by Jim Richards
The falling lava bombs were not the only hazard. The area had become well known for bandits targeting tourists. On our way back to the road, as Eran and I entered the scrub at the base of the mountain, there was a bit of unusual movement ahead and we came up with a quick plan in case of foul play.
We were walking along on the path warily when two local lads came out from behind a tree and confronted us with machetes. They appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen years old and looked pretty nervy.
‘Danos tus equipaje!’ they demanded. (Give us your bags.)
They sure as hell were not going to get my bag that easily, and I was glad to be with Eran, who was up for it – he was used to people trying to kill him in nasty situations.
The guys were about 5 metres in front of us. As planned, we immediately bolted in opposite directions up the slopes that rose on either side of the path. There were handily sized pieces of basalt everywhere; we grabbed them and started pelting our would-be assailants. It was easy to claim accurate hits as we held the high ground.
They turned and ran like rabbits, one of them dropping his machete as we jeered after them. We picked up the fallen blade and immediately hightailed it back to the road. We didn’t want them returning with a tastier weapon. It was an amusing incident, but brought home how exposed I would be going into certain areas alone.
Now that I was moderately competent in Spanish, it was time to move on.
I bought the long-suffering Helena a small gift, and to my Guatemalan host family I gave some kitchen knives they seemed to need. It was touching to me how hospitable this family had been to a complete stranger. Indeed, my reception by the ordinary people of Central America had been unfailingly courteous. It was the bums and touts around the bus stations that I wasn’t so keen on.
For my last night in Antigua, I went out for some local Gallo beers with Eran and a couple of others. It was a good night, and as it got late we walked on to another bar for a final beer. As we passed the centrally located police station, we could hear the loud screams of a man being tortured inside.
I travelled south and crossed the border into Honduras, staying the night in the aptly named town of Copán Ruinas. Next morning I walked around the impressive Mayan site of Copán, just a few hundred metres from the town. The ruins were well preserved and thoughtfully presented, supporting a healthy local tourist industry.
American archaeologists excavated while earnest guides with tourists in tow scurried around. I thought of the looting back in the Petén and felt sad for the people of that area and their lost opportunity.
I continued by bus to the lively port town of La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast, the gateway to the Mosquito Coast. At the market, I picked up some camping supplies, boots and a batea, which is the type of conical gold pan favoured in Central and South America, in contrast to the flat-bottomed pan used in North America and Australia. (Both pans are effective, although the batea is better at catching very fine gold.)
I caught a bus to the local airport, hoping to get lucky and catch a flight to Puerto Lempira, regional capital of the Mosquito Coast. The bus drove past the airport runway, where an aircraft lay tipped forward onto its nose. A group of men with a tractor were milling around trying to figure out what to do.
In the airport building, I approached the airline counter.
‘Hello, can I buy a return ticket to Puerto Lempira please?’ I asked the well-dressed young woman. She smiled brightly.
‘Oh, we are sorry, señor. The plane crashed yesterday and so we have no flights today. Normal services resume tomorrow,’ she added cheerfully.
I didn’t know whether to be impressed by the speed of recovery of the air service or concerned by the routine manner in which the air crash was treated. But beggars can’t be choosers so I purchased a ticket for the following day.
After a pleasant evening in a waterfront bar, I was off the next morning flying in a DC-3, the same type of aircraft the Paras had jumped from at Arnhem in the Second World War. In fact this DC-3 looked as though it may well have been at Arnhem. We flew across huge pineapple plantations owned by the formerly named United Fruit Company, a controversial operator and a source of considerable local ill feeling. Beneath us, the plantations soon gave way to dense jungle.
Puerto Lempira was the biggest town on the Mosquito Coast, with its one dirt road, some ramshackle single-storey dwellings and a low wooden jetty. There were a number of young men hanging around. Puzzlingly, some of them were crippled.
‘Hola señor, como estas?’ I asked one youth.
‘Bien, bien, y tu?’
The man was only about twenty years old and was on crutches. I learned that he, like many others in the district, had been crippled from the bends incurred during long dives searching for lobster, which was a major industry.
I said that I wanted to look at some local gold mining and asked him about going inland. For the first time somebody took this statement at face value, like this was a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do. He gave me some useful pointers.
At the ramshackle local store I ran into an English couple, the only western people I met in the area. Rick and Cathy were missionaries who worked for a Christian charity; they were most hospitable and invited me to dinner.
Rick and Cathy’s home was a haven: wide, mosquito-screened windows caught the slight sea breeze and gave some relief from the oppressive heat and humidity. They filled me in on some of the background to the area while we ate a fresh seafood dinner.
Cathy explained that the long-running guerrilla war between the Nicaraguan communist government and the indigenous Contras was coming to a nervy conclusion. It was May 1990 and the Contras were disarming and returning home to Nicaragua, which had recently held elections. In an atmosphere that was somewhat sticky, the political edginess of the Contra situation added some extra steam.
The next day I left Puerto Lempira and headed west, away from the coast. My plan was to make my way to the upper reaches of the Rio Platano, where my previous research had pointed to there being some alluvial gold mining.
