Through the Mother of God

The Linger Loco!

Chapter 13: Through the Mother of God

Between the lines of competitive raindrops racing down

the glass window of the train, I watch a torrent of brown

muddy water flow past at great speed. On the verge of

bursting its banks, the powerful force of the water seizes

boulders and tears trees from the ground like a dentist

extracting teeth. You wouldn’t stand a chance if you fell in.

It would swallow you whole and break every bone in your

body. I can see the front page headline in tomorrow’s

newspaper, “200 Tourists Killed as Train Crashes into

Peruvian Death River!” I lean back in my seat and start to

think about the journey to Puerto Maldonado, a frontier

town in the Madre de Dios. Will it be possible to get there

by road with all of this rain? I try to imagine travelling

through the Amazon, but find it hard to visualize. I close

my eyes again this time falling asleep.

Caked in mud, Si energetically hails a taxi outside the bus

station in Cusco and we zoom through the busy streets to

our hostel. I feel immediately at home, as we greet the

receptionist and swing open the door to our room with a

view. I jump in the shower and freshen up before knocking

on Franco’s door. There’s no answer, so I decide to use the

internet in the courtyard and quickly sign into MSN. I

spend the next ten minutes flirting with a couple of

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English women sat bored in their homes. I tell one of them

I’m in South America and she replies with a ‘LOL’, which

apparently means (laugh out loud). She then calls me a

lucky bastard before writing, “I went to South America last

year, to Florida!” I think she’s joking to begin with, but

sadly she’s not. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I’m

referring to Latin America, as in the south of the Americas,

a whole different continent. I turn my attention to the second

woman, who calls herself ‘Fartmunger’, which is kind of

disturbing. She’s a middle-aged housewife from Bradford

with boggle eyes, and she tells me she wants to put her

web cam on and show me her big fat tits, but unfortunately

she can’t because her husband is watching football in the

next room. “No worries,” I write back. “No worries at all!”

Signing out of MSN, I go on Google and begin researching

the Trans-Oceanic Highway and the Madre de Dios. I find

a number of interesting ecological websites about the concerns

of illegal logging in the area, and a new $80 million

bridge that opened a few days ago connecting Peru and

Brazil. I skim read an article on the National Geographic

website by a journalist, who travelled the road by truck in

the dry season and made it from Cusco to Puerto

Maldonado. It sounds like an absolute nightmare journey,

with trucks getting stuck in the mud and roads being completely

washed away in the rainy season.

Si slaps me around the back of my head and peers over

at the computer screen. ‘Looking at porn?’

‘No, I’ve just been researching the road ahead. It looks

like hell.’

‘That’s perfect, just how we like it.’

‘It looks really dangerous.’

‘We’ll be OK, local people must make this journey all of

the time.’

‘But they don’t have a choice.’

‘And we do?’

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‘Yes.’

‘Chris, we can’t afford to fly to Brazil and there’s no way

I’m backtracking to Bolivia. Besides, it’ll be an adventure.

Who knows what we might find!’

* * *

With rucksacks over our shoulders we arrive at Cusco bus

station in the early afternoon. Running up the stairs to the

second level, Chris spots a lone kiosk with a brightly

coloured sign above the desk that reads “Turismo

Mendivil” and “Pto. Maldonado”. It looks brand new and

the picture of the bus/truck with its big wheels seems fairly

decent, considering I thought we were going to be riding

on the back of an open lorry. Local Peruvians crowd

around and struggle with their luggage that’s tied up in

enormous bundles. Pleased we’d thought ahead a little and

visited a hardware shop called ‘Plasticos’ early this morning,

Chris eagerly pulls the thick yellow plastic bags over our

rucksacks and ties them tight with a length of cord. We

hang around drinking strong black coffee and observe our

fellow passengers, who look like they might be market

traders buying goods from Cusco to sell in Puerto

Maldonado, or illegal loggers on their way to help cut

down the Amazon rainforest. Eventually, everyone slowly

heads down to the platform, and we follow close behind

and wait outside in the sunshine for the bus to arrive. It

doesn’t. Well, at least not for a few hours, and we take the

delay in our stride, reminding ourselves that when crossing

a frontier like this nothing can be expected to go to plan.

Some hours later a huge dirty noisy vehicle skids into the

station and jerks to a halt on the platform. As the fumes

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engulf us we realise our transport to the Amazon has

arrived. The strange looking bus appears to have a truck’s

chassis with the body of a bus plonked on the top. Raised

high off the ground the truck has huge wheels with deep

treads and is perfectly designed for off road driving. We

feel more confident that if we are going to make it at all,

we’ll have a better chance if we’re travelling on one of

these mean machines. Everybody immediately starts

scrambling for position, but we choose to hang back and

watch as they load the truck with everyone’s luggage.

