The cast
Elad
Elad is a 24 year old former Israel Paratrooper commando with but five jumps to his credit, all training jumps. He has "only child syndrome"; the world is his. If there are 5 eggs and three people he "needs 2". He and Zohar started out with 4 water bottles between them. Leaving camp the second day he claimed the three water bottles on the bench. With the two in his tent they now had five and I none. The longest machete, the sharpest machete had to be his. He and Zohar talked non stop in Hebrew.Zohar
Zohar is a 23 year ex Israeli air force officer. In this case the office represents her work station, she was never in the field. Soft spoken but certainly not quiet. Talked incessantly.Miguel
Miguel was our guide, he is hardcore Indian, 25 years of age and was raised in the jungle. His whole tribe went naked and without metal tools until they were discovered in 1990.Santos
Santos is a 48 year old Indian who served as our cook. Short in stature but incredibly strong. His backpack was a large sack with cloth tied to it for straps. In this he carried 20 kilos of food and the pots, pans and dishes.Day 1 - June 30, 2010
TODO went to Mogli at 7:00 left not about my laundry, returned at 8:15 with Laundry. We were each issued 15 kilos of food, a sleeping bag and a bed roll. Walked to river, took boat across. I went to buy gum, everybody was gone. A moto driver told me that they had left, I got one to take me to there destination. The ride was 2,5 Bs.Boarded bus, was kicked up front, high behind the wind screen, no leg room, the sun beat down on us. Five hour bus ride.
Finally got to Iaxtama, got 5 mototaxis to take us on a one hour ride across the Pampas and through the jungle then we hiked to our camp. The hard dirt floor, bamboo walls, monkey reaching through, lost sleeping bag, pigs. The shitter from hell. Went down to the river for a bath gathered firewood. Four fish in the gill net. Bed.
Miguel's father.
Day 2 - July 1
Woke up, had fried batter, fried eggs, put on my 60 pound pack and we set out into the jungle. Miguel in front, closely followed by Elad who never let Miguel out of his sight. At one point yesterday Elad was left at a fork in the trail with Miguel well down the trail. He was not going to allow this to happen again. Zorah followed Elad and I was content with the final spot trailed by Santo.At one point Miguel indicated that he had spotted a very dangerous snake, a large bushmaster, the most dangerous snake in the western hemisphere, a huge viper up to 12 feet long with a head the size of a softball. Nobody saw the snake but Miguel, who pointed out the hole it had crawled down. He reported its length as four meters, an hour later he said it was five meters, which would have made it a new record.
Spotting a hole in the side of a hill Miguel figured that a tarantula must live in it. Using a small stick he teased her out of the hole which he then blockaded with his machete. He then lit a cigarette and blew smoke over her five or six times which he said sedated them then gently picked it up and we posed for some pictures with her. She was about as large as a dinner plate, one really big spider.
By this time the Israelis were getting very tired and Miguel and I pressed onto camp. After throwing our plastic sheets over the horizontal poles we had our make shift tent. Our mosquito nets were hung and our sleeping bags placed inside.
My backpack and hat were covered with flies two to three layers deep. Apparently they relished the salt; everything was soaking in perspiration, I had sweated at least two liters; I was thirsty, had consumed two liters of water during the hike and had never urinated.
We went down to the river to wash off and fish. I dropped my camera into the water when a chunk of the log on which I was standing broke off. Fortunately it was in a waterproof bag and came out none the worse for the experience.
Miguel found a bow and some arrows, hand crafted out of wood. It takes a full day to make a single arrow. I produced some paracord, 550 pound line used in parachutes and the bow was strung. We took turns shooting the arrows at a plastic bottle. Elad had never shot a bow and amused us with his profound incompetence. Miguel shot at something very high in the trees and the arrow rested horizontally 50 meters above the jungle floor. He pointed it out to me, I have no idea how he could discern it from all of the other sticks, but once pointed out it was obvious that this was the arrow. Half an hour was spent trying to get the arrow down, throwing large sticks at it and shaking the tree, to no avail.
For lunch we had a magnificent salad, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, onions followed by canned salmon and rice.
For dinner we had spaghetti with vegetable (lentils and bean) tomato based sauce.
