Jungle vs. Rich (1 Aug 2012)

The day started unknowingly at 5am sharp, with three bright flashes followed by three loud bangs, then a section of trumpets and a drum thumping, followed by diarrhoea.

The drum was one of those big bastards they use in the military to arouse patriotic fervour. Witnessing this would have been welcomed around lunchtime or even dusk but not before the rooster wakes up.

Because we had to wake up early anyway, we set our alarms to go off at 7am. Having not been use to this for a while, we found a degree of novelty in selecting the sound or tone of the alarm that would gently bring us into the day. I chose a sci-fi number which resembled an x-wing/tie fighter battle and Charly chose church bells which sounded like church bells

The night was stifling hot as you would have expected being in the Amazon jungle. Charly bedded as usual hours before me which left my imagination in charge. I remember finally closing my eyes around 2.30ish, rationalising that I still had nearly 5 hours sleep. 2.30hrs later; flash flash flash; boom boom boom; pamp pamp honk! Bong bong bong, squirt....... began. Unbridled confusion set in! Charly's initial reaction was disorientation: thinking we were back in Australia and angry at me for playing music too loud or leaving a movie on. I initially though something had grossly gone wrong in choosing the alarm. Military band? Was that an option? By now, Charly had gained proper consciousness to recognise that it was not my fault, although I didn't really care, mainly because I had bigger fish to fry. Normal life in South America would be interrupted if there wasn't a fiesta at 5am but a fiesta in the middle of the jungle was only bewildering. Awake, my imagination once again took over and any attempt at sleep now was futile.

I could hear the explosions, drums and horns off into the distance and then return. It was obvious they had a well-established circuit: optimised to reach every person in town evenly. I thought, if I could learn their route I could anticipate their next pass and launch bins full of used toilet paper at them.

Although problems with this plan were discovered 1) the wind was not in my favor and I would most likely suffer friendly fire 2) I didn't know who I was dealing with. 7am came along with a biting humidity. We both peeled our corpses out of the bed and were not too impressed with the fact that our sleep was interrupted on the day we had planned a grueling hike in the Amazon jungle. I personally didn't want to go on this trip, mainly because we have jungle in Australia and we have seen it. Given that it's the Amazon we would most likely be unable to make the differentiation between the two in one day. But what the boss wants the subservient must supply.

The walk involved walking to a view point and learning about natural medicines used by the Indigenous folk along the way, in Spanish. (The little Spanish we did know was geared to find McDonalds in a metropolis not to take a lecture in botanical pharmacy.) Walking in a jungle, your time is divided between either watching where you are going or investigating what just tickled you - every now and then lifting your head to survey your surroundings. I’m just not into it, man!

As fate would have it, joining us on our day trip was a delightful young lad who was Canadian/Italian whose primary role in his life, or at least that day, was to remind me how unattractive and unpleasant I am. He began by saying how he wanted to spend a month "lost" in the jungle, just himself and his wits. Bullshit I thought! I pride myself on calling other people bluffs - but, now I'm in the business of giving people a chance, having metamorphosised into an beautiful accepting butterfly. I did however, notice an odd physical formation on this young stallion. In some circles it would be considered a grotesque feature and in others, a point of intrigue. As a muscly chap, he was wearing a singlet which, by design drew attention to his finely toned arms, but not me. Whenever he turned around I couldn't help but be drawn to an archipelago of shoulder blade hair just on the left side. Curious, I thought. Was it there by design or a lazy concurrence? I didn't know. What I did know is that it looked like it was blow-dried, which shifted the weight of my opinion to it being designed. It was clear to me that Fabio was well ahead of his time.

We left the tour agency and walked down to the river to catch a water taxi across. I didn't previously cast any thought as to why there wasn't a bridge connecting the two villages. The river was infested with alligators - a natural barrier. For what, I wondered. Dinosaurs? On the other side were motorcycle taxis waiting for some business. Our guide talked to the drivers and off we went. These guys ride motorcycles for a living. Keep calm. Don't distract this highly trained transport technician, otherwise we both might be doomed. Just relax and keep your goddamn right leg off the exhaust!!

Being a guy, I think these Bolivian motorcycle drivers assume that I can handle taking a corner or a jump at full speed because whenever Charly and I took this form of transportation I would arrive 2 minutes earlier. I digress. We amassed on the intersection of a typical jungle road. Throughout my life, stomach complications inevitably strike at the most inconvenient times. First dates, queuing 45 mins at a bank, performing surgery, fixing the space station, flying a plane or on a dirt road in the middle of the goddamn jungle. I instantaneously knew what this meant and I loathed my gastrointestinal tract for having perfect, serene constipation for the past week where we were in close proximity to toilets only to let the flood gates open in an alligator infested swamp; where we were just about to begin a hike.

