Walking the Americas Read online

  Right ahead, in front of us was a glorious waterfall – the source of the river we had been seeking. But even more impressive was the fact that it emerged from inside an enormous cave. To the left and the right, the cliffs rose for twenty or thirty metres and were covered in creeping vines, ferns and sprouting palms. But there in the middle was the cave mouth, the size of an aircraft hangar, and inside the murky hole was the sound of a thousand bats, squeaking and squawking now that their morning had been disturbed.

  We climbed up the side of the waterfall over the slippery rocks and boulders until we stood on a ledge from where we could see the interior of the cave. It was like the inside of a cenote, but bigger than any I’d been in before. You could probably fly a helicopter around the place with the right skills. Within seconds we were surrounded by bats, flying low, scooping and banking like a squadron of Spitfires on the warpath. Alberto and I ducked as the flying monsters circled, but Aron just stood still and chuckled.

  ‘Right. Time to learn about survival,’ he said, with the authority of someone used to being direct and to the point. I remembered when I first came to Belize and he’d shown us how to kill and butcher a pig. The soldiers had been captivated by the little man and stood watching as he decapitated the beast and ate its liver raw. As he reminded me, at least one of my veterans had passed out with squeamishness.

  He led us through the cave, where we sat on a boulder listening to dripping water from the roof forming stalactites.

  ‘The first rule of survival is shelter,’ he said. ‘In any situation where you’re lost and exposed to the elements, you have to get a roof over your head. That’s why I brought you to this cave. If there was a thunderstorm or a hurricane, you’d be pretty miserable if you were stuck outside getting wet. And when you’re wet and cold that is when you lose your morale, and eventually your mind. You’ll lose your will to survive and then make a mistake. That’s when you’ll die. And I’ve seen it happen plenty of times.’

  Alberto looked as white as a sheet.

  ‘Get up,’ said Aron. ‘I was just teasing with the cave. You’re not going to find one of these every time you get lost. So you need to learn how to make a shelter.’

  We followed Aron back out of the cave, down the waterfall and back into the jungle.

  ‘Here will do.’ He dumped his rucksack on the floor, and we did the same.

  ‘When you choose a place to camp, you need to be near a freshwater source.’ He pointed to the river ten metres away. ‘That’s the only thing that matters. But it’s best of course if it is flat, and away from any dangers like wasps’ nests.’

  He gripped a tree and shook it.

  ‘Now check for deadfall. That’s the biggest killer in the jungle. When you get dead trees or branches, when it rains or if it’s been windy, they come loose. And if a big fucking branch comes down and hits you on the head, it’s game over. Same with coconuts.’

  Alberto gripped the nearby tree and shook it vigorously. ‘No coconuts here.’

  Aron carried on, he was being serious. ‘My mate once had a branch fall on him when he was putting up his hammock.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘It went in through his mouth and straight through his jaw, came out into his shoulder. He lost all his teeth, but luckily survived.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Alberto.

  Aron took out his machete. ‘Let’s chop down some trees. We need about twenty saplings. As long and straight as you can get them. And some vines for twine, as well.’

  ‘I feel a bit bad chopping down all these trees,’ said Alberto.

  ‘Don’t worry, stuff grows back quickly here. Literally in a couple of weeks nobody will know we’ve ever been here. We never cut down the big ones though – only the Guatemalans do that.’

  So we went off and spent two hours collecting materials to give to Aron, who showed us how to make an overnight shelter. It was remarkable how he wound the branches together with bits of grass and twine. Everything he used was natural and by the end of it he had built a three-metre-long raised platform with an A-frame roof, which we then finished off with palm leaves to create a woven roof. It was just in time.

  ‘It’s raining,’ said Aron, ‘quick, get the bags inside.’ We got all the gear and placed it in the shelter. Within ten seconds of the first drops of rain, it began to pour down in a way that I had never seen before. The rain came down like bullets, painful to the skin, creating enormous splashes, and before long the whole jungle floor had become a muddy bog. ‘That’s why we do it on a platform,’ said Aron, pleased with his creation. ‘Right. Next stage of survival is warmth. We need a fire.’

