Lost in the Jungle Page 4
All three of us gave this plan our enthusiastic endorsement. Karl added a shotgun and ammunition to the list of provisions we would need to buy. His crew wouldn’t be going with us, he explained, so we would need a good shotgun for our own protection and to hunt game. ‘It’s a big expense, but we’ll be able to sell it at a profit at the end of our trip in Rurrenabaque.’
‘But this is a military dictatorship,’ I protested. ‘Won’t it be dangerous shopping for guns?’
‘You’re right, it’s risky, but you can’t get along in the jungle without a shotgun, and out there the army doesn’t hassle anyone. I have a friend in prison here in La Paz. He can tell us where to find one, and ‘Canadian Pete’ is always happy to have visitors, especially if they pay him well.’
‘Canadian Pete?’ The name rang a bell. ‘He’s mentioned in the Israelis’ travel journal,’ I said. ‘Nice guy, likes visitors, especially those who bring a chicken. Karl, how about if I go visit him to get the information?’
Chapter four
CANADIAN PETE
On our way to San Pedro Prison Kevin and I stopped at the marketplace and picked out a nice, fat chicken. We asked the butcher to clean it and cut it up.
A handful of officers patrolled the prison gate. ‘Who’ve you come to visit?’ they demanded.
‘Pete, the Canadian.’
‘And what’s in the bag?’
‘Pollo.’
They led us into an anteroom, and after a quick body search one of them said, ‘You can go in.’
Prisoners flocked about us in the courtyard. ‘Who’ve you come to visit?’
‘Pete, the Canadian.’
‘Pete again?’ one of them grumbled in disbelief and then yelled, ‘Hey, Pete, you got company.’
Pete hurried down from the second floor, waving at us energetically.
‘You lucky son of a bitch, Pete,’ a gringo prisoner growled. ‘This is the third visit you’ve had this week. Look at the belly on you!’
‘Are you Israelis?’ Pete asked with a smile.
‘I’m American,’ Kevin said. ‘My friend here is Israeli.’ We shook hands, and Pete invited us up to his den.
The prison was a strange building, two-storied and very old. Haphazard additions had been tacked onto it, made from wood, corrugated tin, cloth, or any material that had come to hand. We climbed a ladder at the end of the corridor up to Pete’s room. The room itself was of no definable geometric shape. It was built of wooden beams and tin panels, asbestos, and plywood. The ceiling was low and slanted, made mostly of taut nylon sheets.
‘Home sweet home,’ Pete said cheerfully.
The bed was on the side of the cell where the ceiling was lowest. Kevin and I sat there, hunched over slightly. Pete sat on a mat on the opposite side of the room, about four feet from us. In the corner by the door was an electric hot plate.
‘Oh, this is for you,’ I said, and handed Pete the heavy sack.
‘Chicken!’ he exclaimed. ‘My favourite. Thanks, pals.’
The room was stuffy, windowless, but the ceiling of nylon let the light filter in. Pete whipped out a wrinkled notebook and pen and asked if we would mind writing down our names and addresses.
‘Someday, when I get out of this joint, I’ll put a pack on my back and visit all the terrific people who visited me here.’
Kevin opened the notebook. ‘You’ve got half the State of Israel listed in here,’ he said, looking down the long list of addresses.
‘Yes, most of my visitors are Israelis,’ Pete said. ‘They have some kind of book that recommends paying me a visit. They’ve all been bringing me chickens.’
Pete went on to tell us how he had ended up in a Bolivian prison. He had been caught smuggling a kilo of cocaine and was sentenced to eight years. After telling his story, he suggested a guided tour.
We went down to the yard. It was a weird place. Something like the Turkish prison in the movie Midnight Express. An outer wall and inner wall surrounded a large courtyard. The old structure was built around the inner wall. There were no cells or bars and it looked more like a market, with prisoners milling about at liberty. Vendors sold fruit, ice cream, cakes, and other sweets. There were even a restaurant, billiard hall, and movie theatre.