Well, business is business and it never waits for comfortable western conditions. With a hand full of toilette paper I ventured off down to a little stream, dropped pants and began. By no means was it the most gracious experience of my life but a smidgen gratifying, as I had been wondering where all the food I ate went. I regrouped after the third round and off we went.

The trek began as a timid walk, humid as hell but nothing out of the ordinary, walking in Brisbane on a humid summer’s day. The conversation was primarily limited to getting to know you stuff. My belly was still in knots and I was in no mood for this, I kept quiet - reserved and mysterious.

The deeper we went the bigger the mosquitoes got. So big, I could hear their hearts beating, or was it some other large predator? We came across our first tree and ironically it supposedly helps an upset stomach. Ha ha ha, the guide chuckled as he pointed at me sarcastically. (Luckily I didn't buy any stocks in his babble. Later, he admitted that the tree he had thought was for an upset stomach was in fact meant to help lactation for breast feeding. Christ, I thought! I don't need leaking nipples as well!) Other trees, he vaguely explained, did all sorts of things. Any ailment one could think of, a tree existed to cure it. Which is possible but I was catching a wift of repetitiveness as the third tree also helped impotence. "This tree is good for: skin fungus, bad dreams and impotence." This tree is good for: blurry vision, poor sales in your uncle’s sock shop and impotence."

The beautiful Canadian/Italian (now referred to as Fabio) started to show over-enthusiastic interest in what Mr Vague was saying, perpetuating more discussion. You bastard, I thought! The slower we move the more the advantage falls in the hands of the gigantic fucking mosquitoes with very large hands!

Waking for another 45mins, we came across a clearing made for camping. Anything with skin would struggle to survive out here, I thought - everything moist, damp and itchy. Fabio was convulsing and foaming at the mouth with enthusiasm - I momentarily considered he had overdosed on lactation medicine. Trees and vegetation had been cleared but, inevitably, was demanding the space back. A few benches were scattered around the edges of the clearing. On one of the benches there was an exotic fungus of some kind, slowly taking over the damp bench. When I looked at this fungus it made me think of the primordial soup that created life on earth and I pondered: If man managed not destroy this jungle and the jungle managed not to destroy this fungus - what kind of life would eventuate in 25 million years. At this point I asked Mr Vague if he knew what kind of fungus it was and he replied sharply with a tinge of distain. This was some gringo's left-over pasta! Holy shit, I thought! If in 25 million years life evolved from a fungus whose primary source of cheesy-starchy-carbohydrates was pasta: would Silvio Berlusconi evolve out of the Amazon? Mr Vague told us to rest and drink water as the next hour and a half was going to be almost straight up.

Walking into the Amazon you knowingly de-evolve out of familiar, ordered human society and enter the food chain. Out there, teeth and venom are a sought after commodity - not an average I.Q. This point is more relevant when the direction that you take has to be hacked by a machete. Your natural, peripheral senses which have been subdued by internet porn and takeaway food are thankfully amplified in the jungle. Every little snap, leaf ruffling, tickle or itch felt like the jungle was probing, determining where on the food chain to place you..

After an hour and a half of intense walking in 35degree heat I felt like Charlie Sheen’s character in Platoon: on patrol in Vietnam not being able to hack the conditions, temporarily loses control and vomits. The scenario was made worse by Fabio, who, even in stylish Italian slippers was able to leap and bound up this fucking mountain with little or no effort. Bastard, I thought.... but hold it together man. These people don't know you are hurting. Relax, goddam it! I became somewhat philosophical in my discomfort; people will only let you see what they want you to see. Are we all acting? Is Fabio actually terrified and had just vacuumed a kilo of cocaine to deal with the stress? Do we really know anyone? I didn't really know where this was all coming from but I suspected dehydration and some sort of venom played its part.

