Writings By Phil

Thoughts On This And That

Home Sweet Home

March 26, 1978

My pessimistic foreboding of yestereven about sleeping in a jungle hammock made the worrywart in me proud! However, it was for different reasons than I had imagined. I did not topple out of it during the night, and the strings tied to the rafters stayed put and kept the net away from my body. The problem was that hordes of blood thirsty mosquitos found a secret passage into my net and told all their fellows cutthroats where to find it. Try as I might, I could not find the opening to stop the invasion.

The night was long! For every blood sucker killed, two more took its place, and every mosquito I smashed was full of blood. My blood! The night was too hot to retreat under cover of my sleeping bag. The persistent buzzing about my head, and the knowledge that I was only feeling a small percentage of the tiny jabs that pierced my skin to suck me dry robbed me of needed slumber.  To add insult to injury, my Cross pen ran out of ink, and I had to use a pencil to finish writing the day’s events in my journal. I turned the flashlight off long before midnight, but sleep evaded me until at least 2 am because of the bugs. It was in those wee hours of the morning that my mind finally gave up the losing battle against my flying, biting foe and allowed my body to ease into restless sleep in the land of drowsy dreams.   

One of many mud holes that we had to cross with the buggy/swamp tractor

Today we celebrated Easter Sunday in a non-traditional way, bouncing around on the buggy, jumping off frequently to slop through mud holes, or to winch the swamp tractor out of the muck.  We got stuck twice.  We had to completely unload the trailer twice and portage all our gear across the river. At another crossing we cut a “road” around the “bridge” and pulled and winched the buggy to the other side.  At the last bridge before Hediondo, the winch cable snapped so we left the buggy and all of us came on in the boat leaving our things to be retrieved in the morning.

The loggers made “bridges” by filling the river with logs and piling dirt on top. When the river flooded, all the dirt was washed away making it impossible for us to just drive to the other side. To cross these, we usually had to float the buggy across on one side or the other of the “bridge” and then winch it up the bank.
Down-river from a washed out bridge we floated the Buggy across the river. It needed some help getting up the muddy back so we tied the winch cable to a tree to pull it up to the road. Alan Foster is driving. Wally Pouncy stands by ready to help if needed

It was good to be back home.  Everything looked so nice.  We had real lemon aid with ice!  We borrowed a cassette deck from Paul and Sharon Short and listened to real music, something we had not heard for six weeks.  Music was what I missed the most during our time at the Pension. Bananas and papaya hung on trees all around camp, ready to eat! Grapefruit would be ready in about a months’ time. Fresh fruit was a blessing and in abundance, and something I had been sorely missing for the past six weeks.

The Rio Hediondo camp where I lived during my first year in Bolivia. We made surveys and excursions out into other areas to find the nomadic Yuqui from here.

March 27

Our base on the Rio Hediondo was beautiful, but its beauty was marred by legions of chiggers hiding in the grass. They did not have to hide; they were so tiny I couldn’t see them anyway, but in only hours I felt their presence and it was enough to drive me insane. As we walked through the grass, they hitched a ride on our shoes and jeans, then found a way beneath our clothes to burrow into our skin, usually where clothing was the tightest. The chiggers done ate me up clear to the armpits!  The first attack of itching hit me at three o’clock in the morning.  I scratched the rest of the night and most of today, so will probably have a hard time sleeping tonight. Seemed the only working remedy was to scratch the bites until they bled, then pour alcohol on them!

While the guys went to get the buggy I dug out all our household utensils and tried to put them into some kind of order so that we could start keeping house tomorrow.  The food stuffs left over from our time at the Pension were divided among all of us so we had enough to start fixing our own meals. I got the house set up, at least so it was livable, and made a list of things we needed to order from Cochabamba.  It was a long list! I was glad the mission had a man in the city whose ministry was to purchase the supplies that missionaries in the jungle needed. Sometime in the near future, Matt and I would get to go out go out to Cochabamba for a break and do some buying for ourselves.

We met today as a team and decided to send three men by boat to Puerto Grether.  Alan knew a man working for the oil company, Phillips 66, who lived there.  He was in charge of a number of land concessions where the company had surveyed for oil. They planned to start drilling soon.  We suspected the Indians might be in that area and hoped he could help us pinpoint their whereabouts.

This story was from the category Tales From Green Hell. If you would like to read more of my experiences in the jungles of Bolivia, please click on that link below.

More Writings by Phil

Phil Burns

Leave a comment