the Cuna, “The Silent Ones.” While we talked I felt that we were characters in a Joseph Conrad short story. I bought him a beer and we talked of his childhood in the jungle. He was in his late fifties and had been raised in the old ways. He was rich by tribal standards, but he was thinking of retiring and didn’t know what to do. He really didn’t belong in either world. I bought him another beer and left him thinking about his future and maybe whether he would look silly if he started wearing a loincloth again.

The rough map was my creative salvation. After several months in the Darién I wasn’t sure that I had a movie, or really, what I was doing there in the first place. The jungle does that to you, but now I had a project to find, explore, and film a “lost city.” When I told the story to Bartolo, our Choco guide, he said that some of his people were afraid of the area, but he, his brother and a few of his good buddies weren’t and they would be happy to do anything that would “piss-off” the Cuna. We would have to navigate up the Tuira and then go up-river on the Río Púcuro to the village of Púcuro. Above the village the river has rapids we couldn’t handle so we would have to work our way through the jungle on the only footpath across the Darién. If the inhabitants of South America walked to their new homes from Central America then they walked on that trail.

When I got the assignment to shoot this film all I knew about jungles was what I saw on National Geographic specials. There wasn’t much time or money to put a crew together, but I found Big Bob who had just done his tour in Viet Nam and Young Lee, a big kid who knew something about recording sound: On a limited budget you tend to take anyone who is willing to join your foolishness. In Panamá, as we were packing our gear a young man named Ken Francisco knocked on our hotel door and announced that he could guide us in the Darién. He’d worked there with Christian missionaries, but now he was on his own and needed money. His Spanish was reasonably good and he had a few contacts in the jungle so we added him to the crew. I told him to get his gear and be back in an hour. He said he had all he needed and was ready to go. He was wearing a white dress shirt with a toothbrush sticking out of the pocket, dark trousers of an indeterminate color, and normal leather shoes. That was his entire kit. You have to respect a man who travels light

The Darién is classed as one of the world’s great jungles. A jungle is the big party that Nature threw when she decided that life was here to stay. It is an all-you-can-eat affair where everything is eating everything as fast as possible and being on the top of the food chain is a matter of timing and luck. In the literature you’ll see the Darién described as The Gap; the gap being in the Trans American highway the travels from Fairbanks Alaska to the tip of South America. However, there are no gaps in the Darién except the one footpath and the rivers and streams that run down from the cordillera that is the dividing line between Central and South America. These milk chocolate colored rivers are the thoroughfares for all commerce and commuting as well as a source of water for drinking, bathing, washing and waste disposal. If the water flow is high enough it seems that these uses are compatible.

The primary conveyance, called a piragua, is a canoe 8-to 20-feet long hollowed out from a tree trunk and propelled by 10-foot long poles. One man stands on the bow and uses a pole to fend off from the banks while the man at the stern provides most of the up-stream propulsion. It is a beautiful exercise of balance and stamina. For weeks we had carefully loaded our gear and eased into these tippy craft as Bartolo, his brother Eduardo and a varying crew of their friends moved us up and down the Río Pirre to film whatever took our fancy.

The Río Pirre was a stream with a steady flow and banks that varied from water level to six feet high. On the outside curve of some bends in the river there was a dwelling or a small settlement. Children would come running, folks would shout greetings and Bartolo and friends would shout back. Some times we would stop and have the jungle equivalent of a nice cup of tea and shoot a little footage. Everyone was related and we were accepted as friends of relatives. Some of the settlements were the result of divorce. People married by saying that they were married. They divorced the same way, but the woman got the “house.” The man built a new dwelling next door and life went on.

The dwellings consisted of a series of poles, 8-to-10 feet tall and 6-to-8 inches in diameter sunk into the ground. About three feet off the ground a series of horizontal poles inlet into the uprights supported a floor of planks split from large logs. A notched log was mounted as a stairway up to the floor. A peaked roof of woven palm fronds kept the interior dry even in a tropical downpour. There were no walls or partitions and everyone slept in hammocks. The cooking fire in the center of the hut was a large log kept burning with smaller branches and twigs placed on some flat rocks to keep the coals from burning through the floor. Like native dwellings everywhere, they were perfectly matched to the environment.

With our wrinkled map of the “Lost City” in hand, we were now heading back into the jungle. Our destination of Púcuro was a good distance off so Bartolo arranged for two cayucas, which are hollowed out logs about thirty feet long powered by an outboard motor hung off a transom nailed to the hull. We loaded our gear into the cayucas and headed up the Tuira. After weeks of traveling with the gentle flow of piraguas we were now traveling in the hot rods of the river. The outboard motor moved us easily against the current. Unlike the occasional river traffic of the Pirre, the Tuira was a continuous flow of cayucas, piraguas and even one large aluminum launch. Most everyone waved although we did get a few suspicious looks. Clusters of dwellings sat at regular intervals on the riverbanks. Some were typical Choco construction, but further up-river there were shacks of packing crate and tin roof architecture. A couple of dwellings were real houses. We made the village of Boca de Cupe the first day.

