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I had little success fishing the first several days, but there was plenty of food, and just about the first time I thought someone to share my rum with might be nice I had a surprise encounter with Garifuna bushmen - long removed progeny of nineteenth century slaves who, seeing the Guiana’s striking similarities to the jungles of their Congo origins, escaped their captors by simply vanishing into the wilderness where to this day many thrive unhindered, a feral society. Coming up over the ‘tall trees’ trail I swore I heard human laughter. Suddenly four sparsely dressed fellows appeared and froze in their tracks, as did I.  Smiling, I motioned them to the lean-to where I made various unintelligible offerings and possibly inappropriate inquiries. One of them spoke some Pigeon English, and I think he figured out that I was here alone, but couldn’t imagine where I might have come from. They had no interest in my rum, food or even fishhooks, and I didn’t have any ganga, so must have appeared a useless host. Eventually they went on about their business down by their boats, and before nightfall they had vanished. I would have given anything to have gone with them. Who knows where they were going or when or if they’d return?

Dragonfly

And so the balance of the next several days went, one idyllic hour followed by another, one discovery after the other, soon forgetting there even was another world. And what a sweet notion that was while it lasted. I sometimes feel I lived a lifetime during that week. Someone else’s life. I never kidded myself that I could endure there for an extended period, but the notion that only one rogue pilot knew exactly where I was put an edge on the experience that would be hard to duplicate. I was certain that even if Maurice had filed a flight plan, the napkin it was scribbled on had long since been used for its original intended purpose. 

It seemed way too soon that the signature sound of a Lycoming engine could once again be heard from above. It was Maurice doing his steep banking turns above the runway, probably visualizing the thick stack of bills making up his final payment. Of course, once he landed the return price had suddenly gone up another twenty-five percent. His student pilot couldn’t make it today.

Once back in Paramaribo the claustrophobic choke all cities eventually grip me with took hold and I knew I had to get serious about getting away again soon. Wandering the small airport resulted in a chance meeting with a young government worker and his father who had just chartered a twin-engine job for a flight down to a bush strip on the Guiana border. There was room for me and there would be fishing gear, a cabin to stay in, access to a boat, and to a guide with years of military experience in the bush.

But that wasn’t until tomorrow. That night I inadvertently wondered into a seedy section of town – essentially everything outside its center - where a drunken beggar berated me profusely when the handout I offered apparently didn’t cover his evening’s planned entertainment. Shortly afterwards I had to restrain some locals who saw this and were preparing to beat him to a pulp on my behalf. After all, Suriname’s impeccable image was at stake. Later I found the perfect vantage point from which to take in a tropical port: the tip of a dock extending far out into the Copiname River where I could follow the river traffic, wondering from where it might have come or where it might be bound for, or watching hand-holding couples strolling starry-eyed through the town square and at an impartial distance take the earthy pulse of life in a backwater.
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Surinam

Our flight out the next morning was an unnerving affair of ground-hugging fog, high thunderheads and mountaintops that wouldn’t stay put, challenging our pilot to a serious game of strategic avoidance as our ungainly load shifted around inside the fuselage. Conditions eventually gave way to clear skies over rolling hills and a serene valley where we settled down on another crude strip. We had to portage a planeload of equipment to a distant dugout but within an hour of landing we were heading upstream at a fast clip. The river was a half-mile wide here with uncountable tributaries. Aracari’s, hawks and toucan’s crisscrossed overhead, and occasionally a sizable fish would go air borne to get out of the boats path. Camp was nestled at a hilly bend in the river and couldn’t possibly have been more spectacularly positioned. Going further upriver from here was impossible owing to a long series of rapids, and even further ahead and out of view lie an awesome, non-negotiable natural barrier I alone would discover in the days ahead.

Despite my initial reservations Frank and his son Sven, and Peri our guide proved excellent company when I chose to keep it. Somehow I never felt crowded, and our mutual enthusiasm for the sheer wonder of this place enhanced the camaraderie and the experience. Peri’s oft-told war exploits never got old. The fishing was unbelievable with catches sometimes half as large as our dugout if one of us happened to snag the local version of sturgeon - ‘Jurassic Pike’, Peri called them. One fed all four of us for days. 

Peri and a partner had acquired this territory after the war – vast acreage that Californians like me find incomprehensible – and had hewn the cabins, a water catchment and the dug out themselves. He had known about the airstrip from his civil war reconnaissance activities and figured if he could get land within a half an hour from it by boat he’d have it made. And out here he truly did. The intrusion of the camp was minimal, and the surroundings unbelievable, what with the forest, the river, the beaches, the hills, waterfalls, islands, rapids, fishing and mostly, the uncorrupted purity of it all. Of course during the summer months and beyond the rains could drench one’s soul catatonic and would render the landing strip unusable. But compared to what it had to offer the rest of the year these were trivialities.
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The dugout facilitated exploration of the small tributaries, many Peri or anyone had else had never explored. By midday the animal and insect noise was deafening and in most places the foliage on the banks so thick it prevented traversing on foot, even with freshly  sharpened machetes. Crossing the main river technically put us in Guiana according to most maps – an area in perpetual legal dispute, as are many out-of-reach Latin borders. But we seriously doubted we’d have to deal with immigration officials out here. I couldn’t help but contrast this with the ordeal of arriving legitimately in Guiana’s capital four years earlier, standing in line in a hundred degrees for hours at Customs in testimony to the dynamic efficiency of their fine-tuned bureaucracy. Adding insult to injury, I then had to locate our packs in a twenty-foot tall pile of luggage, so arranged by the Olympic-hopeful baggage handlers practicing their hammer-throw.

