When The Jaguar Sleeps: A jungle adventure (4 page)

In contrast, they both ate greedily, and almost directly started to feel much better. Florent’s earlier anger and restlessness seemed to have disappeared.

Afterwards they took a short nap.

Another hour dragged past. Time stood still. The day seemed to be without end.

Evening came and with it obsessive, gloomy thoughts began to haunt their minds, incessantly.

Sandro became feverish again. He was delirious, his breath quickened and from time to time violent spasms went through his whole body and he moaned loudly with pain. Florent gave him another painkiller.

‘Frankly, how long can we hold out here?’ he asked. ‘A day or two at the most. Very soon we will not have even enough strength left to get out of this hell.’

‘We can’t just leave Sandro here alone,’ said Didier, more weakly this time. ‘In his bad condition, I doubt he will make it through another day without us.’

Didier too was beginning to lose hope that someone would ever find them. All sorts of black thoughts and pessimistic scenarios whirled in his mind. He could not explain why but all of a sudden he became absolutely sure that no rescue would ever come. His earlier optimism and confidence began to fade dramatically. For the first time in his life he felt so lonely and lost. With great clarity he realised the cruel reality, the hopelessness of their present situation. They were stranded somewhere in the depths of a vast rainforest and could only rely on their own strength and this was diminishing with every day that passed due to malnutrition and lack of sleep. They were trapped in an unhealthy, extremely hot and humid environment.

Did they actually stand any chance of surviving in these harsh conditions? Not much. The only hope left was that a rescue team would soon come and free them, take them away, back to civilisation.

But do they know where to look for them? Will help come on time? And what should they do if nobody comes?

That night sleep did not come for a long time. They were both lying side by side in silence thinking what to do next. All sorts of anxious thoughts were swirling around their minds like bees, stinging from time to time. Didier worried about his mother and his sister. Was he ever going to see them again? Could they handle another loss in their lives so soon?

Florent thought about his parents, his younger brother and his girlfriend, Nathalie. He wanted so much to see them all back. He and Nathalie were engaged and were supposed to get married in four months. This travel to South America was his last holiday alone. He had been so excited and happy about it. He had never thought it would end that way.

At some point, Sandro began to utter some incoherent words. His body started to shake again, and his forehead felt very hot to the touch. They did not know what to do, how to help him, and sat watching him helplessly, seething with impotent rage at being so powerless, trapped, and abandoned. Fortunately, after a short time, Sandro became calmer, and from his throat only weak moans escaped. Eventually his head fell to one side and he lay silent.

Didier and Florent, too finally drifted to sleep.

Friday: another overcast morning dawned.

Immediately upon waking they noticed that Sandro was lying stiff and motionless with eyes wide open, staring unseeingly upwards. Florent ran the flat of his right hand over his face; the skin felt as cold as ice to the touch. Sandro had been dead for several hours.

Strangely, they felt more relief than pity: both tried to hide it at first, feeling somehow guilty that they were so readily accepting this cruel twist of fate without showing more emotions. But soon they decided they could do nothing to change what had happened and they had to think about their own survival. What mattered now was staying alive and get away out of this green jungle hell.

For now, they were free. There was nothing to keep them here any longer. They both knew what to do next.

After a skimpy breakfast they loaded stuff that seemed to them to be useful, and left. They wanted to depart as soon as possible from this miserable place where four of their companions had already found death, and which soon could turn into their own grave as well.

‘Which way shall we go?’ Florent asked.

‘I once heard that in the jungle you should always follow the water trail,’ said Didier. ‘This means finding running water and following it. Small streams swell into larger ones and later on join the rivers. People generally settle along rivers, so this actually seems to be the best way to find any inhabited settlement.’

‘And I once read somewhere that the cocaine cartels have thousands of small laboratories on the riverbanks in the Colombian and Peruvian jungles,’ said Florent. ‘This way it’s easy for them to get rid of waste products – they can throw them directly into the river. But if we run into one of those places we will not get out alive. I wonder if there are any of these laboratories in the Ecuadorian jungle as well.’