Boca de Cupe was once the terminus of a railroad that serviced the gold mines of Santa Cruz de la Cana. At different times the mines had employed as many as 16,000 workers who extracted tons of gold. The last working mine had closed just before we arrived at Boca. Cana had experienced the boom-bust cycle of mining for over three hundred years so they must have gotten used to it. We strolled around looking for a place to stay for the night, but the vibe didn’t feel good. We may have looked like an easy target to some of the out-of-work miners lying around. Finally we went to the edge of town and slung our hammocks for the night. We kept an all night watch, changing every two hours, to keep the locals honest. Maybe it was the general feeling of gloom in Boca, but I needed to give myself a pep talk to stay optimistic that this whole project was going to be successful. Maybe it was just the jungle wearing me down.

At dawn, I lay in my hammock rehearsing again the role of an expedition leader. Most important, you have to appear confident and in control or things can go bad. If things do start to go bad you must quickly make decisions that are not completely stupid. You can’t complain. No matter how ugly it gets, you have to appear to be having a good time, or at least endure the situation with quiet dignity. I knew that I was in way over my head, but things were not going badly and perhaps the “Lost City” would prove to be the element we needed to have a successful project. I rolled out of my hammock and said, “OK, it’s Show Time!” and we moved out right after coffee.

At the confluence of the smaller Río Púcuro we shifted our gear back into piraguas. I have no idea how Bartolo arranged this in advance. As we moved around the first bend the river narrowed and the jungle closed in. In some places where the muddy banks were near level with the river the locals had worn footpaths for quick trips that didn’t need a boat. Some of those paths were probably ancient when the Inca were still applying for building permits. At the edge of these paths was a tangle of Spanish Oaks, climbing bamboo, banana trees and a variety of plants that included every possible shade, variation and interpretation of green. Towering over this wall of green were giant cativo trees that grew to well over a hundred feet. Orchids covering the spectrum from white to purple clung to trees. Birds flitted, soared or just stood on limbs and complained to each other about our intrusion. Howler monkeys generally agreed with the birds and bitterly complained about our presence. The jungle is not a quiet place.

Everywhere you looked something was slithering or darting out of sight. I spotted a frog crouched on a leaf that was such an intense yellow it looked like it was plugged into a power source. I read once that if a creature chose to be a very bright, unlikely color that it was probably highly poisonous. I decided to turn down any offers of yellow frog soup.

It hadn’t rained for two days and in the early afternoon we were really feeling the heat. The heat in the jungle has weight. It pushes in from all sides and squeezes out ambition and any notion of hard work. People in the tropics aren’t languid; they’re comatose. Around a bend we came to a waterfall dropping from a high cliff to our right. The right bank was vertical right down to the river so we pulled up on the left bank. Because the current was fairly strong we walked about fifty yards up-river before we jumped in to swim across. The waterfall was cold and delicious. I just wanted to stay there and forget all of that jungle exploration business, but the show must go on. After a good wash and shampoo we swam back. I stayed in the river a bit longer just to enjoy exercising all my muscles.

When I got out I had a number of small blue fish attached to me. They had tiny mouths so they couldn’t take much of a bite, but they hung on tenaciously. My loyal crew certainly enjoyed the sight. Big Bob walked up and pulled them off. I made a few chuffing noises, remaining as macho as possible. He said that there weren’t enough to feed everyone. He said something about throwing me back in so we could collect enough fish for lunch. I said something unkind and poured rum on a rag to cleanse the little holes in my chest and belly. I took a drink from the bottle to prevent infection. We had rice and bacalau for lunch and moved on.

Púcuro was quite different from the informal Choco settlements we had visited. It was neatly arranged with a number of pole and woven thatch dwellings surrounding a large open space of packed dirt. There was one large two-story house that belonged to the Sahila, the chief of the village who controls an area that is determined by tradition. Whatever was going to happen in this patch of jungle was only going to happen with his permission. Unlike the Choco, who are the Libertarians of the jungle, the Cuna have a well-organized society The Sahila is elected by a tribal council in which each man and woman has a voice and a vote. Major decisions are made in the same democratic process. If a chief isn’t doing a good job he can be replaced. This concept of popular democracy was ancient when the first Europeans arrived to claim land for King and Queen. Some of those early Euros wrote of this strange practice and, perhaps, provided a bit of inspiration to the revolutionaries of later centuries.

We had Ken act as our emissary because using Bartolo would have been an insult. It was clear that the Sahila was not happy that we had arrived in his village. He was less happy that we wanted to go to La Laguna. The lake was near the mountain Tacarcuna, which was still held in sacred awe by the Cuna. However, a reasonable sum of money might make the gods and demons less grumpy. Even in a remote jungle the concept of “pay the priest” is the way to salvation.

Since negotiations in the tropics happen at the pace of everything else we would have to wait a day or two or three for an answer. One of Bartolo’s crew knew one of the villagers so this poor guy became responsible for our housing and food. He was not happy about this, but he was a good host. We slung our hammocks near the river and ate with his family each day.

