Lost in the Jungle

by Yossi Ghinsberg

  ‘All right. I’ll follow your instructions,’ Kevin conceded reluctantly.

  Karl took the machete and went into the jungle. He swiftly lopped off a few long branches and made four new poles. Then he sketched a raft in the sand and explained how we should deal with various situations. He showed us how to paddle with the pole, and how to use it to push off from the river bottom without letting the river take it away. He showed me how to hold the end of the pole under my arm when absorbing a blow so as not to risk breaking a rib from the impact.

  Back on the river there were fewer rocks, and we were getting used to it.

  ‘Right!’ Karl yelled, and we all rowed, the raft nudging over to the right. ‘Good. Now left.’

  We practiced until we thought we had the hang of it, but whenever we came to a difficult pass or a bend in the river, Karl started yelling like a maniac, Marcus turned white, Kevin got angry, and I hid my fears under a mask of absolute indifference. Fortunately none of us was hurt or slipped into the river.

  ‘Yossi, come trade places with me,’ Marcus said. ‘You should get some practice back here in the stern.’

  Good for you, Marcus, good thinking, I thought sarcastically. Any minute now and Poppa will give you a nice pat on the head. But I did as he said. He took up my position near Karl, and I went aft.

  ‘He doesn’t know the first thing about white-water rafting,’ Kevin said to me. ‘Believe me, we’re doing everything ass backward. Whoever heard of trying to row with a round pole? Is he putting us on?’

  I suspected Kevin of holding a grudge against Karl for having yelled at him. I still believed that Karl knew what he was talking about.

  That afternoon the river was serenely beautiful. We grew accustomed to the pace. Karl had calmed down somewhat. ‘It’s so magnificent,’ he said with a sigh. A family of monkeys was leaping from one treetop to another, and Karl imitated their cries. ‘There’ll be plenty of game downriver,’ he promised. ‘No one has ever hunted that area before. This river is loaded with fish, too, huge fish. They can weigh over a hundred pounds.’

  We came to a slight turn in the river. Karl ordered us to row in the opposite direction, to keep away from the bend.

  ‘That’s all wrong,’ Kevin said to me. ‘We should just let the current carry us along.’

  We made it safely around the bend, and Karl began yelling excitedly, ‘To the left! Hard! Everyone, row left, fast! We’re liable to go into the Eslabon Pass.’

  About two hundred yards downriver we could see a profusion of jagged rocks jutting out of the river. We lost two more poles trying desperately to row but finally made it safely to the riverbank. It had been raining lightly, and now it started coming down harder. Drenched and shivering, we decided to look for some kind of shelter. Karl made a little clearing, and we helped him set up camp.

  Kevin and I returned to the raft to tie it securely to the shore, unloaded the equipment, and took it all to the camp. The rain let up and finally stopped. Karl took a wet log, cut it in half lengthwise, and used the machete to chop off chips of the inner wood, which was still dry. We were soon warming ourselves around a fire. Kevin called me to help him carry more firewood, and I was again amazed at his strength. He lifted entire tree trunks and carried them on his back. We had chosen a lovely campsite on a hillside in the jungle. At the foot on the hill was a nice little beach.

  As usual Karl prepared our dinner. We were having rice, some yucca tossed into the embers, and a little meat from the slab of wild boar that the Don Jorge had given us. Marcus got up and went over to Kevin, who was concentrating on eating. Marcus nimbly flipped his little portion of meat onto Kevin’s plate.

  ‘Happy holiday, Kevin,’ he said. ‘Today is Thanksgiving Day in America. I thought you might like a little surprise.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, Marcus,’ Kevin said, obviously moved, ‘but I can’t take the only piece of meat you’re going to get.’

  With a stubborn smile Marcus refused to take it back.

  Karl started lecturing on rafts. ‘This is a really unpleasant surprise. I’m the only one here who knows how to handle a raft. I can’t do it on my own. We’ll all be risking our lives unless we learn to handle it together, quickly. I think it was a big mistake for me to have taken this upon myself. We would have been better off walking back – ’

  ‘Don’t rush it, Karl,’ Kevin interrupted him. ‘It will take some time, but we’ll soon be doing it like pros.’