Pachamama and the story of the necklace
Miguel then led us in a Pachamama ceremony, burying some coca leaves, smoking cigarettes and blowing on the leaves and drinking whisky made from cane sugar. According to the Lonely Planet, the famous travel series drinking is usually to a stupor or unconciousness, our ceremony was much more moderate with each person consuming a little more than an ounce of liquor.When Miguel was seven years old he went hunting with his father. They took separate trails looking for wild pigs. Miguel got lost and spent seven days wandering by himself, subsisting on wild fruit. Finally he reached a lake at which he had fished with his father and decided to wash himself off. When he was three meters from shore a large black camain attacked him, biting his leg at the knee and dragging him under water. Miguel escaped with a large section of flesh stripped from his leg and swam to shore, crawled twenty meters up the bank and passed out. His father discovered him several hours later and thought he was dead. With the aid of four companions they shot the camain with poisoned arrows. The giant beast disappeared beneath the waters but surfaced an hour later, dead. He was dragged up and placed next to Miguel. The hunters then left, Miguel regained conciousness, screamed when he saw the camain next to him and his father picked him up and carried him back to the village. He was tended to using natural medicinces, skin from his neck was grafted to his leg and secured using the powerful jaws of ants who were coaxed to bite and having done so had their heads pinched off. It took a year for Miguel to heal. The three camain teeth on his necklace are from the big black camain that nearly killed him. That's the story, how much of it is true is unknowable.
While sitting around the fire a wasp landed in front of me. Miguel yelled that it was very dangerous and I hit it with a rock. Miguel picked up its detached abdomen, the stinger kept thrusting against his fingernail. He said that the sting would kill in ten minutes and that there was no cure. Are we having fun yet?
TODO describe tent structure.
Day Three - July 2
I got out of bed shortly after six; I don't think I got any sleep. Santo was up making breakfast and boiling water for coffee. I went for my morning constitution and was disgusted to see that my fellow campers and littered the woods with toilet paper. I buried all of it using my machete. We left our heavy backpacks at the campsite and went for an unladened walk.Elad continued his thrashing and slashing with his machete. I showed him the proper technique; down on the stalk or up at an angle never perpendicular, most of the force is wasted bending the stalks. He hacked down a five inch tree inviting me to help him. I told him I don't take any pleasure in killing things just for the sake of it. We heard a loud banging and walked through the jungle to find Santo on a massive ficus tree which Miguel estimated to be one thousand years old, but more about Miguel's estimates later. After admiring the roots which were ten feet tall and several feet thick, Miguel banged on one and it resonated, the telegraph of the jungle. Elad proceeded to beat the hell out of one root with a massive stick and then started slashing at it with his machete. "What the fuck is wrong with you, you come to the jungle admire a massive 1000 year old tree and then start fucking it up?" "You're right, too much coca I guess."
We were shown one tree, which when shaved smelled just like garlic and is used in cooking. I found a cat's claw vine and asked Miguel to demonstrate. He slashed off a section and held it upright, sweet water flowed down and we all drank it. One vine can hold up to ten gallons of water and the water is sterile and sweet, unlike the vile water from the river where were chlorinating or boiling.
Down by a river we cut down a balsa tree and took the strong fibrous material that lays directly beneath the bark and used it to lash a stick to a vine and swung around for a bit.
After dinner we went for a night walk, but didn't see anything other than spiders and insects.
Day Four - July 3
I advised the Israelis not to use the area around a medium ficus tree as there toilet as I had seen a large number of bullet ants in the area. They didn't know what bullet ants were, I described them and Miguel called them viente quatro, as a bite will incapacitate you in throbbing pain for twenty four hours.We broke camp and headed to our next campground, hiking for three hours. Small palms covered our camp site. The trees were one to two inches in diameter and the bark was covered with very sharp brittle spikes the diameter of boar's hair. Brushing up against one the skin would be pierced and the spike break off in the skin. We cut down hundreds of them and cleared the earth of the smallest stick so that nothing would puncture our tarps. An hour of machete work later we had the ground cleared and went to go find trees appropriate for the uprights and crossbars of our tent. After laying the plastic and tying it down our camp preparation was complete.
Later we encountered another of the lethal wasps.
