Panama Journal, 1988


3/4/88 ...three PM, the Darien Gap.....nine days south of Panama City...should be near the Columbian border. I think I have reached the Atrato River, but without reference points or a decent map, much less a compass, I can't be sure....have been waiting here for two hours and still no sign of Tony. Usually I go on, an hour ahead and wait half an hour and he shows up. He is slow, but not this slow....I think I'll leave my bike here and just take the machete and run back and see what's up. The poor guy is so out of shape that this slog through the jungle is more than he bargained for. I tried to warn him but he wouldn't listen.

...two hours later. I just ran back as far as our last rendezvous and not a sign. Nothing. Where could he be? How does some one just disappear like this? The trail seemed perfectly clear to me, otherwise I would not have gone on ahead. Guerillas? Noriega? Drug runners? The M-19? A tiger? There isn't even an hour of daylight left. Scary time to be in the jungle alone. There is nothing left but to bivouac and wait; ride for help in the morning.

The idea of going through the Darien Gap into Columbia probably began to germinate with me twenty five years ago when I took a couple years off from college to travel around the world. I had driven an old Chevrolet two-and-a-half ton flatbed truck as far as Panama only to discover what a more well-prepared traveler would already have known, that there is no road through the jungle despite an optimistic blue line on most maps suggesting otherwise. I sold the truck on the black market and took a freighter to Columbia from where I hitchhiked down and around through Chile and Argentina and back up to Rio and thence to Europe and so forth.

I thought the reason there wasn't a road through the Gap was because the jungle was so impenetrable. That was the romantic view; or, at least a view shared by anyone who has been in a dense jungle and taken a few steps off the trail only to discover that he is but one more step away from being lost. It was actually only this year, in planning for this trip, that I heard about another reason. Apparently, North America is the only remaining continent free of "Hoof and Mouth" disease. Until an agreement is worked out with our neighbors to the South, to carefully inspect and restrict the flow of cattle going north, there won't be a road. (Exactly why the United States should have the predominant say-so in this is not clear but... ) Of course, an equally reasonable argument could be made for the "flow" of other things (white powder) these days. But I suspect that this "hoof and mouth" business is probably a fabrication of the US Army Corps of Engineers because they know that the jungle is simply too dense, the Atrato Swamp at the south end too big and the thought of a couple hundred miles of levees, bridges and switchbacks is too much for them to deal with.

But there it was, I had fallen in love with Latin America. In graduate school I drove back down to Costa Rica to study their little break with democracy (the revolution of 1948). I kept looking at maps. I made other trips in South America. I kept thinking about people migrating all the way from Asia across the Bering Sea to North America and down through the isthmus into the southern hemisphere ten thousand years ago during the Pleistocene. And, occasionally I thought about Balboa crossing the other way "discovering" the Pacific. But, somewhere along the way I acquired a family to feed and raise so.....

Nevertheless, we get these silly ideas, these needs to do certain things -- to climb a mountain, run in the Boston Marathon, ride across America or go through the Darien Gap. My grandchildren will drive down to Tierra del Fuego on a smooth, asphalt road through the Darien Gap past the farms of MacDonalds and Burger Kings. There will be peace in Central America, the drug lords in Columbia will all be old philanthropists and Pinochet will be but an embarrassing memory. So, of course, I had to do this before progress laid her heavy hand on the jungle.

Two years earlier I had ridden my bicycle from Panama north to Antigua, Guatemala -- part of the way through the jungle along the north coast of Honduras. I confess to being afraid of the jungle, (I do not like snakes) but, at the same time, fascinated. But the Darien still beckoned and by now my kids were out of the nest. An old climbing buddy from college persuaded me that we could collaborate, he as a writer and I with my photographs; that we could do the trip and make a story about it. Although I generally prefer to travel alone, the prospect of long, (scary) nights in the jungle did not appeal to me so I agreed to this joint venture.

We began the trip in Managua. I figured a week's warm-up riding down through Nicaragua and Costa Rica would be good for us. We got to Panama at the tail end of the annual "carnival", not a good time to be on a bicycle -- honking, weaving, speeding cars and trucks and the roads a sea of broken glass. And then, wouldn't you know it, the day we got to Panama City, there was General Noriega greeting us everywhere on all the newsstands on the cover of Newsweek. It was not a flattering cover story.