  ‘But time is what we don’t have, Kevin,’ Karl replied vehemently. ‘Don’t you understand? We don’t have the time. There are treacherous rapids in the pass where the Eslabon empties into the Tuichi. The Eslabon is right here. It takes a team of skilled raftsmen to cross it. I have no intention of attempting it with the three of you. Instead we’ll have to secure long vines to the raft and haul it down the river.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Kevin agreed.

  ‘Yeah, it is a good idea,’ Karl went on, ‘but we won’t always have that option. A day or two down the river we’ll come to San Pedro Canyon. They call it the Mal Paso San Pedro; it’s an unnavigable pass. Waterfalls, white-water rapids, rocks sticking out everywhere. No one has ever made it through the canyon, and neither will we. Even before that canyon there are other treacherous passes, and you have to know how to control the raft, how to stop it when necessary. The risk is tremendous otherwise – we could get swept into the canyon. If that happens, we’ve had it. Just the thought of it scares the shit out of me. We have pulled over twice today, but both times it was only by dumb luck that we managed to stop the raft.’

  ‘What do you mean, Karl, we can’t go through the canyon?’ I asked. ‘You said that you’ve already rafted the length of the Tuichi more than once.’

  ‘I never said that. I’ve gone down the Tuichi many times to a point a little farther on, to property belonging to Don Matías, the Swiss. From there I went by foot to Curiplaya, which is on the other side of the canyon. I’ve rafted from Curiplaya on down to Rurrenabaque many times too. It’s smooth, easy going from there, but no one has ever gone through the mal paso.’

  ‘Then how are we going to go on?’ Marcus wanted to know.

  ‘That’s the point. We have to get as close to the opening to the canyon as we can and stop. There we’ll take the raft apart. Two of us will bypass the canyon on foot, while the other two wait. At an agreed-upon time the two who stay behind will set the logs of the raft adrift in the current. Beyond the canyon, at Curiplaya, the river widens, and the current is very mild. The two who’ve gone ahead will swim into the river to retrieve the logs. By the time the other two get there, the raft will have been reassembled with panchos. From there it’s a breeze, but before we reach that point, the dangers are great. You don’t know how to use the poles. A real balsero can make excellent use of a pole, just like a paddle.’

  ‘So why don’t we just make some more oars?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘An excellent idea,’ Karl agreed. ‘Tomorrow we’ll look for some balsa trees and cut a few oars.’

  Later that evening Kevin and I sat together talking quietly.

  ‘Believe me,’ Kevin insisted, ‘Karl doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s obvious that he knows nothing about rivers. He’s making such a big deal out of this bad pass, like it’s so dangerous. You wait and see, we’ll take the raft through tomorrow with no sweat. If you’re willing, the two of us could take it through. No problem. Besides, I don’t trust him. Why did he only now suddenly remember to tell us about this San Pedro Canyon? There’s something fishy about the whole thing. Karl is a strange guy.’

  Right after breakfast Karl and Kevin went to look for balsa trees to cut oars and soon found some a little way upriver. Balsa trees are very tall with lots of branches, but their trunks are so brittle that it only takes a few machete chops to fell them.

  ‘We’ll cut each one down the middle lengthwise and get an oar out of each half,’ Karl said after they’d returned to camp and set about measuring the branches.

  ‘I�
�d like to know how he thinks he’s going to cut them right down the middle,’ Kevin whispered to me sceptically, but Karl proved his skills. He fashioned a wedge from the branch of a hardwood tree, made a small slit in the middle of the balsa log, fit the wedge into it, and pounded on it with a heavy rock. The log fell into two pieces like a charm.

  Karl was a genius with the machete. He rapidly cut the split logs into the shape of oars and then carved them to the desired width and length. He formed concavities in the lower section of each one and whittled out comfortable grips for our hands. Kevin and I worked on the other pieces, cutting them down to the basic shape, and Karl finished them. Now we had to let them get thoroughly dry so that they would be light and resilient.

  I proposed spreading them around the fire. ‘Otherwise we’ll be stuck here for eight days waiting like we did with the raft.’

  ‘It’s not good to dry them by the fire,’ Karl said, ‘but we don’t really have any other choice, short of time as we are. We’ll sleep here today and go on tomorrow.’

