Shark Attack

I would go out with the fishermen and get in the mud to fish with them at least once every other tide. I found it fun and it demonstrated to everyone that I would never ask them to do something that I was not willing to do myself. If there were 20 fishermen going out to work one of the large nets (eventually we constructed a second bayao) they would go to the net placements in pairs, each fisherman in his own personal small dugout canoe. They would sit by one of the marked poles as the tide went down, until they were both sitting on top of the mud. We had ten groups of two who were all arranged in this manner. Once the water was gone you would get out of the dugout into the almost thigh deep mud. In each group each fisherman would head off in opposite directions, pushing the small dugout on top of the mud and collecting the shrimp that was up against the net as they went along. Each fisherman would eventually be met by someone coming in opposite direction. A typical span that required collection was about the length of a football field, and it took a couple of hours to cover each assigned segment of the mud flat after the tide receded, and before the new tide rolled back in.
On one particular night I could tell that it was a good night because of the large number of shrimp that had been caught behind the nets. I was standing in thigh deep mud and had with me a small dugout canoe that I would use to toss the shrimp into. I pushed as the canoe glided along the top of the mud as I worked my way down the line of nets. The quantity of bugs is unimaginable, as there is a constant din buzzing around, the kind of noise that is not made by a few bugs but by zillions of them. Fortunately, the diesel does keep the flying insects off of your body. I had an old Seco bottle filled with kerosene and an old rag stuffed in the open end of the bottle, and lit on fire, for light. The nets, which were still up and couldn’t be put back down until the tide returned, formed a solid black wall in the darkness about ten feet high and almost a mile long.
As I progressed, suddenly the entire span of the net shook as if it had been hit by a bus. I was shocked, and a little frightened, as I had never encountered anything like this before. I continued to collect the shrimp and pushed my small boat forward in the direction of the light that approached in the distance. I knew the light was Felipe's and on this night I was looking forward to meeting up with him. Suddenly the entire net shook again. This shaking of the net continued to occur periodically during the entire time I was moving along my segment of the net line.
As a fisherman works his way along the net he encounters a couple of areas on each segment that never quite dry completely. The water flows to the lowest point and these pools are constantly fed, as the tide retreats, by small inland streams. I finally came upon one of these pools and there I discovered the cause of the net's movements.
We had caught a 700 pound hammerhead shark that was swimming around in a three-foot deep, twelve foot wide pool of water. Every once in a while it would ram into the net. The force from this huge shark shook the entire line of nets.
I screamed out, in the still clear night air, in the direction of the light in the distance, "Felipe, we have caught a giant shark here in this pool."
Felipe screamed back at me, "Leave it alone, Gringo."
Every time the shark swam to the side of the pool where I stood in the mud just a few feet from the edge of the pool, several shrimp would jump out of the pool trying to get away from the shark. I would collect up these fugitive shrimp and toss them into the canoe. I calculated that there had to be a lot of shrimp in the pool, and to retrieve the shrimp I had to somehow either make friends with the shark, or kill it.
The next time the shark came back over to my side of the pool, I took my very large hard wood mahogany paddle, waved it over my head, and brought it down squarely on top of the shark's head, wham!
Bad idea!
It was like hitting solid cement. It cracked my “unbreakable” paddle and hurt my hand.
And, I think I heard the shark laughing at me!
It was then that I remembered that a shark has to keep moving or it dies. It’s funny when you are in these situations what you are able to remember from your years of schooling. This shark was moving constantly and still occasionally ramming itself into the nets. So I slowly made my way through the mud around the pool and up the side of the stream that was keeping the pool filled. There I started to stack the mud trying to dam up the small stream. The idea worked as the stream water was diverted and started to run out along the sides of the mud flats and away from the shark’s pool. The rest of the water ran out of the pool, the pool dried up, and the shark died.
I then took my small canoe over to this monster dead shark and tied him and the canoe together. The shark was at least half again bigger than the canoe. I will never forget the looks on the guy's faces when I paddled back up to the main rancho as the tide came back in, with this giant hammerhead tied to the side of my little dugout canoe. I was exhausted and my body was completely caked in mud, but I had earned a new level of respect from the fishermen. The guys cut out the jaws and gave them to me, and I still have those jaws to this day. Those shark jaws are one of my most treasured possessions.

