Entry Eleven BOLIVIA Cochabamba, 6 October Update: The Cochabamba Experience: October 1-12 From La Paz we contacted journalist Tita Saez in Cochabamba. She offered to introduce us to people who could help us get to the Encuentro Mundial in Vallegrande. It was October 1 and tour groups would be arriving for the festivities in only five days. We had no idea how we would make the thirteen hour trip from Cochabamba nor where we would stay once we got there. We'd read that camping was the only option, but we had no camping gear. It was time to leave La Paz. My guide book quoted the bus fare from La Paz to Cochabamba as 8$US. I couldn't afford that. My cyber cafe expenses now had me on a $7/day budget. We would have to hitchhike. First we had to get back to the main road. The long trek up the mountainside was impossible to walk with backpacks, so we sprang for a one peso colectivo. The ride took us through La Paz's largest and busiest market district. It was a vast, colorful display of flowers, foodstuffs, and basic consumer goods, set against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains, the highest of which is majestic Illimani. Indian women dressed in multi-layered skirts, sleeved aprons, and bowler hats, the traditional garb of the Andes, clearly dominated the marketplace economy. The visual effect was stunning. It also made me hungry. I had dined the night before on stale popcorn in a bar near the university we passed on the trip back from the cyber cafe. Live musicans played songs by Cuban Silvio Rodriguez. Patrons were Che aficionados all. While nursing the same beer for three hours,I talked with a law student who proudly proclaimed that although class distinctions do exist in Bolivia, racial discrimination does not. And "nobody starves, not like in Brazil and Argentina." I think he got one out of three right. The inconsistency beween the picture he painted of Bolivian society and his professed devotion to Che Guevara was noted. The marketplace in La Paz may have supported the notion that Bolivians are quite well fed, but our trip to Cochabamba and beyond was to shattered that illusion soundly. The colectivo left us off in El Alto, one of the poorer districts of La Paz, near a row of small bus stations. Here I learned a valuable lesson. Bus fares vary significantly outside of the central terminal. We were offered first class tickets to Cochabamba for under $3. We bought them and saved ourselves two days on the road. The seven-hour ride through the Bolivian highlands was spectacular. The high plains were dotted with neat adobe structures that consisted of a small hut for humans and a larger corral for animals. In this idyllic setting, nothing hinted of abject poverty, back-breaking labor, or one of the lowest life expectancy rates and highest infant mortality rates in the Americas. The proliferation of UNICEF projects I saw along the way--more, I learned, than in any other nation of Latin America-- painted another picture. Bolivia is clearly a lesser developed country in terms of infrastructure, availability of consumer goods, and access to technology. Most peasants still don't hold title to their lands. They live on the edge, vulnerable to political and economic forces that are out of their control. For example, this year's El Ni~o phenomenon may cost Bolivia from 1.5% to 3.5% of its GDP, some $400 to $900 million dollars. The brunt of those costs will be born by the peasantry and urban poor. The 7,000 hectares of illegal coca fields being eradicated now at the insistence of the U.S. are the only source of income for peasants forced off of agricultural lands elsewhere. Some of them will be killed defending their livelihood. Others will move further into the jungle where valuable ecosystems will be destroyed to plant replacement crops. Alternative employment opportunities don't exist. Arriving in Cochabamba, we found ourselves in another world from La Paz. La Paz is dirty, chaotic, and cold. But its indigenous flavor gives it charm. Cochabamba exemplifies the slow-paced, hedonistic lifestyle of the sub-tropics. We were about to be spoiled. We found ourselves an annoyingly basic but cheap hotel called Residencial Florida. It was one of those places with hot water "twenty-four hours a day," yet a hot shower always alludes you. The rather pleasant courtyard of the interior nicely offset the row of funeral parlors that confronted one outside. Then, Tita took over. For the next five days, she and her congressman husband, Rene Recacochea, wined and dined us and cared for our every need. Tita took us to Tarata, a colonial town famous for having produced a veritable gaggle of Bolivian presidents and for its convent and church, which inspired the film The Mission. Its priest had provided a hiding place for Che Guevara, though that fact does not appear in the guidebooks. The house where he found refuge was beside the convent. Later, she introduced us to Quico, the president of F.U.L., the student government organization at San Simon University. Through him we got our entire trip to the Encuentro paid for as members of an international student delegation F.U.L. was sponsoring. Six delegates from Cuba and two caravans, one originating in Mexico and the other in Argentina, would arrive on October 6. That night, after a concert and tribute to Che on campus, we and some sixty students from San Simon, would leave for Vallegrande and La Higuera. To my amazement, I was formally presented as a Mexican delegate. It seemed imprudent to organizers to introduce me as a U.S. citizen, since "Yankee Imperialists" are not looked on very favorably here (or anywhere else we've gone in South America). Informally, I always identified myself as being from the Miami area. I wasn't sure how the Cuban delegates would respond to that, but one of them was extremely friendly to me. We talked openly about U.S.-Cuban relations. She encouraged me to come to Cuba some time. "Maybe a motorcycle journey through Cuba?", I thought. Until then, we did what Cochabambinos do best: we ate and drank and lolled around. The lifestyle in Cochabamba is incredibly slow. By their own admission, Cochabambinos "live to eat." They have five meals per day, every one of which they take very seriously. We learned that they also live to drink. On Friday night, Tita and Quico took us to a pe~a, a raucous, beer-guzzling national institution in which live musicians play typical Bolivian and Latin American music non-stop until 4 am. For those of you who believe that Elvis is not dead, let me assure you that he is alive and well, aging and sodden, in Bolivia. The next morning, Quico and a friend took us to the southern section of Cochabamba. The south is "the other side of the tracks," where peasants forced off centrally located agricultural lands to make way for the luxury homes of narco-traffickers, eke out a bare existence. Surrounded by dirt roads, the humblest of shacks, and all the vestiges of extreme poverty, we sat outdoors eating chicharon (roast pig) with our hands and drinking buckets of chicha, guarapo, and garapi~a (corn and grape-based firewater) from a common gourd. It was early and we were a bit hung over from the night before. This was the perfect cure: lots of grease and hair of the dog that bit ya'. I tried not to think about how many mouths had drunk from the same gourd we were now passing around our grime-encrusted table. At that moment, it didn't matter. This was the other side of life in Cochabamba. The affluence of the northern part of the city was nowhere evident here. In this place women wore faces as cracked and wrinkled as an Atacama salt bed. Jaws packed with coca leaves to stave off hunger and provide energy for the hard day ahead gave the place the look of a squirrel's carnival. Lunch for many was chicha, the first gourdful of which was spilled on the ground as an offering to Pachamama, the earth mother, upon whom their meager existence depended. For these people, life was a day to day ordeal. Changing their condition would be dificult in a country where most of the university students I talked to said that they planned careers in politics, but were unable to identify themselves with any political goals or issues. For most, politics is merely a road to wealth and power in a country where other opportunities are few. Commitment to service seems minimal. Gatherings at Tita and Rene's were a wonderful respite from the rigors of travel. Professors, journalists, artists, family members and friends, many of whom had shared the experience of exile, provided a perfect blend of intelligent conversation and rousing fun. Returning from the Encuentro, we stayed for two nights with Tita and Rene. Again, their hospitality knew no bounds. Our last day there, an Aymara curandero came to ritually "clean" the house and read our fortunes in coca leaves. The leaves were with me. I may just survive this trip. On Sunday, October 12, more than twenty-four hours after we'd packed and started to leave for La Paz (it's a pace of life thing), we reached the bus station only to find that every bus to the capital was either price-gouging or full. We opted for hitch-hiking. We'd been spoiled in Cochabamba and needed to get back in the groove. Tita and Rene kindly drove us to the checkpoint outside of town where rides would be most available. We had arrived in Cochabamba as strangers; we left behind us two new friends.