  Since it was still early, Karl decided to go hunting.

  ‘What do you think, Karl?’ Kevin asked before he could go. ‘Maybe we should move the raft down a little closer to the Eslabon Pass, so that tomorrow we’ll have an earlier start, pass it by, and be on our way.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Karl conceded. ‘Maybe I’d better forget about hunting.’

  ‘No, that isn’t necessary,’ Kevin said. ‘Yossi and I will just pull it along by the rope.’

  ‘OK, if you think you can manage without me.’

  Karl took up the shotgun and a few shells and marched off into the jungle.

  Marcus insisted on accompanying us, though he was suffering again from the painful rash on his feet.

  ‘I think I just have to keep my feet dry,’ he said. ‘They hurt like hell.’

  ‘So maybe you should wait here,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Oh, no, that wasn’t what I meant at all. I’m coming to help you.’

  We untied the raft and started dragging it by a rope fastened to its bow. The closer we got to the pass, the rockier the riverbank became and the harder it was to haul the raft.

  ‘We’d better get aboard and take it down out to the middle of the river,’ Kevin proposed. ‘You don’t intend to try going through the pass on your own?’ Marcus exclaimed in fright.

  ‘And why not?’ Kevin demanded. ‘It looks to me like it would be easy. We’ll stay in the middle and let the current carry us right between the rocks. We might take a few knocks, but that’s nothing to get excited about.’

  ‘We can’t do it without Karl,’ Marcus protested. ‘It wouldn’t be right. We promised that we were only taking the raft up to the pass. Anyway, Karl knows what he’s doing. He could show us the best – ’

  Kevin interrupted him impatiently. ‘Karl doesn’t know the first thing about rafts.’

  ‘Well, four is still better than three. Please, Kevin, let’s wait for Karl.’

  ‘All right, Marcus, if you want, you can go back. Yossi and I can do it ourselves.’

  Marcus was terrified, but he joined us. He and I boarded the raft, while Kevin remained in the water, gently pushing the raft toward the centre of the river. The water was already up to his neck before he hiked himself aboard. From there the current had its way. We started gaining speed. The centre of the river was far less rocky than it had been close to the bank, but Kevin had been wrong. We took more than a few knocks. We crashed into one rock after another, the raft tilting on its side. Both Marcus and I fell into the water and clutched the raft, afraid of being swept away. Somehow we managed to pull ourselves back aboard. Marcus was beside himself, pale, too rattled to speak. The original raft stood up well to the beating it was taking, but the logs we had added, using ropes instead of pegs, were beginning to come loose.

  We made it safely across the Eslabon Pass, but we were without poles or oars and couldn’t row for shore. Kevin jumped into the water again, holding on to the rope that was tied to the bow. He managed to brace himself against a boulder and from there used all of his strength to pull the raft toward the shore. Together we hauled it up on a tiny beachhead and secured it.

  Kevin regarded me smugly. ‘You see? A bad pass isn’t such a big deal.’

  ‘We did it!’ Marcus was exultant. ‘We made it on our own! Way to go, Kevin! You, too, Yossi!’

  We walked back toward camp through the jungle. We were soaking wet. Marcus found walking difficult and complained of pain in his feet, which had gotten wet again. Suddenly a shot rang out. Karl must have bagged something. I raced forward, in the direction of the sounding. There was no trail, and I broke off branches, jumped over fallen logs, and crawled under lowhanging boughs. I was making a terrible commotion, when a horrible thought struck me: Karl was likely to think that I was some kind of wild animal charging through the brush.

  ‘Karl, Karl,’ I called out, ‘where are you?’

  ‘Here, Yossi, I’m over here,’ he roared.

  I found him carefully studying a wide tree. ‘What were you shooting at?’ I asked. ‘Did you get anything?’

  ‘Ah, that was a mountain lion. It was too high up a tree. I missed it. But, look, Yossi, a rubber tree.’

  Karl struck the tree with the machete, and thick white drops, like glue, came oozing out of the gash. ‘I can use it to fix my boots.’

  The nylon thread with which he had sewn his boots together had already frayed.

  We went back to the tent and got an empty tin can for the glue. We met up with Kevin and Marcus on our way back to the tree.

