“[Our African boatmen] hurried us into the still expanse of a majestic river…. we were in as perfect a solitude as if removed thousands of miles from human habitations.  On each side was a dense, unbroken forest; the banks were overflowed; the trees seemed to grow out of the water, their branches spreading across so as almost to shut out the light of the sun, and reflected in the water as in a mirror.”

John Lloyd Stephens (1834)

Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan

I read about Tony’s jungle river tour from Peter Eltringham’s guide book.  When my friend and I arrived in San Ignacio (local name Cayo), a mountain town in west Belize, I called Tony to arrange a two-day overnight canoe trip down the Belize River to see wildlife and the jungle.  His voice on the phone was muffled but agreeable.  The cost was $75 per person.  Tony would prepare everything, and we only needed to “bring enough water and mosquito repellent”.  I was very excited about the opportunity to camp in the Central American jungle with a local guide.

On the morning of the trip, we met Tony at Eva’s Café.  Tony had everything packed in his small pickup truck ready to go.  Two fiberglass canoes were strapped on top of a rack.  Camping gear and supplies were stuffed in the back.  I was offered the bench seat by the supplies.  It was my first time traveling on the back of an open pickup truck, so I gladly climbed up to my seat.  At first the truck passed through the narrow streets of our hilly town, and then came onto the Western Highway.

The Western Highway is one of the four major roads in Belize, leading east through the tiny capital city Belmopan to Belize City on the coast.  Sitting at the back of a truck was a little rough, but the view was open and superb, and the wind brought warm smell from the green farms and mountains.  Like the rest of the country, the scenery along the highway was of immense beauty.  The lushness of the tropical forests and the citrus plantations, the redness of the soil, the scattered thatch huts, little white houses of schools and agriculture institutes, composed of a pleasant picture of the countryside.  The area was very sparsely populated; we did not come across any town on the way.  The road was nicely maintained.  There were no traffic lights, but there were many big speed bumps near villages and settlements.  Most vehicles running on the highway were big and small trucks transporting goods and people.  They were all very used and looked at least 30 years old, probably brought in from the US through Mexico.  One truck carrying logs was so old that it could only run 20 miles per hour at the fastest, causing a light traffic jam at the speed bumps.  I was impressed with the orderliness of the traffic.  Unlike other Latin American countries I had been to, in Belize the drivers drove in lanes, observed all traffic laws, and were very courteous and polite.  People from passing cars often greeted one another with a gentle honk, and the pedestrians on the roads smiled and waved at cars.  I found it very pleasant.  The people on the slow truck waved at us as we passed them.  It turned out that some people on the road were Tony’s friends.  When I remarked to Tony that so many people knew him, he said in his usual modesty, “It is a small country!”  Surely Belize is a small country.  The population is a quarter of a million, and the area is that of Massachusetts.  The two assistant guides sitting next to me seemed to be gossiping about the people we passed all the way, as if the whole country was a small town and everyone knew about everyone else.

A quick shower came down but we were sheltered by the canoes.  After the rain, the air was fresher and the greenness of everything was more vibrant and luxurious.  I saw some athletes practicing for the upcoming international cross-country bike race on the highway.  I saw men leisurely riding horses along the road.  I saw children playing soccer in the grass fields.  I saw women gathering outside some houses for parties or religious events.  I saw Mennonite men with white hat and long beard driving horse carts in the distance.  I saw dark skinned men walking along the road, carrying big machetes in hands.  I had grown a fascination of machetes, and I always wondered what these machete carrying people were going to do or had just done with their big long knives.

After an hour on the highway, just before reaching Belmopan, we turned north onto a small unmarked dirt road.  We were in the jungle already.  The trees and brush along the roads were so tall and thick that we were like driving in between two green walls.  Soon we came to a stop in front of a river ferry, and encountered some confusion there.  It was a hand-winch ferry that could usually transport a vehicle cross the river, but at this time it was broken, sitting in the middle of the river.  A yellow school bus was stuck in the sand of the bank while trying to dash onto the ferry.  There were no students on the bus, but a dozen men, apparently the unlucky passengers, were gathering around the bus trying to push the bus back up the bank.  Fortunately we did not need to cross the river—our journey started here.  While Tony and his assistants prepared the canoes, I watched with amusement the bus being pushed out of the sand, a truck driving down the river, up the ferry platform, down the other side and up the bank, two men pushing their bicycles crossing the river the same way, and a dog running after.