Panama is a strange place to be sure. People love it for very different reasons. Some love it for the vice and gambling. Others love it because of the islands and beaches. Others love the cultural diversity of this cross-roads of the world. And there is always the jungle. Because of the canal, the American influence is preponderant; they have even abandoned their own money -- the Balboa -- and simply use dollars. And what a difference now with the canal being open and operated by the Panamanians, compared with the first time I was there in 1962, when the canal, "The Zone" as they liked to call it, was closed to virtually everybody except Americans and a few local laborers. Anyway, there is nothing one cannot find in Panama City, from drugs, sex and cameras to granola bars, so shopping was relatively easy. Scary place at night though as gangs of young boys roam the dark, labyrinthine streets with impunity.

My first opinion about Panama was formed almost exclusively by a two week stay in the "Zone" in 1962, when I had driven that old Chevrolet truck down there. I was not impressed by the "spit and polish" isolation, the "little America" attitude of the residents, comfortable in their screen and veranda bungalows, their softball fields, swimming pools, golf courses and bursting PX stores... while literally just across the fence, were the tar-paper shacks, the open sewage, the naked, seething stench of poverty. My opinion had little to do with the Panamanians themselves or the wonderfully variegated topography of their country. My opinion was based more on historical negatives -- the way in which the United States engineered the revolt around the turn of the century which "created" Panama in the first place so we could take over the failed French canal project -- and the on-going presumption of superiority of the American presence there. That these things should prejudice me against the Panamanians themselves is largely a function of American, white, middle-class, manifest-destiny, "soft"-racism.

However, my opinion was pleasantly ameliorated by Graham Green's wonderful little book, Getting to Know the General in which he describes the fascinating friendship he had with Omar Torijos. Torijos was killed of course by Noriega's henchmen -- I have this on the authority of one of Torijos's bodyguards whom I met later down in the jungle.

Heading south from Panama City the first stop is the airport, about ten miles southeast of town. This is a hard ride through industrial suburbs, narrow, over-crowded, pot-holed streets, honked at and sworn at by impatient truck drivers and taxis hurrying to catch the next plane. But eventually, one gets to Omar Torijos International Airport which, glistening in the hot, tropical sun, air-conditioned and clean inside, guarded and secure, was the last real experience of modern society we would have for a long time. I had only gotten food for one week though, figuring we could sponge off the Indians. I had also heard of people going through the Darien in ten days on foot and so it should be faster on a bike.....Well, as a Haitian proverb goes, "It is no crime to be stupid, it only makes life more difficult."

We ate North American food at the grill, things like BLT's and hamburgers and French fries and cokes and coffee. We called home, wrote post cards, looked through the magazine rack with uncharacteristic fondness, went to the bathroom again and talked with a German fellow who had an enormous bicycle but was flying down to Columbia. We secretly envied his easy route and he felt guilty about missing the jungle. We mailed the post cards and headed off into the jungle.

Well, not quite. Actually the road from the airport to the next town, Chepo, about thirty-five miles southeast, is an undulating strip of straight concrete bounded by the hideous rubble of what had been jungle. The sun beat down hard and reflected back up from the bright concrete. So this is what it looks like when they cut and burn the rainforest? At least in the Pacific Northwest the loggers conceal their rapaciousness with a veneer of trees along the side of the road.

Chepo, a busy little town with shops and even a few two-story wooden structures, a modest plaza, central market and several thousand people looked auspicious for the night. But then, to our surprise there is not a single pension or anything remotely like a hotel. We circle the square a few times and then take the street which seems to head out of town in the most southerly direction. As soon as we turn down this street I realize we have made a mistake because I see the familiar sight of camouflage, jeeps, the flag, the look -- always the same look whether in Pakistan, Panama or Korea -- soldiers standing around waiting for something to do, and here come two gringos on bicycles. (The year before I had ridden into Panama through the jungle from Costa Rica and had run across a squad like this in some village and the experience was not one I relished repeating. And here I was with a friend whose brother had been murdered by the soldiers of Edie Amin twenty years earlier in Uganda).

And sure enough, no way they were going to just let us ride by without some sort of check-up. We are ordered to stop and are surrounded by some boys in army fatigues whose guns, if stood on end, would be taller than they. A corporal looks at our passports. We are treated as though we are terrorists or drug-runners. The hot sun pounds down as we stand there in front of the "headquarters" a small green building with a porch. The corporal looking at the passports turns them this way and that and the Captain up on the porch asks him where we are from. The Corporal says, "Germany." The captain orders us inside. I ask him if it is "safe" to leave the bicycles outside.

