How to Walk a Puma (7 page)

I gulped, tasting the feet I had just placed firmly in my mouth.

Unbelievably, the Minke smiled. ‘That’s pretty odd,’ she said, ‘but I like it!’

‘Wow,’ I thought, genuinely impressed. I hadn’t meant the name as an insult (to me no animal name is an insult) but most women would not be so gracious about being compared to an animal weighing several tonnes. At least I hadn’t called her Humpback. My little crush grew like a plankton bloom, and I resolved to be cool and not make any more references to sea creatures.

So it was that I spent the next hour hanging around the Minke, and when we were finally allowed back on the bus I soon developed a neck strain from constantly turning around to talk to her.

The neck injury grew worse when, with a squeal of brakes and a spray of gravel, the bus came to a juddering halt. Our driver leapt from the vehicle as if it were in flames, and ran onto the gravel area at the side of the bus. Something scuttled ahead of him, jinking as he jagged, but with nowhere to hide in the featureless landscape.

‘Armadillo!’ I shouted again, delighted to see another one, though I immediately became concerned about how it would be treated. The armadillo’s frantic movement finally ceased as the driver pinned the animal with his foot, which probably wasn’t as uncomfortable as it looked given all the armour armadillos carry. Armadillos are the only animal apart from humans susceptible to leprosy, and I thought about telling the driver this so he would let it go, but lacked the Spanish words to say, ‘Keep touching that and parts may well begin to drop off you.’

I got off the bus with a few others, including the Minke, to get a better look, the omnipresent wind sandblasting skin already tender from weeks of rough weather. I looked at the little creature being pinned to the ground and wondered how far I would go to set it free.

To my relief, the driver did not take the animal for the cooking pot but let it go, and it scooted off into the eternal horizon, puffs of dust spurting from its tiny feet as it went. We all got back on the bus, and the Minke told me she was delighted to have seen it. ‘Armadillo!’ she said. ‘Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside!’ Seeing my hesitant grin she added, ‘You don’t get the reference, do you?’

I shook my head.

‘Why don’t you explain it over dinner if we all go out tomorrow?’ suggested Ange (now a fully fledged Angel in my mind) and I could have kissed her but felt it might send a mixed signal.

Some hours later there was a dramatic shift in scenery, and after a small dip in the road that didn’t seem to signify anything of great note, pine trees appeared outside, along with many other forms of vegetation I’d never seen before. The light through the windows waned; soon after, clusters of lights in the distance announced our arrival on the outskirts of Bariloche.

For some reason a pensive mood overtook me after leaving the bus. Patagonia had not been what I’d expected. Admittedly I’d only seen a small patch of it but it had only been on the glacier that I’d felt the sense of isolation for which Patagonia was famous. Somehow, the armadillo incident seemed to sum up the Patagonia I’d seen—once wild, but now held down and subdued. Instead of experiencing an untamed Patagonia, I had been yet another pair of human feet domesticating it.

I pondered this while gazing absentmindedly at an Argentinian woman with a flushed-faced baby waiting for a bus that would take her back in the direction we had just come. There was something
odd about the baby that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then I realised that its cheeks were not merely ruddy, but blotched, blasted and burned, not by sun but by the abrasive air. I sympathised with it, already feeling a cold sore developing that would eventually take the shape of Italy, and become almost the same size.

Then it hit me. They might build roads in Patagonia, they might catch every armadillo and put a trinket store on every corner. But the place could never be tamed while that wind blew, and that thought, as well as my impending date with Lisa, made my cracked lips spread into a painful smile.

The Joy of Pessimism

Over steaks and malbec (Argentina’s signature wine), Lisa and I discovered that our travel plans overlapped in many places, and we decided to tackle South America together for a while. Ange chaperoned us for one night only before her short trip ended, leaving the Minke and me to continue on the road as a twosome. After two more nights in Bariloche we would start making our way by bus yet again (the Andes are a dramatic addition to South America’s scenery, but have precluded much of the continent from developing railways). We began a meandering journey into Bolivia, and took the unappealingly named Death Train (so called allegedly because for every passenger inside there used to be one surfing the roof, and many fell off as fatigue or alcohol loosened their grip) to the Brazilian border.

‘Do you really not mind me calling you the Minke?’ I asked one day, fearful that she might just be tolerating it out of politeness.

‘No, I really do like it! But you can use my name at times if you can remember it.’

‘Of course I do.’ I paused, as if dredging my memory. ‘Ailsa? No, that’s not it. Alisa? No, close, I’m sure …’ and she gave me a playful wallop; while I was thrilled at the contact I was also startled by her reach. If we did get together, as I hoped, I was very glad that I was a runner, not a fighter.

We made our way across Bolivia and into Brazil, arriving at the town of Miranda, and there we met a guide who had been
recommended
to me, a burly man with the strong, angular features of the region’s indigenous people, the Kadiweu people. His name was Marcello, and he was passionate about the very animal I so wanted to see.