The village was an eerie place and now we knew why the Choco called the Cuna, “Silent Ones.” The children did not laugh and run around. People didn’t gather in the common area and talk. I asked Bartolo if everyone was hiding because we were there, but he said that this was normal. He shook his head when he said normal. We settled in and I had Bob and Lee inventory our provisions and supplies while I tried to calculate how far we would have to walk to get to La Laguna and figure a total time for this trip. The map I had showed Púcuro, but not the lake and none of the locals had any idea what a map was or how it worked. They understood the direction of the rising and setting sun, but north had no meaning to them. The closeness of the jungle must have kept them from using the stars and no one traveled at night anyway.

I took a few shots of the village and just one roll of still film. The Cuna clearly wanted us gone. We waited three days for the Sahila to decide on the price of his cooperation. There is an inverse law at work in remote places: The further away and less desirable a place is the more arrogant the local power broker can be. On the other hand no one had invited us here. At this point I did something really stupid. Over the years I have developed a pattern of getting out of situations I didn’t want to be in by committing a dumb act and then letting events unfold from there. I do not suggest this practice to anyone. I like to throw knives, axes, machetes—anything that will fly through the air and make a satisfying “thunk” when it sticks into something. I had been flinging my machete at trees, especially banana trees, for the time we had been in the jungle.

Next to our camping site the villagers were finishing up a beautiful piragua for the Sahila. It was fashioned from a large espavé, a wild cashew tree, shaped by several weeks of precise work with axes. A piragua is perhaps the most important possession of a jungle dweller. It provides the same freedom that a car does for people in more developed places. On the forth morning of our stay in Púcuro a rooster started it’s rasping announcement long before I thought it should. I rolled out of my hammock and threw my machete at it. The bird was standing on the piragua and fluttered to safety as the machete thunked deep into the soon-to-be launched vessel. While no one seemed to be up, nothing happens out there that goes un-noticed. Before we had finished morning coffee the Sahila and a few of his buddies came down and checked the piragua. He fingered the fresh slice in the hull and looked at me with more contempt than any of my ex-girlfriends. At midday we were told that the Sahila was ready to talk to us. The price of cooperation would be a large chunk of my budget. I couldn’t immediately say no to his proposal because it would be impolite and if he sensed that I was nervous he could put much more pressure on us. I told him I would think about it and give him an answer the next day.

That night when I climbed into my hammock my inner voice was yammering at me: It’s over. I’d pushed as far as I could. Giving up was something that came hard, but whatever power I thought I had to make things happen just wasn’t enough. Also, there was a crew that had every right to expect that I wouldn’t make a stupid decision. Failure can be endured as long as you live to tell the tale. We couldn’t continue without his help so the next day I thanked the Sahila for the village’s hospitality, gave him eighty bucks for the cost of food and lodging and indicated that I would never come back. He seemed pleased. We loaded our gear and headed downriver.

When we switched back to cayucas we got a new crew of young guys that we didn’t know. They approached our trip down the Tuira as if a trophy were waiting at some finish line up ahead. At first it was fun to feel the breeze as we roared along. It was like a carnival ride as we screamed around bends and dodged the great snags of fallen trees. I don’t know if our driver had ever driven that fast before because his boat handling wasn’t precise. I was getting nervous when we came to a sharp bend and our boy didn’t make the turn. We went into a side channel and stuck fast on a mudflat. No body moved. I jumped out on the left side thinking that the water was shallow. When I put my weight into pushing the boat I stepped into a hole and disappeared under water. As I was coming back to the surface something large, alive, and probably hungry bumped into my leg. I kicked hard and it moved away. I broke the surface yelling for help to move the piragua. Bob and Lee slid into the water on the high side and we were off in one push.

Bob said, “You sure seemed upset at getting a little wet.”

I said, “You have no idea.”

Back in the main channel our driver didn’t slow down. Bob turned around, laid his machete on the kid’s shoulder and smiled. The rest of the trip went smoothly.

Down river at Boca de Cupe we picked up two hitchhikers. They were young and pretty girls from Yavisa who were in a beauty contest. They carried clipboards with a list of names. The girl who collected the most names was the winner of a two-week trip to Panamá City. I didn’t ask what the runner-up got. We signed both of their lists and dropped them off at the little settlement of Pinogana to get more signatures. At this point our cayuca drivers decided that they had urgent business up-river and left. Bartolo arranged to borrow three piraguas and we continued on.

The crew was clearly relieved that our journey was near the end and everyone relaxed and started to relive the adventure before it was actually over. As we set up our last camp the Choco painted their bodies black with juice from genip tree berries. They highlighted the black color with red slashes across their cheekbones made from achiote seeds, which is also their main cooking spice. They did this in honor of our departure. That night we didn’t party heavily.

The next morning we were up before first light and built a fire for coffee. Our three Choco guides hunkered close to the fire holding their coffee gourds as if they were religious artifacts. They looked like finely chiseled sculptures in the flickering of light and shadow. No one talked. Finally Bartolo grunted, stood up, tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and pissed on it to put it out. We all contributed to the stream and then went down to the piraguas. It was a quiet journey for the last few miles into El Real. When we arrived in front of La Cantina del Sol we said goodbye to Bartolo, Eduardo and the rest of our Choco crew. We shook hands and looked into each other’s eyes for a long time.

We said, “Muchas Gracias por todos.”

They said, “Por nada, amigos ” and went into the cantina. I have never been with men I respect more.