So the captain, a stocky, well-muscled young man walks around behind the chest-high counter inside and sits down and begins to look through the passports himself. He does not speak to or look at us. When he opens my passport I'll be god damned if a fifty-dollar traveler's check doesn't fall out! Jesus H. Christ, I think to myself (I had tried to cash some traveler's checks for two days in Panama City and not one bank out of at least twenty would even consider it -- thanks a lot Carl Malden -- and now here was one I had forgotten to put away). The captain looks at the check slowly, meditatively, lying there on the counter. He reaches out a muscled arm with a cheap gold-plated watch and picks it up and flips it over and over, like card players do, giving it that little flicking sound, and then he looks at me. We are trying to read each other's eyes. It is ambiguous because the check is not signed of course. If it were really meant as a bribe it would have been signed right? Or why not cash? He is not sure what is going on and I am not sure what to do about it. But then, impulsively, I simply take it out of his hand and apologize for being so careless and I babble on about how we are looking for a room for the night before heading south into the jungle to Columbia blah blah blah.

He says laconically that we cannot go on. There is no way through the jungle into Columbia. The only way to Columbia is back to Panama City and take a boat. As tactfully as possible I say that I have heard that there are trails through the jungle into Columbia. "No", he says authoritatively, there is no way; if there were a way don't you think he should know? I reserve comment. I do ask if it is true that there is no place in town where we can spend the night. "Nada", he says. No hotel, nothing. There is a truck going back to the city this very evening he says. It leaves from the town square and they will take you and your bicycles. There is no point in going further south.

No question about it, we were being ordered to go back. We thanked them for their help and rode back toward the center of town, not to wait for the godam truck, as far as I was concerned, but to sort things out, wait for something better to happen. Tony wanted to go back. I mean, I don't blame him after what had happened to his brother in Africa by these same sort of cutthroats. But this trip was my dream and I wasn't about to be thwarted so easily. We needed to hang around awhile. I find a bar and order a couple beers. I am thirsty and need the alcohol, after all, it is happy hour. We are the center of attention of course. It is sultry and the big fan turns and the hard wood chairs hurt against my sweaty back as the ice melts quickly in the beer. The men in the bar tell us there is a place down the road about twenty miles where we can spend the night. It is late though. Tony and I go out to the road and sit down. I study vocabulary and he writes in his journal. Occasionally a car or truck passes in a cloud of dust. Since this is the end of the paved road, I take off the slick tires and put on the nobbies. I make a few perfunctory notes in my journal. The sun is about to set and an old cancerous Ford station wagon pulls up. The driver tells us to follow him.

The old Ford pulls up at a place called "El Restaurante Bamboo", a shack with a tin roof and a counter out front at which three or four people can sit on stools made from axles and hub-caps. Our host is Carlos Bustamante and he lives here with his family. Carlos's wife runs the "restaurant" and he is a mechanic.

Tony and I go down to the river to bathe. The water, warm, vaguely translucent, but glowing in the setting sun, feels indescribably delicious with the prospect of dinner and a safe place to spend the night. Tony is reluctant to get in and only after I have swum back and forth a few times is he convinced that the Piranhas aren't biting and he too gets in. Kids join us. Dinner is rice, bananas, and meat. By the time we finish dinner it is dark and Carlos and his family play cards and Tony and I write in our journals.

Carlos speaks almost perfect English. Says his brother is a big shot in Louisiana, almost became governor. "Of course there is a trail through the Darien," he says scornfully. "Every once in awhile people stop by here and they all say they will write but they never do," he said.

Carlos hated Noriega while his eight-year-old daughter Yensi was in love with the scoundrel because he had held her hand during some bogus ceremony opening up a new power line the past year. The next day Yensi took me by the hand and introduced me to all her friends all over town. We even had lunch with her grandmother. For me and Yensi it was love at first sight. Before I left she gave me a picture of herself and a little drawing which I carried with me for the next two months. Carlos insisted that we wait and get a ride on the truck he was fixing which was fine with me because I was tired and having a good time with Yensi. I also occupied myself with fixing her bicycle and her brother's bicycle and several friend's bicycles.

We finally left about three that afternoon and drove for about two hours and were dropped off at an intersection where there had once been jungle and now there was nothing but two rutted, dirt roads crossing each other. The guys in the truck said there was a settlement twenty miles down the road. There was about an hour of light left. The sun sets fast in the tropics.

