by Stafford, Ed
Diary entry from 24 July 2008:
We are in Pichari. Oz is very worried about the days and weeks ahead. He is scared of the ‘nativos’ (local indigenous Amerindians) and the drugs traffickers. I think this fear is understandable and no one thinks the route ahead is safe. Everybody keeps telling us that no one has ever walked through here before.
I am apprehensive but think deep down it’s just a fear of the unknown and that things will be much easier than we expect.
Looked at the maps between Atalaya and Pucallpa again today and the remoteness is silly. Hundreds of miles of green with a snaking blue river winding its way through. Whether it is successful or not the next few months will be adventure packed.
I actually do now think it is possible I will die on this trip. I am so committed and focused on finishing though that I think it is a risk worth taking. We have been lucky so far – who’s to say our luck won’t continue? The thing is I don’t want Oz to die – I’d hate that. I’ve given him more chances today to leave and I can tell he’s considering it. I don’t want to convince him to stay because if he dies I’ll be responsible.
I feel like I’m about to go over the top; that my life is in the hands of fate. Not being melodramatic – that’s how I feel.
Spoke to Chloë today. We are very close despite being two years separated. She is the only person I have a picture of here; a photo of us both by a lake in the Fijian mountains. We were very happy that day. Chloë – I love you.
The town in two days is Natividad. Stories are that everyone is armed. They fire shots in the air to call a village meeting. All involved in drugs trafficking. No police. Lots of nativos. Tired. Bed.
On 25 July Oz and I set off walking from Pichari with very heavy packs. We had now got all of the gear Sergio (the Ox) had been carrying and we felt as if we had entered the Red Zone heart. I could feel Oz was scared and we hardly spoke as we struggled with the new weight. After five kilometres a pick-up truck drove past and a man in the back screamed out, ‘Aquí se matan!’ – here they kill. Oz looked visibly shaken by the comment and I suggested we take a break. We didn’t speak for about three minutes and then Oz said he needed to tell me something. I knew what he was about to say and asked him to wait until I got the camera out and started filming him. ‘I’ve decided I want to go home, Ed. I am sorry – I have too many worries.’
I wasn’t that surprised. With just five kilometres made we decided that the best bet was for us to return to Pichari and organise Oz’s departure. We hitched a ride on a pick-up and realised we were sitting on top of bails of coca leaves. Ironically, we’d been picked up by a friendly drugs trafficker who dropped us off in town.
Sombrely we checked into a grubby hostel and started to go through the kit that I could carry alone. The medical kit now had about as many drugs in it as there were white people in this area. I eventually got all my stuff in my rucksack down to about 45 kilograms. Cameras, tape stock, computer, satellite links, telephones, solar rolls, a 12v dry-cell battery, chargers, cables, cables, cables and – of course – some kit for surviving the jungle, too. The rest Oz would take back to Cusco and send on to Lima for storage.
I wrote a diary entry and had a rather sleepless night wondering what on earth I could do. I didn’t want to walk into certain trouble but I didn’t want to give up either.
The following morning Oz agreed to try to help me find a new guide. But as we shyly edged around the town the general consensus was that it was not safe to walk with a gringo. The local population thought that the American military were operating in this area in an attempt to eradicate the cocaine processing plants. As most people in the area had some kind of a hand in the drugs trade they weren’t too fond of Americans. With my shaven head and my expedition shirt covered in sponsor and charity logos I looked both American and military.
If we had been in the river, in kayaks, we could have paddled frantically past and not been too visible. But we weren’t in kayaks. If the Americans had not recently started to operate in this area we would not have been targets for the alarmed coca-producing locals. But, according to local rumour, they had. I threw away my expedition shirt and bought a cheap T-shirt from a street stall.