Fishing was productive; we caught five fish. Santo caught a large sting ray; I explained the sting ray shuffle to the Israelis. When one is in water with sting rays, one should shuffle along. If you kick a ray, it will swim away, if you step on one, it will jab its poisonous barb into you. At dinner time Elad helped himself to two large fish bodies, I had a small head. I found more satisfaction in my moral indignation than pointing out what a greedy twat he was. I had left my glasses case down by the river and fashioned a new one from a section of balsa wood. Wood carving with a machete.
Day 5 - July 4
For breakfast we had deep fried mini pancakes, about as close to donuts as you can get. Elad used up all the boiled water, hoarding some for the evening and wanted to know why I wasn't ready to hike. I decided I could get by on one liter for a two hour amble. We saw one monkey, that was pretty much it other than the three days dead pig.Miguel found a brown stick ten feet long. He flailed it and it TODO check brachiated into scores of thin reed like layers as it delaminated; He wove it into a fan.
Miguel braided a couple of carry bags for water bottles out of fronds. They were heavy, stiff, large and hugely impractical. I told him not to make me one, I'll stick with my Inca made cloth ones from Machu Picchu.
Lunch was bead pasta with oil. I went down to the river to wash the pus and blood out of my clothes. I picked up my pants from the river bank, they were covered with large black ants.
I made another sunglass case out balsa as the one I made the day before was too small.
After dinner I took out my bedroll to sit on leaving room for others. Once again Elad came and laid down on it when I stood up. This time I had to call him on his outrageous behaviour.
Miguel fashioned a ring out of a cocoa nut (the nut from the tree that produces cocoa as in chocolate). Using a candle he burned Elads name in Hebrew characters into the ring, amazingly fine detail considering the tools.
Taking inventory I realized that I was down one pair of pants. I couldn't find them on either side of the river. I asked Santo to help me. He walked to the ridge over the bank and pointed upstream beneath a branch at the pants. At 48 he can see unaided far better than I can see with glasses.
I picked up a piece of 140 grit sand paper and put a fine edge on my machete. Elad told me that the paper was only for wood. I responded with "what kind of abrasive is this paper made of?" He didn't know. I told him it was aluminum oxide and that I have a pretty damn good idea that I know a lot more about abrasives and knives than he will ever know. When Miguel picked up my machete he cut all of his fingers and said "Machete Gringo". Elad then had to sharpen his machete usimg the sand paper. I showed him how to use a piece of wood as a sanding block.
I hacked a cocoa nut and sanded it on 140 grit, then 400 grit then 800 grit paper and tied it to a bit of nylon string, making a pendant for my son Mark, who is going to visit me in Panama at the end of the month.
I started grilling Miguel about his tribe. Fascinating. I'll write a Wikipedia article and link to it here. TODO.
Day 6 - July 5
Woke at daybreak again. Broke camp, trekked 6 hours back to Miguel's father's house.Zohar got stung on the ear by a bee, the ear swelled up and became very red. Miguel burned some green leaves found the hive, killing the bees, extracting some pupae and wiping them on the ear. After a couple of minutes Zohar said that it helped. TODO spelling Psychosymatic... after several minutes bee stings stop hurting.
I asked to see the snake antivenom that Mogli said that we would have. Nada. Miguel said that you kill the snake within three seconds of being bitten, then skin the snake and wrap the skin over the puncture site. Now I have absolutely no faith in his healing knowledge. Just kill the animal the stung or bit you and use its powers to heal. Kind of like killing your enemies and eating them, oh they did that too 20 years ago. Trespassers were sodomized, Bonga Bonga joke was not understood.
More boredom. Miguel gave Zohar a temporary tatoo using plant extracts. It took a mixture of
three plants applied consecutively but it is now a strong tatoo that will last for weeks.
Elad insisted that we go gather more firewood, I was reluctant but said I would do so until dark. At dusk he wanted to get more but when the indians were afraid to gather more wood after dark because of the probability of being stung by bullet ants he calmed down.
Day 7 - July 6
My ears are clogged I am near deaf.Breakfast was as bad as it gets, plantain was deep fried, ground in a pestle mixed with cheese and fried yet again. Yucca was double fried but ended up like a giant potato pancake, with ketchup it was pretty good. The fried banana was like eating kitty litter. I scratch with sand, bark, knives, machetes, bleed and ooze pus. Flies feast on the wounds. This sucks. The spikes from the palms have created 30 inflamed volcanoes on my right hand alone. The chitri ( sand fleas) are unbearable.