There were some stars but darkness enveloped us and the road was only a slightly less black strip stretching out in front of us. About three hours later we could see lights up ahead. Not a single vehicle had passed us. We came to a kind of all-purpose place -- general store, pool hall, bar, restaurant. But no rooms, not even an offer of a place to throw down our sleeping bags. A cold beer never tasted so good though and then another and a few games of pool which gave them time to get to know us and so eventually one of the guys I was playing pool with said we could spend the night at his place. Again, all those hours playing pool in college find a purpose later on.

After a few more beers we stumbled back up the dark road about an eighth of a mile and then turned into the impenetrable jungle on a path which we could only feel with our feet as we brushed against the stuff on the side. His little house was a couple hundred yards off the road. By flashlight we could see a neat, two room house up on stilts. We were given the front room and then our host went back for more beer leaving us alone in the dark.

He returned about midnight with a friend, both pretty well tanked up. He and his friend slept in the other room. About two or three in the morning I woke up to the sound and feel of somebody urinating practically on my head. I jumped up and turned my flashlight on a face of savage indifference. I yelled, "For Christ's sake, man can't you do that outside?" and he stumbled to the door and finished on the steps. The next day my impression of this other fellow was no better than it had been under the harsh glare of my flashlight, especially when I saw him spit several times on the floor of this nice little house. Actually, he possessed one of the most untamed faces I have ever seen. I'm sure he was a perfectly decent fellow, but not one to have over for dinner and be left alone with your oriental carpet. Our host was much the opposite -- neat, hard-working and from what we could see, bound to be successful in homesteading this piece of land gleaned from the jungle.

Tony and I rode all day and I forget where we spent the next night finally. In any event, we got to Yavisa two days later. Yavisa is a deteriorating little Graham Green sort of town on the banks of the Piura River. Now that a "road" connects it with the capital, it has become the focal point of trade and jungle traffic headed north (not all this traffic is bananas either). Half a dozen big dug-out canoes laze along the banks waiting to be unloaded into a couple Izuzu trucks which will take the stuff to the city. It is a hot, slippery ascent up the muddy bank with two hundred pound bundles of bananas. There is no hurry. A woman sits in the back of one canoe nursing her baby and eating something from a wooden bowl. The river flows languidly by in silence. Presumably, one could get back to Panama City by spending a week floating down this river and then working one's way back up along the coast. I think about that when I get scared thinking about going through the jungle with my bicycle.

While we are just happy to be sitting beneath a big tree looking down at the river, having reached another goal, another destination, a resting point, shade, a place where we can get food and perhaps shelter after several days of sweltering, interminably dusty riding through tropical wastelands, a bright little kid comes up and introduces himself as Jesus. He takes us to "La Pension Tres Americas," a low wood building with a pleasant porch which had a coat of blue paint many years ago and sits precariously on stilts like everything else in the jungle. We take up residence in one of the two rooms. I am overjoyed.

How gratifying the simplest pleasures like washing clothes in a sink with running water, lying on a bed with an over-head fan moving the sultry air around, eating a peanut butter sandwich and savoring the taste of a cold coke! There was even a flush toilet. Only later when I was poking around behind the house did I notice that the toilet simply flushed right out on to the ground.

The town is mostly black but with more Indians than we had seen so far. Other than at the bank of the river, where there might be a truck or two, there are no other motor vehicles in Yavisa. This could have something to do with the fact that there are no streets, only wide, concrete sidewalks. We were quite a sight on the bicycles. I can imagine the rain and mud is pretty thick in the rainy season.

Some people said we would never make it and others said, "no problem." Some said there were a couple Germans a few years back who went into the jungle and were never heard from again. Frankly, from my brief visit, I could see little reason for me ever returning to Yavisa either. The town has little to recommend it actually; perhaps worth seeing, but not worth going to see. Nevertheless, we spent a couple days there resting up and looking out for what redeeming qualities this bustling little jungle outpost might have. I rode into the jungle in many directions to get a feel for the trails. I visited a couple villages. I flew along the well-traveled, soft, matted trails and shouted with joy at the prospect of more of the same when we headed South. "On trails like these we will be in Columbia in a couple days", I thought, as I tore through the "suburbs" of Yavisa. Sometimes I met women carrying huge loads on their heads with several kids tagging along behind. Other times I met groups of men with their machetes, walking swiftly and silently down the trail toward some work.

Yavisa came alive at night with the relative coolness of dark. People set up booths along the sidewalks selling food and drinks. Music emanated from a hundred sources as people walked and danced in the smokey, flickering lights of gas lanterns. I even won a few dollars playing bingo one night. I can't remember just what the problem was, whether it was the poor light or my inability to count in Spanish, but several women took a particular pleasure in telling me where to put my marks and helping me win. While I had fun Tony sat glumly in the shadows, his Teutonic sensibilities offended by the cacophony of swarthy faces and strange sounds.