Loco

One of our Marineros was named 'Loco' (translation: Loco) and if you had ever met him you would know that the name was appropriate. He was a Panamanian, about 16 years old, five feet tall and weighed next to nothing, but could he climb! He was never afraid of anything. One day while headed up the river with two boats-full of tourists, he spotted a very large, six foot iguana sunning itself on a large branch that hung out over the river. The branch was at least 50 feet above the river. "Iguana!" he screamed. This was a good reason to stop the show, and we pulled over immediately to the bank.
Loco went up the tree so fast that if the tourists weren't paying attention to it they missed it. Loco got up to the tree limb with the iguana and he started inching out onto the branch. The iguana sat there, sunning itself, like nothing was happening. Suddenly the iguana looked up and saw Loco coming out onto his branch, who by now he was just a couple of feet away and inching toward the beast. This surprised the iguana, I am sure he had never seen anything like Loco before on his branch.
So the iguana jumped straight off the branch and floated down through the air toward the river.
It was like the whole event happened in slow motion.
As soon as the iguana jumped, Loco jumped!
He floated down toward the river just a few feet in the air behind the iguana. Both were gliding through the air at the same time. Loco hit the water right on top of the spot where the iguana had hit the water only a moment earlier. When he came up he thrust the iguana into the air, held above his head in both of his hands. All the tourists broke out in applause, as if this had been planned.
Iguana is a delicacy in the Darien. Everybody loves to eat it, and there is a surprisingly large amount of meat on a six foot iguana. Everyone says that it tastes like chicken (they say the same thing about snake meat). The real treat is finding a nest with eggs. The eggs have a soft shell that is a little leathery. They are just a little bit smaller than a chicken egg. You boil the eggs for about five minutes then let them cool. Then you take the egg and bite a little hole in the end of it. When you squeeze the other end of the egg the contents just pop right into your mouth. It is delicious. That night, of course, all the tourists ate iguana, compliments of Loco.  

The Cuna Indians

As I have stated, the Cuna have only two settlements in the Darien; Pucuru and Paya. All of the other Indian villages in the Darien are Chocó. The Cuna principally live on the San Blas Islands on the Atlantic side of the country separated from the Darien by a mountain range: the Serrania Del Darien. I took a trip to an island resort there for a short vacation, and the islands were beautiful, with white sand beaches, palm trees and crystal clear water. It was a great place to go and relax and forget about everything for a few days.
It is said that the Cuna migrated into the Darien basin from Southern Colombia. The banks of the rivers throughout the Darien were already populated by the Choco when the Cuna arrived. Since they came from a colder climate they began to settle along the Serrania del Darien, the mountain range that separates the Darien from the Atlantic Ocean. Over time the Cuna migrated over the mountain range and into the San Blas Islands.
From Boca de Cope, the last village upriver on the Tuira, the trip is about a three hour walk through very thick primary growth jungle, to get to Pucuru. The walk is almost entirely uphill as you are beginning to climb the mountains that separate Panama from Colombia as well as the Darien basin from the Atlantic coast. This hike is one of the most interesting and entertaining that you encounter in the Darien. This trail is so remote that there is seldom any foot traffic, and the animal life is always abundant.
The Cuna Indians live in houses built right on the ground with split cane walls, dirt floors and thatched roofs. Pucuru and Paya are in a higher altitude region that never floods.
The Cunas are famous for their molas, a reverse appliqué that is made by cutting and sewing some very colorful materials. The molas are very popular and you frequently see them for sale in Panama City, and in the tourist trade. The Cuna of Pucuru also made the traditional molas, which they would sew together and use for shirts and blouses, much in the same manner as their ancestors did for centuries. The Cuna of Pucuru did sell some molas to the tourists, on the occasions when we took groups into their village. They charged much less than half the price of what a tourist could buy them for in Panama City.
The other distinctive feature of the Cuna Indians, other than the molas, was their silver nose rings that were worn by both the men and the women. They also wore silver earrings that were frequently made of old coins in the same manner as the Chocó.
The personality of the Cuna Indians is very different from that of the Chocó. They are strong, aggressive people with a good business sense. They were also a very guarded people. They would keep to themselves when we set up camp in their village, and only visit with us and be hospitable when they were selling their molas. By contrast the Chocó would visit with us during the evening after we set up camp, and the Chocó children would always be around us and very eager to help whenever they could during the set up of the camp site. The Cuna of Pucuru and Paya did not move about the Darien the way the Chocó did. There would always be some Chocó in any of the cities like La Palma or El Real. The Cuna never came down to those cities. Actually, a traveler would rarely see the Cuna in Panama City as well, and it was even rarer to see the Chocó in the City.
The Cuna villages of the Darien were very isolated, and the only visitors who passed through them were headed over the gap into Colombia on foot; there was no access by river. Paya was the last vestige of human life located at the edge of the wild frontier leading to Colombia. There was a Guardia outpost there manned by a single soldier.
There was a river that ran by Pucuru, but it was so small and shallow that it was not navigable by dugout canoe. There was a nice wooden house built right on the outskirts of the village of Pucuru, similar to the house we first built when we arrived to the Darien. This house was built by European missionaries, and a couple lived there with the Cuna; they had lived in that house for several years when we met them. I respected these people. They were not phonies like most of the missionaries that I met, and had committed their lives to living, working and educating the Cuna Indians of this village while maintaining the tribe’s culture and traditions.
We took groups of tourists into this village on only about half a dozen occasions, most of who were bird watchers. Since this area was mountainous, unlike the rest of the Darien basin which was flat, the species here varied from what they had seen all day on the way upriver. One of the most common birds we saw were wild Macaws, both the blue and gold, and the scarlet varieties. These birds have a six foot wing span, are brightly colored, and a majestic beauty when we saw them in flight. They lived in the very top of the mountain jungle canopy, and it was common to spot them on the hike from Boca de Cupe to Pucuru.

