We Came, We Saw, We Left

by Charles Wheelan

  “A relaxing walk,” Leah answered immediately.

  I agreed. No rapids, no caves, no slippery rocks. Yes, there would still be poisonous snakes, but they would scurry away if we talked loudly and banged our walking sticks.

  Our “relaxing” hike started out leisurely enough. We walked from the lodge up a gentle path, observing the abundance of fascinating insects and flowers—colors and shapes I had never imagined. We stopped to take a group photo at the base of a tree so large that all seven of us could pose shoulder to shoulder in front of the trunk. This was exactly what we had ordered: a nice, easy hike that would get us back to the lodge in time for lunch and an afternoon of reading in the hammock. So, why was Kevin carrying a machete?

  At some point we lost the path, or we got on the wrong path, or something else happened that presented us, according to Kevin, with “an opportunity to combine two hikes into one.” As best as I could tell, this was a politic way of saying that we were lost. We had little hope of finding the trail by thrashing through the jungle, Kevin’s machete notwithstanding. The safest and most direct route back was along a creek that ran down to the Abiseo River. From there, we would be able to walk along the riverbank back to the lodge.

  But this was a creek, not a path. In some places, we were able to walk beside it. In others, the vegetation was so dense that we had to get into the creek and step carefully from rock to rock. Where there were no rocks, we waded through the water. Every step required concentration. We made slow but steady progress as Kevin hacked away at the branches blocking our path.

  Suddenly Kevin slipped on a rock and fell backward, flinging the machete twenty feet into the air. It happened so fast that none of us was able to react, in part because it was hard to do anything quickly on the slippery rocks. The huge blade spun end over end, like in a low-budget kung fu movie, before falling harmlessly into a bush. We retrieved the machete and plodded on. As we stepped over a rotting log that had fallen across the creek, CJ grabbed my shoulder and pointed. It took a moment for my eyes to recognize what he was pointing at. Perched upside down on the underside of the log was a spider with a body that looked like an avocado. “Holy @#$%!” I exclaimed, having never seen a spider that size, even in a book or a zoo. “Is it poisonous?” I asked Kevin.

  “That’s a good question,” he replied, as if I’d asked him if the New England Patriots were going to have a solid defense this season.

  At one point, Leah steadied herself by grabbing onto to a large rock. “Move your hand,” I told her firmly. We have spent enough time together in all kinds of circumstances that she moved her hand before asking any questions. I pointed at a bullet ant scrambling across the rock. Kevin and Maria had been pointing out these ants—roughly an inch long—on rocks and tree stumps since we arrived. The good news is that the bullet ant sting is not deadly. The bad news is that it is considered to be the most painful bite or sting of any insect on the planet. They are called “bullet ants” because the sting feels like a bullet is ripping through your body. A reporter for Esquire described the bite this way: “There were huge waves and crescendos of burning pain—a tsunami of pain coming out of my finger. The tsunami would crash as they do on the beach, then recede a little bit, then crash again. It wasn’t just two or three of these waves. It continued for around twelve hours. Crash. Recede. Crash. It was absolutely excruciating.”*

  Our “relaxing hike” was beginning to approximate the ill-fated adventures described in The Lost City of Z. Because we had been gone much longer than expected, workers back at the lodge had sent search parties out in two different directions to look for us. Meanwhile, as we slashed and sloshed our way through the creek, CJ lamented loudly: “My pants are getting really muddy.”

  “You have to be [deleted] kidding me,” I said. This caused tension with Leah, as we have radically different approaches to dealing with CJ’s complaints. My strategy of forcing him to be quiet had worked in the cave. Leah was more indulgent, which, to my mind, merely encouraged him to whine. “You have to admit that this is definitely not ‘a leisurely hike around the lodge,’” Leah pointed out.

  “Fine,” I conceded, “but complaining isn’t going to get us back any faster.” At some point, my prescription sunglasses were knocked off my hat by a branch. By the time I realized they were gone, I had no hope of finding them.