Entry Twelve BOLIVIA Vallegrande, 12 October Update: Encuentro Mundial Ernesto Che Guevara: October 6-10 What we'd come to Bolivia for was about to happen. After what seemed like a lifetime of sitting around campus waiting for the confusion that is a natural product of student-run activities to subside, we set off for the Encuentro Mundial Ernesto Che Guevara, the 30th anniversary of his death. I was exhausted, pooched out like a blow-fish from too much food and alcohol, and, quite frankly, not looking forward to the 13-hour bus ride ahead, most of it over unpaved roads. My condition didn't improve during the all night ride. The coche cama, or sleeper bus, F.U.L. had rented was clearly made for amputees. I almost envied the students without seats who stretched out in the aisles. I perked up a bit at dawn when I could look out at some scenery. After all, I was on my way to an historic event. About the historic event: I had a feeling that it wasn't going to be the Woodstock gathering predicted by the Chilean press when I read in a Bolivian newspaper that instead of 60,000 attendees only about 2,000 were expected and that the price of an Encuentro pass was to be determined by the nationality of the purchaser. Bolivians would pay 70 Bolivianos (a prohibitive price for most), "others" would pay 35 U.S. dollars. Europeans, Canadians, U.S. citizens, and Japanese, on the other hand, would be charged the exorbitant price of $200 U.S. I didn't wonder that only 250 people showed up for opening day. When we arrived in Vallegrande at 2 pm, things were indeed slow. There were more vendors than there were visitors. If you wanted to buy Che memorabilia (which I didn't), this was the place to be. Anything that could be plastered with Che's image was available for a price: tee shirts, caps, and backpacks; pins and pens; flags and photos; "artistic" renderings of El Comandante of every kind. I videotaped a table that displayed posters of Che and Christ side by side. It reminded me of a similar display I'd seen some years before in Brazil, when I visited the site of the largest cathedral in the world. Only there the juxtaposed images had been of Christ and Michael Jackson. I passed up paintings and etched mirrors from which the contorted features of El Comandante Che stared out blankly at the surrounding orgy of consumer capitalism, but I had to appreciate the audacity of an almost life-sized, comic book captioned, 3-D poster of Che and Fidel Castro walking arm in arm toward infinity. "Uh, oh. This is going to be worse than Palos," I thought. I was remembering my 1992 journey to Spain to visit the spot from which Columbus had departed for the New World exactly 500 years before. I would stand in solidarity with the crowds of people I knew would be there to protest the destruction that followed in the wake of that journey. I found the place, the time was right, I donned the tee shirt I had made precisely for that occasion. "Recuerden a la gente indigena de las Americas," it said. Remember the indigenous peoples of the Americas. I was all alone. This pilgrimage promised another form of disillusionment. We decided to press on that afternoon to La Higuera, where Che was actually captured and killed. Vallegrande and La Higuera are located in the midst of a vast dust bowl. Gnarled, half-dead trees vie with cacti and scrub brush to suck the bare necessities of life out of dusty soil, clouds of which ungulfed us as our bus struggled along three hours of unpaved roads leading to La Higuera. Many of us marvelled at Che's choice of base location for his revolutionary activities. "He should have chosen Champare," Quico said. Champare is the lush site of some of Bolivia's largest coca fields. "There he would have found all the cover he needed. There's no place to hide around Vallegrande." It's true. Even Br'er Che would have found trouble hiding out here. Though briar patches abound, the military tar baby had the high ground. This was no place for an asthmatic idealist. La Higuera itself is a tiny, dusty town with absolutely no amenities. That aside, the townspeople tried to accomodate us as best they could. Our international delegation was housed in the local school yard. I found out the next day that we'd slept in front of the school laundry room where Che's dead body was laid out, photographed, and dismembered thirty years ago to the day. The night was bonechillingly cold and windy. Wrapped in sleeping bags, we stumbled in pitch darkness to La Posta, the tiny military post turned museum where Che had been forced to his knees and executed. It was now the reception center for the Encuentro. We were directed to a row of make-shift enclosures where townswomen cooked dinner for visitors over open fires. It was a Mephistophelian feast. Fires crackled, pans sizzled, and smoke mercifully billowed into my eyes, making it impossible to look too closely at the food I was eating. We purified our systems with tacho, a local paliative made with hot water (gasp!), rum, sugar, and lemon. We hedged our bets with disgustingly sour chicha. Across from La Posta, a white sheet hung on adobe walls for the screening of the 2-part video biography, Che Vive! It's the best of the genre, I think. Watching it with people who had come from around the world to pay homage to a man who not only spoke his ideals but lived them was the highlight of this Encuentro. The homage continued into the next day, when a bust of Che, donated by sculptor Rolando Aranibar was unveiled near the school house. Again, delegates spoke out, people sang, musicians played, but the tone had changed. Perhaps it was the heat and the fact that everyone was filthy and exhausted. Perhaps it was that many in attendance had come for all the wrong reasons: looking for a party, looking for babes, some even, looking for a skirmish with the military, who, by the way, kept a low profile, confining their military homage to a town fairly distant from the Encuentro. It was evident that most did not see this as a time for contemplation, a time to reflect on the past and chart a course toward a better future. My few attempts to find the time and place for solitary reflection were thwarted by students whose macho code required that they prevent women from doing anything alone. At dawn, I walked to the top of the ridge overlooking La Higuera to shoot some video footage, eat my breakfast of an orange and a peanut butter sandwich, and contemplate the moment. A student followed me, politely but annoyingly hit on me, and forced me to return to base. Later, I attempted the hour and a half walk, through a curtain of thorns, to the barranca where Che had been cornered and captured by the military. Same nonsense. I managed to get a video shot of the barranca in the distance before being forced back to base. By mid-afternoon, most of the international delegates had decided to return to La Paz. The student delegates were drunk. It took us almost two hours to board the bus and get on our way. The drunken organizers were attempting to sell seats to Vallegrande to pay for beer. Fights broke out between students and between students and prospective passengers who thronged the bus and rebelled at the high prices being charged and attempts to make them leave the seats and aisles they'd occupied. I wanted to leave, but every vehicle was packed to the gills. The bus driver did leave. He refused to come back until everyone vacated the bus, the drunks calmed down, and he could determine who belonged on the bus himself. Yosefa and I were the only ones allowed to stay in our seats. Eventually, we got on our way. That night, some of us went to one of the concerts scheduled for the Encuentro. Silvio Rodriguez was to perform. Of course, he didn't show. The alternative performers were quite good. The music was a blend of modern electronics and traditional Andean instruments. I enjoyed it. But I was bothered by the rock concert atmosphere that effectively obscured the real reason we were there. The huge backdrop of Che's face was mostly obscured by colored smoke and lasers. His image was a leitmotif, but his essence was hard to discern. Having effectively fended off a student admirer all night, I sought safe haven in the tent that we'd borrowed from friends in Cochabamba. What was I thinking? Three times that night we had to expel drunken students from our tent. The last time, Yosefa stormed out of the tent and sat smoking a cigarette, defeated. I wasn't about to abandon my ground. I was angry and I wanted to sleep. I grabbed the drunken sot by the hair, told him that next time I'd use my knife to make him a soprano, and threw him out of the tent on his head. Nobody bothered us again. The next day I disassociated from everyone. I spent the day sitting in the dirt writing notes for my updates and diary. By the time we left for Cochabamba that evening, most of the students were so paralyzed, they couldn't move. Just as well. I staked out an entire seat in the bus, for protection more than anything, covered myself with my sleeping bag, and slept. The two filthy, bedraggled waifs that showed up on Tita and Rene's doorstep the next morning were glad to be back. I longed to resume the original journey we'd come to recreate. I'd put Che, the warrior, behind me, and I was about to reconnect with Ernesto, the student/adventurer. The Encuentro Mundial Ernesto Che Guevara wasn't Woodstock. And it wasn't a contemplative, or even joyous, tribute to a revolutionary martyr. It was Animal House. Behind every "!Que Vive El Comandante Che!... !Que Muera El Imperialism Norteamericano!" echoed that ultimate chant to the capitalist state: "TOGA!...TOGA!...TOGA!"