Initially moving inland was fairly simple. There was only one road and I caught a colectivo (minibus) and rode about 60 kilometres due west until we stopped at a small settlement which consisted of a random group of rough wooden and bamboo huts.
I arrived in the middle of a United Nations parade, in which a band of Contras were handing over their weapons to be destroyed before they returned to Nicaragua. There were Venezuelan UN troops and Honduran police everywhere, and I stuck out like only a gringo can. In fact, I was so incongruous that no one appeared to mind; it was a weird day already. Everyone seemed to think that I was a journalist, which suited me just fine.
The parade was quite poignant. The Contras were understandably emotional about giving up their arms. They were mainly native Miskito Indians, and many only spoke their native language, a hard-to-understand creole with some English words.
I gatecrashed the post-parade refreshments and chatted to a senior Contra commander. He was optimistic about the future and happy about returning to his home country. Yet he was dark about what the communists had done to his people in the brutal civil war – seemingly a Central American speciality.
The United States had saved the Contras by providing arms and assistance so they could at least defend themselves from their bases inside Honduras, to which they had fled. Consequently, the Contras loved Ronald Reagan, who had provided them with military assistance in their hour of need.
All I had to do to get a warm welcome from a Miskito Indian was to smile, give a thumbs up and say ‘Ronald Reagan’, and I was in. Reagan, the Great Communicator, could even cross the language barrier.
I thought ironically of all the anti-American travellers I had met on my trip to date who seemed to blame USA President Reagan for every evil in the world. They should have come to this place and heard the horror stories of what the communist government troops had done to the Miskito Indians.
It is credibly doc
umented that during this vicious civil war the Contras also perpetrated plenty of atrocities in Spanish-speaking western Nicaragua. But I was hearing the Miskito story from the culturally different east of the country, and it sounded compelling to me.
As I communicated with the locals, I found out that my planned trip, which had looked like a good idea on the map, was actually not practicable on the ground. The route to the Rio Platano was through thick jungle terrain without any trails, and was not walkable with the resources I had at my disposal (that is, virtually nothing).
I was told that there was some artisanal gold mining being carried out within the nearer lowland, forested areas to the north-west, so I headed up there to take a look.
For the next two weeks, I wound my way between different villages, hills and jungle tracks of the inland Mosquito Coast. The upland areas were partly savannah and the lower areas were jungle. Local guides were more than happy to show me around for a modest fee, although my Spanish ended up being only partly useful here as there were a mix of ethnic groups.
I prospected and panned the rivers using the batea gold pan – with no success. I mainly slept in the locals’ bamboo shacks; these people were subsistence jungle dwellers who moved around regularly. Most of them could not even afford a mosquito net, which I took to be a pre-requisite for survival on the Mosquito Coast. Instead the people would light a smoky fire in their hut and keep it going all night to keep the mossies at bay; it worked, but it left your eyes streaming and your chest tight by morning.
When I slept in the jungle, I hung a string hammock between two trees, my mosquito net enveloping the hammock for protection. I tied a line of cord above the hammock, over which I placed some plastic to keep the rain off. We ate pre-cooked corn tortillas and beans from the last village. As we walked, my Indian guide would often pick out edible green leaves or roots, and fish were plentiful. When we caught the odd turtle, we would truss it up in bamboo, then that night cut off the head and put it on a fire for twenty minutes; it was delicious and tender meat.
During one of these trips, we came across three teenage boys, shivering in just t-shirts and underpants. They were up to their waists in the muddy river, smiling up at us as they worked their wooden bateas in a circular motion to wash out the gold.
They had no machinery and were just panning gravels from the bank. They showed me a few small eyes of gold in the bottom of their batea. It was the first gold I had seen on this trip and it certainly raised my spirits. However, Serra Pelada it was not, and it was clear this crew were living a hand-to-mouth existence.
Still, it was good to see some gold, and I practised the use of my batea under the amused instruction of these artisanal gold panners.
I encountered a number of these groups and there was always a warm welcome. They were dirt poor yet rich in spirit – although I suspected my presence would not be greeted so enthusiastically if they were making their fortunes.
It was time to try prospecting some more remote and unpopulated areas. For my next trip I headed north, away from any villages and, without a natural companion, I went alone. On the second day, I went astray of the main path. I struggled to retrace my steps in the thick vegetation and became lost. In a pre-GPS world this was scary. Everywhere I looked appeared the same: just green foliage.
But as my apprehension grew, my training kicked in. First thing to do when you are lost is to consider your options and don’t move. I sat down, made a brew of sweet tea on my portable stove and had a damn good think.
I doubted if I could find the path again. The only way I could move any distance in this thick vegetation would be on a river. This was also my best chance of getting to civilisation, or what passed for it in this most isolated of places.
With my machete, I hacked and pushed my way downhill, always following the steepest break of slope. Every plant seemed to have razors on it and each creature appeared to bite or ooze some toxic chemical that found its way onto my exposed skin. My hands were getting the brunt of it, ballooning out with allergic reaction.
