Feeling Invincible at My Most Vulnerable: Part 3

This is the final post in a series about my jungle adventure. You can read the first part here, and the second part here.

2.5 hours had passed, and we were just now making it to the damage assessment’s starting point. The damage assessment, or at least the first half, was slow moving. We moved along the seismic line at a snail’s pace while village elders identified trees and their uses. At one point, Egbert said to me, “I am just going to sit here for a while and let them continue, this is like the Stations of the Cross”. Later, under his breath, he muttered to me, "Station Number 2". After a morning of this, around 12:30 we stopped for lunch and to fortify ourselves for the tough part.

Because after our lunch was pure swamp. For 2.5 hours. It didn’t even ease us in. We went from perfectly dry land, to wading through knee-high (and ever deepening) water. And so, we slogged on, with rangers attempting to terrify us by sending a log down the swamp yelling "CROC", or screaming "snake". I like to think I made their day a bit more exciting. Eventually, we hit another river crossing, though this one within the swamp, making things much more difficult, resulting in more than one person falling off the submerged log and getting swept down the river. I am proud to report that I was not one of them! I was not entirely certain what we were crossing into, as there was just a wall of green, but then the machetes came out, and we were cutting our way through the wall of green and the swamp. This is where I was most terrified, as you really could not see anything in front of you, or below you, or to the right or left of you. 

But that terrified feeling never lasted too long, although I do think for any sane person, it would have. I mean, I was wading, waist-deep, through crocodile and snake infested waters, with no ability to see anything around me. And this is where the third item that made me feel invincible came in: my boots. While my boots had caused troubles when walking up the muck hill, I was so very thankful for them as I plowed deeper and deeper into the swamp. They give me a (totally false) sense of security. Of course a snake couldn’t bite through them (yeah, they could)! A crocodile won’t find this boot appetizing (I think it could care less)! These things are so thick; I will just roll over anything that could break my ankle (yeah right!).

Once we crossed this portion of river and swamp, we were in DEEP mangrove swamp. A swamp that smelled so fierce I thought I would gag. And, once again, I was wading up to my waist while crawling over and under and through mangrove roots. It was an adventure, to say the least. But despite the physical exertion, and the fact that in any other situation I would be terrified and grossed out, I was loving it. I had this goofy smile plastered on my face, was laughing throughout most of it, and was enjoying the absolute beauty surrounding me. It was an amazing feeling to be cutting your way through jungle and swamp, knowing few have done it before, and feeling like you are in The Fern Gully.

This continued for quite a while before we hit even deeper swamp over our heads, and we had to head back to the community. This meant a continued slog through the sulfur swamp, and my personal favorite, another deep river crossing. This one came without a log, and thus, we were all forced to throw our bags and machetes across to the other side of the shore, and launch ourselves as far as we could across the river, before kicking like heck so as not to get swept away (and hoping you didn’t swim into one of the machetes that got lost in the swamp/river). If you are lucky like me, you’ll have a park ranger to pluck you out of the river. And then, we made our way out of the deep swamp, back into the obnoxious muck for the final hour back into the village. When we finally made it out 10 hours after we left that morning, the rangers cheered, and I was happy that my invincible feeling was not truly tested, and that, thanks to kind and superhuman rangers, $10 rain boots, and a walking stick, I had made it. Made it to find, somehow in this small community of 190 people, 1.5 hours from the nearest town, an ice cream truck plowing down the street. You better believe that we abandoned our efforts of cleaning the filth from our pants at the town pump, ignored our fatigue, and a made a beeline for that truck.