Entry Thirteen PERU Puno, 14 October The Journey, Resumed As the bus from La Paz to Puno passed through Ilave, I was once again on Che and Alberto's original route through South America. Part two of the journey had begun, but with one significant change. I was now alone. Yosefa had gone her own way in La Paz. She'd wanted to go home since Santiago, and now that she'd done it, I was surprisingly relieved. My only concern was how I would complete the most difficult and dangerous part of the journey without a partner. I'd crossed the border into Peru at the southern end of Lake Titcaca. Riding through the altiplano between La Paz and the Peruvian border, we passed through miles of agricultural fields hacked into the dry rock and gravel that forms the altiplano floor. I wondered how the campesinos I saw laboring there could grow anything. The amount of backbreaking work that went into clearing and planting under such conditions couldn't possibly be balanced by the productive output of this desolate region. The piles of rock that surrounded each carefully cleared agricultural plot looked like freshly dug graves. Then we hit the lake region. My first view of Lake Titcaca barely hinted at the vastness of this, the highest navigable lake in the world and the largest in South America. Some thirty-eight kilometers outside of Copacabana, the last town on the Bolivian side of the border, we had to cross an arm of the lake by boat. The bus was ferried across on a flimsy raft. Passengers went in a small motor craft. From the far side, I watched as our bus rocked and listed forward like a Matchbox toy on a popsicle stick. "Why did I leave my things on the bus?" I asked myself. "I should have brought the small bags with me, at least." The bus made it. But if it hadn't, I would have lost most of the electronics and my plane ticket home. A lesson learned. I did have the video camera with me and was filming the precarious passage of the bus when I learned another lesson. The camera was a great way to induce conversation with locals. Several people from the bus gathered around me to ask about the tiny machine. I replayed for them some of what I had just filmed and showed them how the camera works. One of them asked me how much it cost. I told them I didn't know because it was a gift. I felt embarrassed to admit to a price that was more than most of them made in a year. My fib led to a brief discussion of the low standard of living in this part of the world and the lack of access to advanced technology. When I asked them how they thought things could be changed, I got the usual "I don't know" response. When I suggested that it was they, the people, who would have to initiate change, they smiled and shrugged. One young man stated matter-of-factly that most Bolivians were too busy dealing with the everyday challenge of existence to involve themselves in matters pertaining to the future. He acknowledged, though, that if left to politicians, change would probably not occur. The roads were now paved and we made good time to Copacabana. I smiled at the contrast between this lakeside Andean beach town and its Brazilian namesake. I just made the last bus out to Puno. We were half way to the border when one of the passengers jumped up and asked to be let off, right there in the middle of nowhere. I thought he was sick, but it turned out that he was one of a group of five young Chilean tourists who'd left a packet with all of the groups' documents-- passports, visas, money-- on the seat of a restaurant in Copacabana. He was going back to retrieve it, then catch up with the others at the customs checkpoint. The driver took pity, turned the bus around in the middle of a narrow dirt road, and went back to town. I was impressed. Five very happy Chileans resumed their trip to Machu Picchu. They told me that they'd started their journey three weeks ago. I asked them if they'd gone to the Encuentro in Vallegrande. They said that they had planned to do just that, but the gloomy stories they'd read in Bolivian newspapers convinced them otherwise. I responded with only a "no era mucho," it wasn't much. I'd muttered the great understatement of the journey. As we passed through one of the myriad adobe towns along the banks of Lake Titcaca, I spied an Indian woman, on her hands and knees, skirts hiked up, working the dry, unforgiving soil with her family. In her hair, she'd made a crown of beautiful white flowers. The contrast made me think that, despite their hard life, these poor campesinos have something that most of the more "civilized" world has lost: a feeling of kinship with the earth. *** Peru, around Lake Titicaca, looks more affluent than its Bolivian counterpart. Adobe structures have tin roofs, fields of red soil look more productive, and there is much more livestock. Strange rock structures poke out of the coastal flat lands like jagged teeth from the jaws of the earth. Peru has a different feel to it. As we passed through Ilave, I knew that a new part of the journey had begun. Che and Alberto hadn't stopped in Ilave, so I didn't either. I went straight through to Puno.

Entry Fourteen PERU Titicaca, 18 October The Lake of the Sun When Che and Alberto visited Puno, it was a very different experience. "Here and there, reed canoes bobbed up and down in the calm waters and a few fishing boats headed out into the lake. The wind was very cold and the heavy leaden sky mirrored our state of mind. ...our luck now seemed to have run out," wrote Che in his diaries. The reed boats are still there, but they are few and more of a tourist attraction than anything else. Most of the boats headed out into the lake are power launches that ferry tourists back and forth between the principle islands: the floating islands of the Uros people, Isla Taquile, and Isla Amantani. The weather in Puno this time of year was mild. It was sunny during the day and, because of the high altitude, cold at night. But it wasn't the bone chilling cold that I remembered from an earlier trip here with my friends Steve and Suzanne. Nor was it the cold described by Che. As a result, my state of mind was anything but leaden. I'd made it through my first day alone very well. I was back on Che's original route, and I felt confident that I would complete the journey, one way or another. My luck did not seem to have run out yet. Che and Alberto didn't want to leave Puno without exploring the lake: "...so we went to the quay to see if anyone would help us appreciate its magnitude from a boat. We had to use an interpreter for the operation because none of the fishermen, all pure Aymara, knew any Spanish at all. For the modest sum of five soles, we managed to get them to take us and the officious guide who had now attached himself to us." I went to the quay, but the only boats going to the islands were tour boats. When I asked, without an interpreter, if I could go to Uros in a reed canoe, like Che had in 1952, I was told that they no longer take passengers. The trip, in an excruciatingly slow motor boat, cost not five soles but twenty-five new soles, a relatively modest sum after nearly a half century of inflation. But for me, it was a lot. The one constant was the officious guide. The floating island of the Uros was a tourist trap reminiscent of the "touch an Indian" kind of operation that mars the Florida Everglades as well. Disney does Titicaca. I remembered that eight years ago the island still had the feeling of a viable indigenous community. That feeling was now completely gone. I bought a small watercolor from a little Uros girl. She was the only one of the children hawking the things who was honest enough, when I asked her if she had painted it, to say no. I loved the feel of the island of reeds, but I hated what it had become. Again I thought of Che's description of the area forty-five years ago: "A number of islands emerged in the distance, scattered dots in the immense grey expanse of water. Our guide told us about the fishermen who lived there, some of whom had hardly ever seen a white man, and who live according to age-old customs, eating the same food and fishing with the same methods they used five hundred years ago, and preserving their costumes, rituals, and traditions intact." "Oh, Che," I thought. "They've definitely seen white men now!"

Entry Fifteen PERU Lima, 3 November As to my situation: it is greatly improved! A rafting guide friend of mine is flying to Lima to meet me in about ten days. From there, he will accompany me to Colombia. He knows the rivers well and thinks it will be a blast. We're going to try to do it in a dugout canoe. I'll keep you posted, of course. I'm having a hard time with updates right now. I am in the process of transcribing several updates, but I don't expect to have them ready until sometime between the 5th and 10th of November. BB

Entry Sixteen PERU Cuzco, 17 November Apurimac, In Excess It was the squeeling pigs that did it. I'd slept fine through the chickens and roosters and the snippets of Quechua that drifted in and out of my four hours of regularly interrupted sleep. But now I was awake and I had a decision to make. Yesterday I was packed and ready to leave for Lima when Chachi Pacheco, the rafting guide I was to meet there in ten days came to the cyber cafe to ask me one more time to join him and the rest of an expedition to a relatively unknown section of the Apurimac River. The expedition focused on Michael Horn, a South African residing in Switzerland, and his No Limits/Sector Team comprised of two Swiss rafting guides, two South African cameramen, one Swiss photographer, and two Peruvian rafting guides. Michael was traveling by hydro-speed, a contraption that looks rather like the first two feet of a canoe, from the source of the Apurimac River, the longest tributary of the Amazon, to the Amazon. The film crew and rafting team had come to document and accompany him through the most difficult part of the journey. I had agreed to hitch a ride with the team as far as Huanipaca, the small Quechua town in which I now found myself. The team would trek from there over the mountains and down into the Apurimac valley to the location where Michael had left his hydro-speed two weeks ago. From there they would set out on a five day journey over a section of the river that only four previous expeditions had attempted. In two of those expeditions, members had died. The rapids were extreme. Over a hundred miles of class five and six rapids that ran through sheer-cliffed canyons that fewer than twenty people had ever seen. Michael would do it on his hydro-speed. The team, with all of the equipment, would accompany and film him in two rafts. I planned to take a bus from Huanipaca to Abancay, then on to Lima to await Chachi's arrival ten days later. It was October 31, Halloween. The town of Huanipaca, which we now saw by daylight, was a strikingly picturesque Andean village, nestled amidst snow-capped mountains and green valleys. I remembered that the late-night