So we took off into the night buoyed by our slight improvement in fuel and the novel experience of bartering for gasoline with dry goods in the middle of the jungle. Our joy was short lived though. About 20 km down the road, I came upon a mud patch - it was only about twenty-five yards across, far shorter than some of the ones we had plowed across earlier in the day, and did not seem too hazardous, so I drove right into it, and quickly found myself sinking into what was the deepest mud patch of the trip. I  attempted to shift into 4x4 and get at least two of the wheels on what appeared to be a patch of solid earth, but the mud was too deep and the patch of solid earth was actually muddy clay. The wheels spun and the car  shuddered, and we became well and truly stuck. The mud was so deep that the front tires were off the ground as the middle of the car sunk all the way up to the undercarriage. It was dark, there was no one else for over a hundred kilometers as far as we knew, and we grew increasingly worried. We tried for an hour or two to free ourselves and then decided to wait until morning and try again.

Morning arrived, and we awoke drenched in sweat from the ninety-degree overnight heat to the lovely buzzing sound of the bloodthirsty insects that had not tired of their overnight attempts to get through our mosquito net.

With renewed vigor we set about clearing away water and mud from the area around the tires. We used rocks to drive blocks of wood underneath the tires, and then packed dry dirt around the surface for added traction. Nothing helped. The weight of the car prevented us from getting the wood blocks directly underneath the tires, and the slippery conditions made jacking the car up far too dangerous.

The front wheels, which weren’t even touching the ground anymore, spun uselessly, and the rear wheels were locked in place. At this point the car had settled so deeply in the mud that the center of the car was supported by an island of clay, and the skid pad, a solid steel plate which protects the engine belts from stray debris, had been bent inward by the crushing weight of the vehicle. After several hours of exhausting effort, all we had accomplished was to cover ourselves completely from head to toe in mud; not even a spot of paint was visible on the 4Runner. By noontime we realized we were not going to be able to extract the car ourselves. We decided to make an inventory of our remaining food and water: we had enough for three days with a light diet, maybe seven with starvation rations. We resolved to wait until the next day for another car, and then if no one came, to hike out, although we were undecided about whether we should both go or whether it would be better for one of us to set off with the lion’s share of our supplies while the other waited it out in the car. We spent the day in the sweltering heat trying to stay optimistic, even though it seemed likely that the next day we would be starting a three hundred kilometer hike on unfamiliar ground with a few cans of tuna, some crackers, four energy bars, and a half bottle of water purification tablets. Future plans, such as an upcoming trip to Spain to reunite with my princesa andaluza, Ana Belen, seemed distant and far fetched.

Then at around five o’clock a peasant farmer man and his wife rode by on a bicycle, the woman clutching a rifle as she sat sideways behind her husband. The man hopped off the bicycle, and we negotiated with him for help. He had a machete as well as a sickle like spade tool, and with these in hand he began to dig. After clearing areas around each of the tires, he found chunks of pavement and put them near the wheels. He then cut down a tree about fifteen feet long and eight inches in diameter. His ingenious plan, which succeeded where we had failed, was to use the tree as a massive lever. We positioned one end of the tree underneath the hub of a wheel, and with the combined efforts of all three of us pushing down on the other end, raised the car off the ground, and held it up long enough for the peasant man’s wife to place chunks of pavement underneath the wheel.  We then repeated the same procedure on each of the other wheels. This was all going well until about halfway through the process I was walking around barefoot (the mud made shoes useless) when I heard a loud thunk and looked down to see the man's machete, which he had carelessly left on the ground,  impaled in my big toe. I screamed in pain, and my friend ran over with the first aid kit as a puddle of blood covered my foot and the ground. I bandaged myself up as best I could, using a couple of butterfly closures and gauze strips to staunch the bleeding, and spent the rest of the time in the car, wondering what sort of exotic and incurable infection the mud might harbor.

Finally the pavement was in place under the wheels, and I put the car in gear and gently rocked the car  back and forth, shifting from forward to reverse. At first the wheels spun uselessly. We then repositioned the pavement to provide better traction. I started working the car in forward and reverse again. Again, the wheels spun, although this time the car shuddered, and struggled to pull itself over the mound of mud and clay which supported much of its weight. The cost of failure would be huge and I was as nervous as I was excited. Finally, we realized that it was now or never. I revved the engine and redlined it before throwing it into gear and giving it all she had. The tries spun and screeched in protest and began to burn, filling the air with acrid smoke.  Finally, in a truly climatic moment, the car lurched back a foot, and I immediately threw it into first again, floored it, and shot out of the mud pit.  Thrilled, I honked the horn wildly while Ben cheered and our Brazilian helpers grinned. Inspecting the damage done, I saw that my expensive English off-road tires, which were supposed to have lasted at least one hundred thousand miles, were now completely stripped of their tread. My friend and I thanked the peasant farmer profusely and paid him double what we had agreed before moving on.

We drove for a couple of hours before deciding to sleep a second night in the car and continue at dawn. The next day was all about fuel, as there was nowhere to get gas and the map showed us clearly out of range of the nearest city, Humaita.

Finally, at around noon, a most curious sight greeted my eyes. A well-ordered homestead and farm emerged from the jungle on the right side of the road. I coasted into the driveway, constantly expecting the engine to cut out, the fuel warning light having been on for over forty kilometers. To my shock, two rambunctious children with bleach blonde hair and piercing blue eyes came running from the house to greet us. We were unable to communicate effectively with the children using our book-learned Portuguese. They switched to German, only confusing us further.

Finally their father showed up, having been summoned from a project he was overseeing in one of their fields. I watched this fair-skinned, barrel-chested blonde man wearing overalls approach me, and I was somewhat in awe. Here was a man who gave new meaning to the phrase “pater familius.”  Clearly, whatever needed to be fixed or made, any difficulty or crisis that arose (and there must have been many in this lonely corner of the globe) rested entirely on his ingenuity and determination for a solution. Fortunately he was kind and gregarious rather than stoic and taciturn, and I learned a bit of his story during the course of some polite conversation (he was able to understand my formal and somewhat stilted Portuguese) and a quick tour of his farm. A native Brazilian, whose grandfather had come to Brazil from Germany five decades earlier, he moved to this wild and untamed corner of Brazil seeking new opportunity and cheap land twenty years ago. He had built much of his house and the outlying buildings by himself, and simultaneously filled the roles of father, husband, manager, mechanic, veterinarian, and agriculturist.  When it was time for us to leave, he sold me some gasoline he had stored in a fifty-gallon drum, using a hose to siphon it into my tank. He explained that occasionally government work crews would be doing bridge maintenance and have need of gasoline or peasants would buy the gasoline and use it as an accelerant in the fires they set to clear land.

We said our goodbyes to the affable German. The day was bright and clear, our gas supply was more than adequate for the last stretch, and we could once again use the fuel-consuming luxuries of air conditioning and four wheel drive. From that point it was more or less smooth sailing and after another 100km the road became almost passable. Conditions improved steadily until there were such amenities as pavement, dividing lines, road signs, and lo and behold .... CIVILIZATION!!!!

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