October 21, 1978
Sometime in the night, the time on my watch was changed. My clothes or sleeping bag must have snagged the stem and unlocked it. Then, in tossing and turning in restless sleep, it got rotated and the time was changed. I had no idea what time it was. I guessed-set it to 6 o’clock. We had no food to cook for breakfast, so we got an early start.
Soon, we came to the river. All the dirt, of course, was washed away in the last high water. The tangle of exposed logs was impassable! With machetes we cut a road downstream from it. We drove to the water’s edge, unloaded the trailer, and floated the buggy across the river. The trailer was next, then using the boat, we portaged everything else to the other side.
In crossing the river we waded in water up to our chests. It was hard pushing on the floating swamp tractor tires, and pulling on the winch cable to get it across. The task was made more difficult by the tangle of vines underwater that snarled our legs. The water in the river was still high so it hid these unwanted impediments. These vines were covered with long thorns. I felt one attack my knee. I thought nothing of it until I stepped back on dry land and found it was still hurting. I pulled my pant leg up and discovered a thorn had pierced the skin and broken off in my knee. I grabbed the protruding end and pulled. The wicked needle point had impaled my tendon by more than half an inch. It was with great reluctance that it released its grip and pulled loose. My knee was still sore, but if it didn’t get infected, I thought I would live!
It was almost one o’clock. I drove. We encountered some mud holes, but for the most part the road was in good shape. I hoped that it would stay like that all the way to the Rio Yapacani and the railroad line.
Thousands of butterflies, decked in wings of pastel yellow, white, and green gathered in clusters along the road, Not as common, there were occasional groups of bright colored orange butterflies. The dazzling ones did not seem to mix with the pale ones. I had often seen bunches of beautiful winged insects sucking up the urinated salts left where an animal or human had relieved themselves on the ground. The dirt of the road must have contained something naturally, not urine, that the insects wanted. As we drove past, the colorful groupings exploded skywards like fluttering confetti. God’s confetti was flitting all around us. It was beautiful and should have been a reminder that the Creator of all was with us, even in the hard times!
We traveled for an hour before coming to a narrow, deep gully across the road. Using a shovel, we cut the abrupt sides back, filling the bottom with dirt, hoping we could just drive the buggy in and out for an easy crossing. If so, we would then pull the trailer across with the winch. We left the trailer connected, planning to unhook it once we reached the bottom. That was a mistake!
I put both heels on the break pedal, and pulled back on the steering wheel as hard as I could. I wanted to concentrate as much weight as possible on the brake and make a slow, controlled decent to the bottom of the gully. It went in so easy and neat that someone yelled “If it will drive out, drive!” I took my feet off the brake and started up the other side. Suddenly, I was no longer in control of myself or the swamp tractor. Instead, I was rolling down the gully. The buggy, like an enraged animal, was standing on its hind feet, waving its front tires in the air. In that awkward position, the wheels spun wildly until the engine died.
There we were! What next? We tried to pull the front wheels down but could not. In the mean time, the axle housings were hemorrhaging gear oil. Obviously, the seals needed replacing! I came up with the idea of jacking up the front of the trailer so we could unhook the trailer. It worked. With all the weight removed from the hitch, the front tires on the tractor fell back on solid ground. Well, one of them did. The left front tire just caught a handful of dirt where the gully jutted deep into the opposite bank. If we tried to drive out, that wheel and gravity would pull us into a worse predicament, a ditch from which we would never escape!
The only trees close enough to winch off of where at the wrong angles. We tried anyway and snapped the cable. Matt told us he had seen loggers dig a tee trench in the dirt. They would put the cable around a log in the bottom of the trench and winch against the compacted dirt to free their vehicle. It was our only option.
We dug a trench in the road. Using a short mahogany plank, discarded by the loggers, we hooked the cable around it and put the winch in gear. It worked! The dirt held in place and we winched the buggy to safety. Then, after much jacking, digging, winching–you should have seen that clutch smoke, we got the trailer out of the gully and to the other side. It took us four hours to get out of that mess!
Off we went, again. In five minutes travel time, the thatched roofs of the sawmill came into view. We couldn’t just drive on in with dignity. Oh no! We got stuck once more in the mud. We had to unhitch the trailer, drive ahead, and then winch the trailer to good road.
After talking to the sawmill caretaker, to our dismay, we learned that the loggers left just two short hours before we got there. All their trucks and tractors went with them. That meant that the road from here on would be all torn up. In swampy places it would be almost impassable for our swamp buggy in its sad state of disrepair. It also meant there would be no food for us to buy along the way. That was not good news!
We thought the loggers would work at least another week or two before calling it quits for the rainy season. Getting the boat and buggy out of the Rio Hediondo was supposed to be a fast, one or two day trip on roads still maintained by heavy equipment. With clutch problems it had taken most of two days to travel what we should have covered in three or four hours. In believing the loggers would still be working, we did not bring any food with us. For the last two days or so, I had been surviving on handfuls of peanuts and raisins with a piece of hard candy for dessert now and then. I guessed Matt and Paul were doing the same.
I was disappointed, to say the least. As I set up my tent, I worried what the next few days would bring. A short while later, the caretaker’s wife, or woman if they weren’t married, sent over some refresco, a sweet, flavored cold drink like Kool-Aid. She also gave us some bread and some pan fried pastry. I was glad for the hospitality, even though my cup smelled like chicha, an alcoholic beverage they make out of ground corn.
More Tales From Green Hell
- https://fillburns.com/1978/02/10/swashing-through-green-hell/
- https://fillburns.com/1978/04/08/tibaquite-comes-to-visit/
- https://fillburns.com/1978/09/30/fosters-folly/
- https://fillburns.com/1978/09/26/we-found-indians-2/
Writings By Phil 
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