Bras

Once we had a group of four European missionaries, two couples, who came to the house wanting to go upriver to visit the Indians. During the trip up the Rio Chico, a small river that is a branch off of the Chucunaque just north of Yaviza, the missionaries constantly commented about the Choco's lifestyle. They were horrified at how they lived and talked about how the Indians' souls were in danger of going to hell. I didn't pay much attention to this since we encountered missionaries all the time, and they all were fairly clueless about the indigenous people. Missionaries understand their own religion and seem to have good intentions, but they have little or no understanding of the people whom they are trying to help. After the trip up the Chico we returned to El Dorado and the next day the missionaries left, telling me that they would be back.
About three weeks later they returned. This time they brought two large boxes. I didn't question them about it. After all, they were the paying customer and I was happy for the charter business. Only when we got to the first Chocó village did I find out what was in the boxes.
They were filled with "bras!"
At each village they gave the women the bras, and showed them how to use them. As I stated earlier, the Chocó women are very polite and gracious, and they continually thanked the missionaries for such wonderful gifts. The scene repeated itself in each of the three villages going up the Chico River. The missionaries gave the women the bras, then they demonstrated how to put them on, and then the Chocó dutifully obeyed all the while thanking the missionaries profusely while smiling from behind their new white bras. The next day on our way back down the river, as we passed each village, all the women ran to the shore to wave to us, while showing off their new bras. When the missionaries left they were very proud of themselves for bringing ‘civilization’ to these poor backward people. I realized that the missionaries truly thought that by providing the women bras they were in the process of helping these people save their souls.
Approximately three weeks later the missionaries returned, and this time they brought only one large box. I had learned my lesson from the first experience, so I asked right away what was in the box. The box was filled with Bibles written in Spanish. It occurred to me just how much sense this made for a people who were largely illiterate, and had no written language, but again I kept my mouth shut.
We went back up the same river, the Rio Chico, and came to the first village. All the women and children came down to the river bank to meet us and ... not a woman had a bra on!
Now, at this time I could only speak about 30 words of Chocó, and most of the words I knew had to do with animals. I was still having trouble understanding what they were saying because they speak their native language so fast and tend to run their words together.
All I could get out of them when I asked them where the bras were was, "We love the gifts, and you have to bring us more!"
When we got to the second and third villages we found that the same thing had happened at each one. Not a woman had a bra on, and they kept telling me that they loved them and that we had to bring more.
We built our camp for the night in the third village. We were still puzzled as dusk set in and the men came marching back from the fields. To everyone's astonishment the men were wearing the bras. They had them fastened around their waists, and now they had a pouch for their tobacco, and their machete slipped easily into the side, etc. They had rigged the bras so that for the first time in their lives they had pockets.
The missionaries were trying to impose their own values and culture on another group of people, simply because they were different. It goes to show that generally speaking, it is almost impossible to change culture. The Chocó and their ancestors have lived in this manner for many centuries. A direct effort on the part of these missionaries to effectuate a change in their lifestyle was doomed from the start. This group of frustrated missionaries left and never came back. It is precisely because of this story that I believe that a road bridging the gap would create little or no change in the lives of the Chocó Indians.  
 

