360 Degrees Longitude (46 page)

In the morning we all felt thoroughly thrashed, but it was over. Gradually, we pulled ourselves out of bed. Then it dawned on me.

“We aren't moving. The boat is at anchor.”

“What do you think that means?” September asked.

“Dunno. I'll go find out.”

When I got to the common room, rumors were flying. “The sea was so rough, we sought anchorage in a sheltered cove,” was the collective opinion, but no one knew where we were.

We found out the sad reality after breakfast. “A few hours out at sea,” Mrs. Lady explained, “the captain received a report from another boat heading in the opposite direction that the swells further south were thirteen meters high, five meters higher than we had been experiencing. He ordered a retreat to the shelter of the fjords. We will remain at anchor until conditions improve.”

The puking of biblical proportions of the previous night was for naught. We were back at square one.

 

John's Journal, April 7

We are on terra firma once again. The indigenous people [Kawesqar] of this area, now extinct, used to live virtually their entire lives in dugout canoes. They would build fires in their canoes to stay warm, and wore almost no clothes. Which is hard to believe as it's so cold. It is early autumn now and very nippy
.

The sky here is very big and different somehow. We watched the sun set and it seemed to take forever. The wind blows so very hard. We are on the edge of Drake's Passage, the only ring around the planet unbroken by land and infamous for its fierce wind and what it did to the early explorers
.

Weather delayed the
Navimag
two more days. When we arrived in Puerto Natales, our destination, we were a bit paler and thinner, but roughly in one piece. I said to September as we disembarked, “So, now what happens?”

September looked at me and I knew the answer immediately. “There is so much to do and see,” she said. “A year just isn't long enough.” We had arranged to meet September's father back in La Paz and had a flight the very next day.

Puerto Natales, Chile, is the gateway to the Torres del Paine National Park. Along with sticking our feet in the Straits of Magellan, seeing it was our
raison d'être
for coming south. But there wasn't time. The unplanned extra time on the
Navimag
had cost us our visit to Torres del Paine. I didn't say anything for a while. I was stoically rooted to the spot, trying not to get emotional. “We should've taken the bus.”

“The key,” Katrina reminded me, “is to not have any regrets. We'll just have to come back someday.”

April 9–April 20
Bolivia Again!

A
fter sticking our feet into the bitter cold waters of the Straits of Magellan, we said good-bye to the southern tip of South America and flew back to La Paz, Bolivia. In La Paz, we met up with September's father, P.

He has a real name, Dale, but everyone calls him “P.” When the first grandchild came, rather than being called “Grandpa” he preferred “Aged Parent,” in honor of a smelly, crotchety old man in a Dickens novel. “Aged Parent” was a bit tricky to pronounce for a two-year-old so it got shortened to “Aged P,” which garnered a few stares so it was shortened to simply “P.”

P is a techno junkie, and when September had asked me if I thought he would bring along his handheld GPS unit, I assured her he'd remember to bring his GPS before he'd remember to bring underwear. Naturally, Katrina and Jordan greeted him at the airport by asking, “P, did you remember to bring any underwear?”

P looked a little perplexed. “I think so. At least I know I'm wearing some right now.”

The tires on P's red-eye plane were still smoldering on the tarmac when we all hopped onto a single-engine plane to Rurrenabaque, in the northern Amazon region of Bolivia. One hour and more than eleven thousand feet lower in elevation, we were standing on a grass airstrip in one of the most untouched parts of the Amazon basin. From here we would start a six-day journey into the rain forest that would prove to be memorable not only for its beauty and remoteness but also for what we would learn about ourselves.

We checked into a small hotel in the tiny town of Rurrenabaque. The hotel courtyard sported a toucan and two macaws, and as Katrina and Jordan loved befriending the resident pets, all three birds immediately received more attention than they had in months.

To the kids' delight, P is a walking encyclopedia of animal knowledge. However, since after staying at Dolphin Bay in Panama, Katrina and Jordan had become toucan “experts,” and were able to fill a void in P's knowledge.

“A toucan may have a really big beak, but it can't bite very hard, see?” Jordan demonstrated by sticking his finger out to let the toucan have a taste.

“But don't try that with a macaw,” Katrina shot back. “It could take your finger off!” She tossed one of the macaws a large Brazil nut, which it cracked and opened with its beak as if the shell were no more than a candy wrapper.

The next morning we met our native guide, René, piled into a large canoe with an outboard motor, and began our journey into the rain forest. As I stood in the canoe, René tossed me an enormous propane tank as if it were a football. I staggered and nearly fell over the edge of the canoe into the water. “John-Rambo,” René chuckled, “not too heavy for you, is it?”

The nickname John-Rambo stuck. Unfortunately, I don't think he referred to me as such because of my striking similarity to the movie character.