  ‘How the hell are we going to make a fire in this rain?’ said Alberto.

  ‘Come on, you’ll see,’ replied Aron.

  ‘What? You mean we have to go out in this?’

  ‘Of course. If you don’t and you’re in a real survival situation and you can’t get warm, then you’ll die.’

  Not wanting to risk it, we thought it best to follow our jungle man. We didn’t need to go far.

  ‘Look, the insides of these logs are dry, you only need to chop off the wet bits. Look underneath the foliage and there will be dry sticks, too. Just watch out for snakes.’

  So we collected as many dry-ish sticks as we could and took them back to the camp.

  ‘You need one bit of hard wood for a base, and a soft stick to rub into it.’ Aron took out his knife and whittled a bow, and, using some string from his survival tin, started to drill the two bits of wood together until a little plume of smoke magically appeared.

  ‘Wow, so the shit you see on TV is real after all?’ said Alberto.

  ‘Kind of. This bit takes forever.’

  Aron spent about twenty minutes drilling away on the wood before there was enough heat in the embers to catch on to the tinder. But as soon as he had it, that was that. He transferred the flame onto some grass, and then into some kindling and it wasn’t long before we had a roaring fire under the shelter. ‘That’ll be enough wood to keep it going for an hour.’

  ‘Now stage three,’ he said. ‘We need to eat.’

  Alberto pulled out a bag of M&M’s from his pocket. ‘I’m good, thanks.’

  ‘No. Not today, we are going jungle shopping. The forest is like a supermarket. I’ll show you, you don’t need that shit.’

  We didn’t have to walk far before Aron pointed to a bush. It looked like a palm tree, but a small one with the leaves growing straight out of the ground. ‘This is good stuff. Help me chop off the branches.’

  So we all unsheathed our machetes and hacked off all the leaves until it was a bare stump. Since Aron had the sharpest machete he then cut away at the base of the shaft until all that was left was a kind of green log. Using his knife, he then pared away the outer layers until he found what he was looking for.

  ‘It’s called heart of palm. Exactly what it says on the tin. This white pulp in the middle is edible. It’s pure starch, like rice, full of carbs.’ He pulled away at the white stuff and ate a chunk. ‘Mmmm,’ he licked his lips.

  ‘Look,’ he said with excitement, ‘over there.’ He bounded over to another tree, where a large brown tumour seemed to bulge out from the bark of the tree.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Alberto with wonder.

  ‘A termite nest,’ said Aron, clearly delighted with his find, ‘I’m gonna see if it’s alive.’ He took his machete and gouged off a chunk of the crumbling nest.

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely, it’s alive. That is food right there. That is survival!’

  It was crawling with thousands of little white and brown insects.

  ‘You can stick your finger in like this,’ he prodded his index finger into the nest and waited till a few of the beasties crawled onto it and then sucked them off.

  ‘How do they taste?’ asked Alberto.

  Aron licked his lips, ‘It tastes like fish and chips.’

  Alberto did the same and winced as the animals scuttled round his tongue.


  ‘What does it taste like?’ I asked.

  ‘Like shit,’ came the inevitable reply.

  ‘Just shove your tongue in there,’ said Aron. ‘You’ll get more.’

  So I did. I let the termites crawl onto my tongue and felt as they got trapped in the saliva. They tasted bitter and woody. I swallowed them without chewing and it occurred to me that if you were in a survival situation, you’d need a bloody lot of termites to stop you feeling hungry. ‘Let’s stick to the heart of palm,’ I suggested.

  It stopped raining just as we got back to the camp and we laid out our sodden clothes next to the fire to dry, as Aron boiled up some water to make the tea. It was late afternoon now, and in the jungle it gets dark early.

  ‘There’s plenty more food out there, of course. If you need to hunt then you can set traps, or make a spear, but it’s all very time consuming, and plants are much easier. They don’t run away.’

  ‘What’s the biggest danger in the jungle?’ asked Alberto.