Una Hora

 The Chocó had a simple society and this was demonstrated by the fact that their spoken language only had the numbers from one to five, for anything larger than five they had a word that meant 'many.' When I was still trapping birds, I was visiting the Indians in the second village going upriver on the Tuira. It was a small village but I heard stories about another smaller village inland from there where all the community farms were. They told me that there were hundreds of parrots there. I asked them how far to walk to the other city and they told me 'una hora' (one hour).
It was just after lunch, and I figured that I could walk to the village, check out the birds in the afternoon and visit with the Indians there, then walk back before nightfall. So I set out along the trail ... alone!
The trail was well worn and easy to follow. There was only one trail, no branches and no side trails. The first part of the trail coming from the river snaked through corn and then platano fields. After leaving the fields the trail wandered through secondary growth bush for a long while. Then I reached a stretch of about a mile that traveled through primary growth rain forest. After emerging from the jungle the remainder of the walk was through secondary growth bush and then the communal Chocó platano fields until arriving at the small dale with about half a dozen Chocó huts.
After walking for over an hour and a half, I came across another Indian on the trail walking in the opposite direction toward the river, from where I had come.
I asked him how much farther to the village and he told me 'una hora.' (one hour).
How could that be? That's what they told me back at the river, and I had already been walking much more than an hour.
As I continued walking and thinking about this, it finally dawned on me what 'una hora' must mean to the Chocó. Their comprehension of time must be equal to their comprehension of numbers. When the distance was too far for them to be able to calculate an exact time, they simply used the term 'una hora.' I learned this lesson the hard way as I arrived at the inland village at about four o'clock, almost four hours since I had begun my journey. Knowing now the actual time it took me to get there, and also knowing the approximate time for nightfall, I was in serious trouble!
The trip back was hair-raising. I was completely unprepared. I had no light and only a partial book of matches. Here I was alone, encountering nightfall right as I came to the part of the trail that went through dense primary growth jungle. No moonlight or starlight makes it to the floor of the jungle due to the dense canopy.
Although the trail was well worn for the most part, when it came to following any trail in primary growth jungle it didn’t matter how worn it was. If I veered only slightly off course I knew I would miss a marker and lose the trail in a matter of seconds. There was also the possibility of accidentally walking into one of the giant spider web nets that occasionally bordered the trail. I had to start lighting matches to be able to see where the trail went. Very slowly and deliberately I would light a match and walk forward, trying my best to follow the trail, until the match burnt my fingers. Then I would stop and light another match and repeat the same thing.
Suddenly I heard the roar of a jaguar, not the kind of roar that comes from the distance, but the roar that is so close that you can swear that the big cat was watching you. I knew I would have no chance to defend myself against a jaguar in the middle of the jungle.
It is interesting what a motivating factor fear can become in a moment like this. I immediately lit a match and ran with my hand cupped around the match until it burnt my whole hand. My heart was racing as fast as my feet. I was barely touching the ground and making tracks through the jungle as if I had run on this trail a thousand times before. I slowed slightly only to light the next match.
All I could see in my mind was the jaguar chasing me, gaining on every stride. Then, suddenly, it was as if I had broken through a barrier, and I emerged from the jungle into the relative safety of a platano field and the security of a starlit night.
It was one of the stupidest things that I had done while I was in Panama, but I somehow managed to survive the ordeal.
The biggest fascination for the Chocó was blonde women. When we brought a blonde woman into a village, everyone would come up to her and want to touch her hair; Chocó women and children alike. I am sure that in many cases it was the first time any of these children had ever seen a Gringo other than me, much less a blonde woman. Kim was even more of an anomaly to the Chocó. The first time he arrived at a Chocó village produced one of the most extreme reactions I had seen by the children. Kim is over six feet tall, and has red hair and freckles. They called him 'el rojo' (the red one).
The standard trip with either the tourists or the bird watchers was two days. Each river had three Indian settlements on it, and was about a two hour ride in the dugout canoe from one village to the next. We would stop at each village for an hour or two on the way upriver and visit with the Indians. The tourists would buy baskets and wood carvings that the Indians began to make and sell after they were secure in the idea that we would be coming to their villages on a fairly regular basis. We would then set up camp at the last upriver village (tents and air mattresses), and set off for home down the river the next day. The children were always very friendly and curious about us. They would help us set up camp and then sit and visit with the tourists until their mothers came by to get them as it became dark out. When traveling back down the river the women and children of each village would come down to the shore and wave as we went by.