Soon after meeting Marcello I decided I liked him, for a strange reason. We were travelling towards the Pantanal, a famous wetland often compared to my beloved Okavango Delta in Botswana, a haven for wildlife of all sorts. We’d gone there to see the astonishing birds it was known for, as well as capybaras (the world’s largest rodent, a guinea pig that weighs more than a supermodel), alligators and tapirs, an animal that is pig-shaped and elephant-snouted but is in fact most closely related to rhinos and horses. The Pantanal is also famous for jaguars.

As well as being extremely knowledgeable about the Pantanal, Marcello also had an affinity for the big cat I sought. He was intrigued by my background as a guide, and as we drove from Miranda into the wetlands we swapped stories of lunatic tourists before reverting to the topic we both loved most—animals. I briefly wondered whether he might be putting on a passion he didn’t really feel as part of his customer service.

The road we were on was tarred, and the few cars we encountered were travelling fast. Cane grew high on either side of the road; suddenly a scraggly-looking chicken stepped out from the tight clusters of cane and decided to cross the road, intent, it seemed, on suicide. By sheer chance, at that exact moment a car appeared, coming towards us, which meant that to swerve around the chicken would
result in a head-on collision. So Marcello held his course, and there was a loud
dong
from under the vehicle.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Marcello said. ‘So sorry,’ he repeated, and I could see his brown knuckles go a shade paler from gripping the wheel so tightly. Maybe he wasn’t apologising to the chicken, maybe it was to the Minke and me, but I could see a real tear in his eye. This was exactly the sort of guide I wanted.

Marcello knew my aim—to see a jaguar in the wild, along the way picking up as many other feathered and furred species as I could.

‘It is not the right season for jaguars,’ he said, ‘but you never know.’

I’d said exactly the same thing over the years to tourists who hoped to see some elusive bird or animal, and as much of a platitude as it sounds, it’s true: you never do know. Jaguars tend not to migrate, but in the drier season they have more open land to roam in, and are thus harder to find. For some reason, though, I was feeling lucky, and was sure that we would see a jaguar in our few days with Marcello.

While we were in Miranda, the Minke and I had met Marcello’s wife, Miranda, plus his three dogs, including a puppy he’d rescued from a caiman (a type of alligator). The puppy’s mother had been poisoned by some hard-hearted individual, and she had died beside the lagoon edge. A caiman had appreciated the easy meal, and had also taken several of her mourning puppies before Marcello grabbed the sole survivor. The Minke had become enamoured with the puppy as soon as she met him, and I think she was just as happy seeing him as any jaguar. But before we even tried to meet a jaguar, almost impossible in the heat of the day, we would meet the caiman.

‘It’s huge!’ Marcello said. ‘Huge!’ he reiterated. ‘At least eight feet!’

Two and a half metres? I almost snorted in a way that would have revealed my wildlife snobbery. In both Australia and Africa, ‘huge’
means a crocodile is at least twice the size of a human. (There are records in both places of crocodiles over six metres long; the skeleton of a true dinosaur estimated to have been ten metres was once recorded in Australia.) Two and a half metres is large enough to do damage, but I doubted such an animal could take you down. Still, our plan was to swim with it, and that made my armpits a little sticky.

‘It was right there,’ said Marcello, indicating the spot with a machete he kept holstered on his belt at all times (I wondered if he slept with it). ‘Huge!’ he said again, and I started to like him more, just for his enthusiasm.

The Minke and I changed into swimwear, Marcello just waded into the water in his black T-shirt and shorts, and soon we were in a lagoon beside a gently flowing stream. We paddled around, Marcello explaining that the caiman was curious and would often bob to the surface, and slowly approach, coming as close as a foot away. There were also piranhas in the water, but I was less nervous about them. I had read that despite their mythic voraciousness for meat, most piranhas are primarily vegetarian but will scavenge on occasion, and only if trapped in a shrinking pool turn into savage flesh-tearing monsters.

We paddled around, and I even went into the deeper water, but the caiman didn’t show and it occurred to me that if it had recently eaten a poisoned dog it could well not be in the best of health. Then again, reptile digestive systems can handle almost anything.

As we came out of the water Marcello pointed to a tree down the road, and we approached it. The tree had four vertical scratches carved deep into the bark. This was territorial marking by a big cat, something I was used to from the jaguar’s African cousins. But these
were widely spaced, and high up. The animal that had made these
was
huge.

‘Huge!’ Marcello said, echoing my thoughts.

We drove on from the swimming spot, and I noted with some regret just how many roads there were in the area. To build these roads, areas of wetland needed to be disturbed, which was in itself bad enough for the environment; but while the roads made travelling easy for tourists such as us, it also made access to the region easier for people with ill intent. This was brought starkly home when Marcello stopped the car and we walked towards some vultures we had seen circling, then dropping, at a point not far from the road. It turned out the target of the vultures’ interest was a caiman, this one no threat to us because of a bullet hole in its head and a hacked-off tail.