trip there was terrifying. The steep, narrow rut of a road that we followed threatened disaster at every turn. But now, as I sat in the village square, beside a fountain crowned not by a cherub or mythical creature but by a huge ear of corn, I felt the risk well worth it. The pick-up to Abancay was to leave at eleven. Meanwhile we scouted the village for mules. The team needed at least fourteen mules to portage the rafts and other equipment over the mountains. It would be an all day steep uphill climb to the small village at the top of the mountain where they would spend the night before descending to the river. The expectation was that they would find mules and leave Huanipaca at about the same time that I left for Abancay. This was the first of a series of false expectations that were to plague the expedition. By eleven o'clock the team had resigned itself to having to stay another night in Huanipaca. Meanwhile, I had to decide whether to stay on or follow my original plan. My experience as a rafter was confined to the short, novice trip on the Urubamba I'd taken a week before with Chachi. Perhaps that was good. It left me in a state of fearless ignorance. I was more concerned about my ability to keep up with eight professional athletes on the climb up the mountain. I shared my concerns with Chachi, who assured me that I could do it and pointed out that this was an opportunity to do what only a handful of people had done before. It was an argument I couldn't resist. We spent all of that day trying to put together a team of mules for three o'clock the next morning. Having found someone who assured us that he would have them at the Hostel Junior at the designated hour, we proceeded to explore the town and surrounding area. It was then that the group came to realize that I was a pied piper with the children and women of the many Quechua villages we visited. I think that it was my blond hair that first attracted them, but I also think that they sensed my deep interest in them and their lifestyles. That night we made our dinner on the raised hearth of the adobe kitchen at the Hostal Junior. We were a picture of contentment, sitting in the warm kitchen, chopping garlic and other ingredients for our pasta dinner, surrounded by cuy (guinea pigs) whose cooing reminded me of the classic Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles," puppy and kittens on the hearth, bananas roasting on the open fire, and a chicken laying eggs beside me at the table. It was an Andean idyll. The idyll ended the next morning when the promised mules didn't show. The search for mules dominated most of the next two days. To make matters worse, about an hour into the five-hour trek up the mountain, I got sick. I was sure that it was the eggs swimming in rancid grease that I'd had in Huanipaca that did it. Willy was sick too. Only when I couldn't go any further did I ask Chachi to take the pack mule I was leading, while I headed for the bushes. I caught up with the team, none of whom knew I was sick, about a minute after they made a pit stop. Chachi, who sensed that something was wrong, was amazed that I'd caught up so quickly. To my delight, he put me on the only unloaded mule for the rest of the climb. We arrived in the mountain village of Tacmara at about 4 pm. It was raining and cold. Everything we had was soaked. Even the fire we built in one room of the adobe structure in which we camped didn't help much. Chachi, Willy, and I pitched our tent indoors and huddled together throughout the night. The next morning I was well again. The five hour climb that day would be downhill to the river. My luck still held, it seemed. As the team searched for mules and porters, I took time to appreciate the beauty of my surroundings. Tacmara was a picture perfect town of adobe and thatched huts, nestled into the green mountain side. On the distant slopes were neatly carved agricultural plots. A young boy herded pigs through town, as smoke rose through chimneyless thatched roofs. Smoke dries the thatch, I was told. Once the mules were packed, we began our five hour descent to the Apurimac River. The trail was narrow and I was leading the mule from hell. But the view was spectacular. Chachi said that it was the most beautiful he'd ever seen. He also pointed out that no more than one hundred people alive had seen what we were seeing now, and most of them were Quechua-speaking locals. I arrived at the river a half hour before anyone else. I'd battled my pack mule every inch of the way. My feet were covered with blisters. But I was feeling pretty proud of myself. When the rest of the team arrived, we discovered that this was not the spot where Michael had left his hydro-speed. Our guide had brought us to the wrong place. Michael and four members of his team would have to go back to the top of the mountain and follow another trail down to the river. It was eight o'clock and pitch dark when they left with three mules, the guide, one of the rafts, and the photographic equipment. They planned to climb all night then descend with the mules to the hydro-speed the next day. Chachi, Willy, Phil (one of the South African film crew), and I would stay at the base camp with the rest of the equipment. We would fly my Che flag as a marker for Michael and the rafters. They told us to expect them at around two o'clock the next afternoon. That night it rained. Everything we had was soaked. We tried not to think about Michael's team and the mules climbing up the tortuous mountain trail in the rain. We weren't surprised when they didn't show up as planned. We spent the next three days camped by the river. The waters were dangerously high and filled with mud. Chachi and Willy were extemely concerned. It wasn't until we returned that we found out that emergency flood conditions existed upriver. Five people had died in the departamento of Cuzco alone. Property loss was in the millions. When, after three days, Michael and company hadn't arrived, we attributed the delay to several possible causes. Something had happened to the team on the way to the river. Michael's hydro-speed wasn't where he left it (a good possibility after two weeks). River conditions had delayed the team's departure, or something had happened to them on the river. We were discussing our options when Michael beached his hydro-speed at the base of the boulder above which flew the face of Che Guevara. Hasta la victoria siempre. I hoped that the phrase applied to our expedition as well. I had refused to take the flag down despite warnings from Chachi and Willy that this was an area of terrorists and drug traffickers, patrolled by military patrols who would shoot first and ask questions later if they saw the flag. Michael and the team said that they saw the flag as soon as they turned the last bend in the river. For them, it was a welcome beacon. Only later did I realize how ironic that was. Michael had spent three years in the South African special forces fighting against Cuban forces installed originally by Che.

Entry Seventeen PERU Cuzco, 20 November Into the Abyss Shortly after Michael's arrival, we packed up the rafts and set out on what we expected would be a five day journey downstream to San Francisco. The first day went well. The rapids were less frightening than I thought. The high sierra scenery was breathtaking, its beauty enhanced by the knowledge that only a handful of people had seen it before. That night we camped by the river and celebrated Claude-Alaine's birthday. I made a killer spaghetti sauce. I was learning to get along quite well in the company of eight men, despite certain obvious inconveniences. The night was filled with the first stars we'd seen since our journey began. It seemed an auspicious beginning. The next day proved how misleading those first few hours had been. We began running rapids early in the morning and continued all day. Chachi wouldn't let me or the film crew run the biggest one, a class 6 that even he didn't want to run. As I was brooding about that, having taken a solid class 4 with Willy only minutes before, Chachi's raft hit, side on, the big hole into which the rapid churned, highsided (stood upright on its side) for a few seconds, then flipped over into the hole. We saw someone go into the hole. The other two raced through the rapids with the overturned raft. For quite some time we didn't know if we'd lost one of the team or not. Michael thought he'd seen Chachi and Martin, his brother, with the raft. I thought it was Martin and Claude-Alaine. We'd have to hike to wherever the raft and rafters had landed to find out for sure. We'd also find out then what had happened to the equipment that was on the raft, thousands of dollars of photgraphic equipment, among which was my videocamera, food, backpacks, and more. For the next two hours we made our way downstream to the rafts. Michael set out on his hydro-speed. He left me with a long coil of throw rope and told me that if I found the rafts on the other side of the canyon, I'd have to throw them the line and they'd pull me across the rapids somehow. At first, I had a hard time getting past the throw-them-the-line part, but that soon became irrelevant. I was barefoot, climbing miles over huge rocks and boulders (filled, by the way with huge tarantulas and rock spiders) when I came to a steep gorge, impossible to traverse without professional gear. I had two options: go straight up the mountainside and over, or jump into the rapids and hope to hug the sides of the gorge until land reappeared. I chose the first option, as I was alone and thought it safer than the water route. I was almost to the top, getting gouged by thorns, plagued by huge spiders, literally hanging off the mountainside by my fingernails on more than one occasion, when the trail dead-ended. I had to turn around and go back the way I came. Feet burning and already exhausted, I reached the base of the gorge and resigned myself to braving the rapids alone. I was eager to get to the rafts because I still wasn't sure that everyone was all right. I jumped in, hoping that I was strong enough to fight the current. Hugging the cliff side was incredibly hard work, but the alternative, running the rapids, was worse. I knew that the main thing was to stay calm, and I did. I've lived on water all my life and I have good water skills. I decided that, all in all, this was better than scaling the mountainside. Then the calm waters of the cliff side disappeared. Ahead of me was a wall of rapids. I had no choice but to pick a course line and go for it. I broke a toe and some bones in my foot and banged up my left leg pretty badly. But I got through the rapids and made it back to land. In some ways that was worse. I was bruised, broken, and barefoot, climbing over sharp and slippery boulders. For the next hour I alternated between swimming the rapids and climbing. Finally, I rounded a cliff in the water and there was Chachi and the rafts. I was cold and exhausted, but there was much more