Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Travel
Publisher: CreateBooks
ISBN-10: 1484800222
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 200
Copyright: 2013
ISBN-13: 9781484800225
Price: $4.50 (eBook)
The author challenges readers to find their own "travel wings"in this humorous account of a trip to one of the largest remaining virgin rain forests in the Amazon basin. Join her and 11 plucky strangers from 5 different countries who speak no one language in common as they band together in a trek down the eastern face of the Andes in load trucks and enter the heart of Manu National Park in Peru by canoe. If you love "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,"you will be happy to find that restaurant at the end of the universe, but right here on planet earth. For the totally foolhardy, this book will serve as a great survival guide.
This book tracks a horrendous trip to the Peruvian Amazon, Manu National Park. The park is said to be the largest tract of virgin rain forest left in the world. It has not been mined, fished, rubber tapped, logged or been in any way disturbed. Because as many as 10 indigenous tribes still live in this forest, only a small corner of the park is available to travelers, and travel is limited to only two local eco-travel agencies. In this account, the group of travelers meet in Cuzco and band together to go as cheaply as possible. Riding on load trucks and canoes, they reach their destination with great hardship. It is extremely remote.
Excerpt
THE END OF THE ROAD
Everyone going to Shintuya that afternoon is on the truck; we’ve been gathering all day. The load, both human and commercial, is incredible. The new Dino truck has tires clear across the truck base to support roughly three layers of cargo. The first third is stacked with cement bags; an-other layer of farm produce in bags tops the cement, presumably toted by some of the 20 natives who are already seated on the truck. Last, a layer of people and their breakables (such as pots of soup, crates of eggs, a basket of bread), live chickens tethered to an old man traveling with a child, and our 11 backpacks top the cargo. I count 31 people sitting on this top layer, excepting the twin infants who occupy both nipples of their poor mother for the entire trip.
A Quechua woman chatters at me pointing at where I sit on a crate filled with eggs. “Si, si,” I say, moving my full weight to a sack jammed against it, and wedge my feet between two grain sacks and the legs of my neighbors. Suddenly, the words of an ever-present popular song bubble up: “Si! Si! Si! Como no? / Yo soy hablo Espagnol.” The language the woman is speaking is not Spanish though, and Barbro at my left informs me that they will not un-derstand me; they are apt to speak Quechan. Because the government recruits settlers from the Machiguenga tribes for these villages in the Multiple Use Zone of Manú, even Quechan is doubtful. So few of the natives here speak Spanish, communication is only possible through sign language for all of us.
I had been happy to find a seat on the right side of the truck as I would have had good views; however, due to the prompting of the woman transporting eggs, I moved to that grain sack crammed up against the truck siding. Con-sequently, I am sitting so high that I need to drape my arm over the top slat of the truck’s siding to hold on. I now have a view so unobstructed it is frightening.
Others have fared no better—David is crouched at the back, his long legs folded up because he’s too tall to fit them between the people and cargo. I cannot see my partner, Bob, who sits behind me, perched on the edge of the toolbox above the cab, but I worry nevertheless that, if he is not dumped on a turn, he will be impaled by the central tarp pole. My better judgment is yelling at me, raising my apprehension. Overloaded! Get off this truck! How-ever, I quell my anxiety and sit tight because everyone else seems so calm.
I never achieve that calm; in fact, with each bend in the road, my anxiety grows. Although we have left the rocky face and steep valleys of the mountain behind, we still are traveling through foothills. Unexplainable to me, I am more afraid of these washes and gulleys than I was when I was viewing the precipitous valleys in the high mountains from the toolbox. Does an increased oxygen supply restore common sense? The narrow road now follows the faces of foothills, twisting and turning around concave and convex curves. On one side of us we see a mud bank covered with trees, and on the other side a view of the forested gulley; dead ahead, we see that the edge of the road on the right slopes at an angle that could easily roll a truck. That the road banks on these turns is a natural in-stead of an engineering feature.