The Healing

 The Chocó believe that everyone's life is controlled by a spirit, and that one’s spirit is an animal. When a person is young the spirit lives on your back, and as the person gets older and wiser it moves up the back and ends up living on the top of your head when you are very old. The elderly were the most respected members of the Chocó family.
The Chocó had a Curandero (medicine man) in most of the villages. They believe that the Curandero has supernatural powers from birth, which gives him the ability to communicate with the spirits to determine the causes of a person’s illness. He would make medicine sticks (ethnographic art) that he would then use in the healing process. These were made from a very special hard dark wood, and many of these sticks looked like black ebony, all shiny and iridescent. The only thing that can create that effect on the wood is repeated exposure to the natural oils of the human hand. The medicine sticks had been used and handled so much by the Curandero that they eventually achieved that sheen. The Chocó also made wood carvings that they sold to the tourists, but they weren't the same as the authentic medicine sticks. Genuine medicine sticks had acquired that rich and earthy patina created by countless years, and in some cases generations, of use by the Curanderos.
I stated earlier that there was racial tension between the Mestizos and the Chocó. An example of this was that the Mestizos referred to the Curanderos as “Brujos” (witches). These people tended to be afraid of that which they did not understand.
The supernatural was always a natural part of the lives of the Choco. The Curanderos used their powers for the good of the community in healing the sick. It would never occur to a Curandero to use their skills to do damage to another person. This form of sorcery is practiced in South America and the Caribbean. People of these other cultures will hire a sorcerer to cast a spell doing harm to someone who was an enemy or a person who had wronged you. The sorcery of these cultures was completely foreign to the communal thought process of the Choco.
One day an Indian arrived at the house telling me that the Cacique needed to see me right away. It was late in the day, but I dutifully loaded up the dugout and took off for Union Chocó.
I arrived at nightfall and was met on the bank by the Cacique. While we walked up the hill together, and then across the village, he explained to me that one of the boys in the village had been bitten by a poisonous snake.
I was a little surprised because normally these kinds of things were kept very private and outsiders were never allowed to observe. I knew that I was viewed by the Chocó as an expert on snakes and snake bites, mainly because of my initial involvement in the animal business and the fact that I wasn't afraid of snakes, but what I observed on this day was way outside any of my areas of expertise.
I was led to a hut at the back end of the village. There was a group of five or six women with several children standing near the base of the ladder beside the hut. I smiled at them as I approached the hut, and they nodded in return, but no one said anything.
The Cacique motioned to me to go up the ladder. I scaled the log up into the house but the Cacique did not follow me up the ladder. I quietly stepped up into the hut and seated myself on the floor right by the top of the ladder to be able to observe from a quiet distance. I don’t think that anyone noticed me enter, and if they did they did not show it.
I was immediately struck by the sweet smell of a smoky aura that had settled under the thatched roof. I recognized the boy who was lying on a matt in the center of the floor of the Curandero's hut. I remember him from many of my previous trips to Union Chocó. He was conscious throughout the entire time I was there. He was constantly in a hot sweat all over his body as he stared blankly up at the roof. The Curandero sat beside the side of the mat and was also in a hot sweat. He seemed completely absorbed, as if he was in a trance.
There were two men sitting on the floor on the opposite side of the mat from where the Curandero was seated. One was probably the boy's father, someone who I had never met. The other I immediately recognized as the Cacique’s brother. I surmised that the boy on the mat was probably his grandson.
There was a ceremonial rhythm to what I was observing. Both the Curandero and the father were chanting. The smoke (and the smell) came from a small smoldering fire of what looked like dried grass in a gourd to the left of the Curandero. There were three small gourds to the right of the Curandero. One had a black pitch in it, one had a mashed red berry in it, and the third had a mixture of wet grasses.
The Curandero devoured an entire bottle of Seco during the time I was sitting with them. The Curandero was using two medicine sticks, first one, then the other, and then both. One stick was in the shape of two snakes twisted together and was a shiny dark black color. Perched on the end of the second stick was a carving of a small boy. There was a carved snake that curled up the handle of this stick and the head of the snake rested on the leg of the boy. I couldn't understand what that they were chanting, but I would guess that they were probably praying.
The boy had been bitten just above the ankle. The Curandero would chew up the mixture of the grasses and herbs which he kept applying to the spot on the leg where the boy had been bitten, and then he would massage the mixture into the bite using the black tar. Over the centuries the Curanderos had learned about those particular roots and herbs having medicinal qualities. This was passed down from father to son, as Curanderos tended to be a family business because they believed that the spirits that helped you to cure others were given to you at birth. The best and most powerful medicine sticks, with the most powerful spirits, were also passed along from one generation to the next. The combination of the roots and herbs, the saliva of the Curandero, and the Seco apparently has healing properties, given each different medical situation. However, it does seem like faith also plays a large part in the healing process as well. I would think that a study of these miracle cures coming straight from nature would be appropriate for some scientist to do someday, if it hasn't already been done.
I observed the ritual for about 15 or 20 minutes; chanting, more of the medicinal mixture, more of the Seco, and constant work with the medicine sticks, with the sweet smelling smoke filling the air of the small hut throughout. Finally, I quietly slipped out of the hut and back down the ladder. I explained to the Cacique that there was nothing I could do to be able to help. Even if I had anti-venom with me, it would have been dangerous to administer it without knowing the exact kind of snake that bit the boy. I reassured him that what they were doing was probably the right thing and gave the boy his best chance for survival.
He told me that the Curandero, and the boy's father, would be working with him until morning.
The boy survived and I brought him a pair of sandals from Panama City the next time I saw him some weeks later. 

