We get a much earlier start today and find the path to the search site is surprisingly close to the Santiago river. Yesterday’s meanderings disoriented us, but the fact that this place is so easily accessible to the river is very encouraging. It also allows us to save our energy for systematically crisscrossing the site, hacking down obstacles and probing the soil for hidden foundations.
We encounter one poisonous snake, more spiders and a few domesticated pigs as we move along, their pink bodies resembling last night’s appetizers. The locals brought us enormous, white, living, wiggling, crawling grubs. These guys were as big as sausages and undulated like my digestive tract after a bad meal. I did not have the courage to bite their little heads off and chew on their wiggling bodies, but Ashton and Meg did. Yes, Ashton. The kid who won’t eat his vegetables was perfectly comfortable eating a live, giant maggot. He amazes me.
The next night, another soccer game breaks out and Paco does well enough to be asked to create a few more future San Marjin soccer players with some of the village women. He politely declines.
This evening also teaches me that I really don’t like crapping in the jungle in the dark, but bathing naked in a cool jungle stream as sun filters down through steaming trees is wonderful.
But here up on the search site, as the sun reaches its zenith, we end our search with no convincing discoveries. If there was an ancient church here with a stone floor, under which were two vaults for storing riches, we can’t find it., but if we were scared Spanish settles, surrounded by hostile Aguarunas 500 years ago, this is where we would have built. It will take ground penetrating radar or blind luck to go any farther here. GPS readings are recorded, pictures taken and we head back to San Marjin.
Equally at home in Peru, the mountains, or Seattle, Washington, Tammy Leland has spent the last 18 years exploring every nook and cranny of Peru’s Amazon, its Andes mountains, Southern desert and ancient history. Earning a reputation as a passionate adventurer and explorer, Tammy had wandered over 5 continents, spending her time learning from different indigenous cultures, gleaning important lessons about sustainable tourism and now offers practical guidance as a tourism consultant and environmental educator.
Living on the edge explorer, traveler and climber, Dan Travers has traversed, climbed, scaled, scrambled, skied, trudged, trekked, hiked, biked and kayaked in 6 different continents and over 40 countries. Wilderness First Responder trained and a jungle veteran, lacrosse player, beer drinker, trekker and traveler, diver and climber, but not dancer nor singer. "I want to experience all I can, because if you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space."
keep at it! stay safe!
I have read and re-read “The Rivers Ran East” many times since I first found it on the bottom shelf in the back of my grade school library when I was 11 years old. In Boy Scouts, we would go camping on the Verde River by Red Creek rapids and run along the banks with whittled sticks pretending to be Amazon Indians and walk through old Sinagua ruins and pretend we were back in time. This book and stacks of National Geographic and Skin Diver magazine helped ignite a desire in me to travel to jungle locations and meet local people to enrich my appreciation of my fellow man and nature’s beauty. I lost my latest copy of “The Rivers Ran East” again and I found your site in the process of looking for good copy. I truly hope you are all healthy and happy. It struck me as odd that we both happened across this book by accident on a random library shelf and were similarly inspired.
Thanks for reaching out Ken. It is a pretty odd and amazing story isn’t it? I am so glad you have enjoyed the book and that it inspired you. He was definitely an inspiring guy!