by Stafford, Ed
I don’t think Mark ever really relaxed. He seemed to be nervous of the people and the jungle and I felt for him in this alien world. As we shook hands to say goodbye Mark thanked me and I hoped he had had a good experience. I don’t know if he realised how much he had helped me psychologically and how grateful I was for his visit. Cho and I now had new trousers and shorts, too, as Mark discarded his freebies from outdoor clothing suppliers. We waved him off, the pair of us now looking like fresher Boy Scouts.
The cost of hiring boats to collect and drop off Mark, hotels, flights for Marlene and more expensive food in the city had set us back almost £1,000 over just a few days and so, once we hit Pucallpa properly, on foot this time, we just sped on through and didn’t look back. We needed to be somewhere cheap.
As we walked, each of us had his own kit and a proportion of the group kit that we had to carry with us. Pots, boats, laptop, satellite phone, EPIRB (emergency position-indicating rescue beacon), cameras, tape stock, batteries etc. were split in a way that I thought was fair. Andreas and Alfonso had said that they would walk for another seven to ten days to the town of Contamana, at which point they would turn back.
On 20 October we spotted something very bright red and yellow up ahead and thought we were arriving at a logging camp on the river. As we walked closer, we could make out that the colours were actually two helicopters parked on a helipad, and that the camp was far too smart to belong to loggers. We paddled across the river to the camp and smiled and waved from our inflatable boats. The camp workers looked foreign, Argentine perhaps, and were bemused by the two rubber rafts with an Englishman, an Afro-Peruvian and two Asheninka Indians waving at them.
We were greeted warmly enough by the French manager of the camp who explained that they were conducting seismic surveys to try and find oil. They’d not found any and the camp was in the process of being collapsed over the next few weeks. I tried to dredge up some French from my seven years of schooling but couldn’t even remember ‘good afternoon’ so we spoke in Spanish. The Frenchman was kind but fairly uninterested in us and said we could stay in the workers’ tent at the back.
Despite being the only structure on the camp that wasn’t air-conditioned this was luxury to us. We were given a safety brief (I had to pinch myself that I was still in Peru) and shown the hot showers and flushing loos at our disposal. It was phenomenal what money could do to convert tangled jungle into a sterile camp; the men lived in luxury with their own gym, bar and restaurant. We were fed huge plates of fried chicken and rice with tomatoes and charged up everything we owned on their twenty-four-hour generator.
After breakfasting well, we had to sneak through people’s gardens to continue walking on that side of the river and soon arrived at a Shipebo settlement called Holandia. Holandia seemed deserted and so we walked straight through to a village called San Juan, where we were met, detained and escorted back to Holandia by men with shotguns.
In Holandia the chief of security was very old and I’ve not taken such an instant dislike to anyone since a lunatic Australian professional golfer my sister was dating. He told us that a man had gone missing and that we were under suspicion for murder. This was, of course, far too ridiculous to take seriously, so we didn’t.
In my diary I seem to have referred to the old man as ‘Mr Wanker’ and it would be a shame not to stick with that entirely appropriate name. Mr Wanker wanted to pick every hole in us that he could and thought he was being very clever. He announced that my passport was not valid as the Queen had not personally signed it. He told me it was up to me to prove that Mark Barrowcliffe was back in England and not hiding in the bushes nearby (Mark’s name was still on our permits).
After two hours of questioning me on my own, he then said he would like me to explain every item of equipment that was in my pack. I have to admit my patience was wearing a bit thin and so I asked him why he didn’t ask the chief of San Juan who was sitting next to him holding the full inventory that we’d compiled together four hours earlier when his village had detained us.
No – I had to empty my pack again. During the torturous process Mr Wanker flicked suspiciously through the pages of Mark Barrowcliffe’s comedy novel Lucky Dog as if our detailed murder plot might be contained within it. The serial number of my laptop was even noted down. Better safe than sorry.