‘Poachers,’ Marcello said. ‘They will sell the meat to restaurants.’

We stood in respectful silence, like mourners at a funeral; there was no need to voice our disgust.

‘Shame,’ said Marcello, breaking the silence. ‘He was huge.’

We drove back to the camp where we were staying, showered, and prepared for an afternoon boat ride: the river was one of the finest vantage points for jaguar spotting since they often sun themselves on the banks. I felt a tingle of anticipation about our expedition.

As we set out the atmosphere was electric, and so were the eels. One briefly swam to the surface, and despite a lunatic compulsion to grab it to see just how strong the shock would be, I resisted. I had read that they could produce a high enough voltage to stop your heart. ‘People here fear these eels more than piranhas,’ Marcello explained. ‘It is only your movies that make people think piranhas are bad.’ No more swimming in this part of the river. Time to find a jaguar.

I tried to repress the enthusiasm I was feeling, something I do often. For years I’ve believed that pessimists are the happiest people on earth because they’re never disappointed, and frequently have more pleasant surprises than do starry-eyed optimists. Though I am occasionally accused of cynicism, none is needed to maintain low hopes. I also believe that the anticipation is often better than the reward (this works in reverse too—a needle hurts far less than the expectation of it).

That afternoon my bird-species count advanced at the pace of a child chasing an ice-cream truck—as we glimpsed Jabiru storks, scarlet ibis, wonderful Toco toucans with their absurd banana beaks, and Mardi Gras–coloured macaws. Unfortunately a jaguar failed to materialise.

That night we ate freshly caught fish from the river we’d just been on, and slurped thirstily at icy-cold beers before moving onto caipirinhas. This Brazilian specialty is delicious, sweet and sour: a cocktail so refreshing it’s impossible to stop at one. We didn’t, and were soon roaring with laughter at each other’s stories. Marcello had a bounty of jaguar tales, and I countered with stories of elephants and lions. With some guides the swapping of stories can become competitive, but this was just easy banter, and the Minke laughed at all of them, even though by now she’d already heard most of my stories as I tried to impress her with decade-old adventures, never mentioning the dull intervening years.

I lost track of the rounds of drinks we consumed, and while we needed to be up early (as is the case for almost any wildlife-spotting endeavour), the stories just kept coming. Rather than the animals we’d observed, many of our stories focused more on the tourists we’d
led and their follies, and how hard it could be at times not to poke your own eyes out in frustration at their antics.

At one point I found myself asking Marcello what it was he loved about guiding.

‘I love the Pantanal,’ he said, with a resigned shrug. ‘I want others to love it too.’

I understood. I felt the same way about Africa’s wild places. But the next thing he described was something I had never experienced.

‘I was born here, a real Indian, in a tribe that lived in those hills that I showed you. I don’t even know how old I am, because we had no watches or calendars. We just hunted, fished, and lived with the animals, like animals.’

I was initially surprised to hear him say they lived like animals, but then I thought that maybe it was only in Western culture that the comparison would be considered derogatory. Such a strong link to a place as Marcello felt to the Pantanal was something that as a nomad I could not comprehend. For a moment I envied Marcello his deep roots, but that was only because I hadn’t yet heard the rest of his story.

‘Sometimes we would meet outsiders, but mostly we tried to avoid them. All they wanted was to take,’ he said, then hesitated. ‘Then some diamond miners came, and wanted what was under our land.’ He paused again, longer this time, and took a long draught from his drink. I signalled the barman, who began crushing limes for another round.

‘My people didn’t want the mine, so the miners attacked us,’ Marcello continued, and now the Minke and I realised this was a very different story from those we had heard so far. ‘They tied us up, and then attacked my mother. My father got free, and ran to help
her, so they shot him. Then they shot my mother.’ Marcello’s face was red and crumpled with anguish, and a tear made its way along the creases.

‘I ran away, and kept running,’ he said. ‘I never went back. Some days later, I was found on a farm by some people who took me in. It was in the papers, that an Indian had been found on a farm, but I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened because nobody spoke my language.

‘I worked on the farm of the people who found me, and they adopted me, teaching me Portuguese. Then one day a neighbour had some tourists on his farm. He had heard that I was good at finding animals, so I helped with the tourists, and that is how I started guiding, learning English and some German too.’

‘You were very lucky that those people found you and took you in,’ the Minke said.

Marcello shrugged. ‘Yes … but they used to beat me. So much.’

The Minke and I both rocked back in our chairs, appalled.

Marcello’s broad shoulders shook with some suppressed memory. ‘I want a daughter,’ he said suddenly, changing the subject, ‘because they don’t get distracted like men do, chasing money and women, and she will learn languages so she can speak to everyone, and I will teach her to be the best guide in the Pantanal and show all these idiots guiding how to do it. They don’t love the Pantanal, they just want the tips. I want a daughter to do what I do. That would make a good future for this place.’

‘You’re an optimist,’ I said, leaving it at that, but wanting to commend him for his strength after all the hardships he had faced.