Both mountains and hills fold in because waterfalls have eroded them in the rainy season. In the dry season, drivers must cross washed-out places—mud pits of seeping water—or ford a spring that still runs free. Each time our truck lurches ’round one of these curves, it tips, and the springs of the truck bed give beneath the weight of the cement and human cargo. I can no longer see the truck support beneath us; I see only the shoulder of the road and the sloping terrain below; what is more, I often see only the streams we ford coursing over the road’s shoulder. The sensation of falling is increased by my seat at the rail of the truck, and I am sure we will capsize and spill into the valley. Repeatedly, the panic registered on my face each time the truck lurches to the side makes two native women across from me giggle and elbow each other.
By this time, I am struggling with my fear. The other passengers make me doubt the conviction that I hold. That is, I know the truck is overloaded and that I should get off and walk; however, I am too embarrassed by every-one elses' acceptance. So I argue with myself for much of the distance, using my old standby line from a poem to keep me seated. Thinking of grief, Robert Frost wrote that, when we suffer mental pain, often “the only way out is through.” I have adopted this line to keep me going whenever life is difficult, adapting it to any unpleasant situation—from finishing an onerous task to grieving a death. However, it is most useful when I have sabotaged myself by bad decisions. It’s a bit more forceful than the “too late now,” that tip of the hat to my own stupidity, and has the added feature of an implied stoic heroism.
Then, in the middle of my mental battle, the truck stops. The drivers get out of the cab and tell us that everyone must get off the truck. We are stuck in the mud.
This is a big understatement. The wheels are sunk in ruts over a foot deep at this muddy washout, and the axles are in danger. All of us get out to lighten the load, as much as one can lighten a load of cement bags.
Despite this inconvenience, I am so grateful the truck has stopped. My fear is never strong enough to overcome my dread of making a scene; I could not have asked the driver to let me off with everyone watching. Now, however, I can act on my fear and slip away without notice; I figure we cannot be far from Shintuya. I am ready to walk the rest of the way.
To climb out of a load truck, one must climb over the slats of the side and down a ladder, a metal structure bolted to the side of the truck and situated just behind the cab. We descend more than fifteen feet; the last rung is necessarily three feet from the ground. Wearing slippery sandals, I am climbing down the ladder at just the moment a little boy is stooping down to pick up a rock directly below me. As I reach the bottom rung, I slip from it at the very moment he stands up. His head meets my right rib cage. He doesn’t even notice and walks off, but I am doubled over, gasping with pain.
My ribs are cracked or broken; I am not sure which but have broken a toe and know the feeling. What is more, I understand instantly that no one can do anything but tape a broken bone to something stable until it heals. Without doctors or clinics in this wilderness, I know I can wrap it and endure. What I cannot do is get back on the truck.
While the drivers lay down boards and engineer a solution to the problem, the passengers mill around, answer nature calls in the cover of the forest, or sit on cargo at the side of the road. Bob is the only one to whom I can explain my fear.
I unload the panic I am feeling, exclaiming, “I cannot get back on the truck.” I beg him to get down our packs and hike to Shintuya with me. “Another truck may come,” I plead.
I still have not told him about the cracked rib, nor does he see me hold my breath with each wincing spasm.
Instead, he puts on his best teacher countenance, pulls me to the back of the truck, and points at the wheels.
“There’s no way that truck can capsize,” he exclaims as though it’s obvious to anyone over the age of two. “Look,” he says. “Count the wheels. They cross the whole truck.”
He has a point and his adamancy as much as his reasoning convinces me that the wheelbase is so wide that capsizing is impossible. The drivers (so far as I am concerned) miraculously drive the truck out of the mud hole, and we climb aboard for a short ride to our destination. I am calmer for the rest of the trip until I see the skeleton of a truck of similar size that has rolled down a slope where it cannot be recovered. I was right, I think. But not seeing any telltale shrines with crosses and flowers, I conclude that at least no one died. Minutes later, we arrive at the Shintuya mission; it’s just before dusk.
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