One Israeli got lost in Madidi very near here for quite a while and wrote a book about it . Now every Israeli that comes to Rurre (Rurrenabaque) feels compelled to build a raft. Today we started on one.
We chose ten large balsa trees and wacked them down with machetes. Elad took the longest one, of course; I sharpened the 18" one with my CRKT stainless steel knife. Yes Elad, you can sharpen a knife with a knife.... the CRKT was so hard that I could actually remove stock on the Tratonia Brazilian made machete as well as dress the edge.
Peeling the bark from the felled trees significantly reduced their weight maybe by as much as 20%. The bark was saved for lashing material. We carried the ten meter trunks to the embankment over the river and tossed them down to dry for a day.
Elad was thrashing on an eight inch fallen balsa tree when I yelled, "Bullet Ants" and ran to a clearing. The ground was swarming with ants. I had never seen more than five at a time, here there were thousands. Elad ran behind me and I spent five minutes examining his pants and boots, removing at least twenty ants from him. According to the Schmidt pain index, look it up on Wikipedia, a sting from a fire ant is like walking on burning coals with a rusty spike in your foot, excruciating. In Costa Rica I was told that four ants could kill a german shepard. The indians here say a bite from ten is no worse than a bite from one. Having seen a national geographic show in which a rite of manhood is to put ones arm into a glove filled with bullet ants, I have to go with the Indians. After a certain amount of pain, nothing else can make a difference. Take this from a man who has stepped into a pot of boiling water and who has been defibrillated while concious.
Miguel went into the jungle and found a strong spiky leaf which he used to extricate the two score palm spikes that had broken off beneath the flesh of my hands. He was delicate and I could barely feel as he separated the sub-epidermal flesh that covered the spike.
As I was pumping some water into a bucket Elad came back from the river and thrust his filthy pants into the stream from the pump. TODO describe
The well
The pump for the well was broken.TODO describe house construction
Above ground a pole extended from the ground notched at the top to take the pump lever which was afixed as a fulcrum by a 3/8" 12 TPI Hex head 8" bolt screwed into wood. I removed the bolt then disconnected slid the 30 feet of 3/4" hose out of the shaft. On the end of the hose was a coursely threaded steel fitting which was twisted into the hose. On the other end was a 3/8" threaded shaft with a single nut on it. I pulled the sleeve out of the shaft, removed the check valve and found the other nut. A washer was fashioned out of an old sandal and affixed between the nuts. Elad dropped the sleeve into the shaft without affixing to the tee and it fell a meter down the hole. Attempts to snag it with a fish hook affixed to the stiff bow were unsucessful. I wittled down the mud stop on my Leki walking stick so that it would just fit into the pipe hoping it would flare out but I determined that too much force was necessary and that I would just push the sleeve further into the well. I left it alone. Elad jacked with it until he had pushed the sleeve 10 meters down the hole, beyond any hope of salvation. The only hope at that point was to push the sleeve out of the shaft completely and buy a new sleeve and check valve. Nice work peckerhead.
That night near dusk Elad told me that Miguel wanted us to gather some firewood. I went off and got a couple of large pieces; when I returned Miguel told me that he had not asked us to gather firewood and told us that there were a large number bullet ants in the woods here and that you couldn't see them in the dark. Nicely done Elad.
We played a little bullshit and I went to bed while Elad and Zohar rudely chatted away in Hebrew.
Day 8 - July 7
We notched the giant bamboo trunks, affixed two tranverse sticks and lashed them into place with strips of the sub bark balsa. A platform was constructed of bamboo and lashed to the top of the raft. A tarp was laid down and our bags wrapped up in it. We floated down the shallow lazy river, pushing the raft over obstacles and poling our way down. We found a spot on the bank, covered with massive camain tracks and made camp there. We started a fire which gave very loud pops every now and again from the green bamboo. Miguel caught a very large fish and we had dinner and played bullshit. I suggested that we just hike all the way back the next day and to just get this trip over with.
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