to come. For what seemed like forever, we continued to run rapids. If I weren't so cold, I would have loved it. It was much better, I decided, than trekking and swimming. From now on, no matter how bad the rapid, I was staying with the raft. I loved the feeling of being at one with the river and yet vulnerable to its power. At about five o'clock, we saw a grassy bank with a small sandy beachhead. We decided to camp there for the night. The place turned out to be a veritable entomologist's dream. The grass that looked so pristine was filled with flying spiders, crickets, and fire ants. I was the only one who didn't think that the huge tarantula climbing up my teammates' arms was cute. Indeed, I began to think very fondly of running the rapids. I'll take rocks and current over spiders any day. Our encampment was just down river from the confluence of the Apurimac and Pachachaka rivers. Chachi was trying to chart our course, as no charts of this part of the river yet exist. As we'd moved downstream, the scenery had changed from high jungle to towering volcanic cliffs, dotted with cacti that rose skyward almost perpendicular to the barren soil to which they clung. We'd lost all of our cooking gear, our vegetables, and my shoes. We were all so cold and exhausted, we stripped down and put on whatever dry clothes had survived in dry bags, ate some chocolate bars and moldy, green bread, and sat around the fire, tired, happy, and more than a little proud of ourselves for having all survived. We were packed and on the river very early the next morning. With the waters as high as they were, and rising, we knew that this was going to take us considerably longer than we had originally planned. Everything was going well, mostly class 3 rapids, until we came upon a big, mean class 6. Willy and three others took it first. We thought they'd gotten through, though it looked rough. Then Chachi, Sean, Sebastian, and I went. We slid into a great, churning hole and, the next thing I knew, I was under the raft. I had grabbed a center strap as we went over and held on for my life, but now I was underneath the raft, going like a bat out of hell through the rapids. I thought about air pockets but couldn't find any, so I concentrated on pushing my way out from under the raft. I tried to hold on to a side line, but huge waves ripped me loose. "Exhale when you're under the waves. Inhale when you come up for air. And don't panic." This was my mantra for the next few seconds. When I wasn't thinking about breathing, in the back of my mind was visions of submerged rocks, like the ones I'd collided with yesterday. But, basically, I just went with the flow and tried to stay alive. When I finally saw the raft, the others were still with it and trying to right it. I was still in the rapids but feeling safer. I knew there were more rapids ahead and that I must turn my attention to getting myself out of the main current and to the calmer waters along the side. I used what strength I had left to get to the far shore. Chachi was so glad to see me. He said he saw me disappear into the hole and not reappear for about twenty seconds. He thought I was a goner. He called me the "gringa macha." I felt pretty proud of myself, actually. We found out later that Willy's raft had capsized as well. We assessed our losses and headed out to find a settlement where we could replenish some of our supplies. For the next two days it was rapids and more rapids. During the calmer moments, I could appreciate the beautiful scenery around me. In the sierras, we saw little wildlife, but there were parrots everywhere... and, of course, spiders and little black bugs that bit me so badly that my feet and ankles were swollen up like balloons. We were dining now on sardines and green bread, drinking river water that was so muddy from the flooding upstream that I feared that we would all turn into Gumbies before long. We'd long ago forgotten about things like clean, dry clothes and clean, unknotted hair. Day ten turned out to be the climax of our expedition... and my downfall. Former expeditions had talked about THE class 6 rapid. We didn't know if we'd run it or not. No expedition had run these rapids in high waters like we were doing. This particular day we hit two class 6 rapids that we partially portaged; but the last, long class 5 rapid did me in. We'd highsided three times yesterday, the same today. On this rapid, Chachi told me to stow my paddle and hang on as hard as I could. We were going into a hole, and the back waves were going to be incredibly strong. I was in the back position. I didn't realize how strong he was talking about until a wall hit me and sent me flying into something, either the wooden plank Chachi sits on to row or the metal frame for the oars. Maybe both. I heard a crack. I knew something on my face had broken, and then I started to pass out. "No!" I thought. "You're loose in the raft and will probably be thrown out by the next set of waves. Unconscious, you die." It was Chachi's voice that brought me around. He was yelling at me to get back to my position. We were flailing around like flies in a Cuisinart. But, somehow, I understood that I needed to get to the back pronto. Only then did I realize that blood was gushing all over my face and body. When we cleared the rapids, the team looked at me and freaked out. Fortunately, I didn't have any deep wounds, but I had broken my nose and probably fractured my cheek bone. I'd bashed in my bad leg again and rebroken my toe. I was going into shock and couldn't stop shaking. We found a beachhead and stopped for the night. By now, I also had a bad case of whiplash. Michael gave me some painkillers and some medication to bring down the swelling. I wanted a drink, had one, and slept through the night. Looking in the mirror the next day was not pleasant. One eye was swollen shut, my nose was still bleeding profusely, and the rest of my face looked like mincemeat. But what could I do? We still had four or five days to go. I took another painkiller and hopped into the raft. I spent that day in terror. We still didn't know if we'd passed all of the class 6 rapids, and I couldn't have walked if I'd wanted to. As we ran a series of solid class 4 rapids, some of them quite dangerous, I just hung on for my life. By the end of the day, I was paddling again, but I would never have the confidence born of ignorance that I had before, and I knew it. The river descended steadily from the high sierras to the jungle. The rapids decreased in size and force. We began to sight people on the shore, few of whom spoke Spanish, but all of whom indicated to us that there were more rapids ahead. Always more rapids. We reached San Francisco on the fourteenth day of the expedition. We had taken six days longer than we'd originally planned, and they were hard ones. But we'd done something that noone else had ever done. We'd run legendarily difficult rapids, through uncharted territory, in flood waters. We'd done the Apurimac IN EXCESS. It actually made the mess I looked worth it, because I was the novice in the group, and I'd survived. I'm back in Cuzco now, almost recovered and ready to get back on my original itinerary tomorrow. I expect to be out of touch for a while. I'm going to visit some mines in the highlands of central Peru, then on to the jungle and Pucallpa. From there, the last couple of thousand miles will be on the river again, until we reach Leticia, Colombia. I want to do as much as I can of the Amazon in dugout canoe, and I hope to find the island leper colony of San Pablo still there. We'll see. The journey continues.

Entry Eighteen PERU Iquitos, 28 November Thanksgiving in Iquitos After the Apurimac expedition, I spent three days in Cuzco, recovering and readying myself to resume my original itinerary. The expedition had put me about ten days behind schedule. I still had to follow Che's route through the central highlands before descending to the jungle and Pucallpa. From there, the last couple of thousand miles would be by river, to Leticia, Colombia. I hoped to do as much as I could of the Amazon in dugout canoe, and, if it still existed, to spend some time on the island leper colony of San Pablo. Even with the additional two weeks I'd given myself, time was now a serious problem. The problem solved itself in part when I read that the roads through the central highlands were dangerously washed out from the rains and, in many sections, closed. I remembered that Che and Alberto had been held up by landslides in that very area. I felt that little would be lost, and we would be much safer, if we flew instead to the low sierras and resumed the itinerary there. On November 18, we flew to Huanuco. It was sunny and warm when we arrived at the Plaza de Armas of this typical low sierras town. I felt a mental and physical healing brewing. I spent several minutes explaining to a local that it didn't snow in south Florida just because it snowed in Canada. He had a hard time understanding the geographical distinction. I wondered what the world map in his head looked like. From Huanuco we took a pickup to Tingo Maria. We were thirteen people squeezed into a shortbed with twice as many over- stuffed bags of produce, baskets of chirping cuy, chickens, and the lot. When the driver attempted (successfully) to add another person to the mass, one man loudly complained: "No somos animales; somos humanos." We aren't animals; we're human. His argument, valid as it was, fell on deaf ears. The young woman with whom I had been sharing my food and beer was bringing a large bag of rocotos (chili peppers) back from the market in Huanuco. When the other women asked her why, she told them that the price she'd been offered for the peppers was too low. "I would have sold them at any price rather than bring them back to rot," said one of the women. Everyone concurred. I looked at her and said, " I wouldn't have." We smiled at each other in agreement. It was a nice moment of philosophical bonding. This was also the only time that no one asked about my bruised face. I'm sure that they had concluded that it was my male companion's work. I'd heard that a lot, even in Cuzco, and not always in jest. For the hundredth time I was glad that we'd burned our bras. It took us ten hours to get from Tingo Maria to Pucallpa the next day. The main topic of conversation in the truckbed was agriculture. As we passed one barren hillside, several men explained to us that what we were seeing now had once been a vast field of marijuana and poppies, but the police had burned it all. We were in drug territory, and with that came the threat of banditry and the certainty of military checkpoints. For miles on both sides of one checkpoint, the highway was dotted with two-foot high cement triangles painted dayglow green. They were put there to prevent the narco-traffickers from using the road as a runway, something they do quite consistently. At another checkpoint, the police caught me videotaping the