We talked the Guardia into lending us a 6x6 military truck to haul our gear to El Real International Airport. At the airfield we waited under the thatch roof for the plane to arrive. The pilot buzzed the field and we waded out through cow dung to drive the cattle off the runway. We loaded our gear and the Piper Aztec bounced and careened into the air. After the closeness of the jungle where a view of a hundred feet was a vista we were now looking out across the same vast green mat we had seen months ago. Just being able to see a great distance was a revelation, as though your mind was opening up. I knew that I was a different person than the young smartass who landed in the unknown not long before: With luck, better able to handle the next adventure.

We landed on a dirt strip at La Palma on the Golfo de San Miguel. Two geologists came out and loaded several hundred pounds of rock samples next to all of our gear and climbed aboard. The temperature was over one hundred degrees. It didn’t seem likely that this over-loaded plane would be able to take off in the heat-thinned air. Along the runway a good-sized crowd of villagers gathered. The pilot taxied into the scrub beyond the end of the dirt runway, spun the plane around, set the brakes, and pushed the throttles to maximum. The engines roared and the plane vibrated and rocked. Then our captain released the brakes and the plane lurched forward, rolling, bouncing and slowly picking up speed. The engines sounded like they were going to blow into bits and we weren’t gaining much speed. Our crowd of spectators seemed solemn as they followed our progress down the airstrip. Finally we ran out of runway and bounced into scrub at the far end. In one final bounce we were over the edge of the drop-off to the bay. The Piper’s engines were giving every thing they had and we stopped falling. Slowly the bay retreated below us and we started to breathe again.

Settled into my seat, the engine vibrations began to massage away muscle tensions I didn’t realize I had. Thoughts of what we had just gone through mixed with the realization of how lucky we had been. Yes, we had pulled it off, but any little shift in timing and circumstance could have added us to the list of lost explorers. It always comes down to luck. I was basically a lucky guy, but I knew a number of people who were clearly unlucky. What was the difference? The old Greeks said we were the toys of the Gods, the Fates and the Furies. That’s probably as good an explanation as Chaos Theory and certainly more poetic.

The flight to Panama City took about an hour. When we landed we threw our gear into two air-conditioned taxicabs that dodged, honked and intimidated through traffic to the Hotel Continental. Green-liveried porters with gold epaulets hurried our gear up the wide stairs. Our sweat-stained clothes were still splattered with jungle mud and cow dung. In the large marble foyer a crowd was gathered around a television set. We jostled our way in to get a look as Apollo 11 burned through the Florida sky on it’s way to a moon landing. Bob, Lee, and myself just stood there as the crowd started to drift away. There was nothing clever that we could say. Finally, the sign “Cocktail Lounge” got our attention and we eased into the soft stools and shivered slightly in the cool air. I don’t remember what I ordered, but I remember the ice cubes.

Before dawn that morning we had coffee in a gourd with men who were comfortable in the Stone Age. Then in the late afternoon we saw fellow humans blasting away from the home planet into the terrifying blackness of the void. Now I had ice cubes tinkling in my glass. When we started on this project many months ago, I had expected an adventure, but we had just lived, up close, most of human history in less than a day. In my own life I had worked on a project for NASA and I had lived with Bartolo and his friends in a very unforgiving jungle. Our native guides were clever people who lived a decent life. I believe that Bartolo, with the right education and opportunities, could have been an astronaut. The original NASA crews trained with Choco Chief Antonio Zarco so they had the knowledge to survive if their capsule crashed into the jungle.

At this moment the Stone Age and the Space Age co-exist and both cultures are reasonable ways to live. My Choco friends couldn’t understand why I would leave the jungle and return to the madness of a city. I’ve come realize that the gift of travel is the knowledge that there is no one correct philosophy or way to live. Since the Darién, I have lived in some great cites and places remote from civilization: I have missed living in civilization fewer times than I have missed living in wild places. In time, I came to understand the dilemma of the old Choco engineer. Once you start adventuring you really don’t fit in back home. People may invite you over for dinner to hear your stories, but you are no longer, “one of them.”


Jungle Time



The tropical sun glared off the metal roof of La Cantina Del Sol, a wooden shack standing on thick poles jammed into the mud. Three steps up from the soft ground was a covered porch that listed off to starboard. Stacked next to the door were half a-dozen spears. I stepped over the rotted plank that one day soon would disintegrate, but everyone knew where it was so there was no reason to fix it. I pushed through the two swinging half-doors. It was like walking into a fathomless cave. I stood there for a couple of minutes until I could see a few shapes in the lightening gloom. The only sound was the sad groaning of the ceiling fan as it pushed the hot air around the room. It wasn’t cooler inside, but it wasn’t quite as hot as outside. A bar ran down the left side of the room and a few unmatched tables and chairs were strewn about the right side. A gathering of Choco tribesmen leaned against the bar enjoying cold beers. They were small muscular men wearing only loincloths with a front flap that hung to just above knee level. Their thick black hair had a classic cereal bowl cut. They nodded and said, “Buenos” in a high nasal tone. I answered in my imitation of their accent and they smiled because they are polite people and at least I was trying.