Hauling huge sacks onto the roof and lashing them to the

metal frame, we feel relieved our bags are watertight. The

woman from the office spots us and waves us over. She

takes our bags and thoughtfully loads them into the luggage

compartment, completely ignoring us as she moves

onto the next passenger. Climbing aboard the big truck

there’s a strong smell of the countryside and stale cheese,

and beating Chris to the window seat I quickly slide it

open. Our fellow passengers are of all ages, from mothers

with children, to men on their own. There’s an elderly

couple at the front, perhaps visiting family in Puerto

Maldonado for the first time in their lives. Before we know

it we’re rattling from side-to-side as we pull out of the bus

terminal. The driver seems to be very confident when it

comes to controlling this tank, and I assume to drive the

‘Trans-Oceanic Highway’, from the top of the Andes and

through the Amazon jungle, it would be a necessary

requirement. We head out of Cusco on the road to Urcos

and hurtle through the beautiful countryside passing the

tranquil village of San Jeronimo on the Rio Huatanay. We

drive on fairly good surfaced roads into the evening and

watch the sun drop below the mountains, as we pass the

town of Quincemil 240km from Urcos. My ears keep popping

and I guess we must be dropping in altitude quite

quickly. The road becomes more hazardous by the minute

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as it begins to grow dark, and I try to ignore the sound of

the squealing brakes as we whip around sharp bends and

skid along narrow mountain passes at an altitude of

15,585-feet. Somehow I drift off to sleep, and some hours

later I wake to the sound of the engine cutting out. I

assume we’ve pulled up for the night at a rest stop and I

feel relieved we’re not travelling on these roads in the dark.

I snuggle into my tracksuit top and quickly drift off to sleep.

At first light, I peer out of the window and gasp at the

sheer drop outside. The bus is balanced on a high cliff

edge somewhere in the Andes, and I look around in panic

and realise we’re the only ones onboard.

‘Where is everybody?’ I cry.

Chris looks around, and shrugs. He’s still half-asleep and

doesn’t appear to give a shit. I peer out of the window and

notice all of the passengers are stood on the other side of a

bend in the road. A landslide has washed half of the road

into the valley below, and it doesn’t look wide enough for

the truck’s huge wheels. The engine roars into life, making

Chris jump. We both peer wide-eyed out of the window

and watch as the driver attempt to manoeuvre the truck

along a knife-edge. Chris covers his eyes as the bus tips to

the left at a steep angle. The bus jerks and shunts, and we

cringe as the driver takes the truck to the maximum angle

without tipping it over the edge. We eventually crawl onto

even ground, and the truck falls back the other way and

rocks a few times before coming to a rest. The passengers

quickly climb aboard and glare at our frightened faces.

They could’ve at least woken us up. The driver merrily

squeezes past a queue of trucks that has built up in the

opposite direction over night, and continues on his way.

All in a day’s work! Trying to make up for lost time, the

driver hurtles down the mountain roads and we watch his

every move with fear. My heart is working overtime and

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I’ve gnawed my fingernails down to the skin. My ears keep

popping and I pinch my nose and blow in an attempt to

equalize every few minutes. Even our fellow passengers

begin to look pale, and I try to stay calm and enjoy the

amazing views of the mountains as we make our speedy

descent.

After about an hour we arrive in the small town of

Mazuk. A group of hard-faced local men stand in the main

square and sing at the top of their voices. They’re blind

drunk and hang off each other, as they stumble around the

road clasping bottles of alcohol. One of the guy’s attempts

to play a little guitar with only one string, and Chris laughs

at their comedy drunkenness. Mazuko is at around 1,000

metres above sea level, which seems crazy when we were

at over 3,000 metres in Cusco, and I begin to notice there’s

more vegetation and trees either side of the road. People

are still wrapped up at this time in the morning and look

similar to the people of the Andes, but there appears to be

less bowler hats around.

Filling up with fuel, we continue our descent and after a

while the bus pulls up outside a small restaurant. There’s

a sign outside which reads, “BAR RESTARANT, EL CHEF

MAGALY”, and we follow the other passengers into a

dimly lit wooden building. We perch ourselves on the end

of a long wooden table and wait to be served. A pretty

young girl with rosy cheeks and petite features serves us a

plate of rice with steaming meat and vegetables piled on

top of it. I’m not sure when we’ll get another chance to eat,

so I happily tuck into the morning’s feast. The curious

dark faces sat around the table glance up at us and shyly

look away and a guy with a Nike baseball cap smiles. Most

of the passengers are dressed in modern clothes, jeans and

sweat shirts, and the girl waiting the tables wears red jogging

bottoms and has the number 55 on her tracksuit top.