‘Do you really expect me to have all the answers? I have no bloody idea!’ said Didier ‘Just tell me, mister smart guy, how without a compass do you figure we can manage to find our way out from this hellish green maze? We may get lost and keep wandering for months on end. Have you got a better idea?’

‘No,’ admitted Florent, crestfallen. ‘But you don’t need to be so sarcastic. And what if we won’t come upon any stream?’

‘What if, what if… You keep worrying too much beforehand. There is plenty of water in the jungle. We surely come upon a stream soon. Well let’s go, but be careful and as you walk watch each step you take and do not touch the trees, because their trunks and branches may be crawling with deadly creatures. Keep close to me and don’t lag behind. Otherwise we may lose each other.’

With his machete Didier cut a long, straight branch and handed it to Florent.

‘What’s this for?’ Florent asked looking at it doubtfully.

‘Oh, you never know, it might prove itself very useful. You can lean on it while walking, brush aside foliage blocking your way, or fend off any snake attacks.’ Didier led the way into the unknown without once looking behind, determined to get them both out of the jungle safely. While focusing on the difficult road ahead he was trying to remain composed and confident. Maybe they didn’t need to walk for days. Maybe the civilized world was close by. Florent followed him obediently.

O
n the same day, but five hours after Didier and Florent had left the site of the plane crash, the search and rescue team reached the wreckage. They spotted a flash of metallic white through the lush green leaves and brown branches of the surrounding trees and bushes, but even before that they had been alerted by an intense, nauseating odour of rotten and decaying corpses. As they drew near the air was filled with countless buzzing flies and mosquitoes.

Slowly and without saying a word they approached the shattered and partially burned fuselage of the machine. Right away the heavy smell of death hanging in the air intensified.

‘So we found at last what we were looking for. But it doesn’t look promising. I have a gut feeling that nobody survived,’ Nacho Pacheco whispered hoarsely.

‘Well, we must check to be sure. Wait! Look over there, near the plane wing. What is it? It looks to me like a hut,’ Pablo Mendez said, pointing to his left.

They came up to it and cautiously peered inside. The body lying within was completely covered with swarms of black flies.

‘Oh, look, it seems someone survived the crash and had enough strength left to build a hut and crawl into it. But unfortunately we arrived too late to save him,’ Pablo said, regret and sadness in his voice.

Two members of the team entered the wrecked fuselage.

‘We’ve found someone else,’ one of them cried after a while. ‘He probably died during the crash or directly after, judging by the state of the body. Not much left of him,’ he added softly.

Anna’s partially decomposed corpse was almost entirely covered with thick white larvae swirling continually in all directions, making it look as though her body was still alive and moving. From under them, a few pieces of greyish bone protruded and bits of purple-reddish flesh.

The team searched the whole area around the crashed plane, soon stumbling upon other unidentifiable body remains. Pablo photographed everything in detail.

‘It’s such a horrible mess here that it’s impossible to tell how many bodies we have found; there are parts scattered in different places. Moreover it looks like hyenas and vultures fed on them. We can stop searching. I am sure no one survived. Let’s rest for an hour or two and then we’ll set out on our way back.,’

Just then one of the Indians ran up to him, shouting something and wildly waving his hands in the air.

‘There!’ He pointed to a compact wall of bushes on the opposite side of the clearing. ‘Someone was walking there, because you can still see fresh footprints and traces of machete cuts and truncated branches.’

‘Okay,’ said Pablo, ‘can you and the other guide follow this trail and see if you can find anyone?’ ‘Whoever it was must be tired, maybe injured, so can’t have gone far. We’ll wait here for you.’

An hour later the Indians returned. Alone.

‘We followed the tracks of two people. They entered the territory of the head-hunters tribe – very dangerous. We did not dare go on without weapons, so we came back directly.’ The older of the two Indian guides spoke in a broken voice, fear visible in his eyes.

Pablo knew about the head-hunters. To the east, in the vast area stretching between the rivers Río Napo and Río Pastaza, lived two wild and isolated Indian tribes, the Auca and Shuar. Their shamans were believed to have magic powers: they could throw spells or curses on their enemies, and could ‘imprison for ever the human soul’.