But it wasn’t just me. Mr Wanker spent over two hours more on Alfonso, then Andreas and, finally, Cho. Luckily I had a book to read. The whole day was taken up with interrogation about the missing Shipebo who had probably got drunk and wandered off and fallen asleep somewhere.
Thankfully not everyone in Holandia was like Mr Wanker. Two families offered to cook us food and in the confusion we were entertained twice and ate two enormous candlelit suppers.
The next morning, after we had been put up in the police station (wooden shack), the real chief of security arrived and we learned that Mr Wanker had been a mere stand-in. The younger man took one look at us, smiled, asked us if we were going to visit the hot springs in Contamana and bade us farewell and good luck. He did spoil it at the end, though, by saying that it was obligatory to donate fifty soles to the Holandia police force to repair the roof of the station – after that, we were free to go.
At the end of the day the guys chatted to the very attentive young girls in the street. I shouldn’t judge but these girls were early teens, thirteen or fourteen, and none of our group was under thirty. Most girls of fifteen or older were usually married with kids so I was the only person who found the situation strange. Any man who wanted a single available girl went for one of fourteen or less.
We left Holandia at six the next morning with the intention of making up for lost time. The route to Contamana was flat and we strode out on the increasingly good tracks that eventually became paved roads. At 7 p.m., in the dark, we checked into a hotel in the built-up town. This was no longer a wooden shack kind of town: buildings were constructed in concrete and brick, the plaza was green with neat flowers and there were litterbins that were actually being used.
Alfonso and Andreas Dongo, our faithful Asheninka brothers, left us at this point. They had a good night’s sleep, washed and put on their smart polo shirts, slacks and aftershave for their journey back upriver to the community they had left forty-seven days earlier. They were so far from home now that their influence was waning and so it was the right thing to do. When I went into their room to pay them and say goodbye I felt sad to be splitting up this team. Apart from my dark moods, it had been a phenomenal forty-seven days and I know we would not have got through the fearsome communities without their help. We shook hands and the brothers went out into town and bought a brand-new outboard motor for their community. I was left with a warm sensation that I was saying goodbye to real friends.
That night I read back my journal from the day we had met Alfonso and Andreas.
This lot were bad people. Although I found it laughable when I started that people could be categorised so simply – I’ve started doing it myself now. You could tell in their eyes that they didn’t understand or want to understand.
Who exactly didn’t understand?
Chapter Eight
Depression
ON REFLECTION, I must have been struggling so much with the expedition itself that I had shut out the possibility of such things as pleasure and light-hearted chat. I ignored most interaction and activity that wouldn’t directly help me advance. My gut told me I had things out of perspective; I knew I was being antisocial but I withdrew nonetheless.
Part of the stress was caused by financial concerns. JBS Associates were now giving me a monthly allowance of £1,000 but that only covered half our outgoings. I was up to £9,500 on my credit card with a limit of £10,000 and had no way of paying the interest. My mortgage still had to be paid in England and the tenant had just announced she was moving out. I know that the jungle was stunning in places because very occasionally I stopped and took it all in. Jungle-covered hills clustered together like green egg cart
ons and steep banks gave way to vine-covered cliffs towering over small streams. No one walked through here because it was so dense and without a machete progress was almost impossible. Detours around natural obstacles such as impenetrable swamps were common as we struggled forward and backtracked with our leaden packs.
Cho soon found a new Shipebo guide, Pablo, another kind-faced individual, and I had a good feeling about him. I advanced him 150 soles as he wouldn’t have come otherwise. The problem was that men always needed to leave their women with enough money to live on while they were away. I could see their point.
Pablo, Cho and I walked through the boggiest forest that we’d encountered to date. Having experienced slight trench foot from my original pair of jungle boots I had switched to what the Asheninkas were wearing. Plimsolls. They would be temporary until Altberg could make up some new boots that drained better and so my ankles were now exposed and I felt naked walking through the jungle. The lack of ankle protection left me vulnerable to sprains, thorns, scratches and, most importantly, snakes. But the plimsolls were so thin and simple that they allowed me to walk through bog and not suffer from trench foot.