One of the assistants left with Tony’s empty truck.  I chatted with him on the truck earlier.  He was an honest-looking young man from Independence, a coastal town in southern Belize.  He moved to Cayo a few years ago to get married.  He told me he visited his family in the south often.  It was still difficult for me to grasp the smallness of the country where even the farthest two points are closer than the distance between Los Angeles to San Francisco.  The assistant guide Nery would come with us on the canoe trip.  He was a tall young man of 29 who was always attentive, helpful, easily amused, with a slow but innocent curiosity.

Tony was a short, stout man of 40, but I first thought he was older because he had an air of maturity and responsibility.  His tanned face was large, and he wore a goatee.  His expression was friendly and trusting when he was talking, intent and alert when he was watching, and amused and content when he was relaxing.  He wore a camouflage cap, white sleeveless shirt, casual shorts, and a pair of plastic slippers.  He was dark so I thought he was a local Mestizo whose first language was Spanish, but I learned that his mother tongue was Creole.  His father was Mestizo from Mexico, and his mother was Creole from Belize.  The Creoles are descendant of the slaves brought by the early English settlers.  The Mestizoes are descendant of Spanish and Native Americans.  In Belize, about 50% are Mestizoes and 25% are Creole.  Belizean Creole is a language or dialect developed from English during the early settlement.  Legend has it that the slaves deliberately altered their speech of English so that the outsiders would not know what they were talking about.  When people were speaking Creole, I felt I could almost understand them because it sounded like English, but I was never able catch even the meaning of the speech.  There are talks to make Creole the official language of Belize, in replace of English.  No wonder Tony’s muffled English was often difficult to understand.  But he was always patient to repeat and explain.  And his command of English was excellent.  Here is one example that gave me great impression.  When I was surprised to find that my plastic coated map got soaked wet, he remarked that it was only “water resist” but not “water proof”, a distinction in words that I usually overlooked.  He did not talk much, but whenever he spoke, it was always something notable.  His movements were quick and determined on land, but cautious and quiet on the river.  His laughter was open and hearty.  During the trip I came to know him as an extremely observant and competent guide, always watchful, sharp, responsive, quiet, patient, unhurried, unassuming, confident, and honest. 

The sky was still overcast and there was occasional light rain all morning.  On the river it was cool and misty.  Before the commotion at the ferry died away, we were in a different world of mystery and tranquility, untouched and unchanged by humanity.  It looked the same as when John Lloyd Stephens found it 170 years ago.  Seeing the perfect reflection of the trees and the clouds and the sky in the river, I was overwhelmed with wonder and awe.

The Belize River was quiet, steady, pristine, and inviting.  It starts in Guatemala, runs eastward, winds through the tropical forests in Belize, and enters the Caribbean Sea at Belize City.  Our section of the river was about 60 feet wide, with gentle curves; the banks were ten feet high, overgrown with a thick jungle.  There were tall palm trees, bushy bamboos, big trees entangled with vines, and many trees I could not name.  Wild orchids and bromeliads grew on the Y’s of tall branches, blooming with fresh flowers.  Every time I saw a giant tree with large spreading crown and thick trunk I would point out to Tony, impressed, and Tony would always tell me “it is a strangling fig ”.  Those fig trees grew next a host tree for support at first, but eventually would surround the host, cut off its sunlight and nutrients, killing it.  Some tree crowns extended all the way down to the river, creating a cool shade.  Tony liked to paddle our canoe under the trees, often picking the big long beans from the branch, and sharing the wild fruit with me.  These beans had little flesh and big pits, and tasted sour and sweet, so Tony called them “candies”.  Some trees were standing on the slope of the banks, and because of the annual flood and mud slide, they looked as if they were about to be uprooted and fall.  We came across many trees that had fallen into the river, some floating, some submerged, some covered with moss, and some nurturing new grass and flowers.  One of the fallen trees still had all the leaves on it, and Tony told me that it just fell in the previous week.  We often saw birds, mostly the little Mangrove Swallows, sitting on the dead branches in the river, watching sharply, and upon our approach, suddenly gliding away.

Very few people lived by the river.  Occasionally we saw footpaths leading to the top of the banks, but we didn’t see any other boat for two days.  And no tourists.  A few people were sitting by the river fishing, and Tony chatted with them when we passed by.  At one place a rope was stretched across the river, and nearby some boys were swimming and playing.

The jungle and the river teamed with wildlife of all kind.  At first, with untrained eyes I could only spot overhead birds.  Gradually, under Tony’s patient guidance my awareness grew and I began to see the many inhabitants of this strange world. 

