I woke up, after maybe an hour of sleep, miserable, wet, cramping. The soft patter of water falling from the canopy sounded on the tarp. Checked the Indiglo-"three forty-five."
Good enough for me, let's get moving.
I climbed out of the hammock, woke Fernando, and built a fire. This task would normally be impossible after such a drenching, but Fernando had taught me the secret jungle ritual used to summon the fire gods. A certain plastic, used in the manufacture of motor oil bottles, will, when lit, light anything. The chicleros know this, so they include those empty bottles in their provisions. I dug deep into the leaf litter covering a high patch of ground until I found dry mulch and branches. Put a heaping pile of that into the drowned mess of the stone fire circle, lit a plastic bottle, and dropped it on top. The gods must have smiled on me. In under a minute the fire was going strong. I gathered enough large sticks to fuel our breakfast and threw them on.
"¡Levántese, Fernando!" I barked. He finally got up.
As the fire grew I began breaking camp. We boiled water for coffee and ramen noodles. While we sucked down our liquid breakfast, I asked him how long it would take to get to Carmelita.
"Seis horas y media," he said.
We'll see about that, I said to myself.
The gear sat in the middle of camp, packed and readied it to be hoisted on the mule. The mule pack was a soggy, muddy wreck and we were caked in slop after setting it. I threw on my pack, grabbed the lead rope, popped the mule, and yelled, "¡Siga!" The mule and I were off. Fernando was still gathering himself. A mischievous smile crept over my face.
We were nightwalking again. I loved it. It didn't last long, though. The light of dawn came soon enough. The early-morning jungle was wet. The air was cool, the ground soft, the smell fresh. The ground muffled the sound of our footsteps. From high in the canopy, water continued a steady drip, as though it were still raining.
The morning was serene and we seemed to glide along without effort. The stillness created a blissful silence, contemplative, without disturbance. Then, just off the trail, a loud explosion shook the air as a gaggle of pavos took flight. The mule bucked, my heart lodged into my throat, Fernando let out a yelp.
I saw many more pavos later at Tikal, at close range. They are bizarre creatures, ocellated turkeys, with the shape and form of North American turkeys, but bigger, with the coloration of a peacock. Of course, I observed none of those details that morning in the jungle.
Adrenaline finally drained from the bloodstream, the heart settled back into its customary pace, and the morning resumed without further noteworthy event. The drip from the canopy died with each passing step, and soon the sun was vaporizing the water, liberating it back into the atmosphere, transforming the jungle into a sauna.
We hauled ass that morning. No jungle herb. No water. No stops. Not a word, except "¡Siga!"
The pain was fully present, but the voices were not. My mind, and the voices in it, were focused, united, on one objective . . . getting the hell out of that jungle. So we pushed, without thought.
The trail finally opened into a small clearing of reeds, and in the middle lay the spring we'd taken the back route to reach. It probably formed a small pond in the rainy season. We were, despite the past night's storm, still in the dry season. The spring flowed not. All that remained was a pool of stagnant water unfit to drink. A few mouthfuls of water remained in the plastic bottles. We were both thirsty, but agreed to save the last of the water for later.
As morning turned noon, we came upon a lagoon and stopped to rest. We hadn't prepared lunch for the day, so we scavenged through the provisions for ready-to-eat rations, which consisted mostly of jungle fruit and leftover tortillas, mushy from the rain. We sat on the enormous trunk of a fallen tree, rested, and exchanged smiles. We knew we were close to Carmelita.
After finishing off what little was left of our water, I asked Fernando if we should let the mule drink from the lagoon.
"No. Venga, mira."
We stood and walked to the bank.
"Se llama Laguna Crocodrilo. Espera."
Dragonflies swarmed above a clearing of reeds, hovering in slow motion. Turtles basked on logs protruding from the lazy water, one upon another, like fallen dominos. Blinding sunlight reflected off the shiny black surface, shimmering with the sluggish movements of water insects. Fernando strained to see something.
"¡Por allá!" he said, pointing to the far bank.
A huge crocodile slipped into the water and swam to the opposite side, where we lost sight of it behind a patch of reeds.
"No es segura para la mula."
The mules of more than one chiclero, he told me, had been taken down by the crocs here. There used to be many of them, but chicleros had hunted and killed them for that very reason. There were still two large crocs in the lagoon, and maybe a few smaller ones. It was only a matter of time before the chicleros got them all.
We spent over an hour tromping around the area, through weeds and mud and mosquitoes, hunting for the other big croc, without success. I didn't care. I hadn't expected to see a crocodile in the middle of the jungle; just seeing the one was gravy.
We readjusted the mule pack, I threw on my pack, and adjusted the straps. When I looked up, Fernando and the mule were, uncharacteristically, still there. He chuckled and handed me the lead rope.
"¿Vámonos?" he suggested with a nod.
"Vámonos," I agreed, and we were off.
I had driven the train all morning. Silly as it might be, I was deeply honored by the gesture, and I was determined to drive the train as well as Fernando would have driven it. Handling the mule took little effort. He knew exactly where we were, that we were on the home stretch, and he was every bit as eager to get out of that jungle as I was. I didn't have to pop him once, and yelled "¡Siga!" a few times, only so that Fernando would think I was doing my job-which I wasn't, the mule was.
