Authors: Matilde Asensi
When Marc and Lola came by to get me and go down to breakfast, around ten in the morning, they found me asleep in the armchair with my bare feet on the table and in the same clothes I had been wearing the night before.
That morning, I had to do something very important: I was going to shave my head before catching the TAM flight to Rurrenabaque. According to the warning Marta had given me, long hair in the jungle was a lure for all kinds of bugs.
The airplane took off at noon from El Alto military airport, and in the fifty minutes it took us to arrive, the landscape and the climate changed radically: from the cool, dry, and more or less urbanized Altiplano situated at thirteen thousand feet above sea level, to an oppressive, hot jungle environment ten thousand feet lower. I had the firm belief that the military people would
stop us when our two hundred some pounds of luggage passed through security (because of the machetes and knifes), but if few airports in the world put into practice such control measures, even after the attacks of 9-11, El Alto followed them even less, so those dangerous weapons made it onto the craft without the least difficulty. Efraín explained to us that on any flight to the jungle regions, it was inevitable that the passengers take such tools with them, and that they weren’t considered weapons. Just as we had hoped, they didn’t ask us for any documents either, and it was a good thing, because Marc, Lola, and I had nothing with us other than our Spanish DNI, the national identification document, since we couldn’t risk losing or damaging in the jungle the passports that would take us back home when the whole thing was over. Poor Marc had a horrible time of it again on the flight, and although the trip was short and pleasant, he swore with a voice that barely made it from his throat that he would only return to Spain if he could go by boat. It was useless for us to try to explain to him that there were no longer big maritime lines that offered transatlantic trips, like in the time of the Titanic: he swore and swore again that he would find one or stay in Bolivia forever. The bus from TAM, or, as it was called there, the
buseta
, picked us up right on the runway to take us to the company’s offices in downtown Rurrenabaque, although giving the title of “runway” to the soft meadow covered in high grass and flanked by two walls of forest by way of beacons was only a generous euphemism. When it rained, Lola observed, aghast, that band of earth would turn into a useless mire.
Once in Rurrenabaque’s downtown, surrounded by tourists of all nationalities waiting to enter the park, we went into one of the town’s bars and ate something before going out in search of a
movilidad
to take us close to the place where we planned to slip into the Madidi. We were lucky, because at the quay—nerve center and social center of Rurrenabaque—there remained only an aged Toyota parked next to the Beni River, and we managed to rent it for a few bolivianos from its owner, an old Tacana Indian called Don José Quenevo, who, with incomprehensible half-formed words, also promised to personally take us to where we wanted to go for another small fee. The sight of the Beni was impressive at that hour of the afternoon: the banks were as wide as four highways stuck together, and on the other side we could see the adobe houses with palm roofs of the little town of San Buenaventura, little brother to Rurre (as its residents called it for short). Six or seven wooden canoes, as long as train cars and so narrow that their occupants had to sit single file, crossed from one town to the other, hauling vegetables and animals. For some reason, and despite the oppressive air, I felt fantastic looking at the surroundings of green hills, wide river, and blue sky covered in white clouds: I barely felt the weight of the enormous backpack I carried on my back and I felt optimistic and light as a feather as I jumped up into the bed of Don José’s grimy truck, which couldn’t have been more full of dirt if a cement mixer were emptied into it. Efraín sat in front with the old Tacana driver and asked him to take us to the nearby locality of Reyes, where we planned to camp for a few days. However, when we had been traveling for less than a half hour, exactly as we had agreed, we began to hit the roof of the cabin and we told Efraín—loudly so that Don José could hear us clearly—that we wanted to get out there and go the rest of the way on foot. Our driver calmly stopped the
movilidad
in the middle of that tortuous path that was the road to Reyes—we hadn’t passed any vehicle, and not a soul could be seen close by—and, before leaving us in the middle of nowhere, he warned us that we still had a long hour by truck until we got to our destination, and that it would be good for us to hurry so we wouldn’t get caught by nightfall. The truth is the sun still shown brightly, mitigated only by the brims of the hats with which we were all equipped. I wore the panama hat I had bought in Tiwanaku to hide my long hair from Marta’s
sight, and, although now that hair rested in some wastebasket in La Paz—I had cut it all off—, the truth was it perfectly fulfilled its intended purpose of protecting me from the sun and from the bites of the mosquitoes, which, like gray clouds, fluttered around us despite the repellent we’d covered ourselves in.