There was an old Choco sitting at the bar wearing denim bib overalls and heavy boots. I sat next to him and we started talking. He had some English and I had a little Spanish so we exchanged our stories. I was a filmmaker shooting a project about the people in the Darién jungle and he was the engineer on the banana boat anchored off El Real in the Tuira River. The boat would be loaded by mid-afternoon and he would be off to Panama City keeping the ancient diesel engine running with a few broken tools and a lifetime’s experience of fixing the un-fixable. He wanted to know more about what we were actually doing; he’d heard all the various stories and rumors drifting around. Jungle outposts need rumors to fill in an otherwise dull day. After I told him what we were doing he said he knew of a place that we should film: The Lost City of La Laguna. He pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket, sketched a map and handed it to me. He said it was a cursed village that was under water and protected by demons that didn’t like tourists. It was deep into Cuna territory and they weren’t any more pleasant than the demons. The Choco and the Cuna were not friends. The Choco called the Cuna, “The Silent Ones.” While we talked I felt that we were characters in a Joseph Conrad short story. I bought him a beer and we talked of his childhood in the jungle. He was in his late fifties and had been raised in the old ways. He was rich by tribal standards, but he was thinking of retiring and didn’t know what to do. He really didn’t belong in either world. I bought him another beer and left him thinking about his future and maybe whether he would look silly if he started wearing a loincloth again.

The rough map was my creative salvation. After several months in the Darién I wasn’t sure that I had a movie, or really, what I was doing there in the first place. The jungle does that to you, but now I had a project to find, explore, and film a “lost city.” When I told the story to Bartolo, our Choco guide, he said that some of his people were afraid of the area, but he, his brother and a few of his good buddies weren’t and they would be happy to do anything that would “piss-off” the Cuna. We would have to navigate up the Tuira and then go up-river on the Río Púcuro to the village of Púcuro. Above the village the river has rapids we couldn’t handle so we would have to work our way through the jungle on the only footpath across the Darién. If the inhabitants of South America walked to their new homes from Central America then they walked on that trail.

When I got the assignment to shoot this film all I knew about jungles was what I saw on National Geographic specials. There wasn’t much time or money to put a crew together, but I found Big Bob who had just done his tour in Viet Nam and Young Lee, a big kid who knew something about recording sound: On a limited budget you tend to take anyone who is willing to join your foolishness. In Panamá, as we were packing our gear a young man named Ken Francisco knocked on our hotel door and announced that he could guide us in the Darién. He’d worked there with Christian missionaries, but now he was on his own and needed money. His Spanish was reasonably good and he had a few contacts in the jungle so we added him to the crew. I told him to get his gear and be back in an hour. He said he had all he needed and was ready to go. He was wearing a white dress shirt with a toothbrush sticking out of the pocket, dark trousers of an indeterminate color, and normal leather shoes. That was his entire kit. You have to respect a man who travels light

The Darién is classed as one of the world’s great jungles. A jungle is the big party that Nature threw when she decided that life was here to stay. It is an all-you-can-eat affair where everything is eating everything as fast as possible and being on the top of the food chain is a matter of timing and luck. In the literature you’ll see the Darién described as The Gap; the gap being in the Trans American highway the travels from Fairbanks Alaska to the tip of South America. However, there are no gaps in the Darién except the one footpath and the rivers and streams that run down from the cordillera that is the dividing line between Central and South America. These milk chocolate colored rivers are the thoroughfares for all commerce and commuting as well as a source of water for drinking, bathing, washing and waste disposal. If the water flow is high enough it seems that these uses are compatible.

The primary conveyance, called a piragua, is a canoe 8-to 20-feet long hollowed out from a tree trunk and propelled by 10-foot long poles. One man stands on the bow and uses a pole to fend off from the banks while the man at the stern provides most of the up-stream propulsion. It is a beautiful exercise of balance and stamina. For weeks we had carefully loaded our gear and eased into these tippy craft as Bartolo, his brother Eduardo and a varying crew of their friends moved us up and down the Río Pirre to film whatever took our fancy.

The Río Pirre was a stream with a steady flow and banks that varied from water level to six feet high. On the outside curve of some bends in the river there was a dwelling or a small settlement. Children would come running, folks would shout greetings and Bartolo and friends would shout back. Some times we would stop and have the jungle equivalent of a nice cup of tea and shoot a little footage. Everyone was related and we were accepted as friends of relatives. Some of the settlements were the result of divorce. People married by saying that they were married. They divorced the same way, but the woman got the “house.” The man built a new dwelling next door and life went on.

The dwellings consisted of a series of poles, 8-to-10 feet tall and 6-to-8 inches in diameter sunk into the ground. About three feet off the ground a series of horizontal poles inlet into the uprights supported a floor of planks split from large logs. A notched log was mounted as a stairway up to the floor. A peaked roof of woven palm fronds kept the interior dry even in a tropical downpour. There were no walls or partitions and everyone slept in hammocks. The cooking fire in the center of the hut was a large log kept burning with smaller branches and twigs placed on some flat rocks to keep the coals from burning through the floor. Like native dwellings everywhere, they were perfectly matched to the environment.