After two hours’ exertion, I dropped into a small stream. Things started getting easier. I followed this down to a larger creek and eventually ended up at a main river, which was a relief. There were still no paths or signs of people, but I felt a lot better to be able to see the sky again. Nevertheless the banks were solid with vegetation and the only clear route available was the river.
I made myself another hot brew, had a tin of fatty meat, and then stripped down to my underpants and boots. Using my plastic shelter and some vines, I tightly tied all of my gear up into a waterproof bundle. With a long lead of cord, I attached the bundle to my arm. Losing that would really put me in trouble.
I launched myself downriver, using the bundle as a rudimentary float.
It was bloody cold. But the tea and food helped keep me warm and I made rapid progress, half swimming and half wading.
I was starting to tire when I realised, too late, that I was into some rapids. The current grabbed me and pushed me downstream. I tried to fend off the rocks with my feet and the bundle, then as I ricocheted around I felt a sharp pain on one of my shins. Now I felt very vulnerable: one knock on my head and I was done for.
I was dumped at the end of the rapids, frozen and sodden, and stopped in the calmer water to check myself over. With some cuts and a bloodied shin, I proceeded with more caution.
After about an hour I was ready to stop and make camp for the night. Then, at the end of a long pool, I spied a hut on the riverbank.
A puzzled old man down looked at me from the hut and smiled a toothy grin.
‘Que pasa?’ he asked. (What’s up?)
‘Estoy buscando oro.’ (I’m looking for gold.)
The nuggety old man laughed and offered me a hand.
‘Me casa es su casa,’ he said. (My house is your house.)
In the hut, I got myself sorted out. My carefully packed gear was half wet, which unfortunately included my passport, although only the Guatemalan visa ink had washed out. As we used to say in the Paras, British Colours don’t run.
I used my first aid kit to patch myself up. The waterlogged cuts were a mess so I soaked them in iodine and left them. In the jungle, you don’t cover up cuts or they stay damp and get infected.
That night, we ate delicious baked fish and beans, washed down with piping hot lemongrass tea. My Spanish was now strong enough to converse easily. The old man was a fisherman, but had done some prospecting himself and, it turned out, was something of a kindred spirit.
Much relieved, I slept soundly on the hard bamboo floor in a smoky corner of the single-roomed hut.
The next day, I thanked the old man and gave him some tobacco, which I always carried (sealed in plastic) for such occasions. Then I walked out along an established path back to the main road.
My body was quite bruised and cut up from this outing. My solo prospecting trip had been an absolute fiasco. Flailing around as a one-man show with a machete was not going to work; this was not the California gold rush with nuggets sitting on the surface. I needed to operate in areas where access was more feasible, not to mention where there was more prospective ground.
I also didn’t like the look of the local police. They were content to humour me as I messed around, but I didn’t have any political protection. I suspected they would move in on me if I started getting in some decent mining gear.
More than that, it was dawning on me that I was probably not going to be able to make my fortune on my own. I would need a team, equipment, expertise, protection and logistical backup. This was a good insight, even if it didn’t help my morale much. With no real cash, where was I going to rustle up that lot?
Nonetheless I had anticipated that in order to succeed I would have to learn, persevere and adapt. I had just done some learning, now to get on with some persevering. So I followed my gut instinct and decided to keep moving on to South America as planned to join the gold rushes I had read about.
Back in La Ceiba, I we
nt to the port and tried to hitch a ride south on one of the commercial tramp boats that ply their trade up and down the Caribbean coastline. Three tries on three captains: I failed to convince any one of them to take me on as a paying passenger or crew.
Feeling somewhat disconsolate, I sat down on a bench for a think. I thought about Sarah, whom I had been missing a lot during these quieter moments. Just like the California Forty-Niners, I was missing my girl. I intended to make good my promise to get up to Florida and see her but as my money slipped through my fingers, this got a bit harder each day. I really needed to find a way to make cash, not just spend it.
During this knotty moment of introspection, a man walked up and introduced himself.
‘Hello dere, how ya doin’? What’s ya name? I’m Jerome.’ He spoke confidently in lilting Caribbean English as he sidled up to me.
‘I’m doing well, and my name is Jim. How are you doing?’ I said.
‘Good, good. You trying to get a boat here, Jim?’
This was a reasonable guess as there was no other reason for a foreigner to hang around these crummy docks.
‘Yes, and no luck, the captains are not interested,’ I said.
‘Me neither. You know, we should team up, a partners thing. We stand a much better chance together.’
I wasn’t so sure, and actually felt my chances of a passage would be considerably diminished with Jerome in tow. But at least I had met someone, and you never know what you might learn from a stranger.
Jerome was from Guyana and we settled in for a chat. The Guyanese, I discovered, are good at having a chat.
Guyana is situated on the north-east coast of South America. It borders Venezuela, Brazil and Suriname. As a former British colony, it is the only English-speaking country on the continent. I knew Guyana by reputation as an isolated country, with rich alluvial gold and diamond deposits that were mined in the remote jungles and mountainous interior.