  Neither of the search parties found us. Eventually we emerged on the broad, rocky banks of the Abiseo River. Butterflies of every shape and size—neon-blue, green, yellow, red—swarmed around the ground. Even the rocks were intriguing. I took photos of patterns and colors that looked as if they had been designed as a mosaic. As we walked leisurely toward the lodge, Maria pointed to a patch of ground without any rocks on it. “Quicksand,” she warned. As I stared in disbelief, she told us the story of how her brother Sander had become stuck in quicksand while walking in this area. He was alone and sank all the way to his armpits. He saved himself by laying his walking stick across the quicksand, which stopped him from sinking long enough for someone from the lodge to find and rescue him.

  Over our final breakfast at the lodge, Kevin proposed one last adventure. “How about kayaking on the river?” he asked. Leah kicked me under the table. There was no need for prodding, however, because I was thinking, Good god, no! Tess’s time with us was nearing its end. We had enjoyed a lovely three weeks with her; now was no time to put that at risk. The adventure lodge had been the experience of a lifetime. Declare victory and retreat.

  Before departing downriver, we posed in front of the boat for a group photo with Kevin, Maria, and Sander (the one who had nearly disappeared in quicksand). They are kind, charming people with a deep respect for this unique part of the world. I felt sad to be leaving—even as I looked out at the river and thought, I am so happy we are not kayaking.

  We arrived in the Lima airport with bags stuffed full of wet, dirty clothes. Anytime I unzipped my pack, a jungle stench wafted out. We put Tess on a plane to Florida, where she would meet her mother. She had been a delightful traveler: adventurous, easy, and fun. The rest of us continued on to our Airbnb apartment, where the family immediately fell to squabbling over whose clothes deserved priority in the washing machine. (CJ’s pants did get very dirty.) After a good shower, each of us tended to our various rashes and insect bites. CJ removed a tick from the webbing between two of his toes. I posted our stories from the Amazon on the blog, along with photos of the snakes, spiders, bullet ants, butterflies, exotic plants, and beautiful flowers.

  As I settled into a comfortable bed on that first night in Lima—with no risk of being knocked to the floor by a dive-bombing insect—I reflected on our only nighttime activity at the Abiseo Aventura Paradise. Several of the workers invited CJ and me to go fishing with them. We followed them down the path to the river, where they gave us some line with a baited hook at the end.

  There is an art to tossing the hook into the river and letting the current wash it gently along the shallows. On my first toss, I snagged a rock. One of the workers waded into the water and untangled the line for me. CJ tried next; he got the hook caught on the rocks behind us. By then we had lost our bait, so we asked the men for more. I made another toss and hooked one of the workers’ lines, which required more wading into the water to untangle.

  The subsequent tosses were different only in the details. It was clear that CJ and I had a better chance of getting a pizza delivered to us on the bank of the river than we did of catching a fish. Still, the night was breathtakingly beautiful. As we stood on the bank of the Abiseo River with no light pollution and a brilliant night sky, we both saw a bright shooting star. “You have to make a wish,” I told him.

  I wished for a safe return from our travels.

  * Noah Davis, “What It’s Like to Get Stung by the World’s Most Painful Insect,” Esquire, August 17, 2015.

  Chapter 6

  Things Go South in South America

  I had been keeping a tally of travel-related events in the back of my journal: b
us rides, countries visited, and so on. That night I added a new category, Complete Family Meltdown, which would henceforth be defined as three family members crying at the same time, or one adult and one child.

  ONE OF MY FAVORITE PHOTOS from the trip is of CJ doing his schoolwork in a Lima café. It was midmorning, so the place was mostly empty. CJ was working by himself on a laptop by the window. The natural light cast a gentle glow on his solitary figure.

  The fact that I took the photo from where I had opted to sit—on the other side of the café from CJ—offers some insight into our simmering introvert-extrovert conflict. CJ lost his chatter buddy when Tess returned home. As a raging extrovert, he processes the world out loud and is less comfortable in solitary activities, such as reading or keeping a journal. In contrast, I have kept a journal since I was seventeen. Katrina writes regularly in a journal. For both of us, it is a way of reflecting and processing one’s thoughts.