Reaching the top of the incline with a heart rate of 140, we came to a spot where if you pulled back some of the foliage you could see the town below. The guide stopped at a tree and with his machete peeled off some of the bark. He continued to divulge that this tree was capable of making women fertile and men into stallions. With of course, the typical cure for impotence. Don't take too much he warned! Oh I won't, my mind retorted! He went on to say that if you take too much, men can ejaculate blood and women can go insane. Our Spanish was getting better! Or maybe not... Keep moving, goddam it! The mosquitoes are homing in! I was no longer listening but rather engaged in a strange rhythm of clapping my hands and shuffling my feet, similar to a flamingo dancer. In five mins my hands resembled the hands of gardener - manually turning compost. I had managed to kill 30 or so mosquitoes. The jungle knew we were here! We had to move!

A debate unfolded of what our next move was going to be. Fabio wanted to push on to a lagoon, which was an additional three hour walk. Meaning, we would not return until 9pm. My opinion of this young man was leaning towards heat induced psychosis. So I interjected, which came as a shock to the others because up until this point I had been silent, strangely dancing around, rapidly clapping my hands. I mentioned: I thought it was madness to continue walking for another 3hrs and then hiking back for 6 - highlighting the fact that none of us had a torch. The guide replied, I have my phone - turning it on for reassurance. Would it work when I shove it up your arse, I scrawled....in my mind!! The other option was to descend down the backside of the mountain and follow a river to civilization and be home by sunset. I looked at Charly and begged her with my eyes to agree to this option and with mercy she did. With little peer pressure, Fabio agreed as well. I bloody knew it! You were bluffing you handsome bastard!

Descending, we came across another tree which was used to poison things and cure impotence. My attention was diverted from the poison/erection tree to a strange noise filling the gaps between the usual nonspecific noise of the jungle. The sound was like something eating with a horrible cold. I looked at Mr Vague and he looked at me - midway through his sentence, he could hear it now. I said, do you know what that is. He pondered for a while, as he computed the possibilities. He said that it may be a chancho (pig). But this was no ordinary chancho. This was a tropical chancho. My Spanish may be bad but I am able to judge when something should be avoided. Whilst gripping his machete as if he were about to behead something, Mr Vague explained that tropical chanchos are known to travel in packs of up to two hundred! Not so vague now, I thought. My nature is inquisitive/suspicious which makes it quite hard for me to believe anything you say. The type of scepticism that is only inherited - not practiced, which is far more confrontational. I desperately wanted not to believe him but what could I have based my argument on? I could not recall any relevant National Geographic documentary to prove otherwise, my conclusion would therefore be a gamble. Here was a guy who had lived in the jungle his entire life, knew how to get in and how to chop his way out, for sure he would know stuff like this, so I decided to side with him. Fuck me, I thought. Two-hundred wild boars - hungry and roaming the jungle for fallen berries, nuts or people! Would it be possible to defend against one boar let alone 200?!! I considered taking out my Swiss army knife, so if things went sour I could at least take a few of these bastard chanchos back to hell with me, but I didn't want to trigger an arms race in our tightly knitted group. No...Our group needed to focus less on mortal combat and more on walking.

Hacking, sliding, falling and methodically cursing the person who dragged me into this, we arrived at the river. The river looked unremarkable, a slow trickle of water meandering its way over an eon-old river bed filled with polished stones: exactly like the ones I know in Australia. Champagne did not flow under rainbows guarded by leprechauns or past sleeping unicorns. There wasn't scantily clad women, a tofu stir-fry or the cure for baldness, all of which I would get out of bed at 5.00am for. But never the less, crossing the river provided an avenue to recoil back from the brink of insanity, from perilously hacking through dense Amazon - Charly did not let me forget that!

A quick succession of crossings and Fabio was finding it hard to gain traction with his Italian loafers on the frictionless stones. Obviously struggling, he still displayed a character of optimism with spirituality, not overtly being troubled by the obvious trouble he was enduring. Watching him struggle, turned the volume down on my problems of being hot, tired and sick. But watching him deal with it so well turned the volume up on me being me. Splash!!!! Followed by.... "Puta!!!!" Fabio had gone ankle deep in the river with his Italian loafers. I buried my giggle deep in my diaphragm, because I know for a fact that if it had been me, I would have countered laughter with hostility. Two minutes later.... Splash!!! Followed by "ah well!" From this point in he ploughed through river showing complete disregard of his loafers. Ha ha, I thought. Things aren't so perfect out here, are they!

For the next hour, Charly and I pranced and tiptoed our way over the rivers until, inevitably we were in goddamn knee-deep water, where I remembered what the shoe salesman said back in Australia, "These things could take you to the moon man." Well, if the moon is covered in bloody water we're going nowhere! What little remaining jovial atmosphere had evaporated condensed and drenched my underpants.