The last place we entered looking for a guide was a general store and I bought some fishing tackle as gifts for the Amerindians. The shopkeeper was interested in us and when we told him what we were doing he became very serious. ‘You can’t go through this area on foot,’ he insisted. ‘You must get a bus back to Lima and then rejoin your journey at Atalaya. There is no way through the River Ene on foot for a white man.’ I asked him what he thought would happen if we tried. His answer required little reading between the lines. ‘They will kill you.’
When we told him that I was planning to do this anyway he sighed, and advised I get a permit from the Rondero building. I had heard of Ronderos but didn’t really understand who they were until Oswaldo explained it to me. The Peruvian police were not allowed to enter this area and it was, in effect, outside the law. If the police came here they would be killed. The Ronderos were trusted local people who were selected to police the area for crimes other than those involving drugs and they had a hand in the drugs industry.
We left the shop with fishing hooks, lead weights and nylon line and I seriously considered not going and seeing the Ronderos. If they said I couldn’t go through then we’d be in an even worse position. Nervously, however, Oz and I crossed the plaza and banged on the metal door of the camouflaged building. I’ve never really understood why South American paramilitary (and real military) units camouflage their bases. Do they think it means they can’t be seen? Ridiculous. We were told to enter and the gloomy room housed one fat bloke sitting behind a metal desk and an old typewriter. He looked at us suspiciously and nodded for me to speak.
I told him what we were doing. Actually, I lied a bit. I knew that he would not want me to walk through here but I also knew that previous expeditions had kayaked through, so I pretended we were on a kayaking expedition and asked if he wouldn’t mind typing out a permit for us to pass through. The ‘president’ (he introduced himself in this way) told us to be careful but clearly enjoyed my respectful request. He said that I had come to the right place and of course he would write me a permit. As he stabbed away at the clunky typewriter I prayed that his permit wouldn’t specify our means of transport. After about forty minutes he coughed, signed the permit, stamped it and handed it over. It was perfect – no mention of kayaks; we had official written permission to pass through the area from the Comite Autodefensa (CAD), the Ronderos.
Back out in the bright sunshine of the concrete plaza the small success gave me new hope and the talk of kayaks had given me an idea. ‘Would you stay if we were in boats, Oz?’ I asked. He said that he would but reminded me that this would break the rules of my expedition.
‘We keep being scared of the next part because we are listening to horror stories,’ I continued. ‘But whenever we get downriver things are never as bad as we had feared. Let’s paddle downriver in the rafts – see for ourselves what the situation is like – and if we are both happy we can come back here to walk this section. If you are not happy then you can leave the expedition from where we end up in the boats.’
Oz agreed. This was a longwinded way of achieving my goal but it was a plan and, for the moment, I still had a guide. We would have to return to Pichari to continue walking, but at least we would have an idea of what we were about to encounter.
Chapter Five
The Ashaninkas
THE FOLLOWING MORNING after cow’s foot soup and Inca Kola in a grubby café, Oz and I walked down to the water, inflated our rafts and floated out on to the River Apurímac through the morning mist. The 20-metre-wide river was rocky and broken with small rapids and whirlpools. The journey to get to Puerto Ocopa (the next settlement with road access) was 155 kilometres in a straight line and perhaps over 200 as the river meandered. Expecting to arrive in four days, we must have been pretty distracted when
we set off as the only food we took with us was three packets of strawberry biscuits.
The first emotion I felt was that, compared to walking, this was great fun. The current was strong and the banks rushed past us on either side. We were moving north very fast.
But then Oz started to behave oddly. He would scream at every small rapid as if he’d seen a ghost. His already shot nerves had now got to the stage where he was almost having a breakdown in his raft. I tried to talk him back to calmness but as we were bombing down a fairly dangerous river with large rapids and potentially dangerous nativo huts scattered along the banks my attempts were in vain. He started laughing crazily.
