The Adventurer's Son(34)

My email reminded him about tinadizole, the one-pill treatment for giardia that we would buy in developing countries where giardia and dysentary are common.

I’d say go for it, I wrote in closing.

But two weeks later his plan had changed. Now he described a new route, much longer and far more remote. He’d be gone ten days. He lacked a good map of the area’s “thin jungle trails” and would follow them with little more than a compass and his wits. I shared his apprehension:

I expect I’ll spend a couple days out there, eat a snake, get scared, and turn around. If all else fails, I can always just walk south and hit a road. The distances here are quite small. Honestly, I’m more worried about dealing with the tourism cartel on the mule track from Carmelita to El Mirador than I am of getting lost in the woods.

Roman had designed a tent for his trek, bought material, and had a Guatemalan child sew it together. He looked forward to seeing how his design would work. I’m also pretty excited about getting to use a machete, he wrote. He promised to update me once more before he left and to leave his plans with a local ex-pat in the nearby town of El Remate. But reading and rereading the email describing his new plans, my lips tightened. Ten days? Thin trails? No map?

I OPENED GOOGLE Earth and searched for the place names he’d listed. Uaxactun and El Mirador—both in El Petén—looked far off the “Gringo Trail” of popular tourist destinations. I zoomed in. Flat, featureless forest stretched like a green Berber carpet in every direction. I panned around. Other than a handful of brown patches that looked like wetlands to avoid, there was nothing to help guide a hiker. There were no mountains, no rivers, no pastures, no visible roads or trails. It also looked far from Uaxactun to El Mirador—and empty.

I Googled images of El Petén: flat jungle with ancient Mayan buildings, their steps climbing far above adjacent forest trees. A Wikipedia map confirmed that the northern borderlands of El Petén are desolate. Roman’s planned route was in the center of the largest area of rainforest left in Central America: seven million acres, covering parts of Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize.

I started picking apart his email, composing a response. He needed to know that a map wouldn’t be much help without topography, rivers, or trails. He needed to be reminded to watch out for the most dangerous snakes in the Americas: the fer-de-lance that kills more people than any other and the bushmaster, an aggressive viper that can grow to ten feet long.

I wrote one email, then another, and another—several. They all said, No, don’t do it! or, Do this, it’s safer. Each one I deleted, struggling to warn but not discourage him. While he was my son, at twenty-seven he was also his own man, capable, experienced, careful.

Roman, that way to El Mirador from the west, from Carmelita, looks better. I don’t think you should go from Uaxactun. It looks too remote and without a GPS it’ll be really hard to know where you are and not get disoriented in the flat karst jungle. Maybe you can find somebody to go with you. It looks like a long ways and it’s really remote. Remember that guy we met who was out with a friend in Peru and he got bit by a bushmaster? The friend died before they could get help. I don’t think you should go the way you’ve planned. It seems too dangerous.

I can’t send this. He knows what he’s up against. He speaks Spanish. He’s young. It’s his trip and he’s there because of me. I’ve always resented people who warned me off my plans with “No, it’s too dangerous” or “No, it’s impossible” or “No, do this instead.” Roman even joined me on many of those trips. How can I deny him his own adventure? Shouldn’t I feel satisfaction he’s adventuring instead of fear?

I deleted the discouraging email and wrote instead:

Be careful with the machete. Clumsy me almost cut off my toe once when it went through the shoe, the sock and into the toe. Also watch for the snakes that sit and wait, motionless, hard to see. Don’t want to step on a fer-de-lance or the other big bad aggressive one, bushmaster! And thanks for thinking of your safety. So is your plan to essentially look for trails heading NW from Uaxactun? Off trail jungle walking can get pretty disorienting.

Dad

I pushed send and hoped his trip would go well.

What else can I do?





Chapter 16


El Petén


Volcano climbing, Guatemala, March 2014.

Courtesy of the author



Roman had dug into the Internet to uncover an ambitious M-shaped route through El Petén. A traveler named Frenchfrog described the route on an online forum: “[It] is almost impossible to do it by yourself unless you have been trained by the Marines or Navy SEALs and you have a perfect knowledge of the jungle, how to find your way.” Frenchfrog added, “This is the best adventure I had of all my adventures,” but warned, “You must be very careful otherwise you can be easily lost.”

In an email to me on the day that he left, Roman described the M’s three legs. The easternmost portion started on an unmarked jeep track that weaved below the jungle canopy to Dos Lagunas ranger station. The route then continued northwest on seldom used trails to the most remote Mayan site of all, Naactun (pronounced “Nash-toon”), near the Mexican border. The middle of the M dipped twenty miles to another ancient city, Nakbe, ten miles from El Mirador—Roman’s “undeveloped Maya ruin in the jungle.” The final leg led to the road at Carmelita, which Roman hoped to reach after dark to avoid its armed tourism cartel. To navigate the M, he would use only a compass, a crude sketch map, and his Spanish.