The day we got to Yavisa we ran into a young Swedish fellow who had gotten there by boat and was planning on meeting up with a friend further downstream at Boca de Cupe. They too were going to go through the jungle into Columbia. He was a big kid about twenty with a huge new machete, big Buck knife on his belt and an enormous pack. Under his arm he carried a box in which, I discovered later, was a cassette player and several self-teaching tapes from which he was learning how to speak French. He also had a big new Minolta auto-focus camera dangling from his neck. Decked out in his newish safari clothes and all this junk he looked a bit silly to me. I was disappointed to see another gringo way down here at the end of the road. I was glad when he left that afternoon.

There are a few little shops in Yavisa in which one can buy socks, pens, batteries, beer, cigarettes, soap, matches, powdered milk, sugar and salt and so forth. I had planned a rather Spartan diet of granola bars, peanut butter, Kool Aid, tuna fish and crackers for the week or so we would be in the jungle. I was planning on buying a few things from the Indians as we went along. I certainly thought we could survive without hot food and coffee for a couple weeks (although my experience of giving up cigarettes on a climbing expedition in Alaska twenty years earlier should have been sufficient reminder that small luxuries make hardships more bearable).

This was my ninth trip to Latin America and I figured it would be no easier on my intestinal system than all the others, so I had Pepto Bismol, Lomotil, Sceptia, Halazone and a water-purifying pump. Tony had taken shots for Hepatitis and we had Quinine for Malaria. I started taking a shot of Pepto Bismol every morning from the time we left Managua and every day thereafter for the rest of this trip and I never got sick. A first. Needless to say, I also exercise extreme caution (paranoia) in whatever I imbibe -- a delicate inconvenience when a guest in anybody's home. And the pump was fantastic -- a quart of clear, potable water in about two minutes from any source. Worth every ounce.

Driven more by anxiety than need I wanted to buy something in Yavisa, anything, to make our forthcoming trip through the jungle more agreeable, more secure. I kept thinking about those Germans. I bought a used machete. I should have checked my compass and bought one of those too (if there were any for sale) because the very next day when we were lost, I discovered that my old compass was not water-proof.

Very early the next morning, Tony and I jockeyed our bikes down to the edge of the deep, sluggish river. A young man took us across in his dugout canoe and dropped us off at the bank on the far side, which we had to climb to get to the trail to Pinogana, the next town. It was steep and the rounded, muddy steps were treacherously slippery in the early morning damp. Exacerbated by a stomachy, scared, shortness of breath, it seemed as though half the town of Yavisa watched as we struggled up with heavily-loaded bikes to disappear into the jungle like the Germans before us.

For a few minutes we were in a bicyclist's paradise as we rode smoothly down the well-used trail along the high bank of the river but then the first of innumerable streams, ditches, tributaries, steep banks and fallen trees presented itself. A single, twisted tree across the deep gully was the only way. Still fresh and strong we simply picked up the bikes and carried them across.

We got to Pinogana about noon. It had been a relatively easy trip and we were in good spirits looking forward to more of the same to get to Boca de Cupe that afternoon. There were a couple little "shops" in Pinogana where we bought warm cokes. We sat down next to the church, a very small hut distinguished from the others only by it's lack of windows, and indulged ourselves blissfully in slaking thirst and eating granola bars and peanut butter. The town revolved languidly around us. We went to the local constable to report ourselves. He seemed cordial and told us how to go from there to Boca de Cupe. His directions however, struck me as a bit odd in that they followed the meanderings of the river. I knew from years of river travel elsewhere, that the shortest distance between two points is seldom along the river. But he was so ingenuous that we departed by his recommendations.

Very soon we were in the most vile thicket of recently-cut cane and underbrush, having to actually carry the bikes for ten or twenty yards here, twenty yards there in the hot sun, our feet and legs being snatched at and torn by the sharp undergrowth. Often the trail was lost and we had to wander to find it again. More often, it could hardly be described as a trail. For hours we slogged through that sort of nightmarish stuff; poor Tony, out-of-shape and with his thick glasses fogging up. He was near collapse and every few minutes he would cry out, "Wait up, Art," in a plaintive, breathless voice in the distance behind me. I, meanwhile, driven equally by increasing fears, moved farther and farther ahead. We spent that night in a miserable bivouac along the river. It was about here that I discovered my compass had drowned.

