I say “impossible heights” because, from a raft, any wave looks very large, and these waves would have been beauties anywhere. But with all due respect to Ardiles, they were nothing like six meters; a better guess would be anywhere from eight to twelve feet. And they had little force: at one point, when one swept across us, I was washed violently to one side of the raft, but I recall shouting to myself with relief how weak they seemed for their size. And of course they are not true waves at all, but only the upflung boil or chop of a great rapid.
Nevertheless, when that first big one loomed above our heads, I said to myself quite clearly, with a kind of startled exasperation, “Oh, come on!”—as if waves of this dimension had no business in a river, Pongo or no Pongo. After that, for an endless period which may not have exceeded half a minute, the Pongo went totally berserk. The raft spun and tossed, dove down and popped up again, tilted, leaped, and backslid, and behaved generally in what Mr. John Brown, the imperturbable British author of Two Against the Amazon, might have described as an eccentric manner. At the same time, it behaved very well, for it remained intact and at no point reached that precarious angle on the point of overturning which the Ardiles craft had achieved at Bacanique.
While in this world of water, both Alejandro and Toribio, floundering together like a couple of dogfish on the ends of their lianas, were washed back against the young caballero riding first-class. We were all piled up like maggots, and there was a good deal of vulgar clutching before things got straightened out. Then the waters abated and the two resumed their stations, as did Agostino and the hysterical Raul, and a good thing too, because this particular mal paso, the worst on the Urubamba, is followed immediately by its near-equal, a very large whirlpool on the right side of the river. (I have since been told that in the dry season this particular remolino does not exist.) The Indians paddled furiously, but the clumsy balsa slid implacable across the remolino’s outer rim. Instantly it was spun around and sucked toward the neat hole at the vortex; there came a horrid gurgling as the bow was drawn beneath the surface.
This, for me, was almost the worst moment. Alejandro and Toribio scrambled up the slope to a chorus of death cries from astern, and then the raft popped out, turned around, and tried it all over again, backwards. Again the good old Happy Days surged free, and this time, having made the complete circuit of the remolino, it skated out to the rim again: the frantic skill of the Indians drove it onward, into the open current.
It is just below this spot, as I recall, that a lovely waterfall feathers down the cliff face on the east side. Rather coolly, I thought—though, on reflection, I was probably trying to ease my nerves—I remarked on its elegance to Andrés. But Andrés only stared at me from behind the cargo as if I were some sort of madman. He had been calm throughout the passage, but later, when I asked him his opinion about the remolino, he said fervently, “I didn’t like it.”
Alejandro, squatting in front of me, could not get over his experience. He kept wringing one hand, eyes shining, as near vivacity as he may ever get. “Ai-ee, qué rico!” he repeated several times, rather inexplicably.
We went on down the black current, and in a little while Andrés called forward.
“I think they’re saying that we’re through the worst of it,” he said.
“Good,” I said. I was dying of relief and could say no more.
We went on in silence, through rapids and swirls that could only seem negligible by comparison to their predecessors, and in a few minutes approached the lower portals of the Pongo. These are less imposing than the entrance, but they are mighty all the same and contribute immensely to the drama of the place. The rocks toward this end are rectangular in shape, as if cut by some mighty hand, and the moss on them, the ferns, and the lavender-red flowers of a vine falling down the face of the portal to the left give the whole place the air of an ancient landscape in the romantic concept.
I turned and looked backward, up the canyon. The dark walls were merging in the distance, closing us off, and beyond, the mountains rose and disappeared into the mists of the cloud forest; there somewhere lay the dank realms of Pangoa. For the Pongo de Mainique is the entrance to the Andes, in a way more dramatic than can possibly be described: the jungle on the lower side is quite different jungle from that above, only a few miles away. The river emerging from the narrow Pongo, through a cut perhaps twenty yards across, broadens out into a river of the rain forest, with its sweeping forks and river islands of gravel. The mountain valleys and shadows have disappeared, replaced by the flat selva, which stretches away indefinitely behind red, eroding banks. The swift white streams plunging into the river are gone too; in their place are quiet creeks and shady leads. Even the wildlife has taken on a fresh aspect: within a mile of the Pongo, we saw a maniro, a pygmy deer not much larger than a hare, and a pair of black ducks or small geese rose out of the river, large white patches vivid on their wings.