After taking a quick leak in the toilet at the bottom of the

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garden, we climb aboard the stale smelling bus and head

back on the road. We have absolutely no idea how long it

will take to get to Puerto Maldonado, which relaxes me in

a way. It could be twenty-four hours; it could be three

days. Neither of us has a watch, which helps and we try to

forget about time for a while and simply enjoy having the

opportunity to do little except observe the world outside

the window.

* * *

The bus jerks and I’m shaken from my morning siesta. I

feel hot, and I wipe my sticky forehead on my T-shirt. Si

rocks backwards and forwards and nods his head in time

to the unpredictable motion of the bus. Having stolen the

window seat, I pull the thin red curtain to one side and

slide the tinted glass across to let in more air. I immediately

feel a warm wall of heat hit my greasy face, and I poke my

head out of the window and smell the sweet jungle. The

road we’re driving on is a stony unsurfaced dirt track similar

to the road we travelled on across the Andes. We

approach a red iron bridge and the truck mounts the

wooden boards. It seems incredible that a vehicle of this size

can drive across wooden planks without them snapping

under the weight, but we make it across the wide river

without collapsing into the water. We cross many more of

these identical red bridges, and blink in disbelief when we

pass a large billboard in the middle of nowhere promoting

the construction of the new ‘Trans-Oceanica’. It displays a

picture of a luxury coach cruising down a beautifully

paved highway. The modern world has come knocking on

the door of one of the world’s most amazing wildernesses,

and nothing is going to stop it ploughing down the trees

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and thundering right through. The deeper we penetrate the

Madre de Dios the more trucks begin to appear, as they

make the long journey over the Andes to the Pacific coast

where their cargo of lucrative mahogany will be loaded

onto ships bound for the United States and Europe. It’s the

first signs of deforestation, the first signs of this highway

cutting out the lungs of the earth. Pulling over to allow the

trucks to squeeze by I look at the faces of the loggers and

construction workers travelling between Puerto

Maldonado and Cusco. It’s slow going as we reverse and

shunt in the depths of the jungle. I notice some of the

trucks look new, and I smile at a big guy driving a white

Volvo truck with “L.A.” printed in black letters above the

cab. As far as he’s concerned progress has arrived, and it

seems pretty clear that if you are a willing entrepreneur

there’s big bucks to be made in the jungle.

Observing the natural beauty of the pristine jungle I study

the tall trees and their thick vines. Grabbing my camera, I

photograph bright red tropical flowers growing at the roadside,

which until now I had only ever seen plonked in

vases on office reception desks or in hotel lobbies. All of a

sudden, I hear squawking above my head. I look up and

see a flock of grey parrots with white clown faces flying

alongside the truck. They’re so close I can practically reach

out and touch them. They look like miniature macaws

with small eyes and wrinkles on their white faces. They

look at me with keen interest and continue to chase us

through the forest. It’s a deeply surreal sight and I try to

imagine what we must look like from above, as this strange

manmade vehicle speeds through millions of hectares of

sub-tropical rainforest. The parrots fly off and we struggle

to pass a queue of trucks carrying wood on a sharp bend,

which loops around a ten-metre waterfall. Fears of a paved

highway immediately disappear. This region is harsh terrain

and we wait, once again, for a few trucks to squeeze

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past before attempting the bend. I look to my right and

wonder where the smart guy has gone who was sitting

across the aisle from Si. He was reading a translated copy

of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown. I look up and down

the truck, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I wonder if he

jumped out somewhere along route, although, we haven’t

passed any towns and he looked too smart to be a logger. I

look to the front of the truck and I suddenly realise he’s

driving! Stripped down to his white vest, he’s covered in

sweat and battles with the steering wheel. The muscles on

his arms look tense, but I catch a glimpse of his face in the

large rear view mirror and I can see he’s laughing and having

the time of his life. It fascinates me to think that a few

hours ago he was reading ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and possibly

imagining he was in Paris or London, and now he’s behind

the wheel of a truck battling along a dirt track in the middle

of the Amazon jungle. The bus slows down and the guy

jumps out and chats to a truck driver. I look out of my window

and realise we’re facing a wide river. There doesn’t

appear to be a bridge anywhere in sight and the dirt track

simply disappears into the water. Climbing back into the

truck, the guy cracks his fingers, exercises his arms and

cranks the bus into gear. We head straight for the water and

I look out of my window in amazement, as the wheels

gradually disappear below the surface. We slowly head

down stream and hit boulders and sink into potholes. The

truck rocks from side-to-side and the driver shunts and

battles against the flow, causing the truck to lean sharply

to the right. A few people scream and then laugh, my buttocks

clench the seat and I wipe sweat from my forehead.