More of the same the next day made getting up less than enthusiastic despite a wonderful sun breaking through the trees. Around noon, we met a woman and two boys on horses. Feigning indifference, pretending we were not lost and over-wrought, I asked how far it might be to Boca. She looked at me with a surprised expression and pointed in a bizarre direction and said it was very far. Hmmmmm, I thought. I'll be damned if I was going to say that I was lost, but I suggested that if her boys wanted to earn a little money we would pay them to guide us back to the right path. She suggested that we spend the night with them at their place a ways down the river -- that the boys would take us there while she went on in a canoe.

As I expected, we cut back away from the river and plunged into the jungle. An hour or so later we came out again to the river, crossed it and then back into the jungle. The next time we got to the river and were crossing the sand bar -- actually, had just reached the other side -- from out of nowhere an enormous gray stallion ran up and sank his hideous teeth into the neck of the older boy's horse, also a stallion. All hell broke loose as these two stallions fought for the tender mercies of the younger boy's mare. They kicked and reared and bit and screamed and turned the stream into a bloody froth. And the capricious mare seemed to enjoy it as she would edge in close to the combatants. Fortunately, the malevolent intruder had a rope around his neck which I was finally able to grab; and with me pulling at that and the boy pulling his horse's reins, we were finally able to separate them long enough to get the mare out of teasing range and be on our way. In my wildest imaginings I would think about snakes dropping out of trees, alligators slithering toward me, tigers growling and all sorts of other horrible things creeping around the jungle, but I never imagined I would have to deal with a wild horse.

We finally got to our friend's place; a small clearing along the bank of the river with one thatched hut for seven people. The mother was already tending some coals on which dinner would soon be prepared. Tony was feeling pretty grim. We were exhausted, hot and thirsty. I had some rope burns on my hands from the horse fight. The woman gave us something to drink. Thanking her profusely, I nevertheless, edged off toward the jungle and watered a plant with mine while Tony drank his. Not a good idea. Generally, I don't drink water I can't see through. Diarrhea was the last thing I wanted while trying to get through this jungle.

That evening, comfortably seated in the embrace of our new friends, eating fried bananas and rice we discovered that we were still a long way from Boca. I had thought that Boca de Cupe was an easy day's hike from Yavisa and here it was our third day out already. (Incidentally, I had done my best to get some maps of this area but there simply are none worth a damn. The best I could find in the University of California map library was an old US Army Intelligence map which only hinted at details such as contours and distances. No wonder that comandante back in Chepo didn't think there was a way through. The woman's husband had a big dugout canoe with an outboard motor and said that in the morning he would take us downstream and drop us off at the trail for Boca.

I had broken a spoke that morning going through more of the loathsome cane which I think must have caught on my machete which then snapped the spoke. In any event, I had to take off the tire of course and then lace in a new spoke (fortunately, a front wheel), all of which intrigued the family as they watched what must have seemed to be a fairly intricate procedure. When I was finished, three little, inoperable bicycles showed up with various things wrong with them from flat tires to broken spokes, all of which I was able to repair to one degree or another. I carry a fairly extensive repair kit for exactly this sort of exigency. I guess the PC police might be repulsed by this sort of gringo patronage, but nevertheless, I enjoy fixing other people's bicycles.

The next morning we set off in the canoe. The two boys galloped along the riverbank shouting gleefully, their horses pounding through the jungle as we glided downstream. Soon we left them behind as the motor accelerated. But then there was a big "clunk" followed by silence as we drifted in mid-stream. Julio quickly pulled the motor up and we could see the sheared propeller pin. Luckily, we did not lose the propeller itself. I had a small bolt in my repair kit, which fit perfectly, and we were on our way again in less than half an hour. We passed several huts along the riverbank and waved as children yelled and dogs barked. An hour later we pulled ashore and, not trusting my assurances that we would be able to find our way to Boca, our host got out with us and guided us there himself.

Boca de Cupe is just big enough to be rather unsavory. A few dozen people go through the Darien Gap each year and they/we all have to go through Boca, no way around it. And you have to leave Boca by boat. There is no trail South. So you can imagine the bargaining situation. You've already spent several miserably hot days getting that far, you are deep into the jungle, you sure as hell don't want to go back to Yavisa or the desultory streets of Panama. What the hell, the whole point is to go South but here you are in the primeval quintessence, the annual income averaging about three hundred dollars at most, and some guy wants fifty bucks for a three-hour canoe ride!