Shortly after we got on the boats, Tony said, “Crocodile!” and pointed his finger toward a place in the river.  I looked in that direction for a long while but could not see anything unusual.  Then I heard Tony’s whisper “Iguana!” and saw him pointing at something in the bamboo bush a few feet away.  I looked hard but again could not see any.  “It’s a big green one, just on top of that branch.  Look through here.  See?”  Tony was patient and persistent in showing me the animal, and he quietly moved the canoe closer, but I still couldn’t locate it.  I became a little frustrated and thought I would not see anything interesting on this trip.  “I don’t see….” My voice suddenly disturbed something and right in front of my eyes a two foot long green object fell into the water.  I caught a glimpse of an iguana, my very first time!

Iguanas are very big lizards.  Although fearsome in appearance, they are in fact harmless, and only eat fruits and leaves.  “Vegetarians”, Tony laughed.  He pointed out many iguanas to us along the river.  Some were stretching on top of high tree branches sunbathing, some were hiding under the thick blanket of brush leaves eating, some were strolling up or down tree trunks majestically like a king, some were big and brown like monsters, some were green and so perfectly camouflaged that only their eyes betrayed them.  And they are extremely timid!  When in fear, they would quickly escape into the thick brush, leaving a trail of rustles, or directly drop themselves down into the river, making a big splash, like the first iguana we saw.  Once we spotted two colorful ducks standing on a patch of muddy beach, and as we approached to take pictures, they suddenly took off.   A second later we heard a big loud sound in the water, and realized that the flight of the ducks had scared an iguana somewhere in the tree and it fell into the river.  Ah, that was why Tony always made loud noise whenever we came under trees—he was hoping to collect iguanas falling into our canoe.  “Do you eat iguanas?”  I asked him.  “Not really.  Only once or twice”, he shrugged. “But some local people eat them.  They call them bamboo chickens.”   I suppose it must taste like chicken!  Anyhow, I grew a fond attachment toward iguanas, and by the end of our trip, I became an “iguana sighting expert”.  I was able to pick out suspicious shapes in the bare tree branches and would yell with excitement—“Iguana!” and Tony would gently smile and approve me—“Yes”. 

Birds were everywhere, and they were loud.  Unfortunately I was not a bird watcher and could not fully appreciate the sightings.  Tony could identify the birds from afar by the color, the shape, or the song.  Sometimes he would imitate the sounds of some birds, and I heard birds answering him from a distance.  Later at the campsite, Tony recited the names of all the birds we encountered and spelled them out for me so I could write them down and look them up afterward.  Since I got back, I have checked the names against Peterson Field Guides of Mexican Birds, and here are the names of the birds for interested readers: tinamou, cormorant, Anhinga, Little Blue Heron, Green-back Heron, Yellow-crown Night-Heron, Tiger-Heron, Boat-billed Heron, Black-bellied Tree-Duck, Turkey Vulture, Black Vulture, Harris’ Hawk, Laughing Falcon, Plain Chachalaca, Wood-Rail, Red-lored Parrot, Yellow-crowned Parrot, Great Horned Owl, nightjar, Citreoline Trogon, Violaceous Trogon, Ringed Kingfisher, Green Kingfisher, Pygmy Kingfisher, Keel-billed Toucan (local name banana bird), Collared Aracari, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Ruddy Woodcreeper, Social Flycatcher, Mangrove Swallow, Brown Jay, oropendola, cacique, Melodious Blackbird, Black-backed Oriole, Red-headed Gray Saltator (?), Collared Seedeater, fishing bat (not a bird), ….

At noon we stopped at a pebble beach to rest, and had some bananas and grapefruits for lunch.  I was astonished to see Tony and Nery threw the fruit peels into the clean river, only to learn that the fish would eat them in no time.  We then skipped some rocks.  For this Tony was by far the best I had ever seen!  It was impossible to tell how many times his rock skipped on the water because we would lose count after a first dozen skips.  Often the rock would make it all the way across the river to the other side!  As I was looking for flat rocks, I found a piece of flint with sharp edges, shaped like those stone-age rocks in anthropology museums.  I was so excited and I showed it to Tony.  With only one glance he told me that some Mayan Indian must have been carving this rock to make a weapon.  He said it so casually as if it was the most common rock in the river, so I did not ask him how old this rock might be.  I quietly kept the rock.