  At the beginning of the trip, I urged CJ to keep a journal, in part as a record but also as a writing exercise. This turned out to be inimical to his personality. Rather than using the daily writing as a way to decompress or to process experiences, CJ felt a need to record every detail. He was quickly overwhelmed. “What did I have for breakfast on Tuesday?” he would ask anxiously as the rest of us worked quietly. “Was that the day I had chicken empanadas? Did I have one or two? How much did they cost?” Whereas the introverts found solace in the journal, CJ found it stressful. Besides, as Katrina or I might point out sixteen hours into an eighteen-hour bus ride, CJ had already processed every single one of his thoughts out loud: “Is that a goat? Yes, it is a goat. Baby goats are really cute. Hey, guys, don’t you think baby goats are really cute?”

  We had now been on the road for a month. We had the travel part figured out. The family dynamics, however, were still a work in progress.

  While CJ did homework in the Lima café, Leah used the time to map out a route that would take us down the west coast of South America through Peru and into Bolivia. The plan was to spend a handful of days resting up in Lima, where we literally put salve on our wounds from the Amazon, and then head south to Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city. There were two classes of travel on offer for that thousand-kilometer trip: the regular bus and the “VIP Coach.” CJ was lobbying hard for VIP seats; the Budget Czar was skeptical. “They cost twice as much,” Leah pointed out.

  “Eighteen hours is a long time to be on a bus,” I mused, feigning objectivity. “And it’s overnight, so it saves us a night of lodging.” The sybarites won a rare budget victory, and the “VIP Coach” lived up to its billing. The bus had two levels. We were in a compartment on the lower level with huge reclining seats and only a handful of other passengers. There were heavy velvet curtains on the windows, which made our little cabin feel more like a cozy salon or a garish private plane than an intercity bus. These long night bus rides had a number of advantages. First, they spared us a night of lodging, as I had deftly argued. Second, the darkness minimized our motion sickness. Finally, the time went by faster when we could sleep for six or eight hours. Still, eighteen hours is a long time to be on a bus, even one that feels like a salon.

  Arequipa is a charming city, much smaller than Lima, with an archetypical plaza: a square with a fountain, gardens, and benches surrounded on four sides by government buildings, a towering colonial cathedral, and restaurants with outdoor tables. The weather was warm and sunny. On the first day, with the family still tired and cranky from the long bus ride, Leah offered up a crowd-pleaser. “Chocolate,” she pronounced. “Here’s what we’re—”

  “That sounds great,” we interrupted in unison. She had us at “chocolate.” One of the city’s artisanal chocolate makers offered a class on how beans are transformed into bars. We had been fascinated by the chocolate business since we had seen the cacao trees on Maria’s family farm. Scoop was still working on her crop substitution article. Also, we were certain that any class on making chocolate would involve eating it, too.

  The four of us put on aprons and hairnets and perched at a marble counter where a charismatic guide led us through the chocolate-making process. We ground beans. We tasted different kinds of chocolate (milk, dark, etc.). We took quizzes, nibbling at chocolate chunks and trying to identify the cocoa content.* And then, of course, we made our own chocolate bars. Each of us selected a chocolate, poured it into candy molds, and added flourishes: nuts, dried fruit, wasabi, ground chili powder, and even coca leaves. We fashioned our bars with great care, each of us boasting about our unique combination of ingredients. “No one can eat mine,” CJ declared.

  “We all have our own,” Leah assured him.

  “So everyone agrees?” CJ asked.

  “Yes, we heard you the first time,” Katrina said.

  CJ continued, “I’m just saying, sometimes—”

  “Enough,” I said.

  We did not appreciate the prescience of CJ’s food-hoarding. It would be several days before we found ourselves in a famine-like situation.

