This is #6 in a serialized post about one of my first assignments. It comes up most Mondays.
"We'll give you a machine gun if you join us" is what the Tupac Amaru rebels told one of Don Beni's sons. At least that is the story he told us as we hacked through the jungle in search of a lost "Incan temple."
The son, Fabian I think, was not sure what he would do with a machine gun so declined the offer. When did they ask you this? Recently. Where were you? Oh right here at my farm...
2 days before we had shouldered our packs and headed out from La Morada. Some of us happy, the writer, the historian and I. One of us indifferent, our body guard, and two distinctly unhappy porters. We had survived crossing a river, climbing a mountain and a night spent up guarding against jaguar attack only to be told we were in Rebel controlled country.
Great...
The Incan Temple turned out to be a Chachapoyan temple. Chachapoyan, wasn't Indian Jones looking for Chachapoyan artifacts in the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark when he was betrayed by his guides? The temple had been discovered years before by Don Beni's family as they cleared land for a farm.
That night back at Fabian's house I went to the porter's packs to pull out some of the freeze dried food I had brought to share with the family. I found their packs amazingly light and the food was not there! It seems that our porters had been dumping food along the way. It seems they were planning to extort more money from us when we ran out of food. The historian had found out about this plan earlier and told them to get serious. Betrayed by your guides indeed...
The good news was that Don Beni was only a day's walk away.
were you lucky enough to have alfred molina as one of those guides? is it any surprise he became a supervillan?
Posted by: geof bowie | July 21, 2008 at 03:13 PM