Capivara

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Climbing up and attempting to sort through this man-made mountain I soon made the disturbing discovery that every item that hadn’t cracked or ripped open exhibited a conspicuous foot-long razor slash. I’m guessing the only thing that spared ours this fate was its vintage military surplus pedigree. When I got back down and one frustrated fellow passenger asked how on earth I ever managed to locate our things I assured him the visibility improves considerably once you get above the tree line.

One morning I had Peri drop me off of the far side of the river from camp. The wonderland of macro photographic subjects that awaited were so prolific I ran out of film. In veering off the trail somewhat the noise of the rapids subsided, slowly displaced by an enticing and distinct thunderous rumble. Though moving toward its source proved problematic I sensed I was honing in on something not to be missed, something magnificent, and breaking through the last wall of resisting vegetation was something far exceeding my highest hopes – falls dropping fifty feet right off the edge of a plateau the entire width of the river, where the earths crust had suddenly just sunk away leaving the voluminous surging waters to gravity’s whim. Its crashing impact blew up a mist that soon soaked me to the skin. I sheltered the camera and scrambled up some boulders and just sat there sucking in the power and majesty of it all, hardly believing I was one of the very few to ever see this. I didn’t even care that I had no more film. No picture could render the shear power, the thunderous reverberation to the very core of ones being I experienced there.
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Spider

There were other almost equally surreal and sublime finds. The river here had uncountable pockets of visually stunning if ephemeral beauty, ever changing with its flow, the vegetation, the weather, the geography and the geology. I particularly recall a maze of small stepping-stone ponds spilling over into each other, accented by random islets overgrown with trees that exploded with bird life. There was that section of one tributary where car-size tussocks of moss as thick as sea kelp dotted the waters, providing a bridge all the way across to the sure-footed. Another twisting rocky stream was perfect for rapids running sans boat at uncontrollable speed, and yet another creek where tree trunks and branches bent all the way over it allowing an irresistible though slippery crossover above the rushing waters. But mainly it was the sense of place I left here with, a place I knew must exist as an imaginative child, but had no notion would be so difficult to get to, or so exhilarating once I had. Each day offered something never to be forgotten.

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When we returned to Para I had no sooner parted company with the boys than I discovered almost all of my cash had been depleted. Banks were closed on Saturdays, my flight out wasn’t until Sunday night and credit cards weren’t accepted anywhere. I was so desperate I seriously contemplated selling some camera gear on the street. Luckily I found a place to stay for ten bucks a night and limited myself to two meals a day at three bucks a pop, leaving forty dollars for the long taxi ride to the airport and exit taxes. By the time I got on the plane I had exactly four dollars left.
 
To break up the return trip I had penned in a few days on Curacao, eastern-most of the Dutch ‘ABC’s - just another funky Caribbean non-entity I presumed, a relaxing if predictable contrast to the jungles. The flight out of Paramaribo was late as usual and I didn’t arrive until midnight. Soon after the entry formalities I found myself wandering a deserted airport, nowhere near any hotels, rental agents gone until morning. An upstairs outdoor hallway with rows of benches began looking more and more like viable sleeping quarters the longer I lingered. That and the warm tropical night enticed me to crash right there overlooking an eerily silent runway. Using my pack as a pillow and doubting I‘d see a soul who’d care, I nodded out, waking only once before sunrise. 

Heading east at dawn on a pot-holed road in a rental I couldn’t believe was once a car, I aimed toward the empty north end of the island in search of a room without the usual Caribbean price tag - something they’d allow me to park this thing in front of. Passing through small settlements the island took on an atmosphere both new and familiar. The sullen faces of unemployed young men, the houses too small for so many children, earmarks of poverty with turquoise beaches in the background - the usual stark contradictions to an otherwise potentially beautiful setting. I’d seen it all over the Caribbean, to my great shock initially, but well past that now. These were folk who were lucky if they worked a decent job five years out of their entire adult lives. What got them by were family, friends, a sense of humor and a little luck. But get them by is all it did, despite what’s portrayed in the cruise line commercials and brochures. Yes, I’m certain they’re just overjoyed to be serving over-priced drinks and meals in some glitzy ambience that so sharply contrasts what they go home to every night that they just forget all about being the disenfranchised in their own country. 
 
I managed to find an unpretentious place and immediately set out after unloading my gear. To its credit Curacao officially protects a huge population of flamingos in a massive salt flat lagoon, and most of the hilly North country had yet to be exploited in any manner. With my photographic sensitivities I’d become adept at emphasizing the pockets of natural beauty to be found in small hidden places, but more and more I found myself altering the composition to edit out encroaching signs of development, pollution or other troubling indications of a mismanaged environment, an indifferent culture or an inept officialdom. 

Three nights here proved more than sufficient. I had wandered quite enough beaches and the central highlands held little promise of revealing much more wildlife than I’d already found. There were no revelations to be had with so little time. I made no friends. In the end I understood little of what I’d seen, and drew hasty, dubious conclusions about what I had. 

So I departed this palette of contrasts and inequities for the predictable and the excessive – suburbia USA. But I left inspired, longing if a little discouraged. My heart was back in that humid forest where the trees reached right through the clouds, where each moonrise was an event, where every tomorrow held the promise of something worthy of memory.

The following is John's first article for the magazine:

Adventures In Surinam ~ Into The Jungle

To contact John Click Here
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