This would be a good time to mention that I have never—not once, not ever—gone backpacking. However, I had gone camping multiple times, and by multiple, I mean twice. Once for one night, once for two nights—both times in Olympic National Park, both times with my father, and both times with a car parked thirty feet away. I think it’s safe to say that neither my father nor I particularly enjoyed our time amid nature, and we decided after the second trip that in the future we would much rather do our father-son bonding at Seattle Seahawks games.

So, outdoorsy I was not.

After adjusting the straps of the forty-pound pack, I began jogging the remaining two hundred yards to the airport entrance. I was supposed to meet this expedition team at one of the private-jet terminals on the northern side of the airport at 9:45 a.m. According to Garrett, the plane was leaving at 10:00 a.m. “with or without me.”

Unfortunately, I still had an errand to run.

I moved through the sliding glass doors of the airport and into the slightly cooler recirculated air. I checked a large airport directory and found what I was looking for: Bank of America. I hurried my way through the busy airport to the full-scale bank on the fourth floor.

“Thomas?” a fortyish woman asked as I walked through the bank doors.

With my sixteen hours of travel time from Nice to Miami, I had left Lacy the formidable task of securing the $300,000 for Papagayo. I’m not sure exactly how she accomplished the feat, as neither of us had an account with Bank of America—or where she found the extra $100,000 on top of the $200,000 in our bank account—but I woke up to a text on my new burner phone that read “MONEY WILL BE THERE.”

As for my old phone, I’d left it with Lacy, just in case Gina was able to call back. Then I bought a cheap burner phone to communicate with Lacy while I was still in the States. The Garmin inReach Explorer I’d purchased would take three days to activate—and technically, it wasn’t a phone; it was a satellite communicator. I would be able to send and receive text messages while in the jungle.

At least, in theory.

The woman introduced herself as Cathy and led me to a large wraparound desk. She handed me an envelope and said, “Check that over for me.”

I pulled the cashier’s check out of the envelope and looked it over. It was for one hundred thousand dollars and made out to Roth Media Inc.

“Looks good to me,” I said.

Cathy nodded, then she unlocked a drawer, pulled out a small blue duffel bag, and slid it across the table. Had I gotten the money in hundreds it probably would have come in a large manila envelope, but I’d been instructed to get the $200,000 in fifties.