With our wrinkled map of the “Lost City” in hand, we were now heading back into the jungle. Our destination of Púcuro was a good distance off so Bartolo arranged for two cayucas, which are hollowed out logs about thirty feet long powered by an outboard motor hung off a transom nailed to the hull. We loaded our gear into the cayucas and headed up the Tuira. After weeks of traveling with the gentle flow of piraguas we were now traveling in the hot rods of the river. The outboard motor moved us easily against the current. Unlike the occasional river traffic of the Pirre, the Tuira was a continuous flow of cayucas, piraguas and even one large aluminum launch. Most everyone waved although we did get a few suspicious looks. Clusters of dwellings sat at regular intervals on the riverbanks. Some were typical Choco construction, but further up-river there were shacks of packing crate and tin roof architecture. A couple of dwellings were real houses. We made the village of Boca de Cupe the first day.

Boca de Cupe was once the terminus of a railroad that serviced the gold mines of Santa Cruz de la Cana. At different times the mines had employed as many as 16,000 workers who extracted tons of gold. The last working mine had closed just before we arrived at Boca. Cana had experienced the boom-bust cycle of mining for over three hundred years so they must have gotten used to it. We strolled around looking for a place to stay for the night, but the vibe didn’t feel good. We may have looked like an easy target to some of the out-of-work miners lying around. Finally we went to the edge of town and slung our hammocks for the night. We kept an all night watch, changing every two hours, to keep the locals honest. Maybe it was the general feeling of gloom in Boca, but I needed to give myself a pep talk to stay optimistic that this whole project was going to be successful. Maybe it was just the jungle wearing me down.

At dawn, I lay in my hammock rehearsing again the role of an expedition leader. Most important, you have to appear confident and in control or things can go bad. If things do start to go bad you must quickly make decisions that are not completely stupid. You can’t complain. No matter how ugly it gets, you have to appear to be having a good time, or at least endure the situation with quiet dignity. I knew that I was in way over my head, but things were not going badly and perhaps the “Lost City” would prove to be the element we needed to have a successful project. I rolled out of my hammock and said, “OK, it’s Show Time!” and we moved out right after coffee.

At the confluence of the smaller Río Púcuro we shifted our gear back into piraguas. I have no idea how Bartolo arranged this in advance. As we moved around the first bend the river narrowed and the jungle closed in. In some places where the muddy banks were near level with the river the locals had worn footpaths for quick trips that didn’t need a boat. Some of those paths were probably ancient when the Inca were still applying for building permits. At the edge of these paths was a tangle of Spanish Oaks, climbing bamboo, banana trees and a variety of plants that included every possible shade, variation and interpretation of green. Towering over this wall of green were giant cativo trees that grew to well over a hundred feet. Orchids covering the spectrum from white to purple clung to trees. Birds flitted, soared or just stood on limbs and complained to each other about our intrusion. Howler monkeys generally agreed with the birds and bitterly complained about our presence. The jungle is not a quiet place.

Everywhere you looked something was slithering or darting out of sight. I spotted a frog crouched on a leaf that was such an intense yellow it looked like it was plugged into a power source. I read once that if a creature chose to be a very bright, unlikely color that it was probably highly poisonous. I decided to turn down any offers of yellow frog soup.

It hadn’t rained for two days and in the early afternoon we were really feeling the heat. The heat in the jungle has weight. It pushes in from all sides and squeezes out ambition and any notion of hard work. People in the tropics aren’t languid; they’re comatose. Around a bend we came to a waterfall dropping from a high cliff to our right. The right bank was vertical right down to the river so we pulled up on the left bank. Because the current was fairly strong we walked about fifty yards up-river before we jumped in to swim across. The waterfall was cold and delicious. I just wanted to stay there and forget all of that jungle exploration business, but the show must go on. After a good wash and shampoo we swam back. I stayed in the river a bit longer just to enjoy exercising all my muscles.

When I got out I had a number of small blue fish attached to me. They had tiny mouths so they couldn’t take much of a bite, but they hung on tenaciously. My loyal crew certainly enjoyed the sight. Big Bob walked up and pulled them off. I made a few chuffing noises, remaining as macho as possible. He said that there weren’t enough to feed everyone. He said something about throwing me back in so we could collect enough fish for lunch. I said something unkind and poured rum on a rag to cleanse the little holes in my chest and belly. I took a drink from the bottle to prevent infection. We had rice and bacalau for lunch and moved on.

Púcuro was quite different from the informal Choco settlements we had visited. It was neatly arranged with a number of pole and woven thatch dwellings surrounding a large open space of packed dirt. There was one large two-story house that belonged to the Sahila, the chief of the village who controls an area that is determined by tradition. Whatever was going to happen in this patch of jungle was only going to happen with his permission. Unlike the Choco, who are the Libertarians of the jungle, the Cuna have a well-organized society The Sahila is elected by a tribal council in which each man and woman has a voice and a vote. Major decisions are made in the same democratic process. If a chief isn’t doing a good job he can be replaced. This concept of popular democracy was ancient when the first Europeans arrived to claim land for King and Queen. Some of those early Euros wrote of this strange practice and, perhaps, provided a bit of inspiration to the revolutionaries of later centuries.