For generations, the Auca and Shuar had been hostile to visitors from the outside world. Shuar Indians were famous for their head-hunting raids. Having cut the heads of
their
victims they would shrink them to the size of an orange and hang them as ornaments in their huts. Such a reduced head, called Tzantza, imprisoned in itself - according to their beliefs - the evil spirit of the killed person and lent strength, courage and vitality to the victorious warrior-killer. For hunting and killing their prey they used
blowguns, long hollow tubes made of hard chonta palm wood or bamboo,
and darts dipped in poisonous
curare
.

The Auca Indians were regarded as extremely cruel and aggressive and even the Shuar did all they could to avoid them. Apart from blowguns, they used as weapon long spears with sharp tips. They called themselves the Huaorani, meaning ‘people’, because they believed they were the true people of the jungle. The name Auca had been given to them by other tribes – a
contemptuous
name meaning ‘savage’ in
Quechuan,
the language of the former Inca empire, and now the indigenous language of South America.

The Auca regarded everyone from the outside world as an enemy. In recent years, since international oil companies sought to explore ever further into the rainforest, their hostility had deepened. They were determined to defend access to their native territory. As well as enormous deposits of crude oil, the lush green unexplored areas of their land concealed gold, silver, emeralds and diamonds. Often, after heavy rain and flooding brought down parts of cliffs, flecks of gold were clearly visible in the beds of streams and rivers.

Pablo thought about the legend of the lost treasure of Atahualpa, the ill-fated last ruler of the Incas. He was believed to be buried with a fabulous cache of gold and precious jewels in a secret cave located somewhere in the foothills of the Andes. Some thought that the tomb lay in the rainforest east of Quito. The legend was born in the sixteenth century, when the Spanish Conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca empire. On Friday afternoon, November 15, 1532 he and his men arrived to the city of Cajamarca located in modern-day Peru to meet with Atahualpa. The newly appointed Inca leader was encamped then outside Cajamarca. The next day the Spaniards ambushed him and his men. The unarmed Incans offered little resistance. As a result, in less than two hours over 4000 Inca warriors were slaughtered, while not a single Spaniard lost his life. The same day, at the order of Pizarro Atahualpa was captured and imprisoned in a large chamber of one of the city buildings. In return for his release the prisoner offered his capturers a lavish ransom:
enough gold
and precious stones
to fill the
room he
was
kept
in. The cunning Pizarro willingly agreed to his proposal. Directly Atahualpa’s people started to gather precious metals and transport them to Cajamarca. However, as soon as devious Pizarro put his hands on the first part of the enormous wealth he changed his mind. He did not keep his earlier given word and had Atahualpa executed on August 29, 1533 by strangulation with a garrotte. But before he died, Atahualpa pronounced a vengeful curse upon the white man that would befall anybody who would ever dare to touch the legendary Inca gold destined to pay the ransom for his freedom.

His precipitous death happened just before the last, the largest load of the ransom treasure had been delivered.

The story went that afterwards Incas stole Atahualpa’s body from his grave and buried it with the rest of the fabulous treasure in a secret cave located somewhere on the vast grounds of the former empire, in the foothills of the Andes densely covered with virgin jungle. Some believed that the impenetrable, challenging rainforest of Ecuador east of Quito hid the tomb and the legendary treasure of Atahualpa.

Over the years, many a treasure hunter had ventured his life – and even lost it – searching for the lost Inca riches. The mysterious treasure of Atahualpa attracted them irresistibly like a magnet. It was said the Shuar and Auca knew the whereabouts of the treasure and considered themselves to be its guardians.

Pablo ran a hand up his forehead to wipe the trickles of sweat running down into his eyes. He sighed deeply, feeling suddenly worn out. Then he spoke to the team. ‘We’re exhausted and we have no weapons. I am not going to risk your lives. We don’t know how long it will take to track the survivors down. Will they still be alive? I think we should return to base. We will say that no one survived.’

Their job was done. Now they had located the crash site, another team would be able to come here soon, better equipped to gather evidence that was going to help them determine the cause of the crash and identify the dead. Pablo was glad he wouldn’t need to handle the unpleasant task of informing the victims’ families.