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Back Jungle Up Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
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  63. Author’s Note

Juan Pablo and Carlos stowed our packs (Vern’s was battered and covered in at least a cubic meter’s worth of duct tape) with three large military rucksacks and five gallons of bottled water. Not wanting to deplete my three-liter water bladder quite yet, I asked, “Do you mind if I have a hit of that water?”

The morning humidity already had me parched, and my quick-dry long-sleeve shirt was stuck to my back. Carlos tossed me one of the gallon jugs, and I twisted off the top and drank heartily. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, then stepped into the boat, my 175 added pounds rocking it slightly. I had just gained my equilibrium when I noticed something crawl out from beneath one of the wooden planks.

I yelped.

All three Bolivians glanced at the creature, then to me, then erupted in laughter. Even Vern was cackling.

Diego patted my shoulder softly and said, “That just Camila. She very friendly.”

On cue, Camila slowly pulled herself forward, slowly wrapped herself around Diego’s leg, and slowly began pulling herself up. She slowly made her way up his body until she was hanging around his neck.

Camila was a sloth.

≈

We’d been on the river for twenty minutes, the slow hum of the motor propelling the boat with the current of the Madre. Juan Pablo was sitting at the back of the boat, playing motorista, steering the outboard. Vern and Carlos were on the second bench, and I was on the third. Diego and Camila stood near the helm.

There were several other boats on the water, mostly tourists on boat tours of the jungle, their phones or cameras held tightly in their hands as they snapped thousands of pictures they would soon upload to their Instagram accounts.

When Diego wasn’t tasked with tracking down a kidnapped doctor, he was one of these guides, and I’m not sure if instinct took over or if he was hoping for a tip, but he began pointing and explaining this and that—howler monkeys swinging from the branches of the thick jungle canopy; several different birds, one the neon-blue of a Vegas sign; the beady red eyes and long snout of a giant black caiman; the snapping of piranha; this sort of tree, that sort of tree.

After thirty minutes and what I could only assume was three or four miles, we rounded a bend, and Juan Pablo guided the boat toward a tributary feeding into the Madre. From my time on Google Earth, I knew that if we continued east on the Madre, it would take us north into Brazil and eventually feed into the Amazon River. But now we were headed west, against the current, on the Orthon.