The first day we gently paddled 12 miles down the river in great leisure.  At two o’clock in the afternoon we reached our campsite.  The campsite was on the high left bank, overgrown with the jungle.  Tony told us that this general area was called Never Delay, and we were at Howler Camp.  For many years it was a logging campsite, and now only Tony’s group came here to camp.  “Tomorrow we will stop before More Tomorrow.  It was also a logging campsite”, Tony said.  I was amused by the colorful names the logging workers gave to their camps in the early days.  On my map I found names like Go To Hell, Leave If You Can.  As for the name Never Delay, it was because “there are a lot of mosquitoes, so you should leave early and never delay”, Tony explained.  These camps were long abandoned and the areas had been reclaimed by the forest.

Nery had to use a big machete to clear out a path from the river to the campground, and to clear an area to set up tents and fire.  “These things grow so fast.  Every time we come here we have to clear out the area”, Tony said apologetically.  Nery was very handy with his machete.  He chopped tree branches to use for fire, cut long poles to build rain shelters for the tents, and made a crutch for my friend who had a knee injury.  Watching Nery in action I was reminded of the descriptions I read of early jungle explorers who hired the natives to cut down thick vegetations in order to make a path or to reveal a hidden ruin.  And I remembered Harrison Ford in the Mosquito Coast, a film shot in Belize jungle.  Nery also used the machete to collect some herbal leaves for me, to cure me of the bad heat rash and allergic reaction to mosquito bites.  Tony showed me how to extract and apply the liquid from the leaves.  The natural remedy worked very well.  Within minutes my rash went down and I felt much relieved.  Later I found out the leaves were from a plant what we Chinese call “bitter melon”.

I helped Tony and Nery set up tents, make a fire, and prepare supper.  Some local women cook the food earlier that morning for us to heat up.  The food was very satisfying, especially after a half day of lazy paddling.  We had the usual rice and beans in a very delicious and fresh sauce, corn tortillas, tomatoes, and very large and unusual avocados.  By four o’clock we had finished supper.  My friend went into the tent to rest, and the rest three of us sat by the fire to hang out.  First, Tony poured some liquor into a plastic cup from a bottle labeled “Maya Whisky”, and added big chunks of ice.  Nery wouldn’t drink hard liquor, and claimed to only drink beer at home.  I wanted to follow Tony’s example—by this time I was already a fan of him—so I took a cup of iced whisky.  They were amused that I wanted to drink it, because this whiskey was made by a bona fide Chinese liquor factory in Belize.  Tony always brought a bottle with him to camping.  Later I tried to buy some from the stores for souvenir but was surprised to find that most stores wouldn’t carry this brand—even though 99% of all stores in Belize were owned by us Chinese immigrants.  The locals told me it was because the whisky was very bad and only the Chinese liked it.  Indeed, this liquor was weak and coarse, but perhaps ideal for jungle camping.  Later Tony rolled up a joint and offered to share with us.  Nery declined again—he was so virtuous!—but I wanted to follow Tony’s example again, so I decided to try.  I hardly knew what I was doing.  It was doing the forbidden thing with Tony that excited me, especially in such a remote place where everything was pre-allowed.  I only took a little, not enough to dull any of my senses.  I wanted to keep my senses awake to welcome all the sounds and colors and smells and vibrations of the forest.

At first it was still bright.  We sat around and looked at the photos on my digital camera screen.  They really liked the animal photos and asked me to send them some.  Tony never advertised his tours because he didn’t want too many people, but he would like to show his future tourists what they might find on the river.  I was glad to be of some use to him.  To make more connections, I took out some printed photos of my past travels and activities that I brought from home to share with them.  They had not traveled outside Belize except Guatemala border area, and they were very glad to see my photos.  They liked the one of the Amsterdam flower market—“so many flowers!” they exclaimed.  And they wanted to know about those little colorful fruits people were selling in Nice.  I told them those were not real fruits, but candies that were made to look like miniature oranges, limes, mangos, apples….  They examined the photo closely and were very impressed.  They also remarked on the photos of the California wildflowers, the Michigan snow, the LA freeway traffic jam, a petrified tree from Arizona, and the colorful Chihuly glass sculpture in Las Vegas.  But they never commented on any of those Italian churches or New York skyscrapers or Roswell aliens.

