On
the rivers in Utah, before coming into camp, it was customary for one of the
boats in the party to stop at a driftwood pile and collect sufficient dry wood
to supply fuel for the evening meal and the breakfast meal the next morning.
As I looked around the sand island on which we were camped, there wasn’t
a lick of driftwood, not even a tiny speck.
This was more than a serious
problem; I conferred with my guide and the local Mexican guide I had made
arrangements with, about the challenge of finding wood for a fire. The
Mexican guide suggested we take the boat over to the bank of the river and look
for driftwood there, and/or chop wood from bushes or trees hanging down towards
the water.
This we did, but we found no driftwood; the river in high
water had scoured the beaches and banks of the river clean of any wood;
likewise, any wood we procured from the overhanging trees along the riverbank
was damp, and why shouldn’t it be; after all, this is the rain forest.
The Mexican guide took an axe I had with me and cut down a ten-inch
diameter tree, then split the log into kindling-size wood.
We hauled
this wood back to camp and attempted to make a fire, but the wood was green,
and even after soaking it with gasoline and using the big manual boat pump as a
billow, all we got was a weak, smoky fire. Dinner tonight was to be
tortillas with all the fillings and toppings just as one would buy at a taco
stand. Desperate to get something, anything going for dinner, I mixed the
tortilla flour with water until I had the right consistency and then sectioned
off small pieces that I rolled into balls to be pressed flat in the tortilla
press.
Watching
the Mexican women make tortilla shells by hand, using the metal press, seemed
so easy but when I placed the dough between the two plates of the press and
pressed the handle to flatten the dough, the flattened dough wouldn’t peel off
the metal plate. It would just stick to the metal. Then I
remembered seeing the Mexican women placing the dough inside a plastic bag,
like a bread bag, and pressing the dough, then peeling the dough off the
plastic bag.
This we tried and it worked a little better, so with help
from the passengers, we began an assembly line of making tortilla shells.
It was a slow process, the smoky fire could hardly cook the shells, let
alone the meat that needed to go in the shells, and it was late at night before
everyone had at least two tortillas.
To say
that the trip wasn’t going well would be a gross understatement. However,
the mantra I’ve always followed that has sustained me in more than one venture,
is the scriptural statement that says
“If ye
are prepared, ye shall not fear.” (D&C 38:30)
Always
trying to stay one step ahead of potential trouble, it was for this reason that
I purchased a new Ford pickup truck for the long journey into Mexico, brought a
new Mercury outboard engine plus two spares for the journey on the water, and
carried a gas generator on the boat to power hand tools if I needed to make
repairs on the rubber boat. To this list of preparatory steps I could add
the brand-new three-burner Coleman Stove I purchased as a backup to wood fires,
and a sufficient quantity of freeze-dried dinners to be used in case we ran out
of food.
For the
rest of the journey, with the help of the Coleman Stove, I was able to prepare
sufficient quantities of meals for the group, and the freeze-dried dinners,
although not gourmet by any means, provided us with sustenance, such that we
weren’t starving. To be sure, there was grumbling among the passengers,
but at the moment, there wasn’t much I could do about it.
The next
day, around four o’clock in the morning, an ungodly noise began to reverberate
through the jungle; it sounded like howling. It lasted for several hours,
and everyone was mystified as to the source. By 8:00 a.m., we were on the
water, floating through an eerie fog that has settled on the river, obscuring
our vision of anything on either side of the river.
As the morning wore
on, the fog slowly began to lift. At a bend in the river, we spotted a
group of large monkeys playing on a sandbar adjacent to the water’s edge.
They were making the same sound we had heard early this morning, and then
we realize that the monkeys were howler monkeys and they were the ones
responsible for the sounds we heard.
After the
fog had fully dissipated from off the water, we had the incredible luck to see
a flock of brightly colored macaw parrots flying single file through the
air. Macaws have feathers that are red, yellow, green, and blue, which
made them look like a rainbow flying through the air.
There
were two massive Mayan ruins we wanted to visit, Yaxchilan on the Mexican side
of the river, and Piedras Negras on the Guatemalan side of the river. We
visited both, and without a doubt, seeing these ancient structures in the dark
and gloomy jungle was the highlight of the journey. At the caretaker’s
home next to the Yaxchilan airstrip, I traded all of the tortilla flour, about
twelve bags, for a bucketful of citrus fruit.
From the
caretaker at Yaxchilan, we learned that there was another group on the river,
just a few days ahead of us. They were Americans, eight in number,
traveling in kayaks and sit-on-top canoes.
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