Andrew
Clover
Lost in the Jungle
(In which I learn to gallivant)
Jaguar Plantation. March 2023. I approached Jose in the garden, and inquired which way I should go to get to Minca. The news was good.
‘You just go down the hill,’ he said, ‘you go left, you follow the river, and, in maybe four, five hours, you reach Minca.’
So I set off.
I found the river no problem. In excellent spirits, as I turned left for Minca, I was tempted to skip.
I passed a gentleman mending a motorbike. ‘Me gusta ambular a Minca,’ I informed him. ‘Es esta la
buena direccion?’ [I have since found that ‘ambular’ is not – as I was thinking – ‘to walk’. ‘Ambular’ is
a rare, poetic word, meaning something like ‘to stroll’, or ‘to gallivant’ In my strange, stilted Spanish,
I’d basically announced to the man, like a odd foppish freak, ‘I wish to gallivant to Minca. Is this a
good direction?’]
He had no problem with the question.
‘Si,’ he replied, and waved me on my way with his cloth.
**
Later the path was almost touching the river, and I passed an insanely lovely family all beaming at
me from large stones, like a family of friendly water nymphs.
​
‘I wish to gallivant to Minca,’ I informed them.
‘Is this a good direction?’
‘Si, si, claro!’ they soothed.
I tried, as Jose has suggested, walking in the river, whereupon the water level now rose up perilously close to the pant area. This was fun, it was bracing: but I couldn’t see how, at this rate, I’d be reaching Minca anytime before midnight.
I returned to the path.
​
**
Another hour later, I passed a man with a machete.
‘I wish to gallivant to Minca…’ I told him.
He nodded.
**
Two hours later, I grappled round a huge rock, where the path now…
stopped in a patch of sand. Ah… Either this was Minca, I thought, or I’m lost.
​
This is what I’d foreseen, in all those hours, in which I’d tried to plan this trip, and I’d feared, I’d be
lost, or captured by cruel, sneering people. I saw I was about to serve the jaguar community by feeding one.
I could see another path, going up the hill, in entirely the wrong direction. I headed off up a hill into a
place which seemed to be trying to win a competition for the World’s Shittest Farm. I found a wooden
house, with one wall made from flapping plastic, that was perched on a hill top, surrounded by
chickens. Ha ha, I thought. Civilisation! I was glad to see it.
‘Ola,’ I started calling, walking boldly up to the house. Laundry was waving cheerily from the fence,
so I knew someone was there – mostly. ‘Ola! Ola!’
Then I heard a woman’s voice. She was emerging from what was clearly the toilet.
​
‘Ola!’ I called again (hoping to God she’d be friendly).
The woman now appeared.
‘Hello,’ I told her, as warmly as I could. ‘I am attempting to gallivant to Minca.’
That bothered her. She seemed to have heard of Minca, but looked disturbed by my scheme to go there. The implication was that people had gone in the past, but several had died on the passage. The lady said a few things, most of which I didn’t understand, then something I did…
‘Eres perdido?’ she asked.
Perdido summed it up. ‘Si,’ I told her. ‘Soy perdido.’
‘The problem,’ she told me, ‘is it’s already nearly dark.’
What could I do?
I could now only think of one strategy. I got it from a fairy story, but it applied…
‘Is it possible,’ I asked, ‘that I might pass the night here, and you might help in the morning?’
Like a lost dog, I looked up hopefully into her eyes, and….
‘Si!’ she told me. ‘Of course you can stay! No problem!’
She gestured up to the room with the flapping plastic. She called out to her husband. 'Conreillo, aa gringo is here. He has invited himself to stay the night!'
​
Corneillo put down his gun, as he stepped forward to shake my hand.
‘What sort of music do you like?’ he asked.
‘What sort of music do YOU like?’ I ask him (remembering the quest’s core vow to ask questions).
It turned out that there was really only one artist Corneillo favoured, and he was called Luis Alberto Posada.
**
Throughout the evening, I got to know very fully the works of Posada. Posada sang as I met the huge rabbit that lived in a cage in the main shack. He sung as Ruby cooked us rice and squished plantains on the little fire of her stove. Posada sung, as, in the twinkling light of the fire - (Ruby and Corneillo had no electric light) - I was presented with the large rabbit, who I cuddled, and with whom – to the chuckles of both Ruby and Corneillo – I waltzed around the shack.
Corneillo now went out. I asked Ruby one last question I remembered from the Spanish phrase book.
‘How long have you and Corneillo been together?’
‘I am 67. I’ve known him for 60 years,’ she told me. Then… ‘Nunca vamos estar separados’ – which translated literally as ‘never will we be separated’ - a most poetic phrase, which made me think of Philemon and Baucis, the Greek myth about Zeus who stays the night in the house of a simple couple, and afterwards he turns them into an oak and a lime tree, which remain forever joined.
‘I am most happy to have met you,’ I told her. ‘But now I should like to retire.’
In the morning, we all walked off together. We crossed streams, walked up hills, and finally reached a larger path, where we stopped. I had prepared a letter expressing my thanks, in which I’d wrapped up 150 000 pesos. That’s what I would have paid for a top quality hotel room, so it was a lot. There was a slight worry that, by paying, I should undermine their kindness, which had been spontaneously given, but I liked the idea of doing some good to them, as they had to me.
Saying our goodbyes they both give me a hug, which I appreciated immensely. When they unwrapped the letter and saw the money, Ruby actually gasped, then beamed with pleasure. (She had no problem with the gift at all!) We hugged again.
‘Thank you so much for your kindness,’ I said, ‘which has touched my heart.’
Ruby kissed me. ‘You are welcome, any time,’ she promised me. ‘(And you did not to give us money – but thank you)’.
Corneillo was more practical.
‘Take this path,’ he told me.
‘Can I gallivant to Minca this way?’
‘No,’ he told me. ‘You walk up this path. You come to a house. Then
you ask for a motorbike.’
I couldn’t see that this scheme would work, but as a man in a fairy story
must, I did as instructed.
**
I came to the first house, I shouted for help, a man arrived, and he spontaneously offered we would motorbike together to Minca. Which we did. All I needed to do was to hold onto the metal bars behind me, and to sit still for the rest of the way to Minca.
​
But, in my warm, grateful heart, I gallivanted each step of the way.