We had Ken act as our emissary because using Bartolo would have been an insult. It was clear that the Sahila was not happy that we had arrived in his village. He was less happy that we wanted to go to La Laguna. The lake was near the mountain Tacarcuna, which was still held in sacred awe by the Cuna. However, a reasonable sum of money might make the gods and demons less grumpy. Even in a remote jungle the concept of “pay the priest” is the way to salvation.

Since negotiations in the tropics happen at the pace of everything else we would have to wait a day or two or three for an answer. One of Bartolo’s crew knew one of the villagers so this poor guy became responsible for our housing and food. He was not happy about this, but he was a good host. We slung our hammocks near the river and ate with his family each day.

The village was an eerie place and now we knew why the Choco called the Cuna, “Silent Ones.” The children did not laugh and run around. People didn’t gather in the common area and talk. I asked Bartolo if everyone was hiding because we were there, but he said that this was normal. He shook his head when he said normal. We settled in and I had Bob and Lee inventory our provisions and supplies while I tried to calculate how far we would have to walk to get to La Laguna and figure a total time for this trip. The map I had showed Púcuro, but not the lake and none of the locals had any idea what a map was or how it worked. They understood the direction of the rising and setting sun, but north had no meaning to them. The closeness of the jungle must have kept them from using the stars and no one traveled at night anyway.

I took a few shots of the village and just one roll of still film. The Cuna clearly wanted us gone. We waited three days for the Sahila to decide on the price of his cooperation. There is an inverse law at work in remote places: The further away and less desirable a place is the more arrogant the local power broker can be. On the other hand no one had invited us here. At this point I did something really stupid. Over the years I have developed a pattern of getting out of situations I didn’t want to be in by committing a dumb act and then letting events unfold from there. I do not suggest this practice to anyone. I like to throw knives, axes, machetes—anything that will fly through the air and make a satisfying “thunk” when it sticks into something. I had been flinging my machete at trees, especially banana trees, for the time we had been in the jungle.

Next to our camping site the villagers were finishing up a beautiful piragua for the Sahila. It was fashioned from a large espavé, a wild cashew tree, shaped by several weeks of precise work with axes. A piragua is perhaps the most important possession of a jungle dweller. It provides the same freedom that a car does for people in more developed places. On the forth morning of our stay in Púcuro a rooster started it’s rasping announcement long before I thought it should. I rolled out of my hammock and threw my machete at it. The bird was standing on the piragua and fluttered to safety as the machete thunked deep into the soon-to-be launched vessel. While no one seemed to be up, nothing happens out there that goes un-noticed. Before we had finished morning coffee the Sahila and a few of his buddies came down and checked the piragua. He fingered the fresh slice in the hull and looked at me with more contempt than any of my ex-girlfriends. At midday we were told that the Sahila was ready to talk to us. The price of cooperation would be a large chunk of my budget. I couldn’t immediately say no to his proposal because it would be impolite and if he sensed that I was nervous he could put much more pressure on us. I told him I would think about it and give him an answer the next day.

That night when I climbed into my hammock my inner voice was yammering at me: It’s over. I’d pushed as far as I could. Giving up was something that came hard, but whatever power I thought I had to make things happen just wasn’t enough. Also, there was a crew that had every right to expect that I wouldn’t make a stupid decision. Failure can be endured as long as you live to tell the tale. We couldn’t continue without his help so the next day I thanked the Sahila for the village’s hospitality, gave him eighty bucks for the cost of food and lodging and indicated that I would never come back. He seemed pleased. We loaded our gear and headed downriver.

When we switched back to cayucas we got a new crew of young guys that we didn’t know. They approached our trip down the Tuira as if a trophy were waiting at some finish line up ahead. At first it was fun to feel the breeze as we roared along. It was like a carnival ride as we screamed around bends and dodged the great snags of fallen trees. I don’t know if our driver had ever driven that fast before because his boat handling wasn’t precise. I was getting nervous when we came to a sharp bend and our boy didn’t make the turn. We went into a side channel and stuck fast on a mudflat. No body moved. I jumped out on the left side thinking that the water was shallow. When I put my weight into pushing the boat I stepped into a hole and disappeared under water. As I was coming back to the surface something large, alive, and probably hungry bumped into my leg. I kicked hard and it moved away. I broke the surface yelling for help to move the piragua. Bob and Lee slid into the water on the high side and we were off in one push.

Bob said, “You sure seemed upset at getting a little wet.”

I said, “You have no idea.”

Back in the main channel our driver didn’t slow down. Bob turned around, laid his machete on the kid’s shoulder and smiled. The rest of the trip went smoothly.

Down river at Boca de Cupe we picked up two hitchhikers. They were young and pretty girls from Yavisa who were in a beauty contest. They carried clipboards with a list of names. The girl who collected the most names was the winner of a two-week trip to Panamá City. I didn’t ask what the runner-up got. We signed both of their lists and dropped them off at the little settlement of Pinogana to get more signatures. At this point our cayuca drivers decided that they had urgent business up-river and left. Bartolo arranged to borrow three piraguas and we continued on.

The crew was clearly relieved that our journey was near the end and everyone relaxed and started to relive the adventure before it was actually over. As we set up our last camp the Choco painted their bodies black with juice from genip tree berries. They highlighted the black color with red slashes across their cheekbones made from achiote seeds, which is also their main cooking spice. They did this in honor of our departure. That night we didn’t party heavily.