Well, the young Swede and his friend had been bargaining unsuccessfully for a day and a half when Tony and I got there. They just didn't have that kind of money in their budget so Tony and I said that if we could all fit in one canoe we would pay the bill and they could come with us. Finally, we agreed on seventy five dollars for the four of us which Tony and I paid.

After an uneventful night in Boca de Cupe we all piled into the big dugout the next morning and headed downstream. At Balsal we were met at the bank of the river by the village chief and some other people. It had been an easy ride so when I spotted some kids playing basketball I invited myself into the game. Although some of these kids were as much as fourteen or fifteen, not one was over four feet tall. We are talking veeeerrry small. Their basketball had about as much bounce as a grapefruit, but perhaps that made it easier for it to fit through the ring that was attached to a delaminating piece of plywood which served as the backboard. The whole apparatus could not have been more than about eight feet high. I liked the dirt "floor" too, rather than the blistering, shin-splitting hard-wood floors we always insist on back home. Anyway, their game was sufficiently innocent that even I was able to show them a few tricks like head-fakes, double-pumps, behind-the-back-passes, lay-ups, hooks, jump-shots and a backwards slam-dunk (like I said, the net was only eight feet high). This basketball game was a highlight of the trip for me.

Needless to say, the bicycles were a big hit in Balsal. I mean, Balsal is really in the thick of the Darien and along come a couple gringos with these fantastic looking machines with bags, and gears and shiny wheels and stuff. I spent the rest of the afternoon giving every single kid in town a ride on my handlebars up and down the main path while the chief's wife prepared dinner for us. Tony was still feeling pretty sick.

We were given a clean little kiosk with a dirt floor and thatched roof in which to spend the night. It had a sturdy center post from which we could string our hammocks -- only in a generic sense could these sporting-good store nylon net things which hold your body like a bag of groceries be called hammocks. I found the best way to use it was very close to the ground with one's feet actually resting on the ground. A small stick across the top and bottom helped. Actually, I preferred sleeping right on the ground even without a pad. Anyway, half the town gathers around to look at us and our things. We try to show them some things without being ostentatious. Unfortunately, we have nothing to give them except money. They give us so much in their warmth and generosity I feel badly having nothing more to share than a couple Bic pens and a cigarette lighter.

It was a very congenial night in Balsal, the four of us foreigners comfortable in our hut swinging peacefully, securely from our slim hammocks listening to the tyding-up sounds of the village. Dark silhouettes surrounded us as both young and old sat around the periphery of the kiosk watching us; just happy to squat there and watch, not needing talk. It was all very quiet except perhaps when a couple little kids might break into a loud whispered dispute about some item of ours. We slept soundly with every expectation of an excellent day ahead.

Morning breaks gently in the jungle village. One first awakens to the rustlings of women silently shuffling darkly for wood and water while the rest of us squeeze selfish sleep from the remaining darkness. A baby cries. A match lights. A dog stretches. And one lies there and listens and watches the night disappear, as silhouettes become three-dimensional. At fifty, I lie there thinking, "What sores, aches, and pains will I have to contend with today when I assume an upright position?" Our young friends, Marc and Thomas sleep youthfully, happily oblivious of the weight of age and marriage and jobs. I couldn't have been much happier though. How many people have the luck to actually live out one of their favorite dreams?

Lacking even rudimentary skills in anthropology or natural history I cannot give a very accurate description of Balsal other than the usual picture of skinny dogs, lots of children and thatched huts up on stilts. I mean, one jungle village is pretty much like another -- architectural distinctiveness is a luxury of industrialization. Sometimes the geography lends a unique quality to the place. But, generally, huts are sprinkled here and there with broad, smooth paths between and in each one three logs constantly smoldering even in the dry season. The women wear beautiful, embroidered "molas" while the men wear mostly regular manufactured clothing. Kids run around like everywhere. Untrained for anything, dogs seem more of a nuisance than help as they slink apprehensively from shadow to shadow. From the taste and appearance of the gnarly lump of meat we were served I would be worried too if I were in their position.