The potholes are deep and the truck struggles to get

through them. We’re thrown violently to the left, and a bag

stored on the rack above the seats falls onto a woman’s

head. She screams and throws the bag to the floor. It all

seems to be getting a little nasty. The truck leans to the

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right again and stays at that angle for 20 seconds before

correcting itself. I grasp the armrests and turn to Si. We’re

speechless. This is all too much for us. If the truck leans a

little bit further we’re fucked. I look for exit points in case

it tips onto its side in the deep water, but I quickly realise

there aren’t any. The truck is packed with people. They’ll

be panic if it rolls. The windows only open a small

amount, not enough to climb through. It seems the main

door is the only way out. That’s if you can get there before

you drown. I hate the thought of drowning with my brother

sitting next to me. If I have to drown I’d prefer to do it in

private. The wheels disappear completely, and the water

level reaches the luggage compartment beneath the bus,

which is well over a metre high. I think about our bags

sloshing around in a foot of water and wonder if perhaps

the woman loading the bus wasn’t being quite so kind after

all. Our nightmare river journey from hell lasts over an

hour, and we thankfully emerge on the other side of the

river and wheel spin onto the bank. I feel relieved to be

back on dry land, and I’m close to handing the guy a $20

note as a thank you for not killing us. I still cannot believe

this dude was originally a passenger. Sadly, this isn’t the

last of our river experiences and we battle across many

more flooded areas as we push deeper and deeper into the

Amazon.

In the late evening we find ourselves passing small wooden

shacks along a dirt track. Thirty-three hours have passed

since we left Cusco and we haven’t had a pit stop for

hours. As it begins to grow dark the skies open up, and hot

tropical rain thunders down overhead. I feel physically and

mentally exhausted. My body aches and my face is sore

and my mouth is as dry as a bone. Si looks like he’s just

fought a battle and lost miserably. The thought of being

close to the bright lights of Puerto Maldonado, makes me

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want to jump out of my seat and kiss every single person on

this putrid smelling truck. Cusco seems like another trip,

another month, another year. Mary-Jane, Franco and

everyone else we met in Cusco seem like friends from a

time gone by.

Bright lights appear on the horizon as we approach the

frontier town of Puerto Maldonado. The truck is on a tarmac

road now, and it truly feels like we’re driving over silk.

People shelter from the rain outside the rows of tatty

shops, and young teenagers on mopeds watch as our tank

makes its presence known. It seems to be a fairly rundown

place, which I kind of expected from a frontier town at the

end of the line. People around us stand up and organize

their belongings and the driver/passenger, who has

returned to his seat, quickly finishes the last page of ‘The

Da Vinci Code’. He slams the book shut and blinks at his

reflection in the window. We too gather our bags together,

and release a sigh of relief when the bus jerks to a halt for

the last time. The doors swing open and everyone charges

down the aisle and pushes for the exit. I step down onto

the tarmac road and slowly look around; it’s stiflingly hot

and I’m instantly attacked by a group of taxi drivers and

touts. They shout out to grab my attention and wave

leaflets in my face. Everything seems to be in slow motion.

I look down at the side of the bus and see our yellow sacks

lying on the wet pavement. Si falls off the bus close behind

and runs over to the bags. They follow him too and shout

in his face. It’s all a little surreal, but we calmly grab our

bags and walk over to a three-wheeled moto-taxi parked

up nearby. The guy strikes the two-stroke engine and we

speed away from the chaos behind us. I look over my

shoulder and see the truck for the last time.

Within five minutes of travelling through the wet streets

the driver turns left and then right down a small dark road,

and stops outside a white rundown building that looks a

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bit like somewhere the outlaws Butch Cassidy and the

Sundance Kid might have spent the night. Paying the driver

with damp notes we stumble through the doors of the

hotel. The reception area is very basic, with wooden white

washed walls the same as the outside and a concrete floor.

A naked light bulb hangs from the ceiling, and if it were

not for the tropical humidity you might describe the place

as cold. A middle-aged man smiles and slides over a registration

book. He has a bronze complexion and salt and

pepper hair. We drop our rucksacks on the floor and force

a smile. The guy laughs and turns to three old men watching

TV in the next room. We both laugh. We all laugh. We

don’t know why we are laughing; it’s almost a way to overcome

the pure exhaustion we’re both feeling. Somehow we

scribble our details in the book and the guy hands us a key.

He points up to the ceiling and we guess he means the

room above, so we stagger through the TV room and say

“hola” to the three gentlemen relaxing in their uncomfortable

looking wooden chairs. Climbing the stairs onto a

creaky balcony, a crooked sign with Hostal Moderno written

on it hangs outside all tangled up in power cables. Kicking

the door open we step inside the tiny room. It stinks. The

beds are as hard as a rock and the sheets smell musty and

unwashed. There are no curtains at the windows and the

white walls are covered with little red bloodstains from

where people have smacked the living crap out of the mosquitoes.

At this moment in time the room could have no

roof and a swarm of cockroaches living under the bed, and

I’d still be too tired to care. On that note we collapse into

unconsciousness. My last delirious thought is – the mosquitoes

are going to have a field day.

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