  We were having a money problem in Peru. This was not a budget problem. Rather, we were literally having trouble getting money. Many businesses, such as our hostel, did not accept credit cards. We needed cash for most of our day-to-day expenses, but back in Lima a cash machine had eaten one of our ATM cards. At home, this is an easy problem to fix. The bank sends out a new card. While traveling, everything is more complicated, especially things involving access to finances. The bank would only send a replacement card to our home address. Sophie would bring that card with her, but in the meantime we had lost access to one of our checking accounts. The other account had a daily limit on ATM withdrawals. We needed more cash than usual because, in addition to our daily spending, I was stockpiling dollars to pay for our Bolivian visas: $160 per person, cash only.

  The liquidity crisis came to a head at a delightful little crepe restaurant in Arequipa. I was short of Peruvian soles to pay the bill. The restaurant did not take credit cards, so the only option other than making a run for it was having Katrina withdraw cash from her personal account. We would reimburse the intrafamily loan once our liquidity crisis was over. Katrina agreed to this plan and set out to find an ATM machine. I stayed behind at the restaurant. Fifteen minutes passed, then half an hour. Arequipa is a tourist-friendly place, with ATMs all over the city. Katrina had been gone for a bizarrely long time; it was starting to feel like Medellín all over again.

  After about forty-five minutes, my mild frustration grew into alarm. Eventually, I walked out into the street, at which point I saw Katrina striding past the crepe shop. I yelled, “Katrina!” loud enough to get her attention. And then, mostly out of relief, I exclaimed, “What happened?”

  Katrina had become lost on the way back from the ATM—and probably would have walked past the restaurant again if I had not called out to her. She was angry at herself for getting lost, and angry at me for overreacting to the situation. She declared that I should have gotten my own money (I couldn’t), or gone to the ATM myself with her card (I had offered). And then she added, “I’m eighteen years old and I can do whatever the hell I want!” One could quibble with the substance of that statement, and certainly with its relevance as we finally paid for the crepes, but Katrina’s desire to be out from under her parents was plenty clear.

  Meanwhile, Sophie was back home making negative progress on her schoolwork. How does one move backward in an academic class? If a student submits no work to a VLACS class for many weeks—not even one single quiz or discussion question—the system will automatically deny further access to the course. Once a student is “frozen out,” he or she must provide some explanation to the supervising teacher in order to regain access. In other words, it takes extra work just to begin doing work again.

  “I got this,” Sophie insisted when we spoke to her from Arequipa. This phrase sent chills down our parental spines, as it typically signaled the opposite. For example, there was the time I spotted Sophie wheeling my bicycle out of the garage bec
ause she was late for school and did not have time to walk. I yelled from the porch, “Lock it!”

  “I got this!” she replied jauntily as she rode off (without a helmet).

  The bicycle was stolen that afternoon.

  Leah and I could not make Sophie do VLACS from South America. We had tried bribery. We had tried threats. We had tried imploring her to think about her future. Every new strategy felt like pushing a stone with a wet noodle. To the extent there was good news, it was that Sophie sounded delightfully happy when we spoke to her, regaling us with stories of homecoming and other fun activities with her friends. Apparently if you take the “school” out of high school, what’s left is loads of fun.

  Leah and I made a strategic decision: We would give up on VLACS for the time being. We reckoned that once Sophie joined us in November, we could supervise her directly. That would leave her plenty of time to finish her classes.

  On our third night in Arequipa, I opted to dine on my own. I went out to a very nice restaurant for ceviche, a local specialty. The rest of the family does not like ceviche. Also, sometimes when I feel like I need time to myself, the rest of the family feels the same way. I went on TripAdvisor and found the most highly recommended seafood restaurant in Arequipa. How did I manage to fit that in the budget? I used my “fun money,” which is an accounting gimmick Leah and I invented twenty-five years earlier when we went on our first low-budget adventure. We recognized that it would be a tragedy to get to some distant part of the world and forgo a unique local activity, such as scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, for lack of seventy-five dollars. The solution was to give each of us a fixed amount of “fun money” over the course of the trip. We reprised the idea for our family trip: five hundred dollars per person. Every time one of us made a fun money purchase, we declared it to Leah, who kept track of our declining balances. In Arequipa, I used fun money to order ceviche, shrimp soup, and several glasses of Argentine wine. I enjoyed this delicious meal while reading the Economist and writing in my journal.