The next morning we were up before first light and built a fire for coffee. Our three Choco guides hunkered close to the fire holding their coffee gourds as if they were religious artifacts. They looked like finely chiseled sculptures in the flickering of light and shadow. No one talked. Finally Bartolo grunted, stood up, tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and pissed on it to put it out. We all contributed to the stream and then went down to the piraguas. It was a quiet journey for the last few miles into El Real. When we arrived in front of La Cantina del Sol we said goodbye to Bartolo, Eduardo and the rest of our Choco crew. We shook hands and looked into each other’s eyes for a long time.

We said, “Muchas Gracias por todos.”

They said, “Por nada, amigos ” and went into the cantina. I have never been with men I respect more.

We talked the Guardia into lending us a 6x6 military truck to haul our gear to El Real International Airport. At the airfield we waited under the thatch roof for the plane to arrive. The pilot buzzed the field and we waded out through cow dung to drive the cattle off the runway. We loaded our gear and the Piper Aztec bounced and careened into the air. After the closeness of the jungle where a view of a hundred feet was a vista we were now looking out across the same vast green mat we had seen months ago. Just being able to see a great distance was a revelation, as though your mind was opening up. I knew that I was a different person than the young smartass who landed in the unknown not long before: With luck, better able to handle the next adventure.

We landed on a dirt strip at La Palma on the Golfo de San Miguel. Two geologists came out and loaded several hundred pounds of rock samples next to all of our gear and climbed aboard. The temperature was over one hundred degrees. It didn’t seem likely that this over-loaded plane would be able to take off in the heat-thinned air. Along the runway a good-sized crowd of villagers gathered. The pilot taxied into the scrub beyond the end of the dirt runway, spun the plane around, set the brakes, and pushed the throttles to maximum. The engines roared and the plane vibrated and rocked. Then our captain released the brakes and the plane lurched forward, rolling, bouncing and slowly picking up speed. The engines sounded like they were going to blow into bits and we weren’t gaining much speed. Our crowd of spectators seemed solemn as they followed our progress down the airstrip. Finally we ran out of runway and bounced into scrub at the far end. In one final bounce we were over the edge of the drop-off to the bay. The Piper’s engines were giving every thing they had and we stopped falling. Slowly the bay retreated below us and we started to breathe again.

Settled into my seat, the engine vibrations began to massage away muscle tensions I didn’t realize I had. Thoughts of what we had just gone through mixed with the realization of how lucky we had been. Yes, we had pulled it off, but any little shift in timing and circumstance could have added us to the list of lost explorers. It always comes down to luck. I was basically a lucky guy, but I knew a number of people who were clearly unlucky. What was the difference? The old Greeks said we were the toys of the Gods, the Fates and the Furies. That’s probably as good an explanation as Chaos Theory and certainly more poetic.

The flight to Panama City took about an hour. When we landed we threw our gear into two air-conditioned taxicabs that dodged, honked and intimidated through traffic to the Hotel Continental. Green-liveried porters with gold epaulets hurried our gear up the wide stairs. Our sweat-stained clothes were still splattered with jungle mud and cow dung. In the large marble foyer a crowd was gathered around a television set. We jostled our way in to get a look as Apollo 11 burned through the Florida sky on it’s way to a moon landing. Bob, Lee, and myself just stood there as the crowd started to drift away. There was nothing clever that we could say. Finally, the sign “Cocktail Lounge” got our attention and we eased into the soft stools and shivered slightly in the cool air. I don’t remember what I ordered, but I remember the ice cubes.

Before dawn that morning we had coffee in a gourd with men who were comfortable in the Stone Age. Then in the late afternoon we saw fellow humans blasting away from the home planet into the terrifying blackness of the void. Now I had ice cubes tinkling in my glass. When we started on this project many months ago, I had expected an adventure, but we had just lived, up close, most of human history in less than a day. In my own life I had worked on a project for NASA and I had lived with Bartolo and his friends in a very unforgiving jungle. Our native guides were clever people who lived a decent life. I believe that Bartolo, with the right education and opportunities, could have been an astronaut. The original NASA crews trained with Choco Chief Antonio Zarco so they had the knowledge to survive if their capsule crashed into the jungle.

At this moment the Stone Age and the Space Age co-exist and both cultures are reasonable ways to live. My Choco friends couldn’t understand why I would leave the jungle and return to the madness of a city. I’ve come realize that the gift of travel is the knowledge that there is no one correct philosophy or way to live. Since the Darién, I have lived in some great cites and places remote from civilization: I have missed living in civilization fewer times than I have missed living in wild places. In time, I came to understand the dilemma of the old Choco engineer. Once you start adventuring you really don’t fit in back home. People may invite you over for dinner to hear your stories, but you are no longer, “one of them.”

There is a saying etched into a wall of a church in Urubá on the Columbian side of the Darién:

Cuando entres al Darién 

When you enter the Darién

Encomiéndate a María.

Commend your soul to the Virgin Mary.

En tu mano está la entrada, 

In your hands is the entrance,

En la de Díos la salida. 

In those of God’s is your exit.




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