We marched, and my mind wandered. The idea that I would soon be out of the jungle felt strange. I remembered how enthusiastically I had jumped into it, into that life over the past days-the thrill of the unknown, the expectation of wild adventure, the fantastic projections of my mind as to how it would be. How many of those fantasies had manifested themselves, how many of them had not, and how much I had encountered that I was simply not prepared for; how unimaginably difficult it had been to extract myself from that existence, from that reality; the rich and rewarding teachings of the experience; the lessons, pain and all. The growth. How, in the end, it would soon come to pass.
Then I thought of the other realities I had thrown myself into over the course of my life. How enthusiastic the entries had been; how rich and rewarding had been the experiences themselves. How thankful I was for the opportunities for growth that those experiences had offered, pain and all. How excruciating the extractions had been. And how, in the end, they had all come to pass.
And then I realized how much I loved them, the experiences, and how I wanted more . . . pain and all.
The path in the distance ahead was no longer darkened by shadow, but fully bathed in sunlight. The mule quickened his pace. I knew what was next. We broke into an expansive clearing at the end of the world, the Carmelita airstrip. I let go of the lead rope and dropped to my knees. The mule kept going. I was, quite simply, overcome with emotion. All the emotion that had dried up inside me the day before came flooding back with such force that I couldn't control it. It would come and I would welcome it. It felt like the first gasp of air after holding my breath for days-it felt like liberation.
Fernando put his hand on my shoulder, and told me to let it out. He noted that we'd made it in just over five hours.
"You must have found it while we were out there, eh?" he said.
We took our time to get to the other end of the airstrip, to Guillermo's home, past the grazing horses, savoring the wide blue sky. When we arrived, the mule was already there, sucking down a bucket of much-needed water that Guillermo had put out. As we unloaded the gear, Fernando gave Guillermo a rundown of our journey. Their conversation turned to the business of the jungle. Fernando recounted the story of the guard selling water. Guillermo was disgusted. The jungle was changing. I went inside to rest, heard "chico" and "fuerte" as I walked away; smiled.
Guillermo and his family put everything at our disposal-coffee, food, a bucket of water for bathing. They averted their eyes and kept their distance. Their behavior was unsettling, but I was glad for it. It was only later that I understood their reasons. That much time in the jungle does something to a man. Maybe it reignites some smoldering primal fire, long starved for oxygen by the trappings of civilization. Maybe a call of the wild is heard, and its vibrations awaken the sleeping animal within. Or maybe the sleeping human within. Guillermo's family had hosted enough chicleros returning from the jungle to know the pattern, whatever it was.
Guillermo's daughter had her hands full with a litter of brand-new puppies, barely able to walk. I didn't remember a dog at the house before we entered the jungle, much less a pregnant one. Maybe she had gone into isolation to give birth. I don't know. But they were beautiful-brand-new beings, beginning life in the world. It seemed a good and fitting omen.
After dinner, Guillermo's daughter took me out back, to a small wood-screened stall with a stone floor. She pointed to a bucket of water on the ground.
"Báñate," she said, "báñate," and left.
I peeled the clothes from my body. They almost stood on their own. Naked there, in that rickety contraption, surrounded by pecking chickens and towering jungle, I removed a week's worth of film and jungle from my skin. I had never been so glad to see a bucket of water. The garrapata infections were now the size of pus-swollen quarters, surrounded by small webs of red streaks. I knew that they needed sterilization and treatment.
Guillermo's wife cooked a late lunch of sardines and tortillas. While we ate, Fernando and I discussed the state of my infections and agreed that reentering the jungle would not be wise. We decided to skip the final three days of trekking through the jungles to the south, and return to Santa Elena the next day.
I was depressed and relieved at the same time. It was tough to let go.
Fernando and I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the front porch in our underwear, removing garrapatas and soaking in the rays of the sun. Late-afternoon thunderclouds built up and blackened the eastern sky. One cloud after another billowed and blew past. We both dozed off, draped over wooden benches. The benches weren't as comfortable as the hammocks inside, but the cool breeze and smell of distant rain were refreshing. It was a good trade.
Guillermo's wife woke us for dinner: gallina, rice, and vegetable stew. Fernando and I made coffee after dinner. I grabbed the sugar bag. It was empty. We had consumed that pound of sugar after all, in seven days, not ten.
After unpacking the moldy gear, we repacked it for an early departure in the morning. The bus to Santa Elena left at daybreak. We slung our hammocks in the front room and took a walk across the airstrip to visit a friend of Fernando's. Fernando told his friend the highlights of our journey, and they talked the business of the jungle. I mostly sat there in an exhausted daze. When we headed back to Guillermo's, the sky to the east was ominously dark with the storm clouds that had been building all day. The sky above was a white-speckled ocean. I remembered the night on the temple at Nakbe.
After the family retired to bed, Fernando and I stepped outside to conduct one last ritual of the jungle herb. Our talk of the journey flowed into a ceremony of our amistad. Then it flowed into talk of our return to the modern world. That talk made us both a little uncomfortable, as though we were bracing ourselves to return to a world much less than the one we'd just come from. I was sad that it was ending.
That night it poured on the tin roof above our hammocks, a deafening roar of Nature clashing with man's attempt to tame her. It was intense. I was thankful for the roof. The sonic fury drowned out all voices. Sleep was deep.