‘This all belongs to the prisoners,’ Pete explained. ‘If you’ve got the dough, you can open a business and live pretty well in here. One prisoner has a restaurant, another runs a vegetable stand, someone else even sells grass. Money rules. They don’t even give you a cell or room. You have to buy one. When I first got thrown in here, I spent a few nights on the bathroom floor, until the money my mother sent me from Canada arrived. Then I bought that little place and made it into my room.
‘You have to pay for the food here too. And they don’t give you any clothes. You have to buy those. The rich prisoners have it all right here. Look over there, on the second floor. There’s a wealthy political prisoner. He has a furnished apartment: a television, you name it, everything. You won’t find any of the big-time pushers here ’cause they just plain don’t get arrested in the first place. They only lock up the small fry like me here.’
Life in the courtyard revolved around a water hole in its centre. The prisoners did their laundry there and in hot weather took a dip. A shower cost money. A prisoner passed by, selling Popsicles. I offered to buy one for Pete. He refused politely.
‘Come on, and I’ll show you the prison’s slum,’ he offered. At the edge of the wall huddled a few small cells made of wood and tin, dark little cubicles that looked more like pigsties than human habitats. That was where you lived if you were penniless, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight.
‘When I first got in here, they had a coup. The army took over. The rebels broke through the prison walls, and almost everybody escaped. Me, with my luck, I was still being held over in the wing for guys awaiting trial, and I couldn’t get out.’
We wrapped up our tour with visit to a few of the other rooms and the restaurant. Pete stood looking at us.
‘I’ve sunk just about as low as a man can sink,’ he said. ‘I’m reduced to having to ask you for a handout. You saw the way things are here, and my poor mother doesn’t have much money. I would appreciate whatever you could let me have.’
‘You can earn yourself some money, Pete,’ I said. ‘We’ll pay you well if you can get something for us.’
‘Hmmm, I see. You want a little grass? Great stuff.’
‘No, we want something else. Information. Where can we buy a good hunting gun?’
Pete gave us a solemn look. ‘If you guys are planning another revolution, don’t leave me out this time.’
We laughed and told him the real reason we wanted the gun. Pete left us and came back a few minutes later with an address written on a scrap of paper.
‘I don’t know nothing about this. You remember that good,’ he warned us.
Kevin and I got out our wallets and paid Pete generously.
‘Thanks, guys,’ the Canadian said. ‘I’ll use this for a ticket to the movies and a little grass tonight.’
We all went together to the Lebanese arms dealer whose address Pete had given us. He owned a noodle factory and sold arms on the side. He showed us a brand-new, shiny 12-gauge Winchester. Karl checked it over, spent a long time haggling over the price, and finally agreed to pay six thousand bolivianos. We bought two kinds of buckshot, the kind that makes a concentrated pattern for hunting large animals and the kind that scatters widely for hunting birds.
We stopped next at a hat shop. Karl recommended that we all buy wide-brimmed hats, then said goodbye. A very nice Bolivian woman smiled at us patiently, though we each tried on dozens of hats until Kevin came up with the idea that we should wear distinctive headgear; that would make us more photogenic.
When we finally left the store, I looked like a gangster out of the 1930s, with a stiff, light-coloured felt cocked over one eye. Marcus wore a sombrero, and Kevin a broad straw that made him look like a kibbutznik.
Kevin and Marcus returned t
o the Rosario, and I went to inform the Israeli embassy of our planned adventure, but they were too busy to see me. I left a note detailing the route we would be taking and the exact dates that Karl had set. I wrote down Kevin’s, Marcus’s, and Karl’s names along with their ages and addresses and ended with the request that action be taken if I hadn’t returned by the fifteenth of December.
The secretary told me to leave the note in the register of Israeli tourists visiting Bolivia. The note was extremely important to me. It made me feel safe: if something were to happen to me, the embassy would come to my aid.