Cito and the NBC News Crew

We were out on a multi-day bird trapping trip upriver on the Tuira, about a half day's trip from the house. Around midday I heard a boat motor and went down to the river to see who it was, because boats with motors rarely came by. Surprise, surprise! It was Arnold (Cito) Talbot, a good friend of mine from Panama City who worked as a cameraman for NBC news in Central America. The word 'Cito' means 'little,' but Cito was anything but little. He was shorter than six feet tall and weighed over 250 pounds, and I don't think any of it was muscle. He was always quick with a joke. Cito was the kind of guy who was the life of the party.
Here was Cito, arriving in the middle of the jungle with a news crew (it must have been a real slow news day). The crew was in Panama to cover the Presidential visit of Jimmy Carter and the signing of the new treaty changing the terms of the management of the Panama Canal.
They took some footage of the jungle and the parrots and interviewed me. I think I said something romantic about the jungle, like how you could feel it because it had a heartbeat of its own. It was something highbrow and philosophical. The spot got picked up in the United States on national news. Cito told me later that when they ran the piece it was very well received, and they even got some letters. He told me about one letter from a waitress in St. Louis who wanted to come down to live with me. I got upset with him because he never got her number or address.
Years later at my 20th high school reunion, many of my old friends told me that they had seen the spot on television. They told me that they told their friends, "Did you see that crazy guy in the jungle on the news? I went to high school with him."
Cito had grown up in the Canal Zone and now lived in Panama City. He would come down to the house in El Real and just pop in, unannounced. He would bring with him a cheap bag of nondescript beads. The first time he brought them I asked him what they were for; he told me that he was going to trade them with the Indians for baskets and wood carvings. I thought he was nuts. When he pulled out the beads at Union Chocó I couldn't believe the reaction of the Chocó Indian women. They were willing to trade anything they had for Cito's beads. I learned the lesson that there were some things that were more important to a Chocó woman than money. 