There were several tricky places, one of which, presumably, was the Place of Bones, Tonkini. But we were veterans now, with full trust in the Happy Days. On we drifted in a kind of growing realization, exultation.
Behind me, at last, I heard a sigh. I turned to see a new Andrés, grinning from ear to ear. “Now I feel at home,” he explained. “Isn’t it beautiful here? Flat, flat, flat! We’re out of the Andes, and I’m glad. The mountains make me gloomy, and I hate them.” The change in his appearance was remarkable: for the past week he had looked old, and now he looked simply tired.
The Indians were grinning too, Raul with his black face tattoos and crude haircut, Toribio with his tight gas belly and thin legs of malnutrition, and Agostino, who in his way is beautiful. And Alejandro: Alejandro, in an access of belated nerves, was devouring one lima after another.
And I was grinning, at least inwardly. We were through the Pongo and we were an important step forward on our way, and at Timpia, not far below, Cruz might be awaiting us; in any case, there would be a radio there with which to reach him. And I too had had enough of the mountain valleys, the lowering clouds, the wary, nervous people. The weather was clearing, and my spirits were clearing with it: I felt a terrific surge of joy and life and felt like singing.
It was late now, nearly five, and darkness was not far away. In a little while the Machiguengas eased the balsa toward the shallow encuentro of a small river. We wanted to reach Timpia this evening, for in the jungle the custom is that people wait eight days and then go on; this was the eighth day since the date that Cruz had planned to meet us. Andrés pointed downriver, saying, “Timpia,” and the Indians nodded and smiled. They understood that we wanted to go on, but Indians do not have our own exaggerated sense of time’s importance, and they could not take our haste too seriously. They were tired, understandably, and they meant to camp here; that was that. The Indians of the selva come and go much as they please, having little or no concept of duty, and as each vuelta of the river meant a longer trek for them, through a wild jungle without trails, we would be lucky if they did not slip off during the night.
They drew the balsa into the mouth of the small river, and we camped beneath a yellow-flowered tree. Removing our soaked clothes, we realized how deeply cold we were: the last bottle of pisco was hunted out, and all six of us took deep swallows of it. The Indians, who had only their wet cushmas, built a fire and kept near it; over the fire they constructed their precarious grill of sticks and placed yuca and plantains there to cook.
Andrés was exhausted. He made his bed quickly on some branches cut with the machete and did not bother to eat supper. By six o’clock, when darkness came, he had turned in. Relaxed a little by the pisco, he spoke bitterly of the people we had had to deal with. “They are not jungle people,” he kept saying, “but people of the sierra who have come down into the jungle. And there is an old saying in Peru: ‘Never trust the people of the sierra.’ These people have lied to us and cheated us, but wait and see: everything comes around in life a second time, and I am going to revenge us, wait and see. They have taken a
year of my life, these people, and especially that business with your friend Ardiles.” He looked up and shook his head. “I just don’t think you realize what a bad spot we were in.”
This was true—and I still don’t quite accept it. I was in fine spirits, and I went over to the Indians’ fire, where Alejandro loitered hungrily. One never touches the belongings of the jungle Indian unless one wishes to risk trouble, nor does one request food from them, according to Andrés, without insuring their contempt. But Agostino, the most civilized of the three, was quite aware that we were without food. Neither Andrés nor myself had felt like begging from Epifanio, and Epifanio had not offered anything but a few limas: we had counted on getting some supplies at Timpia. Whether because we had shared our pisco with him, or because we had been through the Pongo together—probably it was neither of these reasons, for the Indian is not sentimental—Agostino rose suddenly and thrust some yuca and bananas at us, silent and unsmiling.