When I returned to the old-folks’ home, there was the usual bustle: people cooking, doing laundry, doing handicrafts to make a little money, and Grandma shouting advice to everyone. I packed my things and tied them up in two bags and with a safety pin fastened a note to one of them: ‘Property of Yossi Ghinsberg. Will return December 15.’ I shoved the bags under a bed. I took my backpack. It held only the bare necessities, including Dede’s red poncho. It had been in my pack since the trip.
Although I wasn’t leaving for two days, I wanted to get my farewells over with. Then I would be completely free of obligations. So early that evening I went to say goodbye to Lisette and her family. They were good people, and I had become attached to them during my stay in La Paz. Their home was in the city’s wealthiest neighbourhood. I had spent many pleasant evenings there listening to wonderful Bolivian music, enjoying fascinating conversations, and eating delicious foods. I was on particularly cordial terms with her mother, and at the end of these evenings her father would drive me back to the old-folks’ home in his fancy car, and the guys there would give me a hard time, teasing me about my good fortune.
Lisette and her parents listened to my plans for the trip and grew anxious.
‘That’s too dangerous, Yossi. Don’t go. Stay here. Terrible things might happen to you there.’
I promised to be careful. I left my documents and my remaining cash – two hundred and fifty dollars – with them.
‘If I’m not back by December fifteenth, please call the Israeli embassy and inform them that you have my papers. Ask the staff to check the note that I left in the register.’
The next day all of us were very busy. We did some last-minute shopping, then Marcus and Kevin went to their embassies to leave word. They packed their belongings and stored them with a Canadian friend. I added my wristwatch to Kevin’s belongings. There was no need to keep track of schedules and dates in the jungle, Karl told us.
The French girls were leaving that day, and we hurried back to say goodbye to them. Dede asked that I write to her in France and tell her all about the trip. Annick’s eyes were red with tears. She hadn’t slept all night. She was very much in love with Marcus.
We went out for dinner but returned early. Karl came over with a large rubber sack.
‘This is my backpack,’ he said. ‘It’s better than yours because it is made out of rubber and is waterproof.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Kevin said. ‘How do you think you’re going to carry it?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Karl smiled. ‘I’ll attach straps to it, and it will make a great pack. You’ll see.’
He was as excited as the rest of us. Tomorrow was the big day.
We decided to leave the final packing for morning. Kevin went up to his room to sleep. I stayed to spend the night in Marcus’s room. He wrote a letter home, and I did the same, a letter to my brother telling him about the trip into the jungle.
La Paz
November 3, 1981
Hi, Moshe,
What’s new, Big Brother? I know that I haven’t written for quite a while and hope that you aren’t angry. But the truth is that I’m more concerned about the fact that I haven’t had a letter from you, or from Mom and Dad, for about three months now.
This trip has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s something really special, out of the ordinary. What I’m trying to say is that I’m doing this differently than the other kids backpacking around South America, including the other Israelis. Most of them go from one tourist site to another, from one museum to the next. They seem to think they have to climb every mountain in sight and have a look at every scenic view. I’ve visited a few museums, seen some nice spots, and climbed a few mountains. The mountains are really something. You keep climbing and climbing, and everything is so high here in South America that you run out of oxygen and think your lungs will burst. And finally, after all that, you stand on the summit and look around, and you really feel like you’re on top of the world. But I’d rather go climbing once a month or every two months, otherwise it becomes routine.
What I’m doing here in South America is looking for the extraordinary. I love the unusual. Mystical religious ceremonies, pagan rites, local Indian witchcraft. Unusual people, places that have their own special atmosphere, new friends, all those things. There are a few special things here that I just had to try. Just a short while ago I had one of the most fantastic experiences of my life. I climbed up to the top of a mountain with this French girl, took a piece of cactus, and prepared a drink from it. The girl only had a little, and it didn’t affect her that much. I had a lot and was flying for seventeen hours. By the end of the trip I was scared that I would never come down.
Now the main thing I want to tell you is about another kind of trip I’m leaving on tomorrow. I don’t want it to sound like I’m over dramatising, but it could be very dangerous. I might even be risking my life. I’ll be gone between four to six weeks, and I won’t be writing home during that time. Think of something to tell Mom and Dad so they won’t worry.