This deep in the jungle snakes were ever more present. If you walk down jungle trails they are a manageable risk. If you are cutting through dense vegetation knowing that most of them are semi-arboreal (they live in trees) then the risk is much higher. Like all animals they wouldn’t attack us without reason as we were too big to eat, but the chances of us disturbing one and startling it were greater than ever. Increasingly, when we passed pit vipers on the forest floor I suggested walking round them rather than killing them, as the locals tended to do. We were often in areas through which no one else would walk now so the chances of someone following us and being bitten were very slender indeed. The snakes could live on.
Every day in the jungle I had a strict routine for sorting out my feet. I would Vaseline them in the morning before my socks went on and then I would put on my clean (but damp) socks from the day before that I’d washed in the river. Then, at the end of the day, I would wash myself and my socks before supper, powder my feet and walk around in sandals or Crocs for the evening, allowing my feet to breathe and dry out.
This method worked perfectly throughout the expedition except with the first pair of Altbergs, which were too thick and the drainage ‘valves’ blocked up with mud. Subsequent boots I requested had the valves replaced with simple eyelets that had the advantage of draining fantastically well but the disadvantage of collecting sand from riverbeds. These boots would need to be washed out regularly if the area was sandy and we were crossing numerous rivers. The consequences of not doing so were red-raw, cheese-grated feet and subsequent infections.
It was only at this point that I judged it safe to tell Cho that I wasn’t religious. I hadn’t lied before but I’d avoided being direct. He took it well and I could see that he saw it as a challenge to convert me while we were walking. Pablo had to return home to protect his daughter from the unwanted attention she was getting from a man in their village. He’d heard the news over the HF radio and he was replaced by Jorge.
Jorge was very different from every local that we’d so far hired. He wasn’t indigenous but, rather, a Spanish colonial Peruvian. He was a bit older than the others, about fifty, with a huge belly and the calm, relaxed manner of a favourite uncle.
On 9 November we also picked up Raul, a local man of similar age who was stick-thin yet strong and muscular. I was worried about money and didn’t feel in control of the finances. Employing a man who didn’t know where he was going was infuriating as it was a direct reminder that I was wasting my money. Raul had claimed to know the paths and so we set off as a team of four. As we started to go wrong and to go round in circles I became irritable and made it clear to Raul that I wasn’t impressed.
In a village called Nuevo Delicia, as the four of us sat eating sloppy rice and rodent, I took it upon myself to bring up the subject of guides.
‘We need to find a new guide tomorrow morning,’ I announced. Everyone looked down and continued shovelling food into their mouths. ‘We need to find someone who knows the paths so we are not going round in circles all day,’ I continued. I thought Cho and Jorge were in agreement but everyone clearly felt for Raul, who said nothing.
Cho ventured, ‘What happens to Raul?’
‘He goes home,’ I said, ‘we’ve paid him for today.’ I was very aware I was talking about Raul in his presence. ‘Is that OK, Raul?’ I asked.
‘Si,’ said Raul.
That night I finished reading The Book Thief, an amazing story of courage in 1942 Munich. I lay in my hammock crying – the book reminded me about all the people I loved and about what mattered in life and what didn’t. It made my walk look absolutely trivial compared to wartime suffering, and I realised that I needed to keep reminding myself that I had to relax and think of others rather than live in this insular bubble of blinkered determination.
I slept well with the help of the cheap diazepam that I was now reliant on to enable me to shut out the money worries and get a decent night’s sleep.
At the breakfast table in Nuevo Delicia a rat fell from the rafters above us on to the table and made us all laugh, but there was an air of uneasiness. Raul wasn’t pleased about being let go but, rather than admit this, he proceeded to tell me all he could about the route ahead which we would now be taking without him. The more he talked the more I realised how knowledgeable he was. I stared at the map pensively.