Sitting in between Tony and Nery, smelling the warmth of the camp fire, watching the river flowing andante in front of us, sipping bad Chinese whiskey, smoking a cigarette, listening to the jungle winding down for the evening, making small talks of nothing important, for me it was the ultimate feeling of simplicity, peace, and solitude.  We were the only people here, quietly occupying a small corner in the vast forest.  The many creatures in the forest were conducting their daily business as usual, completely indifferent to our existence.  Even the mosquitoes were kept away by the smoke from the fire.  Gradually it began to get dark.  The temperature was cool and comfortable.  The jungle scene changed.  Nocturnal animals came to play.  How many of her secrets would the forest reveal to me tonight?  I waited with great excitement.

The first secret was Tony.  He was the most amazing experience I had on this trip.  I was constantly amazed by his intimate knowledge of the forest and the wildlife and his comfort in being a part of them.  He could see things with his nose and ears.  In my big city mentality, his extraordinary jungle ability could only be compared with Tarzan.  When we first arrived at the campsite, I asked Tony whether we would see the famous howler monkeys on the trip.  He gave me a nod, lifted up his nose, sniffed around for a few seconds, pointed toward a tree in the distance and said, “There are some monkeys over there.”  “You can smell monkeys?” I was incredulous.  “Oh, yeah.  I can smell them.  I can smell most animals in the forest”, he answered in his casual tone.  Nery took me to check out the monkeys on the tree.  We hiked into the forest for about 200 feet and found indeed a family of seven or eight little black monkeys jumping from one tree to another.  The next morning, Tony smelled a larger family of monkeys on the trees up the river.  These little monkeys looked like black dots that shifted around.  With the help of binoculars, I was able to see them swinging from branch to branch, or hanging upside down by their tails, playful as monkeys!

“Can you smell crocodiles too?” I asked Tony as we were sitting in the dark.  “No.  They don’t give smell.  But I can hear them.”  When we kept quiet, I could hear faint sounds of splashing water from the river.  Tony described to me what each sound was: sometimes a fish jumped out of water to eat insects; sometimes a night fishing bat dived down to catch a fish; sometimes a crocodile splashed his tail to kill a fish and then loudly chewed on it.  Could Tony really hear such fine details of river sounds?  And where was the crocodile we knew so much about?  He scanned the opposite riverbank with a flashlight and fixed the beam on something near the water, “See, there’s a crocodile.”  It was so far away that I could see nothing at all.  “See the two red eyes shining where my light is?”  “That’s a crocodile?!” I was excited.  “That’s the one we just heard eating the fish.”  After a while Tony heard the crocodile crossing the river, and when we looked, we saw the two red eyes move closer to our bank.  “Is he coming over here?”  “No.  There’s a crocodile on this side too.  They don’t go into each other’s territory.”  Another crocodile?  On our side?  I wasn’t ready to believe.  “Hear that splash just now?  The crocodile on this side is warning the other one not to come too close.”  Tony described the sequence of the events in a plain tone as if he had seen these two crocodiles dealing with each other like this many times.  I heard the warning splash again and I wondered how many such dramas were going on in the darkness each night. 

Tony then swept his flashlight toward the forest behind us and revealed many bright little eyes, silent and watchful in the dark.  “These are the nocturnal animals.”  The music of the jungle at night was also different from that in the day.  In the day there were the loud, short, happy bird chirps.  At night the insects made long, sad, sustained sounds.  To show me, Tony imitated the sound of the day and the sound of the night.  Somewhere in the distance, a bird was awoken by Tony’s call and weakly replied.  When I asked him about it, Tony told me that he could call all the birds and many animals in the forest.  I remembered earlier today he exchanged calls with some birds and thus revealed their whereabouts, and he also made some calls to the monkeys so they wouldn’t run away upon my approach.  Now he was making some repeated sounds with his lips, and as in a dream, dozens of fireflies appeared from nowhere, floating toward us, dancing up and down in the dark.  The scene was rather ghostly.  “In the summer, hundreds of fireflies will come to my call.  Once there came so many that the tourists got really scared”, Tony told me.  I tried to imitate the sound, and I believed that a few fireflies actually came for me.

“Can you call armadillos?”  “Of course!  But I don’t want to call the animals too much.  It is bad luck.  We believe there are spirits inside the animals.  When you call them, you are calling the spirits.  I don’t want to disturb the spirits.  I want to leave them alone”, Tony explained.  Just as we were talking, all of a sudden Tony quieted us with a “shhh…” and a frozen hand gesture.  He sat up straight, turning his ears slightly toward the shadows of the forest, still as a statue yet ready to spring into action.  He must have heard something in the woods.  I sat with my heart in my throat and waited in suspense.  A slight rustle, barely audible, stopped, another one, maybe, nothing, a few minutes passed.  Tony whispered to Nery, “Over there.  Very quiet.  No light.”  Nery grabbed a rifle (for protection) and noiselessly entered the dark, as if following a trail.  A minute later he came back and said disappointedly, “It got away.”  “What was that?”  I was still in the dark, not knowing what had happened.  “An armadillo”, Tony told me, “that was an armadillo coming down to search for food.  You can recognize the sound of their footsteps.  The big animals make different sounds than the small ones.”  Tony mimicked the sounds to show me.  Later that night when lying in my tent, I heard some footsteps similar to what he had described.  In the morning they told me that an armadillo did come to visit us and took some of our leftover food.

