This would be our first time in a hardtop without a windshield. Covering her face with her hands, Babe just had to laugh when I shouted over the turbulence how beautiful she looked with the breeze flowing through her hair like that. 

But the laughter stopped abruptly as we sped through a very red light at a very large intersection doing fifty, an act that had no less than four encores by the time we arrived at the hostel, where the driver found us huddling for dear life below seat level.

Still numb with jet lag, we returned to the airport a mere five hours later to catch the early flight south to San Fernando de Apo, a brief flight made unforgettable by its landing. We had never been slammed so hard on to a runway.

Men cursed, women screamed, kids cried. I couldn’t believe the fuselage didn’t just snap right in two.

Notorious for quicksand, electric eels, Denge fever, anaconda’s and countless other forms of wholesome entertainment, the Llanos region was not to be trifled with. Any serious exploration without the most robust vehicle would only have invited even further setbacks, which we were already on track to set a record for. 

The wildlife encounters we did have were but a tantalizing distant tease that would require solid four-wheel traction or a boat to get anywhere close to. We couldn’t believe we had come all this way only to experience it all through binoculars. By then I was so pissed I kicked in the car’s door panel, which only enhanced its aesthetics. Nothing was working out. If we wanted to see the real Oronoco basin we’d have to bite the bullet and board yet another goddamn plane. 

The approach in to Puerto Ayacucho brought us in directly above a long series of major cataracts on the big river so treacherous they impeded any commerce beyond, explaining the town’s location. 

Once arrival formalities were completed, we were confronted by yet another stranger wondering what our business was in these parts - this time an aspiring guide. ‘Phil’ failed to impress us with a litany of local of points of interest, but his mentioning familiarity with an indigenous tribe got our immediate undivided attention. Challenging him for more details, we piled into his aging Land Cruiser to locate a cheap inn, and that afternoon over beer the three of us roughed-out plans and costs and itemized the necessary provisions.

Ayucucho had the look of a frontier town growing too fast for its own good. Phil had been there seven years, having been effectively forced out of his native Madrid by vindictive business partners looking for a scapegoat when some shaky scheme collapsed.

He had tried to make a go of it in Caracas, but lacked the requisite connections, so he came south.

His clients were mainly sport fishermen, though more intrepid foreigners and scientists with natural or anthropological interests had recently begun making exploratory incursions. He’d befriended some of the strange folk wandering into town from distant tribal areas, men mainly, who walked in single file even on Ayucuchos’ streets, having spent a lifetime doing so in thick jungles. He’d learned their language and customs when he wasn’t bouncing between the dock and the small airport to drum up business. Anyone arriving who wasn’t clutching a blowgun got his sales pitch. 

On our way out the following morning we loaded up on canned goods, strange fruits and vegetables and sacks of flour and rice, then proceeded out of town for several hours to a ranch situated on the Cumana tributary of the Orinoco. Tied along its banks was the largest dugout I’d ever seen - thirty feet plus, four feet wide, and not a saw mark on it. Someone had labored long and hard whittling this thing out of some forest giant. Babe and I got distracted by the beautiful skin of an exquisite adult Margay being cured, trapped on the property when snatching chickens. Ever the opportunist, Phil whispered that for a price it could be ours, so to calibrate him to our priorities we declined vehemently but countered we’d make him an equal offer if we were to sight one alive in the wild, and double it if I were able to get a photograph. We soon had the dugout loaded and were heading upriver, up to the foot of distant mountains and, as we were to discover by the end of the day, well into what can only be described as a separate reality. 

The river meandered unceasingly with few straight stretches longer than a hundred yards or so as the banks drew ever narrower, thick with uninterrupted foliage contrasting steep basaltic cliffs in the distance. Our approach spooked sunbathing snapping turtles and herons from their nests, and on occasion the brush would rustle at the escape of some unseen ground dweller.

We had definitely entered Sir Conan Doyle country, delving deeper and deeper hour after hour as the bow parted an infinite twisting mirror. It was all beginning to look just like the images we had conjured up months earlier pouring over maps at the library or from the comfort of home.

And just as we had become accustomed to the uninterrupted lushness of it all, primitive dwellings suddenly intruded on the landscape on a small bluff ahead. Carefully thatched from fronds and lianas, they resembled upturned nests looking almost as if they had grown there. Upon spotting us, naked children on the shore froze, then started following our slowing approach.

As the bow dug into the bank the appearance of the first adult made it clear we had landed a world away and a century behind where we had  started that day. I was cautioned not to take any pictures. Within a few minutes the entire village had surrounded us, scantily-clad women breastfeeding infants, men right out of some B headhunter movie.

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