My driver was wearing a red sleeveless T-shirt and jean shorts, which appeared to be the dress code for men in their twenties. I held tight to his shoulders as he merged into the honking traffic and zipped through the busy streets. Small houses—some nice, many dilapidated—whizzed by as we drove the mile to the muddy bank of the Río Madre de Dios.

Vern and I hopped off and headed down a steep embankment leading to the river. The “Mother of God” was brown and moving at a nice clip from left to right. The river was a half mile wide, the brown water on the opposite bank giving way to hundreds of miles of dense, impenetrable jungle.

There were twenty boats beached on the muddy banks of the great river, but only one had three Bolivians standing next to it. Like many of the Bolivian men I’d seen thus far, two of the three were trim but muscular, with coffee-brown skin, and shiny black hair. And they were short. Really short. Bolivia had some of the most diminutive people on earth, with the average male standing at five feet three inches, and your average woman just four eight. However, the third Bolivian was an anomaly; he was fairly light-skinned and towered over his two compatriots.

Suffice it to say this was not the elite fighting force I was expecting.

I turned and gave Vern a hard stare.

He said, “Trust me.”

“I don’t think I have much of a choice.”

We drew closer, and two of the men rushed forward and took our packs. They were young—kids really—and I doubted either had seen their twentieth birthday. Like my moped driver, both were clad in T-shirts with cut-off sleeves and jean shorts. They spoke bits and pieces of English. The short Bolivian had a wispy black goatee and introduced himself as Juan Pablo. The other one, the “anomaly”—who in actuality was just a couple of inches taller than me but looked like a giant standing next to his two peers—had a three-inch scar on his neck and said, “I am Carlos.”

The third man was older, around thirty-five. He was maybe five foot three, with chubby cheeks and black hair buzzed down to half an inch; his eyes were small and squinty. He stepped forward and said, “Nice to meet you, sir,” in B− English. “Boat ready to go.”

This was Diego, our tracker.

The boat he was referring to was a canoe. What they call a dugout. It was twelve feet long and faded blue in color; it bobbed in the shallow water at the river’s edge. Four equally spaced benches spanned its three-foot width. I was relieved to see a scuffed black outboard motor attached at the back of the boat. I had been worried we’d be paddling for twelve hours.