When I arrived at the bus corral the next morning, Fernando was exactly where he said he'd be. I was ten minutes late. I had humped my pack twenty minutes to the bus corral, wearing jungle pants and a T-shirt. It was hot as hell, and humid. I was soaked with sweat. Fernando was in jeans and a collared shirt. He wore the black leather bush hat with "Ganador" branded on its brim. "Winner." Quite possibly the coolest hat I had ever seen. He was stocky and a head shorter than me. A thick black moustache marked the Spanish line of his mestizo blood.
At the last minute, Fernando firmly suggested that I buy a sombrero and a long-sleeved shirt to repel insects in the jungle. The only long-sleeved shirt in the mercado large enough for my frame was a flannel. I donned the sombrero and the shirt, and we boarded the bus for the four-hour passage to the distant settlement of Carmelita.
We were packed in the bus like sardines, three to every seat, aisle jammed, standing room only, no standing room left, everyone gasping for air through the suffocating heat and dust. Before the bus had even started its engine, the new shirt was drenched and the hat had already soaked up a thick band of sweat.
My long legs had been brutalized on many a previous chicken-bus journey, so I felt lucky to have the aisle seat . . . blood trickled from only one knee. Fernando sat to my right, and a huge Mayan woman stood in the aisle to my left. Her largeness engulfed my arm; it felt like an oven. Above my lap, from her right arm, hung a basket, its contents covered with towels. For most of the journey, those contents would poke out from beneath the towels: a gawky head of mangy feathers, filthy beak, and terror-stricken red eyes. More than once the creature would chirp at me as though I somehow held the answer to its existential crisis.
The bus was finally so crammed that no additional human movement was possible, and thus its passengers became intimate neighbors. Cooling was a group effort. My sweat cooled the people I was pressed against, and theirs cooled me.
The bus stopped midafternoon at a military checkpoint. All men were required to exit the bus and provide the soldiers with proof that they were neither guerrillas nor narcotics traffickers. Naturally, when they saw I was a gringo, the hassling began. No sooner had it begun than Fernando stepped in. My seventy-year-old companion gave the young soldiers a stern lecture on reason and the affair was terminated. Just like that. I was really starting to like this guy.
Back aboard the bus, Fernando and I entered our first conversation beyond the business of the journey, our first earnest effort to get to know each other. He informed me that I was the only gringo he'd guided into the jungle. I felt special.
The jungle along the road leading north from Santa Elena was little more than a sickly, decimated expanse of unbridled deforestation. My heart sank and I prayed that our expedition would deliver us to forgotten corners of the world, as far away from the hand of man as possible.
Fernando's mood seemed to change from relaxed confidence to seething anger. He glared out the window, his face tightened; he shook his head in disgust. "Todo por vacas," he said.
The jungle grew thick as we gained distance from human population, and eventually soaring walls of vegetation hemmed us in on both sides. Late in the afternoon we arrived at a wide grass clearing-an airstrip for the export of chicle, the sap tapped from chicle trees, used to produce chewing gum. Hardened men called chicleros disappear into the jungle for days at a time to harvest the sap, pack it on mules, and haul it out to the airstrip. Fernando had been a chiclero for thirty-five years.
The airstrip was lined with a few thatch-roofed huts, one tin-roofed bodega de chicle, and the towering edifice of jungle. Horses and mules roamed the grass airstrip, grazing and mating, running free through the only open space of that size for fifty miles. No electricity, no running water. The road ended here. This was Carmelita.
We stayed the night in the home of Guillermo, a longtime amigo of Fernando's, and a fellow chiclero. They had braved the jungle together since they were young men, extracting its nectar and learning its secrets. Guillermo had assisted the archaeologists with their early discoveries of El Mirador and Nakbe, two massive Mayan cities three days by foot from Carmelita. He proudly showed me photos of himself in worn and faded National Geographic articles-a "local native" holding pottery.
I found it interesting that archaeologists had "discovered" those cities, as Fernando told me that the chicleros had used them as encampments for as long as he had been harvesting. I now believe that the word "discovery," as used by some archaeologists, has a slightly different import from its commonly understood meaning.
Guillermo had one of the few homes in Carmelita with a tin roof. We slung our hammocks above the dirt floor of the front room, a large rectangular space, every wall covered in the yellowed newsprint of fútbol heroes, Hollywood actors, Guatemalan beauty queens, pop stars, politicians, boxing champions, prize livestock, and talking animals. We broke down our gear and provisions, to be repacked on the horses in the morning. Guillermo's wife and daughter were in the cocina at the rear, slaving over a stone hearth. Young hens-gallinas-scratched in the dirt floor of the kitchen. Chirping chicks darted for cover from human feet. Beyond the cocina was an enclosed dirt yard with an outhouse, chicken coop, and barbed-wire clotheslines. More than thirty hens and a rooster scratched and pecked the yard without pause. Guillermo's wife grabbed one of the gallinas from the kitchen floor and gave it to her daughter to prepare. The Señora cooked the gallina, esteemed for its tender meat, along with some vegetables and tortillas. We ate well and washed it down with coffee.
I headed for the outhouse after the meal. Boiling in its blackened depths was a living, demonic, vile, teeming, bacterial sludge. It triggered dry heaves. I left the shack and chose a nearby patch of jungle instead.
Fernando and I paid a visit to another of his friends, one of Carmelita's elders. He owned most of the horses used by the chicleros. We had planned to hire two large packhorses to carry our gear and provisions. We would travel by foot. The elder explained that because of recent events, he now required that one of his sons travel with the horses to ensure their proper care, and that the boy must be paid daily and fed. We did not have enough provisions for three people, and paying the boy would have blown the budget, so I asked Fernando to figure out an alternative. The only other keeper of beasts in Carmelita had but one available, and it was much smaller than those of the elder, and it was a mule, not a horse. After mulling it over for a few minutes, Fernando decided we could take the one small mule, break down our provisions, and leave three days' worth with Guillermo in Carmelita. We would retrieve the provisions left behind on our swing south from Nakbe.
"Perfecto," I said, and we made the deal for the mule.
We returned to our quarters, broke down the horse packs into two smaller packs for the mule, and stowed three days' worth of provisions in a back room, including two plastic drums of water, called tambos. We packed only two tambos, instead of the originally planned four. I knew it was dry season in the jungle, and this concerned me. Fernando assured me that two tambos would be enough water. Not that it much mattered; it was our only option.
The evening grew late and Guillermo's family retired to their sleeping quarters, one small room in the rear of the house, strung with hammocks. Fernando and I entered the cocina, lit only by the low light from the hearth and a candle. We boiled water for coffee and Fernando handed me the sugar.
"No, gracias," I told him. "No tomo azúcar."
I had never taken my coffee with sugar. When we were buying provisions, Fernando threw a pound of sugar into the basket. "What the hell are we going to do with that much sugar?" I asked. He responded simply that we were going to be in the jungle for ten days. I assumed he was indulging at my expense, and wrote it off. If he wanted sugar for his coffee, fine, not a big deal, but a pound?
We spent the next hour in the dark cocina, frying a chicken, making tortillas for the next day, and getting to know each other at a whisper. Fernando repeatedly assured me that he was responsible, honest, and dependable. Long past midnight, we slipped into our hammocks, exhausted. It had been a long day. The night was hot and muggy and without breeze. The mosquitoes were active. It took forever to fall asleep, but finally I did . . . slept horribly.