We drank some more Maya Whisky and rekindled the campfire.  Tony started to tell me his life story.  “When I was fifteen I started to work for the logging company with my father.  We lived in the forest for many years.  We did logging all over Belize.  It was a lot of hard work.  Very hard work!  I learned about the jungle during those years.  We discovered a lot of Maya ruins too, some are very big.  That year when I was 26, a group of Canadian tourists came to Cayo and they wanted to find someone to take them to the jungle.  People told them about me because I knew the jungle pretty well.  So I took them into the jungle for a few days, just showing them where I had been to and what wild animals we could see.  They really liked the trip.  At the end they gave me some money.  I thought—this is such an easy way to make money; all I had to do is just to take people to the places I like to go.  So I became a guide.  It is really a lot better than logging”, Tony laughed.  Indeed he knew the jungle well.  I remember earlier when he saw on my map one of the tiny thumbnail photo of a man riding a horse crossing a river, he immediately recognized the exact location of the photo just from the one tree in the background.  The caption read “out in the wilds, Cayo district”.  I was so astonished.  Anyway, I was glad that he was not cutting down trees anymore but, on the contrary, he was guiding people to see and learn about the beauty and the bounty of the forest.  He also took people hiking in the jungle, for days.  In the summer high season sometimes he could have a fleet of ten canoes.  But in the slow season when there were no tourists, Tony would still come out here with friends, to camp, to fish, to hang out, and to enjoy the forest.  “When you are here, you forget all your worries”, he said with a smile.

Late in the evening, we went down to the river bank.  We lay down in the canoes, watching the night sky.  I pointed at the brilliant Mars and told them that in three days it would come the closest to earth it had been in 60,000 years, the famous Mars opposition event that was in the news all over the world.  They were surprised and glad in seeing such a bright planet, but from their lack of excitement I didn’t think they had much knowledge of the stars.  Perhaps it was because they grew up in the skyless forest.  Nery went to the beach, standing in the mud with bare feet, holding a flashlight and a machete in each hand, bending down and watching the flowing water beneath him with full concentration.  “What is he doing?” I asked Tony.  “He is trying to catch some fish.”  “Using that big machete?  How can that be possible?!” I doubted it.  “Oh, I can do it.  It’s very easy for me.  But he is still learning.  He needs a lot of practice.”  “And a lot of luck”, I thought to myself.  I stopped asking more silly questions whose answers were all so obvious to Tony.  I was content to be close to Tony and doing whatever he was doing.  Lying in the boat, listening to Nery’s knife cutting through water, I imagined him patiently trying and failing to spear fish, by this silent river, in this moonless night, holding that dim flashlight and that big machete.  And I dreamed of fish barbeque for breakfast.

I turned in around 10 o’clock.  The sounds of the night brought back my sweet memory of the evenings in the Amazon jungle and put me to sleep.  In the morning, I was awoken by the sighting of a crocodile.  It was supposed to be one of those from the night before, sunbathing on the muddy bank.  When the sun became hot, the crocodile jumped into the river and was not to be seen again.  After a delicious breakfast of eggs, beans, tortillas, fruits, and instant coffee (no fish), we started off again.

The second day was sunny and hot.  In the oppressive heat, we swiftly paddled seven miles down the river.  At noon, before reaching the end of our trip at More Tomorrow, we jumped into the river for a dip.  We played in the cool water like little kids.  Nery pretended to be a crocodile.  Tony held his breath in the water for a long long time.  I floated on my back, watching the bright sky, the lush forest, the iguana on the tree, the curious yellow butterflies, and listening to the songs of the rapid and the birds and the laughter of Tony and Nery.  I was so happy to be invited by all the creatures to share their happiness.

First draft:            September 18, 2003
Second draft:       October 2, 2003
Final draft:           October 7, 2003
Revision:              November 4, 2003 (Thanks Sushil, George for constructive comments!)