The Adventurer's Son(54)
I wanted to talk to Arley, Coco, and Luiz. I wanted Jenkins to sketch a map of where this all took place. And most of all, I wanted to go to this Zeledón Creek, Roman’s point last seen.
That was where I’d go look, and soon. It didn’t matter that Dondee had threatened to have me arrested if I was caught in the park. Nobody could stop me from looking there now.
Chapter 27
Zeledón
Vargas and Jefe, point last seen, July 31, 2014.
Courtesy of the author
Jenkins offered to take Thai and me to the point on Zeledón where he had seen Roman. It felt like we were finally on Roman’s trail, not just milling around town or sitting quietly in the sparse headquarters at MINAE. If searching the jungle meant going in with illegal miners and other Osa criminals, so be it. Lauren connected us with another man—named Vargas—who was neither ranger nor guide but intimate with the park in ways no one else could be.
Thai, Lauren, and I met Vargas by the bank in Puerto Jiménez. It was almost eight in the morning and the sun’s heat would soon force its daily discomfort into everyone’s life. A few locals parked their trucks to sell rambutan in the shade of broad-crowned trees that overhung the street.
“That’s him,” Lauren said as we walked toward the corner. “He was a suspect in Kimberly’s death. He’s a poacher as well as a farmer. His brother was killed by a bushmaster when they were young. Vargas probably knows Corcovado’s mountains better than anyone alive.”
Dark from six decades in the tropical sun, Vargas was short and compact with a toothy grin and a mop of black hair. His hand, muscular from a life of farming, grasped mine firmly. He looked me square in the eye. Vargas was in town for business and dressed sharply in a pearl-snap shirt with crisp blue jeans pulled over pointy-toed cowboy boots. He’d taken the bus from his small oil palm farm just south of the Rio Conte.
Lauren told Vargas about the four miners who met Roman in the jungle two weeks earlier. She said the Cruz Roja and MINAE had banned Thai and me from the park, but that we were headed to Dos Brazos and up El Tigre anyway. Vargas shook his head and kicked at street dust with his boots, scoffing at the MINAE and their iron-fisted control of the park.
“Lauren,” I said, “ask Vargas if he can go today with us and the guy we met in Dos Brazos who saw Roman up the Tigre. Tell him it’s about three or four hours upstream.” Lauren rattled off my request in her thick American accent.
“Si.” Vargas nodded, looking me in the eye again, but he would need to do some shopping first.
VARGAS AND HIS eighteen-year-old son, Jefe, joined us in our rental Suzuki as we drove the bumpy road to Dos Brazos. It was nine when we picked up Jenkins.
Jenkins lived on the Piedras Blancas arm of the Rio Tigre in Dos Brazos but would lead us up the El Tigre arm into Corcovado where he had his mine and rancho, one of the small tent camps of black plastic tarps that were routinely burned by rangers and remade by miners. We parked at the end of the road. A narrow trail above the creek led past a tin shack surrounded by barbed wire where a bicycle leaned against a fence post. A toothless, shirtless guy in shorts called out Hola as we walked by.
“That’s Pata Lora’s uncle, Willim,” said Jenkins of the skinny man who looked to be in his mid-fifties.
The trail soon reached the knee-deep El Tigre. Jenkins led us into the creek and we splashed upstream below ferns, philodendrons, and figs clinging to black canyon walls. Waterfalls plunged down side streams. The creek’s waters were clear and cool, welcome in the building heat. Because the rocks on the bank were slippery, we walked directly up the sandy streambed.
Jenkins wore rubber knee boots, shorts, and a tank top: the local miner uniform. Vargas splashed upstream in his town clothes, minus the cowboy boots. He looked overdressed for wading to the waist and climbing hand-over-hand up rock walls slick with algae and mud.
Basilisks—Jesus Christ lizards—ran on the water in front of us when disturbed. Their sensational sprints reminded me of Roman at thirteen on our second trip to Corcovado, when he’d learned how to catch the miraculous creatures. First, he would chase a young basilisk across the water to the far side of a creek. Clinging to a rock, the animal would eye Roman warily until he waded too close and the reptile dove into the cool water to hide in bottom debris. Roman then reached into the mass of sticks and leaves, braving what else might lurk there, and grabbed the little lizard. Pleased with himself, he would pull it out like a trophy, inspect its dinosaur-like crest and oversized hind feet, warm it in his hands, then release it to run across the surface of the pool like some sort of windup water toy.
I tried to ignore the lizards—the memory upset me—but simply couldn’t. I watched every one dash over the stream.
Our pace accelerated. I was eager both to look for clues where Roman had last been seen and to establish that Thai and I could handle ourselves here, unlike tourist gringos. We passed miners’ camps as the creek threaded a series of flats and canyons. We scrambled up faint trails to rock rims above canyon slots too narrow or steep to traverse at water level. We pushed aside broad leaves adapted to deep shade and familiar as house plants in homes and offices back home.
After an hour or so Jenkins pointed out the boundary of the park. It was illegal to continue. We would face stiff penalties if the authorities caught us. “You can go back, Jenkins, but I need to go on,” I said, willing to take my chances with only Jenkins’s sketch map in my notebook as a guide to Zeledón. “If they find me, what can the park service say?” I asked. “I’m looking for my son. How heartless can they be? I’ll take any blame.” Urged on, the others agreed to continue.