Walking in silence all in deep thought or discomfort we trudged on and on and on and on x 10^9. Fabio hadn't said much - looking a little deflated and bewildered. I wondered if his immediate dream of living in the jungle had taken a hit. The type of hit so profound it can change your sexuality or just make you lose your mind. Time will tell...

A few hours later the jungle turned into farmland. We were walking on a muddy track that was lined by barb-wire on either side. On our right, in a paddock, we watched two cowboys trying to lasso a teenage cow - with great difficulty I might add. The cow knew the game very well - jolting at the last second, avoiding the circular noose by cm. We drew parallel to the action and the cowboys, along with the cow, were in full flight on the opposite side of the field. The cow knew it was running out of room and without notice or de-acceleration, made a 90degree turn at speed, throwing the two cowboys and their cumbersome animals off track. The cow aimed itself, directly at us and the barb-wire fence, accelerated and speared its way through the sharp wire on one side of the road - grunted - and again speared its way through the other fence into the very dense jungle, crushing and displacing palm trees like some kind of prehistoric beast in a Stephen Spielberg movie. We stood still, being eaten alive by mosquitos, but speechless. I'm not sure if the cowboys had ever seen anything like that. I'm sure as hell I hadn't and I'm quite certain Steve McQueen hadn't either - if he had, he would have escaped! The cow made it. One for the good guys! Who knows where she is now? With any luck she made her way across the Andes, to the west coast and managed to stow away on a grain ship, headed to India. 

30 minutes down the road, with most of the farming area behind us, we came to an open clearing: a dusty road snaking it's way through tall grass, completely surrounded by dense jungle. A perfect place for an ambush, I considered. By the owner of the gigantic paw-print we had seen earlier... 

We pushed on and were met by 70, or so, startled cows. Had they all managed to escape? Did they form some kind of guerrilla faction on the outside? We stopped to consider our options. A part of me wanted to vent my entire days frustration on them by suddenly screaming like a lunatic and running at them, like a starving bear. What would their reaction be, I wondered. What if it back fired and they called my bluff? What if they did the same thing? I doubt very much I could make a dent on a 500kg dairy cow. So I kept my cool...but ready. We walked slowly to show that we were on their side but they had obviously been double crossed by slow walking humans before - cautiously staring. 

Keeping a safe distance they amassed behind us, shoulder to shoulder. Charly and Fabio thought it was an interesting sight and decided to take a photo. The cows took the photo taking as a sign of aggression and in unison began stomping their feet.  A dairy cow by itself is a placid beast but a 70 cow phalanx is a terrifying war machine. The cow phalanx was surging forward and their huffs and puffs were filling the atmosphere. Realising what was happening, Charly and Fabio began to panic and started to jog away from the pack. The cow phalanx knew it had the upper hand and matched Charly and Fabio's speed closing the gap. What the crap! I thought. We survived everything so far, only now be murdered by fucking dairy cows? I briefly considered my earlier plan of spearing myself right at them, screaming  my lungs out and tearing my clothes off to let them know I meant business, when Mr Vague (while giggling at the situation) made a soft kissing/clicking noise with his mouth, instantaneously dispersing the cow phalanx - losing it's organisation and its power. They were again just normal dairy cows. Were the cows under some kind of spell? Forgetting their rumen and fixated on the taste of mans blood? Curious. The soft sound you would normally use to attract a cat ended up being horror to the beasts ears. Me and my bones were truly grateful to Mr Vague.

We left the farming region on a come down. We all knew we were not going to see something that awesome again that day. Shuffling back into the edges of civilization, we passed through a few villages that had not yet been ravaged by modernisation. We stopped off at Mr Vague's village, where he cut down some coconuts and made us a drink. 

Charly and I sat on a bench, drinking out our coconut (which cured my thirst and impotence but not my diarrhoea) while a couple of chickens and their chicks pecked at corn around our feet. Fabio was close by falling asleep - every now and then his leg would spasm, jolting the leg out slightly. One unfortunate chicken wondered over to Fabio to graze on some corn around his feet, not seeing the camouflaged Fabio, then... BOOT! SQWALK! Fabio woke up in a hurry (probably wondering what was attacking him) with children hysterically laughing and coconut juice running out of Charly’s nose. I was too tired to respond. A fitting end to Fabio's dream and the poetic end to my day. 

All the photos from our time in the Amazon here: 
https://picasaweb.google.com/109362659982164453049/RurrenabaqueAndAmazon?authuser=0&feat=directlink