Smart Parrots

Doing business in Panama was different than in the United States. It was all about whom you knew, not what you knew. Our contacts in the Darien, as well as Panama City, proved to be the key to our success.
We were working with a section of the Panamanian Department of Agriculture called RENARE (REcursos NAturales REnovables – Renewable Natural Resources) for our animal collection and shipment permits. Their offices were not in Panama City, but in a remote location about a half an hour outside of the city. It was a series of old block buildings that looked like old scattered homes, or an old elementary school, more than it did the hub of Panamanian forestry and agriculture. We had two contacts in RENARE, both in their twenties, and both liked to go out at night and have a good time. We took them to the local discos on several occasions and developed excellent working and social relationships. Although I had heard that you did business in Latin America based on greasing people’s palms, neither of our two RENARE contacts ever shook me down for money, and the only sums we paid were the legitimate costs of the permits and the duties for shipping the birds. 
We had made arrangements with a group of doctors led by Doctor Pedro Galindo, from Gorgas Memorial Hospital in the Canal Zone, the largest and most modern hospital in Central America, who were studying Newcastle disease in exotic birds in the wild, to test all of our birds. We did buy some birds from the Indians, and we caught some as well, enough to make a couple of successful shipments. During the time that we tested and shipped birds we never had a single positive test for Newcastle disease in the wild Panamanian birds. But we soon found out something else about trapping parrots:  
The parrots were much smarter than we were.
Wild parrots would come down into the corn fields to feed by the hundreds. We would set up large mist nets (thin, black monofilament nets, with each net about 12 feet high and 40 feet long) on bamboo poles along the perimeter of the corn field. We hid in a rancho, a small lean-to constructed from large sticks and palm fronds. The rancho was strategically located across from the net placements.  When a large number of birds were in the field feeding we would jump out and scare them into the nets. At least that was the theory behind our plan.
We would set the nets on the right side of the field, and the parrots would fly to the left. Because of this we would spend all of the next day moving the nets to the left side of the cornfield. After all, that's where they flew yesterday. Here come the birds back again. We would execute our plan and jump out and scare them, but this time they flew to the right. There would be literally hundreds of parrots feeding in the corn field, and the best day out we would only catch a few.
Then one day something happened that changed my point of view regarding taking animals out of the wild, as well as the live animal business as a whole. We were trapping parrots at a corn field about a half an hour from the house. We caught three parrots that day and had them in a cage beside the nets. Another parrot from the flock did not fly away with the rest. It sat on a branch near the caged parrots, calling out to them. One of the caged parrots kept calling back to the one in the tree. We packed up all our gear and finished up closing down the net site for the evening, and then headed back toward home with the three caged parrots. The other bird followed us, calling as we walked along the trail to what was probably its mate in the cage. The scene touched me deeply, and made me realize that these animals have feelings of attachment and loyalty; emotions just like humans have. I stopped on the trail and let the caged parrots go. I watched the birds fly off together until they disappeared in the distance. I never trapped another animal after that day. If I was going to stay in the Darien and live this lifestyle, then I would have to find a different way of supporting myself.
I must admit that the work of trapping birds was very interesting. One of the first things we did at any bird trapping site was to construct the rancho. It would be built at the highest point of the farm, on a hill overlooking the corn field. We would hide in it and observe the movements of the parrots. Hiding in the rancho and observing the surroundings was very reminiscent of my childhood days, hiding in the underbrush of the Angeles National Forest and awaiting my friends coming up the ravine.
Sometimes I was alone in the rancho and sometimes with another person, but we never spoke or moved. While the observers sat quietly in the rancho we would see many things in addition to the birds. So much was happening around you that it was like being involved in a live movie:
There were parrots bouncing around from corn stalk to corn stalk, feeding.
About 100 feet down the hill to the right was a small rodent-like animal foraging for food.
Coming across the small clearing into the corn field from the left side was a small animal that had a body that looked like a fox with a long bushy tail, but it was grey in color.
Hanging from one of the palm fronds on the top of our rancho, not three feet from where we are seated, you notice a large praying-mantis-like insect that you have never seen before. It is four inches long and all jet black with some slight orange coloration.
You think for a moment, “I wonder how far that bug can leap and how much it would hurt if it bit me?”

The Jungle Trail

Everyone who came to visit us wanted to see the jungle, so we created a short, half mile makeshift trail through a section of the primary growth jungle behind Neddy and Augustina's place. It took the hiker through thick primary growth jungle, then by the place where Mark and I caught the barba amarilla (so I could stop and tell the story), and then over a small gully on a giant dead tree that formed a bridge over the gully. From there it went through an area where we usually saw spider monkeys in the trees, and then completed the loop back to where we started. The entire walk would take a couple of hours because of the frequent stops to quietly watch different animals we spied from the trail.
When my mother, and two of my sisters, came to visit we took them for a walk on this trail. It was when we were first trying to create the trail, and the path was still not well defined. It was easy to lose your bearings when walking through primary growth jungle. After walking for a while, and marking trees as we went, we finally came back across a previous tree mark. We had been going in a circle. Not a very impressive display of navigational skill for "jungle boy" in front of his family.
My mother is neither very tall nor athletic, and was an inexperienced hiker. I remember having to boost her up onto the tree bridge, an old fallen tree that ran over the gully. I gave her a long stick to help her with her balance. She had a handful of flowers, which she had picked along the trail and refused to put down, in one hand and the long stick in the other hand. A few moments later we all heard a splat. Mom had fallen off the log and face down into the mud. No one ran to help her right away; everyone was too busy laughing and taking pictures of our mother caked with mud. My mom was a real trooper during the walk, and never uttered a single complaint. She has always had such a zest for life. I figured that if she could make it around this little adventure trail, anyone who we brought out could as well.