After an infinity of maneuvers to turn his dilapidated
movilidad
around and start back on the path toward Rurre, Don José disappeared from our view, and at last we were completely alone on the very edge of the Amazon jungle. Efraín took out one of the maps from his pants pocket and spread it out on the ground. With the help of my GPS receptor we discovered that, as we had foreseen, we were very close to one of the Madidi park rangers’ cabins, and the plan consisted in waiting hidden until nightfall, and slipping into the grounds, passing under the very noses of the sleeping guards. That maneuver turned out to be very dangerous, because entering the jungle at night and in the dark meant exposing ourselves to the possibility of running into a puma, a snake, or an angry tapir, but we only planned on going in far enough to cross the limits of the park without being found out and then finding a spot to sleep and wait for sunrise. Starting at that moment, we had ahead of us a long week of walking without rest, following the route traced on the map from the gold sheet, which I had taken upon myself to enter point by point into the GPS so that it would keep us going in the right direction.
We went into the west part of the jungle, which, since it wasn’t very thick and was made up of thin palms, was easy to move through. Besides, we all walked with a very light, easy step, and Marta and Gertrude explained to us that the energy we were feeling was only the opposite effect of altitude sickness, since now we had more oxygen in the air from the change of altitude, and everyone felt this when they descended from the Altiplano to the jungle.
“It will last for a few days,” added Gertrude, who was last in line, “so let’s get as much from it as we can.”
The distribution of personal responsibilities had been agreed upon the night before: Marc was in Gertrude’s hands, so he was walking in front of her, occupying the second to last spot; Lola had ended up with Marta, so she went ahead of Marc; and I belonged to Efraín, who went first, clearing a path, machete in hand, although, since I was much taller than he was, I frequently had to bow my head so I wouldn’t scratch my face.
As we moved through the vegetation, it changed at an imperceptible rate; the underbrush became denser and leafier, while the trunks of the palms got thicker, choked by vines, and they crowded together, their crowns forming a cover fifty or sixty feet above our heads and barely letting the light through. The sticky heat caused by the humidity in the air started to take a toll on us. Luckily, we had bought special clothes for the jungle: We all wore long sleeve shirts that got rid of sweat instantly, dried quickly if they got wet, and provided incomparable thermal insulation from the heat and the cold, and our pants were windproof, breathable, and waterproof, as well as elastic, and could be changed in the blink of an eye from pants to shorts, depending on what we needed.
At last, an hour and a half after leaving the road, we came upon a clearing in the forest with a giant sign bearing a long welcome message that said “Bienvenidos-Welcome. Madidi National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area,” and below it, over a yellow background, a drawing of a funny monkey hanging from the letters. Right behind the notice, half buried in the exuberant green underbrush, a cabin with wooden walls and a palm roof blocked access to the protected zone, but to our surprise, the cabin seemed completely abandoned and there was no evidence of any human being nearby, park ranger or otherwise. Efraín silently brushed past me to Gertrude and put a hand on her shoulder, pushing her back so that she couldn’t been seen from
the house. The six of us crouched in the vegetation and silently set down our packs and got ready to wait until it was completely dark. The ground on which we were sitting seemed to give off the heat of a furnace, with waves of torrid, wet, and moldy air. Everything rustled and crackled, and as twilight fell, the noises got louder until they became deafening: the buzz of diurnal cicadas gave way to the sharp chirps of nocturnal crickets and grasshoppers, peppered with strange howls coming from the crowns of the trees and by the incredible uproar coming from the nearby Beni, made by frogs with their croaking and drumming. In case there was something missing to make Marc, Lola, and me, latest generation cosmopolitans, collapse, the shadowy underbrush where we were hiding began to fill with lights flying around us, coming from some repugnant bugs that our three companions caught in their hands as they murmured, with voices full of tenderness: “Fireflies, how beautiful!” Right. The beautiful fireflies measured something like two inches; in other words, they were firefly giants, and gave off flashes more suited to a lighthouse than a sweet nectar-eating insect.
“Everything is very big here, Arnau,” Gertrude told me in a quiet voice. “In the Amazon, everything is oversized and colossal.”