Then the rapids got much worse. At one point I misjudged one and found myself pinned against a rock by the force of the river. The water completely filled my raft in less than a second and I thought I was in serious trouble. Oz was bearing towards me from behind with a manic grin on his face and I waved him away from the path I’d chosen. As he passed safely I managed to free my raft and to my delight realised that, even full of water and submerged, the raft didn’t sink. I paddled out of the rapids with just the top half of my body and my rucksack out of the water – the entire boat was below the waterline.
We passed many indigenous-looking people that day; most of them were armed with shotguns. The majority just watched us, showing no emotion.
We set up camp on a stony beach at 6 p.m. as it was getting dark. Two young boys were fishing with a hook and line and we went to ask them if they had any food to eat. Oz was asking the boys questions in such a panicky, frantic manner that it was somewhat embarrassing and I knew that he really needed to go home. The boys were not too put out by Oz’s behaviour and told us that there was a passenger boat passing in the morning. This was the first I’d heard of the river being navigable by boats other than kayaks and canoes and this lifted our spirits greatly. They gave us two yucca to eat and, as I’d never prepared one before, Oz showed me how to chop them up and boil them. We each dined on a big plate of yucca; it tasted vaguely like potato. Oz relaxed a little, comfortable in the knowledge that his stomach was full and that he wouldn’t have to get into his raft again in the morning.
The next morning we took the passenger boat to Puerto Ocopa. There I paid Oz what money I could, told him I’d send the rest by Western Union and packed him into a clapped-out taxi to the town of Satipo where he would get a bus to Lima and then another to his home in Cusco. It was all rather dispassionate but at the time I was glad Oz was leaving; his fear was contagious and he wasn’t a help to the expedition any longer. He had done an amazing job to get me as far as he had and I owed him a lot. Above and beyond the wages that he had earned I also forwarded him the money to allow him to do his next term at guiding school. The dented taxi disappeared in a cloud of dust and that was the last I saw of Oswaldo.
The expedition was four months in, I’d seen the back of Luke and now Oz, but I could feel myself getting stronger. I was physically and mentally adapting to the new demands of this expedition and I felt truly alive, experiencing new sensations and new scenery each day.
The portly captain of the boat we had come in on was called Ruben and he kindly took me to the local Ashaninka community near Puerto Ocopa in order to search for a new guide. I was looking for a man who spoke the local indigenous language. The village was an orderly arrangement of dusty streets and basic wooden buildings thatched with palm branches. The difference between the Ashaninka village and the colonial settlement of Puerto Ocopa was that the Indians were neat and orderly – while the colonial port was chaotic and filthy. Houses were thatched and often without walls, but the dirt streets connecting them were not too dissimilar to those of a Western village. After about the fifth attempt at finding the right house we arrived at one outside of which sat a middle-aged Ashaninka couple and a young boy. Ruben explained what I was looking for and immediately the young boy smiled widely and said, ‘I’ll do it!’
‘Fantastic!’ I said, amazed that I had found someone to guide me. ‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen,’ said Elias.
It was only a couple of hours before the boat left back upriver and so I repacked my stuff. A fairly light pack for me (minus laptop, solar chargers and other heavy stuff that I would leave in the shabby hotel as we would be walking back this way) and a very light rucksack for Elias. Elias was, I estimated, less than five foot tall. He had broad shoulders and a wide, almost African smile. I bought him some plimsolls and a shirt and we boarded the boat.
On the boat I asked Elias about his family. He explained that the couple I’d met were his uncle and aunt and that he was staying with them because his mother had been killed. ‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘When was that?’
‘On Wednesday,’ replied Elias.
I just didn’t have the fluency in Spanish to talk to Elias about this as much as I would have liked as it was such a delicate subject – but it would appear that his mother had died less than a week before I met him. Incredibly, with a nail through the throat.
Back in Pichari, Elias and I booked into the same hotel that Oz and I had stayed in twice before. Having left my laptop behind in Puerto Ocopa to save weight, I couldn’t check emails and so I rang my friend Marlene in Lima and she relayed all important messages. Speaking to her was comforting and to hear the concern in her voice for my safety made me feel that someone not so far away cared.