Indonesian becaks (motorized rickshaws) that I'd seen since Tingo Maria. They wanted to take my videocamera, but Chachi went with them to their headquarters and shamed them into giving it back. It was only then that I appreciated fully my decision to complete the journey with a guide. About half way to Pucallpa, we passed through a tunnel. As we entered, the scenery was that of the sierras. On the other side, it was jungle. Two distinct ecosystems separated only by a mountain. It was an impressive, and somewhat surreal, sight. That a section of the tunnel exit had caved in as well heightened the visual experience. Entering Pucallpa was much like entering Jakarta. Arriving after dark, you come to know the city first through sound and smell. Dominating the senses is the noise of the mototaxis. It grates on the nerves almost as much as the clouds of dust and dirt the vehicles throw up grate on the body. But there is something charming, even exciting, about Pucallpa. It is the river and the jungle that dominates this environment, and the energy they emit is powerful. The next morning we went to the port to find out about transport to Iquitos. The boat Che and Alberto had taken was called La Cenepa. We asked if it still existed but were not surprised to find out that it didn't. Forty-five years is a long time. Instead we booked passage on the Jhuliana, the same boat used in one of my favorite films, Fitzcarraldo. The Jhuliana was leaving that afternoon at five. Everyone told us that it was the best riverboat to Iquitos and that another boat might not leave for days. When I looked at some of the other boats, the shabby, filthy Jhuliana did look pretty good. We decided to cut our stay in Pucallpa short and begin the four day voyage to Iquitos that afternoon. The captain advised us to bring supplies and water with us, since very little was available on board. We bought booze, lots of it, a hammock, and fishing gear. We figured we'd covered all the important bases, and we were right. River travel on the Ucayali has changed a bit since Che's days. On La Cenepa, Che and Alberto had managed to pay third class fares to travel first class. There they had "mixed with the privileged passengers," and Alberto had won 90 soles playing black jack in the casino. There was only third class on the Jhuliana, and there was definitely no casino. Perhaps for that reason, we mixed with the other passengers immediately. We'd hung our hammock in the bow of the boat as soon as we'd boarded. The stern section looked like a vast clothesline of hammocks, strung far too close for my liking to what passed for bathrooms. Interestingly enough, the only other people to chose the privacy of the bow were a couple much like Chachi and I, a gringa from Holland named Esther and her Peruvian travel companion, Tutano. Esther had done anthropological research in Iquitos and Tutano was a local artist. They had water and some food. We had booze. It was a symbiotic relationship. Our gringo enclave served as a magnet for the rest of the passengers. We were constantly surrounded by people. By the end of the four day voyage, we knew many of them well. I came to be known as La Gringa Loca, the crazy gringa who was following Che Guevara's route through South America. Tutano made a name plate for the dugout we were buying in Iquitos. It would be christened Gringa Loca. Che described their trip on La Cenepa as being monotonous and uneventful. So was ours until dawn of the third day. Before then, the most exciting part of the day was meal time. Breakfast was runny oatmeal made with brown river water. Lunch consisted of rice and plantains with some meat stuff. For two days it was maja (rodent) and some monkey-like creature I saw only in bits and pieces. There was also sajino, wild pig. Then the storm hit. For twelve hours, Chachi and I clung to the bow in a hammock and sleeping bag. Everyone else was in the stern, except when they came forward to peer at the crazies in the bow. The next night, the boat's engine burned out. Someone put gasoline into the deisel engine, and that was that. We were awakened when the boat drifted to shore and into a huge tree branch that nearly impaled Esther and Tutano. For hours we floated aimlessly on the river. The engine was repaired later the next day, but we were soon drifting again because we had sprung a serious leak and the boat seemed close to sinking. This time, we chose the route of the rat and abandoned ship. We jumped onto another boat that had come along side and, by late afternoon, we were in Iquitos. It was November 25, two days before Thanksgiving. We had a tremendous amount to do to prepare for the last stage of the journey. First we had to buy a dugout. We went to Belem, the boatmaking section of Iquitos, to seek one out. We took a dugout up and down the waterfront looking for the perfect craft. Our plan was to buy the canoe then build a small cabin for it, something to keep out the rain and bugs at night. Everyone told us to buy a small engine as well. We had to shop for that too, though both of us preferred to rely primarily on oars. By November 26, we had rejected the idea of an engine and were still looking for the ideal canoe. It was time for a break. The next day was Thanksgiving Day. I decided to become the first person in history to make a complete New England Thanksgiving dinner in Iquitos, Peru. It took a few trips to find all of the ingredients I needed, but by Wednesday night I had everything together and permission to use the hotel kitchen. At eight o'clock the next morning, I was in the kitchen preparing my feast. The hotel chefs were intrigued. Soon they were helping me with everything. I gave them English lessons, while they chopped and pureed. At mid-afternoon, I laid out a nearly complete, gringo Thanksgiving dinner for Esther, Tutano, Chachi, the chefs and kitchen help, and a guy we met on the street. True to custom, we ate and drank for hours. It was almost like home... except in the Amazon.

Entry Nineteen PERU Iquitos, 30 November The Amazon, In Excess We made up for our holiday hiatus the next day. We'd originally planned to leave on Saturday, but we still didn't have a canoe. We also had to get supplies, build a cabin onto the dugout, get an official letter of passage down the Amazon from the Coast Guard, and get some advice about river conditions and routes. In addition, I had arranged interviews with the owner of a local radio station, Teddy Bendayan, whom I was told had a letter from Che, and with Guillermo Silva, a former friend of Che's and his guide while he was in Iquitos in 1952. It was Guillermo who had taken Che and Alberto to San Pablo, the leper colony where they'd spent almost two weeks. From this wonderful old man, who is still sharp as a tack at 81, I learned that the San Pablo leper colony still exists. Indeed, Guillermo had returned from there only days before. We talked at length about Che and his memories of the then young and idealistic doctor. Most of all, Guillermo remembered him as being tall and of a quick wit and curious mind. "He was always asking questions about the area and the people. He was extremely intelligent, and his interest in everything he saw around him was absolutely genuine. I'm so glad to have someone else to talk to about him. The letters he sent me are long gone, but I remember everything." Guillermo also told me that several people who had been in the leper colony when Che was there were still alive. Among them is "Che" Silva. Che Guevara had performed a complex operation on this man, saving his arm. Out of gratitude, the man had taken Che's name and has used it proudly ever since. Another survivor is Pancho Lopez. Not as lucky as "Che" Silva, he long ago lost both arms to leprosy. Like others in his condition, he replaced his arms with knives and is still building houses in the colony. I promised Guillermo that I would visit both men as soon as I arrived. From Teddy Bendayan we got valuable information about the river. He allowed us to videotape a block-long map he has of every aspect of the river, including the dangerous sandbars, bends, and forks that we would face, plus the towns in which we could take refuge. Like everyone else we'd talked to about our travel plans, he thought we were joking when we said we were going to row to Leticia in a dugout canoe. "You can't do that. It's impossible. Do you know how to go? If you take a wrong turn you'll get lost, or worse. If you get caught in a storm, you won't have a chance, unless you get to shore immediately and stay there. Where will you stay? There are pirates everywhere. Always stop at night in a village, where you will have protection." As parting advice, he told us to stay to the left until we reach the mouth of the Napo River, the center of Amazonian biodiversity, then move to the right and stay there until we reach Brazil and Colombia. With this valuable navigational advice under our belts, we set out to accomplish the rest of our tasks. By night fall, we had purchased a 15 foot dugout and the supplies we needed to build the small cabin we would use as refuge from the sun and rain and as a place to sleep at night. We would stay near villages when possible, for safety's sake, but we preferred to sleep in the dugout with our belongings. It would also be more comfortable than a dirt floor. We'd bought plastic for the roof and sides of the cabin, mosquito netting, a foam mattress, cooking gear, and enough food and water to keep us secure and comfortable for the two week journey. We'd have to row our hearts out, and we knew that we would face some challenges, but we were sure that we could do this. After all, we'd done the Apurimac, hadn't we? When we went to the Coast Guard for our papers, the commander reacted like everyone else. First he laughed. Then he told us we couldn't row to Leticia, that no one could without a motor. Then he, too, set to giving us some helpful, but by now familiar, advice. Beware of sun, storms, and pirates. It was clear that he thought that we were lunatics, and probably goners, but he recognized the futility of trying to stop us. Saturday was building day. As I'd expected, the dugout wasn't done by nightfall. We set Monday as a more realistic day of departure. Today we finished all of our last minute outfitting and completed our work on the Gringa Loca. Tonight we'll christen her and, hopefully, be out of Iquitos and on our way to San Pablo by tomorrow morning. It should take us about four days of rowing to get to San Pablo. If possible, I'd like to stay there for at least a couple of days, working in the colony. We should make it to Santa Rosa in another three or four days. From there, we plan short visits to Tabatinga, Brazil and Leticia, Colombia. From Leticia, I will fly to Bogota. Then Caracas. Then home. It's hard for me to say those words. Home for me now is on the road, and I don't want it to end. My next update will be from Fort Lauderdale. But from there, where next? I'll let you know.