Estimates vary about the time it should take us to get to Pucuru, the next village -- three hours, three days. I come to the conclusion that times are relative to the size and speed of the person asked. Anyway, my basketball team helps me carry my things down the steep, muddy bank in the morning. Tony struggles with his stuff alone. Both bikes are loaded into the narrowest dugout I have ever seen. The chief himself poles us across the stream. I keep one hand on my camera bag remembering the Gunnison River (When I lived in Gunnison, Colorado I used to take my family and friends down the river in my canoe. The only time I tipped over was the time with Tony!) But our guide this time was infinitely more adept than I and we arrived safely on the other side. With a wave to the village, we disappeared into the jungle again. Thomas and Marc, unencumbered by bicycles, are quickly out of sight up ahead. One of my basketball players offered to guide us for the first hour through some thickets. Without his help we would surely have gotten lost again. I gave him a dollar and some candy.

Once we left Yavisa we had ridden our bicycles about one tenth of the time. The rest of the time we pushed, carried, dragged and swore at them as the pedals tore at our shins, banged into our calves, caught on stumps, vines and proved to be an unimaginable burden. For some stupid reason, I had not anticipated the geography of the Darien Gap. I had imagined something like central Florida; slight undulations, easy going. Lots of luck! Panama is mountainous for Christ's sake! Besides the hacking, slashing, dragging, crawling, pushing of the bikes through the impenetrable, often indistinguishable jungle trail, I would bet that we went up and down the equivalent of five thousand feet every day. I am talking long, long, endlessly steep muddy hills up which we pushed our bikes, every muscle strained, every pore sweating, lungs burning, legs rubbery with fatigue as we crawled under fallen trees, clambered around huge vines, climbed over fallen trees, hacked our way through mammoth jungle leaves... and always a bit scared of getting lost, getting hurt, being attacked by something or some one, just being so far from anything remotely familiar with what our lives had been used to up to that moment.

Anyway, a few hours later, as I was riding down one of the only ride-able stretches of trail in the Darien Gap I suddenly yelled at the top of my lungs. I just let out with a huge "Yaaahooo" right there all alone in the jungle because I was so happy. I mean, there I was riding my bicycle through the frigging jungle between North and South America while the rest of the world punched time clocks, sold stocks, built dams, taught school, nursed, dug ditches, computed and did the "stop and go" every morning and night to get home for packaged dinners with Dan Rather.

Not for even those few moments of unbridled joy however was I unaware of my singular good fortune in being able to be there though. I never, ever fail to realize how lucky I am. And I laughed at the relative silliness of it all and especially my own western-European concept of time. Was there a single watch in Balsal? And yet I ask them, "how many hours is it to Pucuru?" That makes about as much sense as if one of these villagers visiting me would ask when looking in my swimming pool, "Where are the fish?" First of all, Balsalans probably don't travel to Pucuru very much and secondly, when they do they probably just jog along and never give the time of day any thought -- after all, they live sensibly from sun-up to sun-down. If, by any chance they get caught out in the dark they can surely feel the trail with their feet. But they are not so dumb to ever let that happen. Only white people delay, and get lost in the dark.

It was a long and difficult slog to Pucuru. Thomas and Marc had already been there for two hours when I arrived, well ahead of Tony of course who was getting more and more fatigued. They had been given a place just above the river where we could pitch our tents and hang our hammocks. There was an uncomfortable ambience to the town though. I felt it as soon as I came to the first clearings at the edge of the village. It was the heavy hand of missionaries. The women were ashamed and the men defensive.

By and large however, the people were very friendly although one fellow in particular was a bit too friendly for my taste as he insisted in looking through all my things and then riding my bicycle all over town. I mean, first of all, I had not completely unpacked it since there was no reason to; so there he was riding all over the place with my machete, camera, tool kit, and various other odds and ends in the front panniers which I always left on at night. Secondly, this was my only means of transportation through the jungle (not that, in that respect, I wouldn't have been better off without it) and then the long trip I had ahead across Columbia and Venezuela. What if he should jam my gears or bend a wheel? Selfish thoughts of a North American materialist.

I went over to the missionary's house that night after dinner but he was off in another village and his wife was not interested in talking with me. My premonition about the suspicion of missionaries confirmed I returned to our friendly little fire with the Indians. I played my flute and went to sleep comfortable in the proximity of friends and the prospects of continued good fortune.

Around two in the morning there was a terrific barking of dogs for a few seconds during which one was inclined to think, "Oh shut up, for Christ's sake!" and then the impenetrable blackness of starless jungle was shattered by a macabre scream, the sort of scream of death which brings you to full alert, bolt upright, tense to the slightest quiver, rustle, breath. And then nothing. I crouched there motionless at the door of my tent for a minute or so, one hand on the machete the other holding the flashlight (off of course). I lay back and the silence pressed down again with the total absoluteness of death.

...to be continued, hopefully.