I had been anxious and scared for my life at times over the last few days. But when I questioned the validity of the whole expedition I decided that I was simply scared of what I didn’t know and would probably be fine. The warnings were almost certainly aimed at the average tourist. I told myself I wasn’t one of them. I reminded myself, too, that I had served in Northern Ireland and spent four months in Afghanistan. I could handle this. Especially if Elias could handle it six days after his mother had been killed.
On 30 July 2008, after walking 35 kilometres down a winding, unpaved road, Elias and I arrived in Natividad. After all the warnings, I had built up an image in my mind of this outlaw town being full of armed narcos with wide-brimmed hats and handlebar moustaches. Instead, a quiet couple let us stay in a sort of hostel and I went looking for Oz’s sister, Paulina, who was coincidently working as a teacher in Natividad. Paulina was easy to find; she was the only female teacher in town and it was fascinating to see this beautiful female version of Oswaldo. She was very concerned to hear why Oswaldo was no longer with me and told me that I should probably go home now, too. I smiled, tried to reassure her that I was OK about the risk, and suggested we visit the town president so that I was seen to be as open and unthreatening to the drugs traffickers as possible.
Paulina accompanied me to the house of the president but he was in the shower when we arrived. As we waited outside I felt a bit like George Bush hanging around in a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan hoping not to get noticed. The entire plaza stopped what it was doing and stared at me.
Then I saw the heavies. ‘Here we go,’ I thought. Four men with shotguns marched purposefully towards me across the plaza with mean looks on their faces. I was in quite a cocky mood so I anticipated their arrival, walked towards them and shook each one by the hand in turn, looking them straight in the eye.
I explained myself and showed them the letter of permission from the Ronderos in Pichari. That letter, I now began to realise, was fucking gold dust.
Slightly confused by the letter, the heavies nonetheless seemed to agree that I had permission to be there. But they demanded to see Elias, who was back at the hostel, and so I was escorted at gunpoint to the accommodation that we’d checked in to. Annoyingly, Elias had not seen the need to bring any form of identification with him, a huge mistake in a country like Peru where it is the law to carry your ID card. He managed to get away with it only because he was a child.
Once through with the letter and Elias, they demanded to see the contents of my rucksack. I took them to my room and showed them everything. I went into silly detail explaining the video
camera, how it worked and basically overloading them with information. Before long they got bored.
I had been worried they would confiscate the camera, because the one thing they wouldn’t want was people knowing about the narcotics trade in the area. But once they’d seen everything they didn’t really know what to do. So they continued looking mean, thanked me for my time and welcomed me to the town. If there was any trouble I was to contact them. ‘We are the law,’ they told me, in case I hadn’t worked that out by now.
After this I walked up the main street and a tall, thin man with a goatee beard slid up beside me. ‘Be careful, gringo,’ he said menacingly and slid away. Had I not already been warned to be careful here by everybody I would have burst out laughing. The people in Natividad took themselves ridiculously seriously. They were just kids with guns, but that was a fairly lethal combination.
As I went to sleep that night I was surprised to be in a hostel in a bed again and I put my camera within arm’s reach on night vision in case we were disturbed in the night. We weren’t.
We breakfasted at 6 a.m.; then, with fried eggs and bread inside us, we said goodbye to Paulina and walked out of Natividad towards the River Ene. Elias and I looked ridiculous walking together, me at six foot one inch and him under five feet. He looked all the more like a child in his shorts and his brand-new plimsolls.
By mid-morning we had arrived in Puerto Ene. There we met Jonathan, a strong, lean man without an ounce of fat on him who took about two seconds to decide he would leave his wife and kids to walk with us. Jonathan knew the paths and had the confidence of a man who had always lived in the area. Importantly, he was a man with drive and character and he immediately set about motivating Elias and me to walk faster. He led us through the forested paths strongly and the injection of new blood was entirely reviving.