We ate our supper in the darkness. Alejandro is no conversationalist, and my Spanish is poor, but we talked anyway because we were happy. Across the mouth of the stream a strange animal voice resounded, very loud and fast, “OCK, OCK, OCK, OCK, OCK,” and then slowed quickly, “OCK … OCK … OCK,” and, after a few seconds’ silence, a solitary “OCK.” The Machiguengas called this a tarato, and while Alejandro felt it was a monkey, I felt certain it must be a remarkable sort of frog or toad. We discussed this a little, and then it occurred to me—for the first time, I’m ashamed to say—to ask this uncomplaining boy if he could swim. He smiled sheepishly. “Poco,” he said. “Muy poco, señor”—as if he were somehow at fault.
April 19. Timpia.
When I went to sleep the jungle sky was ablaze with stars—the Dippers and Vega and the Milky Way—but during the night it began to rain. I had given my tarpaulin to Alejandro, and my sleeping bag was soon soaked through. Toward four in the morning I got up and went to the fire, where the Indians, rolled up and headless in their cushmas, lay like mummies in the embers. They would steam and dry one side and, when done to a turn, roll over and offer the other. Even in this uncomfortable hunched act, they managed to maintain that economical grace of animals—and I say this with no condescension whatsoever, only envy.
There were two hours to go until daylight, and it seemed a good time to reflect on our position. We were not far from Timpia, a couple of hours at most, but I had no real hope that César Cruz would be there. We had a long way to go to Atalaya, perhaps two hundred miles, and more than twice that distance to Pucallpa, and we were all but broke. The balsa was ours, but the bogas would leave us at the first opportunity: we could manage the balsa here in the lower river, but the current below the Pongo was much slower, and Atalaya would be at least a week away. Furthermore, the haciendas below the Pongo were all but non-existent; we could not expect even the dubious hospitality of the upper river, for we were in the wilderness.
For the rest, we were short of bedding and spare clothes—Andrés’s second pair of pants had been ripped to pieces on the march down from Sirialo, and by mistake I had left my own at Pangoa, drying on the eave poles of the hacienda. Our emergency food was gone, all but canned peaches and distilled spirits. We had the .44, but this is not as effective a game weapon as the shotgun Cruz was supposed to supply, and animals could not be counted on. And finally, Andrés’s camera, on which we had depended for the colored pictures which might help pay for the expedition, had become saturated at last and was now defunct. I was wet and cold and tired from lack of sleep, and by dawn the great happiness I had felt the night before had slipped away, leaving a dank mood better suited to the morbid mists which shrouded the muddy river.
The Indians at first light rose from the fire and drifted silently away, up the small stream. They had left their weapons behind and presumably would return, but we were anxious to get to Timpia, and the suspense was disagreeable. Two hours later they returned, but now they indicated that they wished to go no farther with the balsa. As I have said, we could now manage the balsa without them, but we did not know the river forks and could easily go astray; besides, speed might be important. Unable to reason with them, we pointed angrily in the direction of Timpia, where Pereira had contracted to deliver us, and after a time, quite suddenly and quite mysteriously—so mysteriously that Andrés became suspicious—they decided to go along. We boarded the raft, and Andrés sat with his back to me, facing the two Indians astern, his loaded carbine across his lap. I thought and still think that he was mistaken about these Machiguengas, but probably he was wise to take no chances; he would not feel easy until this last thread with Pangoa, and the talk of revenge, was broken.
The rain continued through the morning, and another lovely stretch of river slipped past us, all but unappreciated. At one point we started a heavy animal—probably a tapir, or sachavaca—from the brush at the river bank, but the visibility was poor, and we saw no game. The Urubamba curled away ahead of us, mile upon mile, with only an occasional small rapid at its vueltas. We came at last to the confluence of the Timpia, and the mission materialized in the mist, high on the bank of the tributary, about half a mile away.