Entry Twenty PERU Iquitos, 1-4 December Update: December 1-4 Iquitos to Pevas We finally left Iquitos on Monday, December 1. Our planned time of departure was 7am. Get an early start and make it half way to Pevas was our plan. But, then again, we were operating on "Latin time." By about noon we had christened the "Flaca Loca" with a local fire water called "siete raices." By 2 o'clock we were ready to leave. Of course, by then, the beautiful day we'd experienced earlier had fled and we found ourselves in the midst of a raging thunder storm. We waited out the worst of the storm-- it was the wind that we feared most-- but by 3pm we had to decide whether to wait longer and leave early the next morning or go for it, storm be damned. We chose the latter option and left Iquitos in the driving rain. For two hours we rowed hard. I was in the rear navigating while Chachi rowed up front. It was not the best arrangement. My navigational skills were disastrous, and nature was not being kind to us. After an hour or so we decided to try to make it to the next town downriver from Iquitos and call it a night. By then we'd switched places in the dugout and found an acceptable current line, but it was getting dark. At about 6pm we pulled into Barrio Florida-- an auspicious first stop, I thought. We drank a couple of beers and a bottle of rum as piranha repellant, flopped around in the Amazon for a while, and ensconced ourselves in our cocoon. Soon thereafter another storm hit. We would see now how secure our plastic cabin was. It passed the test with flying colors. We emerged the next morning dry and secure. We were now ready to hit the road (or river) in earnest. We began rowing at 7am and rowed for almost ten hours. Around noon, we stopped at a "caserio" (small village) called Yanamono. Though otherwise insignificant, this small settlement is reputed to be a center of Amazonian diversity. There are more species of plant, insect and animal life here than anywhere in the Peruvian Amazon. We pulled up to a large stilt house outside the main settlement. We asked directions of a young man named Carlos who was fishing in his dugout with his younger brother. He told us we were two days from Pevas rowing, but that we should reach the mouth of the Rio Napo by late afternoon. We asked him if we could moor there and go up to the house to cook some pasta. He told us that his mother would be happy to help us. Sari she was called, and she couldn't have been more friendly or generous. She cooked our pasta for us but, not content to see us eating so basically, she brought us a large bowl of freshly caught fish cooked in banana sauce, maracuja juice, and boiled yuca. We ate like pigs. When we offered to pay her for the food and service, she refused outright. She'd never travelled even as far downriver as Pevas, and she wanted to help us begin our journey well. We entertained her and her five children with the videocamera for a while, then resumed our journey. We knew that we'd added to an already long list six more Peruvians who would remember the crazy couple who were actually rowing to Leticia from Iquitos. I thought about the taxi driver in Iquitos who told me that he was sure that no one else had done what we were attempting to do. I don't know if this is true, but I do know that everyone we talked to agreed with him. By mid-afternoon we reached the mouth of the Napo. Ahead of us and completely obscuring the wide passage at the confluence of the Napo and Amazon rivers was another raging storm. We weren't sure how far it was to the other shore, but if we were to follow Teddy's directions we'd have to cross here. For a moment we considered going for it, storm and all. Fortunately, we opted for the more prudent course and pulled in to a small inlet to wait out the worst of the weather. When visibility was restored and we set out again, we realized that we wouldn't have survived the crossing earlier. We weren't even sure of the direction we should take now. We flipped a mental coin and opted for following a river boat that was entering an inlet to the right. After a major battle against the elements to get there, we found ourselves confronted with a marvelously open beach that, siren-like, beckoned to us to stop and stat the night. There we met a family that lived in a cabin tucked into the jungle backdrop. We came to know them well. We were their entertainment: a crazy gringa and a Peruvian guide who should have known better rowing some 500 km on the Amazon in a dugout canoe. The five boys played soccer with us. They showed us where to fish, but the fish didn't like our bait of spicy Italian sausage. Maybe it was the green stuff that covered it, though, of necessity, we ate it that way for days. Low as we were on supplies and deprived of our fish dinner, we dined that night on decaying white and sweet potatoes stuffed with green sausage and thrown into an open fire. A curious toad attached himself to us like a stray dog. The mosquitos and black flies dined on us. Earlier I'd watched as the island facing us was slowly but inexorably reclaimed by the river. Huge virgin trees crashed thunderously into the river as the current ate away the soil that held them tight for decades. The sound of it sent shivers up my spine and made me feel totally vulnerable. Night on the Amazon is a lullaby punctuated by the roar of thunder. That night I fell asleep to the sound of chirping armies of toads and frogs and the strange barking of the bamboo rats. Then the storm hit, and what began as a river idyll turned ugly. We were relatively dry in the canoe, but my arms were throbbing with pain. I was obsessed with the image of our floating into the black current, lost on the Amazon in a raging storm and an easy target for the massive trees that now thundered to their watery death en masse. It was the only night that we hadn't tied up the canoe, having beached it instead between a log and the beachhead. Sleep was impossible. By morning the storm had barely subsided. We decided to delay our planned 7 am departure. We both hurt and I was sopping wet and exhausted. We made cold oatmeal and coffee, pulled everything out of the boat and began to reorganize our floating home. It was then that Chachi discovered that we'd sprung a leak. Apparently, in pulling the boat up over the log that secured it, we'd cracked the hull. Chachi calked it with string and restored it to a relatively watertight state while I washed myself and my formerly white clothes in the muddy Amazon. Feeling refreshed and reorganized, we set out rowing for Pevas. We stuck to the right bank as we'd been told to do. It was a mistake. After about an hour of rowing we realized that the current and all signs of life were on the left. Forced to row across the open river again, we lost quite a bit of time, but our detour, all in all, had been worth it. We rowed until about 5:30, stopping once or twice for directions or food and drink. Inadvertently, I had videotaped over the part of Teddy's map that we now needed. Navigating through the myriad islands and inlets of the Amazon is not easy. Most of the time, we were rowing blind. I was amazed at the number of people we spoke with who had little or no knowledge of towns that were only a few hours up or downstream. The women especially lived lives that confined them to their own little kingdoms in the jungle. After talking to so many of them, I concluded that, narrow as their existence might be in more cosmopolitan terms, it was a happy and fulfilling life that they led. The jungle cares well for those who know how to live in harmony with it. It should be remembered too that travel on the Amazon is confined to the river. In all this vast territory, there are no roads that connect the towns and caserios. The primary means of communication and transportation is by canoe. This trip has left me with a deep understanding of how that reality impacts on the lives of the people of the Amazon. It's made me yearn to be one of them. By midday we were starving but too tired to attack our own supplies. We stopped at a caserio called Oran and sought out food and drink. There were no restaurants but we found a small bodega where we downed several warm soft drinks and bought a freshly smoked and salted majas. By now I'd developed quite a taste for rodent meat. This particular beast would last us a while in its preserved state. We returned to the Flaca Loca and feasted on rat sandwiches and fresh pineapple. That evening we reached Canton, a caserio one day's row from Pevas. We'd bought a large fish from some fishermen we met along the way. We'd stopped originally because they had a huge "paiche" stretched across their boat and we wanted to see it. The paiche is one of the largest fish in the Amazon. This one weighed about 100 kilos. They were bringing it to Iquitos where it would fetch them a tidy sum at 7-8 soles per kilo. We felt compelled to point out that the paiche was a protected species. The fishermen agreed that they were very rare these days. Otherwise, they were completely unaffected by our statement. In Iquitos we'd been confronted daily by street vendors trying to sell us the hides of endangered species, especially cats. They carried them around in bags to hide them from open view, but they offered them to tourists openly. We always responded rather agressively, telling them to get away from us, that we wanted nothing to do with endangered catch and that they should be ashamed of themselves. Of course, they were unaffected, but we felt better. In Canton, we settled into a hut where we spent the evening sharing our fish, which the women of the household cooked for us, and two bottles of pisco we purchased there. We were a group of five women, five men, and a gaggle of kids. Only the men drank. I was writing my diary entry for the day when one of the men identified himself as a teacher in the local school. He asked if I would come the next day to talk to his class. Of course, I was delighted to do so. We decided to string our hammock in the hut and spend the night. Unfortunately, the teacher got so drunk that he woke us up in the middle of the night babbling about wanting to share the gringa. We snatched up our belongings and headed blindly down to the canoe. I remember sliding down the wet clay embankment on my butt and feeling very relieved to be safely back on the Flaca Loca. The next morning we left at 6am. I thought it best to save the teacher the embarrassment of having to confront us again. Nonetheless, the whole town was lined up to watch us leave. I hoped that we hadn't caused the teacher any harm. He was a very nice man when he didn't have a bottle of pisco under his belt. It was a hard day of rowing. There was almost no current and it rained most of the day. The pains in my arms and the blisters on my hands were much better, but rowing for eight hours through rain and wind isn't easy under any conditions. That day we saw a profusion of pink dolphins. These were the "bufeos" that had so fascinated Che when he passed this way. Their presence lightened our day. At six o'clock that evening we reached Pevas. We had completed about one third of our journey.