After loading our supplies, we puttered three hours up the Rio Beni, which is one of many tributaries to the mighty Rio Amazonas. P, who single-handedly keeps Duracell profitable by powering his small electronic gadgets, held his GPS unit toward the sky to receive satellite signals tracking our route. Our destination was a small jungle camp in Bolivia's Parque Nacional Madidi.

When we arrived at our camp in the rain forest, P immediately took a GPS reading and marked the location on the GPS's internal map. I gave him a glance with eyebrows raised.

“Just in case,” P said.

“Just in case our guide has a heart attack?” I quipped. P begs for good-natured ribbing over his obsessive GPS data collection.

As we explored our small camp we were reminded that this region of Bolivia is relatively new to visitors. Had we chosen to visit the Amazon Basin in Peru or Brazil, we would have found a well-established jungle lodge complete with electricity and running water. In Bolivia, however, our camp consisted of a rough wooden hut with cots and lights powered by candlesticks. The camp did have a real toilet, although to flush it you had to dump a bucket of river water into the bowl.

 

Jordan's Journal, April 11

P brought us our books (instead of having them mailed to us). One of the books is
Explorers Wanted!
about the Amazon Rain forest. Some of the animals that it talks about sound scary, but the scariest are the insects. There is one that bites you and then you just drop dead 20 years later. I like to read it to Mom because it grosses her out
.

I took to the camp hammocks immediately. When René found me lying in one he said, “John-Rambo, no nap time! Hike time!”

So almost immediately after arriving at our camp we took off on one of many hikes through the jungle. As we walked along, the tree canopy over our heads was so thick that it was almost dark, and insects buzzed constantly around our faces in the sweltering heat. We followed behind René as he hacked away at the overgrown trail with his machete.

René made a detour around what I considered a natural path. I didn't want to go out of the way to follow where he had walked, so I continued along my chosen path and blundered straight into a massive spider web. I didn't see the spider, but I'm sure the spider heard me.

“John-Rambo,” René said patiently in his fractured English, “follow me. You don't want to scare spiders.”

After that, I followed René's instructions exactly. We could be hiking along, passing all manner of flora and fauna, and suddenly René would state simply, “Don't touch that tree.” Or, “Don't touch that plant.” Sometimes his voice took on a bit more urgency as he would direct us to “run very quickly across these ants.”

I'm not sure if he did that just to spook us. The kids were at an age where they were sure nothing in the world could harm them. September was a different story, and followed René's instructions precisely. Whenever René's voice took on a cautionary tone, P would say, “Oh my, yes. That's the flesh-eating (blank) of the Amazon. You wouldn't want to touch that!”

 

Katrina's Journal, April 12

We saw a bunch of howler monkeys in the tops of the trees. They jump from branch to branch. René said that if one of them slipped and fell to the ground that they would be banished from that group and would have to find another group to live with. I thought that was really mean. Dad said, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” When I asked him what he meant, he said that after millions of years of evolution humans hadn't learned all that much, and then started muttering to himself like grown-ups do sometimes
.

As we trudged along, René pointed out animal tracks, but when he pointed out a set of jaguar tracks, September lost her cool. “What are we doing out here?” she cried. “Jaguars eat people!”

“Not you worry,” René replied, “tracks are one week old.”

This mollified September somewhat, until later that day when we found a fresh kill, which consisted of no more than a few feathers and something gizzardy. September gritted her teeth and trudged on.

During our jungle hikes we saw and heard lots of evidence of wildlife, but aside from various monkeys high in the treetops and a large herd of wild boar, we didn't see many mammals or reptiles in the jungle. There were just too many places to hide for an animal that didn't want to be seen.

After slogging through all manner of muck, hacking through dense undergrowth, and crossing streams and small rivers while balancing on the tiniest of log “bridges,” René did manage to get more or less, um, disoriented. “A few weeks ago, a guide got lost,” a red-faced René confessed. “He and his group had to sleep in the forest all night.”

“Ha! Not to worry!” replied September. “We have a GPS device that will show us which way back to camp!” René had never heard of such a gizmo, which was just as well. The GPS didn't work.

“Well.” (P tends to speak monosyllabically when on stage.) “It seems that my GPS unit can't pick up any satellites under the rain forest canopy.”

Poetic justice. Ten billion dollars in satellite infrastructure rendered useless by about 50 feet of tree leaves! We did find our way back to camp using the low-tech method of retracing our steps, which was harder than it sounds.

René one, High Tech, zero.

The Amazon is insect heaven. Most strikingly, we constantly witnessed an immense kaleidoscope of colorful butterflies, and more ant varieties than we ever knew existed, such as the 24-hour ant.

Jordan, who had done extensive research in his
Explorers Wanted!
book, picked up one of the inch-long critters that was clinging to a stick. “Hey, Mom! If one of these stings you, it feels like you're on fire for 24 hours!”

September found the leaf-cutter ants more intriguing. To know September is to understand that she can't stand to see anyone, or any
thing
, mindlessly go along with the crowd. Which is why the leaf-cutter ants drove her mad.