the dangling vines, the snaking undergrowth.
So the jungle and the river through it were graveyards; abandoned prospecting sites littered the edges, as did old mining facilities and banana outposts. Farther up the river from the Germans, for instance, was the sunken wheeler ship Maid of the Patuca , which had once ferried prospecting supplies. When the river was low, you could see the ship’s ruined iron boiler sticking up from the muck, like a monument to a dead utopian dream. After the boat ran aground, the operation was ditched, and the American entrepreneurs behind the project cut a trail to Catacamas—the small city to the northwest—and sold everything to get back to the States. As Morde wrote of the misadventure, “sic transit Gloria mundi.” Easy come, easy go.
That night, the Germans switched on the radio and there was news of the war. According to the announcer, Germany was now attacking Belgium and Holland, while the British army was withdrawing from Norway. Among Morde and his party, there was some momentary concern that the world would be altered in their absence. Morde tried to imagine where the war was headed, where Hitler would go next, but he couldn’t get his mind to see it and went to sleep trying to forget it all.
The real adventure began on May 14, just over a month and a half into their journey. In the mountains, the men watched as steep moldering limestone rose up above their narrow boat like “grotesque pillars.” Within the jagged cliffs, caves opened up like tiny gaping holes in the earth. The rapids became treacherous at times, which worried the adventurers a bit because the river would grow only more intense. Morde began to sketch maps of the landmarks they passed, marking down the rivers so they knew where they had been. “This is striking country,” he wrote that day, his mind imagining all the amazing possibilities ahead. He noted that they had passed “the last outpost of white civilization,” and soon the rain forest was everywhere—the trees, the vines, the overwhelming mess of moist vegetation. Anything could happen now. With a mixture of eagerness and trepidation, he wrote, “From now on the interests of everyday existence are of more concern than foreign wars.”
Bandit Alley
O N THE WAY across the country, our Geo Prizm began to overheat, and so did our driver Juan. “Where are we?” he shouted to no one in particular as he veered the sedan to a halt in a scrum of low-lying bushes. We had expected to make that leg of the journey in less than six hours, with no stopping. We were about two thousand feet up a mountainside after almost two hours of driving and two earlier pit stops.
Juan slammed his hands down on the leather-gripped steering wheel and dropped his forehead. The hood looked as though it was hiding a fire, white smoke rising out of its seams. The dirt road had been climbing thousands of feet through hairpins and streambeds and eroded earth that plunged straight into the green abyss. We had passed vehicles left for dead—a pickup in a ditch with no windows; a sedan in the pine trees, missing doors. Sometimes SUVs with blacked-out windows zipped past us, likely carrying narcos. Our car had struggled the whole ride. The suspension was shot. I hadn’t seen another truck in half an hour.
Juan jumped out and threw open the hood and immediately began to hyperventilate. “ Problema! Problema! ” he yelled. The last time we had stopped was forty minutes before. The radiator was low on coolant, and Juan hadn’t brought any backup. He made a sign toward the sky, as if he were either looking for God to help his car along or hoping that the heavens might have an answer for what he was doing out here in this forsaken place.
As Pancho and Chris uncapped the radiator and filled it with one of our last bottles of drinking water, Angel paced in tiny circles with his cell phone raised up in the scorching air, hoping to catch a signal so he could say another good-bye to
So the jungle and the river through it were graveyards; abandoned prospecting sites littered the edges, as did old mining facilities and banana outposts. Farther up the river from the Germans, for instance, was the sunken wheeler ship Maid of the Patuca , which had once ferried prospecting supplies. When the river was low, you could see the ship’s ruined iron boiler sticking up from the muck, like a monument to a dead utopian dream. After the boat ran aground, the operation was ditched, and the American entrepreneurs behind the project cut a trail to Catacamas—the small city to the northwest—and sold everything to get back to the States. As Morde wrote of the misadventure, “sic transit Gloria mundi.” Easy come, easy go.
That night, the Germans switched on the radio and there was news of the war. According to the announcer, Germany was now attacking Belgium and Holland, while the British army was withdrawing from Norway. Among Morde and his party, there was some momentary concern that the world would be altered in their absence. Morde tried to imagine where the war was headed, where Hitler would go next, but he couldn’t get his mind to see it and went to sleep trying to forget it all.
The real adventure began on May 14, just over a month and a half into their journey. In the mountains, the men watched as steep moldering limestone rose up above their narrow boat like “grotesque pillars.” Within the jagged cliffs, caves opened up like tiny gaping holes in the earth. The rapids became treacherous at times, which worried the adventurers a bit because the river would grow only more intense. Morde began to sketch maps of the landmarks they passed, marking down the rivers so they knew where they had been. “This is striking country,” he wrote that day, his mind imagining all the amazing possibilities ahead. He noted that they had passed “the last outpost of white civilization,” and soon the rain forest was everywhere—the trees, the vines, the overwhelming mess of moist vegetation. Anything could happen now. With a mixture of eagerness and trepidation, he wrote, “From now on the interests of everyday existence are of more concern than foreign wars.”
Bandit Alley
O N THE WAY across the country, our Geo Prizm began to overheat, and so did our driver Juan. “Where are we?” he shouted to no one in particular as he veered the sedan to a halt in a scrum of low-lying bushes. We had expected to make that leg of the journey in less than six hours, with no stopping. We were about two thousand feet up a mountainside after almost two hours of driving and two earlier pit stops.
Juan slammed his hands down on the leather-gripped steering wheel and dropped his forehead. The hood looked as though it was hiding a fire, white smoke rising out of its seams. The dirt road had been climbing thousands of feet through hairpins and streambeds and eroded earth that plunged straight into the green abyss. We had passed vehicles left for dead—a pickup in a ditch with no windows; a sedan in the pine trees, missing doors. Sometimes SUVs with blacked-out windows zipped past us, likely carrying narcos. Our car had struggled the whole ride. The suspension was shot. I hadn’t seen another truck in half an hour.
Juan jumped out and threw open the hood and immediately began to hyperventilate. “ Problema! Problema! ” he yelled. The last time we had stopped was forty minutes before. The radiator was low on coolant, and Juan hadn’t brought any backup. He made a sign toward the sky, as if he were either looking for God to help his car along or hoping that the heavens might have an answer for what he was doing out here in this forsaken place.
As Pancho and Chris uncapped the radiator and filled it with one of our last bottles of drinking water, Angel paced in tiny circles with his cell phone raised up in the scorching air, hoping to catch a signal so he could say another good-bye to
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