“Remember the British Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett who disappeared in this area in 1911?” Efraín asked me in a whisper. “Well, it turns out he was a friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur also wrote a stupendous novel called
The Lost World
, in which he described giant animals, and it seems that it was inspired by Colonel Fawcett’s accounts of his travels in these lands.”
I didn’t say anything, but I took off my hat and shook it, trying uselessly to scare the fireflies, which were aware of their size and numbers and decided that I was inviting them to play some kind of fun game, and they insisted on coming even closer to me. The part of my body where I felt most vulnerable was the nape of my neck, left naked after my haircut, and I felt chills just thinking that one of those insects could brush me with its wings. I still hadn’t gotten used to having my neck uncovered. I think that was the first time it occurred to me I would have to change my attitude. All around me was nature in its purest and wildest form. It was not my well cared for urban garden attended by a professional gardener who worried about keeping the bugs out of my house. Here I had absolutely no say, I couldn’t exercise any influence over my surroundings because they were not domesticated surroundings. In reality, we were the intruders, and as much as the heat, the insects, and the thick underbrush bothered me, I would either have to adapt or become an impediment to the expedition and to myself. What sense did it make to remember that thousands of miles away I had a house full of giant screens connected to an artificial intelligence system whose only purpose was to make my life comfortable, clean, and agreeable? Moved by an unconscious impulse, I took out my cell phone from my backpack and turned it on to see whether it was working. The battery level was good and the satellite signal was as well. I sighed, relieved. I was still in contact with the civilized world, and I expected to stay that way for the following two weeks.
“Missing Barcelona?” the professor asked quietly. I couldn’t see her face because the sun had set quickly and we were in the dark.
“I suppose so,” I replied, turning the phone off and putting it away.
“This is the jungle, Arnau,” she told me. “Your technology isn’t worth much here.”
“I know. I’m preparing myself mentally. Give me some time.”
“Make no mistake, Mr. Queralt,” she whispered jokingly. “Since we left La Paz there has been nothing that depended on your will. The jungle will take care of showing you that. Learn to be respectful, or you will end up paying for it dearly.”
“Should we go?” Efraín asked at that moment.
We all nodded and stood, picking up our equipment. It was clear there were no park rangers of any kind there, and at that hour they weren’t going to show up so we weren’t taking any risk crossing the entrance.
“Isn’t it a little irregular for there to be an entrance without any guard?” Lola asked, taking her place in the line.
“Yes, of course it’s irregular,” Gertrude replied without lowering her voice, as she finished adjusting her pack on her back, “but also quite common.”
“Especially at these secondary entrances where almost no one ever comes,” Efraín pointed out, stepping decidedly into the clearing. The darkness was so complete that, despite the fact he was right in front of me, I could barely see him.
We walked along the narrow path that crossed in front of the notice and the empty guard post, and entered, at last, into Madidi. The sounds of the jungle were as startling as its silences, which also fell without any obvious reason. Suddenly everything would go surprisingly quiet and only our footsteps would be heard on the fallen leaves; and then, also unexpectedly, the sounds, cries, and strange whistles would return.
When we were one or two hundred yards from the entrance—I couldn’t be sure, because I had never been good at measuring distances by feel—Efraín stopped and I heard him doing something until a light, small at first and then intense and bright, turned on in his gas lantern and illuminated our surroundings. Marc turned his on as well, and Marta, who was walking behind me, copied them, so our walk became much faster and safer; thanks to this, we found a small hollow in the vegetation soon after, next to a stream, and we decided it was the perfect place to camp that night. A cloud of moths had been hovering around us since we had turned on our gas lamps. Gertrude made us examine the ground carefully before we began to pitch our tents: according to what they told us, there were many kinds of very dangerous ants in the jungle, and we should make sure we weren’t close to any termite nest, most easily identified by its high conical form. We pitched the tents in a semicircle facing the stream, and we made a fire to chase away any animals that might be attracted by our smell and the smell of our food. According to Gertrude, the savage beasts weren’t that savage, and they usually fled whenever they detected a human presence, except, of course, when they were hungry and the snack seemed unprotected, in which case, dinner was served. But a good fire, she assured us, could keep us safe all night.