Entry Twenty One PERU Pevas to Leticia: The Journey Ends, December 4-13 Entering Pevas was like entering a dream. As we rounded a point in the river, there upstream was a town like none I'd seen before. Perched atop a hill overlooking a sea of wooden shacks is a pagoda-like structure that gives the place the look of some far corner of China rather than the Amazon. Imagine our delight when we found that the "pagoda" was the home and studio of artist Francisco Grippa, whom we had promised Teddy Bendayan we would visit. Our courtesy call resulted in Pancho inviting us to spend the night. We accepted his invitation with delight. We passed the evening like characters in a fairytale, wandering for hours through the rooms and studios of Pancho's complex and through the small town of Pevas. There was no restaurant in the town, but we were directed to a jungle lodge where we were served fresh fish and rice on a bamboo veranda overlooking the Amazon by a transvestite dressed like Cinderella. The next morning, Pancho invited us to his studio for coffee. When we got there he was entertaining a group of tourists who within a half hour had purchased $8,000 worth of paintings. "I'm clearly in the wrong business," I thought. We reluctantly declined an invitation to lunch with the family. I wanted so much to spend more time in this marvelous place, but time was nipping at our heals. It was December 5. I'd already missed my December 1 flight from Caracas to Miami by four days and I couldn't delay much longer. An additional day in Pevas would be at the expense of a day in San Pablo, a price I was unwilling to pay. We got a late start that day and only rowed for five hours before stopping for the night. As required, we stopped at the military checkpoint outside of Pevas to present our safe conduct papers. We'd had them stamped at the police station in town, but we'd been warned often that failure to stop at any of the checkpoints along the river was to invite disaster. The military shot first and asked questions later. Fortunately, it was midday when we passed by and everyone was asleep except the guard on duty. He told us that dugout canoes didn't have to check in and refused to stamp our papers. We asked him to at least radio ahead to the next checkpoint to tell them to expect us. It wasn't until we reached Leticia that we discovered that the soldiers at the same checkpoint had killed and robbed two Japanese tourists only days later. I guess two crazies in a dugout didn't seem like good pickin's. Depending on whom we asked, San Pablo was anywhere from eight hours to three days away. To make up for our late departure from Pevas, we set out the next morning at 6am and arrived in San Pablo at seven that evening. It was our longest day of rowing and the only time we rowed after dark. We discovered that, although everyone warned us about boat collisions and pirates, no one told us about the bats. Drawn by the lights of San Pablo in the distance, we maneuvered a living cross-fire for over an hour. At least the beating of wings in my hair diverted my attention from the pain I was in after twelve hours of rowing. Storms were a normal part of our existence now. The El Nino phenomenon had seen to that. But the night before was hard on me. I'd slept the whole night in water, and I didn't sleep well. Going now from water-logged to exhausted put me in desperate need of a hotel. I lusted for a dry, comfortable bed and a shower. To that end, we tied up Flaca Loca and asked for the best hotel in town. Everyone directed us to the Hotel Paraiso. Don't let the name fool you. Although it is the best hotel in San Pablo, the Hotel Paraiso is no paradise. The closet-like room we stayed in for two nights had no lights, a bare mattress without pillows, and, at no extra charge, a disco downstairs. Until closing, the room vibrated to the sound of bad salsa. The bathroom down the hall consisted of a lidless, seatless commode and a large bucket of rainwater that served as both shower and flushing mechanism for the toilet. We loved the place. Any deficiencies were more than made up for by the people of San Pablo who, almost immediately, made us feel not like tourists but like members of a family. And a bizarre family it was. No longer a leper colony, the more virulent form of the disease having been brought under control, San Pablo remains a town in which the ratio of people to appendages is considerably below the norm. The children, on the other hand, are healthy. The strain of leprosy they and most younger residents of San Pablo carry is a benign one. Our young friend Luis was both fishing partner and procurer of whatever goods and services we required. At twelve or so years of age, he was already the perfect gentleman entrepreneur. He accepted no gifts, but he added a slight commission onto every item he purchased for us. The lady next door transformed our fish and foodstuffs into luscious meals served at the family table amidst children gawking, chickens squawking, and adults swinging in hammocks strung from the rafters. As San Pablo was a highlight of Che and Alberto's journey, I spent considerable time looking for people who could tell me more about the colony or about the young leprologists' visit. From Lorenzo, a local teacher, I learned the legend of the founding of the leper colony and how it was maintained. From "Che" Silva, the now blind octogenarian whose arm Che Guevara had operated on and saved some forty-five years ago, I gained firsthand knowledge of Che's visit to San Pablo and the impact it had on the island's residents. At the "casa de ancianos" (old folks home), I asked five old men who were in the colony at the time if they remembered Che. They said no, because for them he was just another doctor passing through. Nonetheless, they seemed grateful to have a visitor. I stayed for a while to chat with them, then shook each of their hands good-bye. Not one of the hands I shook had fingers. We learned that Pancho Lopez, the armless builder, was dead. We had interviewed everyone who was in San Pablo in 1952, and our time was running out. On December 8, after paying one last visit to "Che" Silva, we rowed away from San Pablo toward Leticia. Tears filled our eyes as townsfolk lined the riverbank and leaned from windows to wave good- bye. We'd promised to come back soon, but we knew that we would never see some of our friends again. We'd been told that the rowing time to Leticia was at least twenty five hours. We made it in twenty two. For two days our instincts led us successfully through the maze of islands that impede a traveler's passage down the Amazon and make every mental flip of the coin a potential life or death decision. We spent the first night tied up at a military checkpoint and the second night in an evangelical community called Macedonia. In Macedonia, the "curaca" (preacher) in charge of the community gave us permission to use the floating community center as our home for the night. By then we'd used up all of our supplies and water. The townsfolk took us under their wing, first providing us with fresh bait for our fishhooks, then, when we had no luck fishing, sharing with us their own meager stock. We spent the evening talking to members of the community and to some Peruvian merchants who were in town. One of them had a huge gunshot scar on his upper arm. We suspected that he didn't always deal in legal goods, and we knew that we didn't want to run into him and his partner on the open river. As usual, townspeople lined up to watch our every move. Shortly after 7 o'clock the next morning, we set out for Leticia. By now we were rowing between two countries. On the right was Peru, on the left Colombia. The current seemed always to be on the opposite side. We wasted considerable time and energy crossing back and forth until we resolved to stay to the right no matter how enticing the other side. It was the only day of our journey that we didn't get rained on. For seven hours we followed a gigantic storm front, always remaining a bit behind it, but sometimes so close that we could smell the rain that formed a natural wall before us. That day we traded our usual waterlogged state for severe sunburns. I didn't mind the tradeoff. At two o'clock that afternoon, well before our estimated time of arrival, we spotted buildings ahead. We knew that we were looking at a cluster comprised of Leticia, Colombia and Tabatinga, Brazil to the left and Santa Rosa, Peru to the right. But we couldn't make out which was which. We'd been told to stay to the right to reach Santa Rosa, where we would have to clear customs before crossing to the Colombian side and our final destination. We were rowing in midstream now, and we were exhausted. But it was more than physical exhaustion we felt, though there was certainly much of that. It was mental exhaustion of the kind that comes after a long journey from seeing your destination ahead and not knowing if you really want to arrive. What we did know was that we didn't want to row the long, difficult course to the right and Santa Rosa, only to have to cross, against the current, to Leticia. We decided to take our chances and head left to Colombia. We arrived in Leticia at around 3pm. No one noticed our arrival, so we rowed around looking for safe harbor for Flaca Loca. We found it beside the floating home of an exotic fish trader named Gutierrez. We tied up and crossed to Santa Rosa in a water taxi. There I had my passport exit stamped and we returned to Leticia. For the next two days we wandered around between Leticia and Tabatinga, the neighboring Brazilian town, sightseeing, Christmas shopping, and feeling more and more like fish out of water. Neither of us wanted to talk about returning to our respective homes and former lives, though we knew that, in two days, we would be doing just that. I had a book to write. And I had family and professional obligations to fulfil. Chachi had rafting expeditions scheduled in Chile in less than two weeks. But our hearts were still on the river. Our "no limits" existence had changed us. We had done things that no one else had done, and we wanted to do more of them. First, though, we had to conclude this adventure. There was still the Flaca Loca to see to. We'd asked Gutierrez to help us find a buyer for her, but the only offer he'd gotten was too low to consider. Of course, everyone knew that we were leaving soon and that we couldn't hold out for a better one. We had two other options. We could donate her to a worthy person or organization, or we could give her a Viking funeral on the Amazon. Something about the latter option appealed to me, but we shared both with Gutierrez, hoping that he could help us make a decision. We think he did just that. Our last morning in Leticia we went to Gutierrez's house to take photos with Flaca Loca and decide what to do with her. She was gone. Stolen, Gutierrez told us, while he was sleeping off a drunk the night before. The decision had been made for us. At first we were furious. We knew we'd been had. We would spend our last few hours looking for her. We would report the theft to the police. Then we realized how perfect a solution this was. Flaca Loca would spend the rest of her existence floating between three countries on the Amazon. It was where she belonged. And us? Well, we weren't ready to call it quits either. I would return to Peru after Christmas, and we would begin to plan our next great adventure. And that we did. EPILOGUE On December 13, I began a series of flights from Leticia to Miami via Bogota and Caracas. I'd completed Che Guevara's route and come full circle. The journey had taken me four months. Once home, my work began. Looking For Mr. Guevara, the travel/adventure book I've worked on since August, will be finished shortly. It contains the many adventures and experiences I was unable to include in my updates, plus photographic and multimedia access to some of the people and places you've read about here. On the academic side, I've engaged in incorporating my observations of continuity and change in South America, and their implications for the future, into my teaching and research. Che Guevara and his journey through South America figure prominently in my work. This summer the university will offer a new Andean study abroad program. It will allow students to experience the beauty and adventure of the highlands and jungles of Peru while working on environmental and community service projects that will help conserve the region and its cultures for the future. With friends, I've formed an NGO that will sponsor students who might otherwise be unable to engage in such an experience. And I'll be there with them. La Poderosa III, the motorcycle that took me safely through the southern part of the journey, is home now. It arrived only days before I did and awaits patiently the occasional weekend ride. Michael Horn, with whom we'd run the Apurimac rapids, was kidnapped by a tribe of Ashanincas not far from San Francisco. Fortunately, he was rescued and continues his journey by hydro-speed along the Amazon. As to my next adventure with Chachi... well, stay tuned. It's going to be a beaut! My thanks to all of you who have followed my adventure so loyally and whose well wishes I felt always. Barbara January 25, 1998