  ‘Like I say, you’ve got deadfall from the trees, and then the risk of flash flooding. Don’t put the camp too close to a river. And then there’s the animals. Don’t worry about the big ones – you won’t even see a jaguar unless you’re very lucky. Spiders won’t hurt you too much. It’s the snakes you’ve got to worry about.’

  He drew us closer as he told his story.

  ‘It was on a Sunday evening in October 2003. It was a night like tonight and I was walking home through the forest with my friend. A tree had fallen across the path. He was at the front and climbed over the log and carried on. I went to do the same, but just as I was raising my leg, a snake jumped out of a hole and bit me on the thigh.’

  Aron rolled up his trouser leg to reveal the puncture marks.

  ‘At first, I didn’t feel anything. But after my friend came back, I realised how serious it was. It was a fer-de-lance – the deadliest snake in the Americas. My heart was racing and I knew that if the venom got all around my system, I’d be dead in a few hours.’

  It was almost totally dark now, with only the glow of the fire and the dancing shadows to protect us from the night. All around the jungle seemed to come alive. Fireflies jigged around the trees and the reflection of a hundred spiders’ eyes glinted back at us from the darkness like droplets of dew. The noise was deafening as the crickets began their nightly call.

  ‘My friend helped me up and I stumbled for two miles back to my village. My leg was in agony. I’d never felt pain like it before. It was as if someone has pushed a hot knife into my skin and was twisting it around.’

  Aron lifted the boiling water off the fire and poured us all a tea.

  ‘It took an hour to get to Belmopan City, but by that time my leg was completely black. I was bleeding from everywhere, even my eyes. I was vomiting and shaking and I thought I was going to die.’

  We huddled closer to the fire.

  ‘And when we got to the hospital, guess what?’

  ‘What?’ we said in unison.

  Aron let out a roaring laugh. ‘They didn’t have any bloody anti-venom. I had to go round all the hospitals in the bloody country and go to Belize City and break into a pharmacist in the middle of the night to find some. It took seven hours in all.’

  Aron stood up, patting his lucky thigh.

  ‘Now, let’s sleep. It’s getting late, and tomorrow, we have a jungle to get across.’

  10

  Borderlands

  I woke to the sound of rustling. I looked at my watch, it was six a.m., I’d slept solidly for twelve hours straight. Aron was already up and about, making tea and sharpening his machete.

  ‘How did you sleep?’ I rolled over and saw Alberto still lying down.

  ‘Terribly,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about snakes.’

  ‘Come on, you two. It’s time to get up,’ said Aron. ‘Make sure you shake out your boots before putting them back on. Check for scorpions and tarantulas.’

  Neither of us needed to be reminded of that.

  We washed in the cool water of the Rio Frio cave and dismantled the camp. Aron took out his map and showed us where we were aiming to get to.

  ‘We want to get back to the main road, which is here,’ he jabbed the map with the blade of a knife. ‘It’s about five or six kilometres, three-and-a-bit miles from where we are now.’

  ‘So on a road that would take an hour,’ I said. ‘How long do you reckon it will take through the jungle?’

  ‘Six hours,’ he replied. ‘At least, maybe more.’

  We were heading due north, and after crossing the Rio Frio, there was no path whatsoever. We would walk on a direct bearing, and it looked like there would be lots of other rivers to cross as well.

  ‘Ready?’ he said, tightening the straps on his rucksack. ‘Let’s go.’

  We stepped off and followed Aron. Like yesterday, he maintained a steady pace, slicing through branches and ferns. In the jungle it is hard to keep your bearings, and easy to become very disorientated. There’s no such thing as following intuition here, as that will get you lost, so you have to trust in your compass and GPS.

  Throughout the morning, the terrain was brutal. Sometimes we’d get completely stuck in matted entanglements of lianas and vegetation so thick that it seemed impossible. When it became too thick, we would have to crawl on our hands and knees to try and get under the branches. When that happened, we’d cover less than five hundred metres in an hour. The worst bit of going through uncleared forest, though, was the spider webs. Especially if you found yourself at the front, sooner or later you’d walk straight into a huge silken tangle and find yourself face to face with a grizzly looking, golden orb spider that looked like something from a horror movie.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ said Alberto, as a tarantula crawled up my arm.