  ‘We bypassed the Eslabon,’ Marcus informed him excitedly.

  ‘Hey, that’s terrific, really. Was it hard?’ he asked nonchalantly.

  ‘Piece of cake,’ Kevin replied.

  ‘Terrific,’ Karl said, without the slightest trace of spite in his tone, ‘we’ll get an early start tomorrow.’

  Within half an hour Karl had enough glue to fix his boots, and we went back to camp.

  Marcus was lying in the tent. Kevin was turning the oars over to dry on the back side. Karl set the tin of glue down near the fire.

  ‘It has to harden a bit before I can use it,’ he explained.

  Restless as always, he got out the fishing line and hooks. He rooted around in the loose earth of the jungle with the machete until he found what he was looking for, a nice fat worm. He baited a small hook with half of it and started fishing.

  ‘They’re nibbling, the little bastards, they’re nibbling,’ he said to me happily, and in a short while he had hooked a minnow. He cut the minnow in two and baited a large hook with half of it, using thick fishing line.

  ‘Yossi, have a go,’ he urged, and went back to his cobbling.

  I swung the baited hook over my head and cast the line into the river. I hadn’t even had the time to roll in the line when it went taut and straight. I had a large fish on the line; I could feel how hard it was pulling.

  Take it easy, pal, I thought, you’re not going anywhere.

  I gently drew the fish toward me. From time to time I let out a little slack and then drew it in again. After a few minutes the fish tired and was easier to pull in. It was a catfish that weighed about ten pounds.

  Karl was stooped over the fire and turned around to look at me.

  ‘Oh, ho,’ he called out, ‘what a beaut! You’re really something, pescador valiente [gallant fisherman].’

  ‘Don’t get so excited,’ I boasted. ‘I just started out with the small fry, now I’ll go catch a real fish.’

  I removed the hook from the fish’s mouth and baited it with the remaining half of the minnow. Marcus went down to the riverbank with me to watch me fish.

  The line was thick, but too short, only about thirty yards long. I tied one end to a tree branch. Again I swung the baited hook over my head, cast it into the water, and waited. The line was taut in my hand, and I could feel the steady tug of the current. Then something pulled hard. In an instant the line was pulled tight, humming l
ike a guitar string. I had it wrapped around my finger, and it sliced through the flesh. Luckily I managed to free my hand. The branch was quivering, shaking, and then suddenly the line snapped and went slack. The fish got away with the bait and the hook.

  I was stunned. I had done a lot of fishing in my time, but I had never felt that kind of pull on the end of a line. The fish must have weighed at least seventy pounds.

  Marcus, too, was awed. ‘God, what a fish that must have been!’ he cried out.

  I showed him my injured finger, and he hobbled over to the first-aid kit and carefully bandaged it.

  Karl laughed when we told him about the big one that got away. ‘Just wait,’ he reassured us, ‘you’ll catch one of those yet.’

  ‘Yeah, and how will we go about that, Karl?’ I asked, ‘with twenty yards of line and two hooks? How could you have given and traded away all our fishing gear without leaving enough for us?’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have enough,’ Karl waved me off.

  I cleaned the fish I’d caught, and when it was ready, Karl skewered it on a green stalk of bamboo and tied it in place. He arranged two forked branches over the fire and hung the stalk between them. We slowly turned the fish, its fat dripping down and crackling in the flames. The flesh was tender and delicious. We could barely stand to leave a little for the next day.

  Then Karl repaired the soles of his boots with the glue he had collected from the tree. When he finished, he lay down by the fire and fell asleep. From inside the tent I stared out at him: Karl, the jungle dweller, so at home in the wilderness.

  In the morning Karl decreed the oars ‘ready to go,’ and we carried our provisions on our backs to the place where the raft was tied.

  Rafting was heavenly. The Tuichi was placid, the day was lovely and warm, and the raft was easily controlled with the oars. We could manoeuvre it any way we wanted with little difficulty. After a while Karl pointed over at the left bank.

  ‘This was Don Matías’s property, but he doesn’t live here anymore,’ he said.

  We went on. I called Karl’s attention to the fact that the panchos were very loose, and we were liable to lose the additional logs.