‘Cho, do you think I’ve made the right decision about letting Raul go home?’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Cho.
‘But I’m asking you for your opinion, Cho.’
‘OK,’ Cho began, ‘I think you are being too impatient. I think that this walk will take time and that you need to relax, and when a path turns into brambles and thorns for two hours you need to take a deep breath, smile and accept it as part of the adventure.’
All this time Raul and Jorge were listening and everyone, including me, knew that Cho was right and that I had been put in my place. I felt pretty humiliated and turned to Raul. ‘Sorry, Raul. I was too hard on you yesterday. If you are happy to, I would like you to continue.’ Raul said nothing but I could tell he had accepted the apology and would stay on.
Somehow the revelation of my inadequacies and the ensuing honesty seemed to change things for the better. We walked well and in my journal entry the following night I made comments about the fact that we had the makings of another great four-man team such as we’d had with the Dongo brothers. On breaks we would share cheap cigarettes and they would teach me to swear in Spanish. We started to laugh and, notably, I began to feel much more a part of the team.
The next day we passed through a colonial settlement. There were fewer and fewer indigenous communities now and the reception we were getting became warmer and warmer. I would occasionally hear the cry of ‘pela cara!’ but now it seemed more in jest than anything else. It was lunchtime and Jorge, never slow to point out the chances of eating a decent meal, suggested that we stop for one. An eighteen-year-old girl appeared – the most beautiful person I had seen since arriving in Peru – and my heart pounded as she served us rice, beans and plantain. Her name was Sonia and she asked me personally if I could stay for a few days. I explained why I couldn’t and left the village with my three companions mocking me but with a spring in my step.
Many of the communities we passed through still had problems with alcohol and it’s sad to report that in most of the settlements there were several drunken men in the middle of the day, smashed out of their minds. Not singing or even getting into fights: simply so blind drunk that they looked insane and were completely out of it. The people were still very indigenous-looking. Despite all of them speaking Spanish, there had been little direct interbreeding with pure Spanish stock here and the tolerance to alcohol was correspondingly low, as with the Amerindian tribes.
Our marching order was often Raul, me, Jorge and then Cho at t
he back. Raul carried only a light daysack and enjoyed macheteing, I navigated from just behind him and Cho and Jorge brought up at the back. On one path between communities Cho called us to a halt. ‘Mira!’ he said, ‘Look!’
As I tried to focus on what he was pointing at in the undergrowth I saw the ominous presence of a fer de lance (a pit viper), coiled and ready to strike. The snake was half on the path and so Raul, Jorge and I had all stepped within inches of the now very agitated serpent. The saying goes that the first person wakes a snake up, the second aggravates it and the third gets bitten. Cho had been number four and had seen the movement as the snake recoiled ready to strike defensively.
A bite from a pit viper such as this could be very serious indeed. Fer de lance has become the common name for many species of vipers in the Bothrops genus. They have predominantly haemotoxic venom, which causes a breakdown in the cells and massive haemorrhaging and necrosis. A bad bite would mean death from all organs and tissue breaking down and failing. You would bleed from your hair follicles, eyes, ears, nose and your fingernails before dying a gruesome death.
As it was on a path and could easily have struck a passing villager, Raul killed the snake unceremoniously with a sharp blow to the head with a long stick. Conservationist or not, I agreed it was the right thing to do in the circumstances.
At the next village – now feeling pretty vulnerable in my plimsolls – I adopted Raul’s and Jorge’s style of footwear and I bought myself some rubber wellies and football socks. I liked this combination immediately and loved the ease with which I could empty the boots out after crossing rivers. I would put them upside down on sticks at night and in the morning they would be bone-dry and quick and pleasant to put on compared to soggy shoes or boots with gritty, muddy laces. The one drawback was that when I waded through dirty water I would also get thorns and spines in them. These came in over the top and would need to be removed as soon as we were on dry ground again. Not a great hassle as the wellies were quick to take off, swill out and put back on again, but it wasn’t the perfect system.