  ‘Yep,’ I said in horror, even though I knew they were fairly safe.

  ‘Watch out for the chichen trees,’ said Aron.

  Alberto had told me about them before. ‘They are toxic – the stems, the leaves, everything. If you touch them, it’s said to be so painful that people would rather take a knife and cut away the skin than have to deal with the pain of the sting.’

  Everywhere I looked there were evil-looking thorns and spikes and oozing pustules erupting from the bushes. On the ground as we crawled were scorpions, hairy centipedes with bright-red bodies, and beetles that I was certain had never graced the pages of any books before, they were so ugly.

  Around noon, it started to rain. We hadn’t eaten anything and we were hungry. ‘We’ve only managed two kilometres,’ said Aron, shaking his head.

  ‘What?’ said Alberto. ‘We’ve been going for four hours already.’

  ‘We need to get a move on, then.’

  We tried to pick up the pace, but with the wet ground under foot we found ourselves slipping and sliding and making mistakes. I grabbed onto a branch to stop myself falling and tore the skin of the palm of my hand on a vicious thorn. Alberto had already been bitten by a spider and his fingers were swelling like balloons.

  To make matters worse, we’d had to walk along the streams instead of cross-graining the ridges, which was exhausting and slow because of the thick vegetation. ‘We’re already wet, so it doesn’t make any difference,’ I said to Alberto.

  We waded along the creeks, which were sometimes shoulder-deep in water. We were soaked through as the rain got harder, and with it we got colder and colder. Even Aron slipped over a few times in the river. I noticed the water levels were rising.

  ‘We need to get out of the water now. If there’s a flash flood, we’ll drown,’ said Aron.

  And so we tried to follow the course of the stream downhill along its banks, but there were times when the undergrowth was so impenetrable that we’d have to simply jump in and swim to the other side. I’d noticed that Alberto hadn’t said a word for at least an hour and I was concerned.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I asked him, worried that he was losing confidence and morale i
n equal measure.

  He looked thoughtful.

  ‘You know what, I’m cold, I’m wet and I’m tired. I’m also the hungriest I’ve ever been in my life.’ And then he smiled. ‘But I can’t remember when I was this happy. It’s hard work, but I’ve learnt that I can eat termites and swim across rivers. I love it.’ And with that, he pushed on ahead to the front and began chopping away with his machete.

  ‘Hurry up, muñeco. We haven’t got all day!’ he shouted back at me.

  Given the fact he’d never been to the jungle before, I thought he was doing pretty damn well, and I knew then that I’d made a fine choice of guide with my Mexican fashion photographer.

  It took another three hours to climb up and out of the jungle. It was late afternoon by the time we reached the trailhead. It was time to say goodbye to Aron.

  ‘I’m heading back to the city. I’ve got soldiers to train,’ he said. ‘I’d love to come with you, but I think you’ll be fine without me. Just remember what I told you. And stay away from the snakes.’

  He hugged us with his little barrel frame and walked off to the east to find the nearest village. Alberto and I walked the other way, towards San Ignacio and the Guatemalan border.

  The western highway was as straight as the pine trees that flanked it. But as we carried on along it, the forest grew thinner and thinner until we reached an area of farmland that stretched out for miles around. It reminded me of the vast fields of central Europe, or the corn lands of Bible-belt USA. It felt like we’d been transported into another world. There at the side of the road was a sign, welcoming us to ‘Spanish Lookout’.

  Gone were the potholed roads and the ramshackle wooden huts of coastal Belize, with their rickety tin roofs. We suddenly, and unexpectedly, entered the first world.

  ‘What on earth is this place?’ asked Alberto, as we stood gazing up at an enormous grain silo. Next door was an industrial-size dairy farm with its own attached ice-cream shop. Everywhere there were top-of-the-range shiny tractors. The homesteads were beautiful and clean, and well made. They all looked like the Little House on the Prairie, each with its own windmill and horses, fat cattle and white picket-fences.