The Indians beached the Happy Days on the sand bar of the Timpia delta, where we disembarked. Not wishing to leave them alone with the sacks, Andrés gestured to them to accompany us to the mission, but this they refused to do. He unlimbered his carbine, making it plain that we would not leave the balsa until they did; he then suggested that I make a show of taking my revolver from my bag and strapping it on. I did so, feeling very silly. Agostino now stepped forward, followed by Toribio, but Raul was still stubborn; he was giggling and seemed to me less larcenous than frightened. Finally he joined us, and we walked up the long sand bar of the Timpia, leaving Alejandro behind with the carbine to guard the raft.
The padres were happy to receive us and expressed astonishment that we had traversed the Pongo: they immediately sent their mission Indians down by canoe to retrieve our gear. One of these, having carried one sack up the steep bank, slung it carelessly to the ground, smashing the bottle of precious Scotch: I took this as an exceedingly evil omen. And indeed, Padre Daniel Lopez Roblés, the Spanish Dominican in charge of the mission, had no good news for us. First of all, his radio transmitter was out of order, so that we could not reach Cruz. And second, Cruz had never reached Timpia, assuming he had ever left Atalaya at all. Cruz is not highly thought of at Timpia, and there were even suggestions that he is a not quite trust-worthy individual. Father Daniel, an agreeable and expansive man, has a tendency to jeer at things, and he jeered with gusto at the idea of Cruz’s ruin on the Río Picha; he too has heard of it and confirmed that no white man had ever seen it, for the reason that it does not exist. The sole ruin below Machu Picchu that he was willing to recognize was one located a few years ago by two Englishmen and an American high up on the Mantaro. This is the Mantaro, called Mantalo on some maps, which joins the Urubamba near the hacienda of Epifanio Pereira, not the one which flows to the Apurimac from a point east of Huancayo. The Mantaro ruin, in a country of wild Machiguengas, is all but inaccessible, and as only one party has reached it to date, and returned with unsatisfactory evidence, its very existence is still considered hypothetical. (I have since read an interesting account of the expedition by Julian Tennant, one of the young Englishmen involved. It contains a good description of the lower end of the Pongo, which Mr. Tennant’s party failed to ascend and declined to descend, possibly because another Briton, Professor Gregory, met his end there in 1935. It also contains the statement that Fidel Pereira’s patricide was inspired by his apprehending the elder Pereira in bed with Fidel’s sister, though Tennant does not reveal how he came by this lurid information. His book is called Quest for Paititi, which would tend to indicate that he was unaware of, or had not taken seriously, the claim of Mr. Leonard Clark that he had discovered Paititi, or El Dorado, a few years earlier.)
Andrés has had a good opinion of César Cruz until this time, based not only on my own impression
but on what he himself was able to learn of him in Pucallpa, but he now leans toward the opinion of the Dominicans. He feels that if Cruz had been acting in good faith he would have come as far as Timpia, even if, later, he had tired of waiting and gone back. Of course there may be good reasons why he has not done so, but for the moment the evidence is against Cruz, and it very much looks as if the expedition is to prove the wild-goose chase that everybody assured me it would be. The Picha ruin has been loudly discredited by Padre Daniel, and Andrés himself has joined the ranks of those who believe that the preservation of a large fossil in the rain forest is impossible. In fact, he says that all we can do now is to make our way somehow to Pucallpa and try and get our down payment back from Cruz. This would be cold comfort, as far as I’m concerned. On the other hand, I am certainly seeing something of the jungle, and this is what, I keep telling myself, I really wanted most of all.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Padre Daniel and his assistant, Fray Jaime Ayesta, are starting downriver tomorrow as far as the mission at the Sepahua. This will carry us past the mouth of the Picha, irretrievably, I’m afraid, but we have no choice. And there is a radio at Sepahua; if it works we’ll be able to find out whether we’re getting anywhere or not. At worst, Sepahua is a long step farther down the river. The priests have a large canoa with outboard motor, and the downstream journey will take little more than a single day, as opposed to three or four in the Happy Days.