I’m taking a flight tomorrow from La Paz to Apolo with three other guys:
Kevin Gale, age twenty-nine, American.
Marcus Stamm, age twenty-eight, Swiss.
Karl Ruchprecter, age about thirty-five, Austrian.
The American and Swiss guys are very good friends of mine. The Austrian is a geologist. He has been working in Bolivia for the past nine years looking for gold and uranium and other precious metals in the jungle. He is coming with us as our paid guide. He has an uncle with a ranch in Bolivia. The uncle’s name is Josef Ruchprecter, and his address is Santa Rosa Ranch, El Progreso, Reyes, Beni.
From Apolo we will walk to a village called Asriamas on the Tuichi River...
I am planning to fly from Riberalta, the last place on our route, back to La Paz and take a train and buses from there to Uncle Nello in São Paulo. If I haven’t called home by the first week in January, something has happened to me.
I’m sure that everything will go right, and there’s nothing to worry about. I’m being somewhat melodramatic but wanted you to know all the details just in case. Tell Mom and Dad that I’ve gone to some little island or village up in the mountains for a month. Try to think of something that won’t worry them, because I won’t be writing at all. Tell them you got a letter and that I feel fine and I’ll be at our uncle’s soon.
Be seeing you, Brother,
Yossi
Chapter five
GOLD AND PIGS
We hailed a cab on Calle Illampu and loaded our packs into the trunk and onto the roof. The taxi wove in and out of traffic, then turned toward the airport. A ten-minute drive and we were there. I had a funny feeling: this wasn’t just a plan or a story to tell anymore. We were really on our way.
The flight to Apolo took less than an hour. The plane was small. The passengers were seated side by side along benches of taut canvas that ran the length of the aircraft, leaning back against taut strips of fabric. All the luggage was in a heap at the back.
Most of the passengers were residents of Apolo. The men had short, bristly hair. The women, like the men, had high cheekbones. They wore their black hair in thick braids intertwined with yarn and tied off with ornamental tassels. There was also a European, a priest in a brown soutane.
Flying over the Andes was inspiring: snow-covered peaks and breathtaking panoramas. Once in a while we flew into an air pocke
t, and the plane lost altitude with a quiver, then steadied itself. Whenever that happened, the women became hysterical, screaming and crossing themselves in a frenzy. One of them, her eyes dark and frightened, took hold of the priest’s hand and wouldn’t let go for the rest of the flight.
Then the scenery below changed drastically; suddenly we were looking down on rivers winding through vast jungle. In no time we touched down in Apolo, and I quickly realised why the women had become so hysterical during the flight. Hanging from the trees on either side of the airstrip were the broken, burnt, and rusted hulks of earlier flights.
We waited for our packs and were soon on our way into town, along with the crowd that had gathered to meet the plane. Two officers on motorcycles stopped us to ask what we were doing there. When we told them, they said that we should go to the police station to register.
‘Nonsense.’ Karl waved them off after they had ridden away. ‘Just a lot of unnecessary red tape.’
We started walking, Karl in the lead with Kevin and me right behind him. Marcus brought up the rear. I could hear him softly singing,
Freight train, freight train, going so fast,
Freight train, freight train, going so fast,
Please don’t tell the train I’m on,
’Cause I don’t know where I’ve gone.
The heat was sweltering, and we struggled up a steep incline. Karl had tied his rubber bag to his back with two crossed strips of cloth, but we could all tell that the strips were digging uncomfortably into his shoulders. Our progress was slow because we stopped to rest frequently. We didn’t waste our breath talking. We weren’t carrying any water with us, so we were glad when we came across a small ranch, where they gave us chicha (a sweetened, fermented beverage made of corn or yucca). We drank it down greedily.
By late afternoon we came to a flat, wooded area, and the going was easier. We had hoped to find a ranch where we could spend our first night, but since it had grown dark, we decided to set up camp where we were. Marcus got out the tent, but Karl preferred to improvise a shelter of nylon sheeting.