The Army Is Coming

Life in the Darien was slow-moving and peaceful. There always seemed to be something that needed doing around the house, and we always were working on dreaming up the “next project.” Visitors to our house were frequent, whether it was Chocó coming down the river from one of the Indian villages, or people coming out to the house by foot from town. We were definitely a curiosity to everyone.
One morning Diego burst into the house, waking everyone up in a passionate rush, screaming that we had to leave. He kept shouting "the army is coming." When we didn't understand he took us to the door and pointed across the cleared out area between the side of the house and the gully. The army he spoke of was ants. They were advancing in a huge hoard, marching in a straight horizontal line that was at least 100 feet across, and that went back as far as the back of the cleared area, all the way to the gully and the Mercadeo. There had to be many millions (maybe billions) of them covering the ground like a rippling blanket. You could see numerous insects and small rodents running for their lives just in front of the advancing hoard. We quickly gathered a few things together and immediately left the house by dugout canoe and went into town for a few hours.
When we got back, the ants were all gone, and the house was spotless - easily the cleanest that it had been since being newly built! Every crumb, every scrap, every little dead insect or piece of anything not nailed down was gone! We decided to have them in once a month to clean the house, but they never came back.
When I first went down to Darien, it was all about the animals. Whenever someone came across something interesting, they would bring it to us. We had a young Toucan brought to us (you know, the Fruit Loops bird) that had a very distinctive personality. We let it roam free around the main house, and it hopped around, following all of us everywhere like a puppy. It made a cute little clicking noise with its beak when petted behind the ears (birds have ears?) in the same manner that a cat purrs. It lived with us, loose in the house, for well over a year.
We also had a pair of baby 'gato solo' (translation: lone cat) or as we refer to them, coati mundi. They were very cute and cuddly and roamed freely around the house. The toucan was a curiosity to them, but basically they left each other alone. They look like little racoons with a long snout. They were curious about everything, just like a raccoon. They lived with us at least a couple of years and we nicknamed them the Little Bears. The Bread Girls would sit for hours playing with the two gato solo.
In the kitchen we always had a bunch or two of hanging bananas. There were three kinds of bananas, and they got sweeter as they got smaller. The platano is the largest, big and mealy. Platano is eaten at every meal and it is debatable whether it is a fruit or a vegetable. The second is the 'guineo' or what we refer to as a regular banana that you buy in the local grocery store. The third is the finger banana, which never gets more than a few inches long (the length of one of your fingers) and is very sweet. We also always had a large stack of platanos on the floor in the kitchen. These were on our primary menu and they were also on the menu for the animals.
In addition to the platanos and hanging bananas we always had sacks of whatever was in season (papayas, mangos, avocados, etc.). The kids would pick them growing wild and bring them to us. We generally paid one dollar per 100. Yeah, you heard me right, fresh picked mangos and avocados for 1 cent apiece.
There are numerous different kinds of mangos, and each has a different taste and consistency. Some varieties are mealy, some are stringy, some have the consistency of a peach and some a harder texture like that of a pineapple. They have named the varieties after the fruit that tastes like that particular mango; for example mango de papaya, mango de guava, and mango de pina.
Unfortunately the fruit in the house also brought unwanted animals. The most frequent visitors were bats (vile, ugly creatures) which would come into the house at night to eat our fruit. There are two kinds of bats living in the Darien; fruit bats and vampire bats. The vampire bats feed entirely on blood, and generally take advantage of sleeping cattle and horses, but they are reputed to feed on humans as well. They do not cause any immediate harm to their victims when feeding, but they carry numerous diseases that can be very dangerous.
I remember one night, when the bats became so numerous flying around the house, that we took drastic measures. We set up a mist net, the same kind we used to trap parrots, across the kitchen. We caught a lot of bats but didn't completely solve the problem. We finally solved the bat dilemma by screening over every hole around the bottom of the roof of the house.  

Chicha de Mais

  One day Augustina, my neighbor across the river, paddled across the river in her tippy little canoe, and she had with her a one-gallon glass jug. Any drink that they made was called 'chicha.' They would make chicha de mango, chicha de papaya, chicha be guanabana, and when they made Kool Aid they called it chicha de kool aid. On this day she had worked hard to make me a special treat. She came up to the house and handed me her gift. The jug was cloudy and had little bits of things floating in it. I asked her what it was and she replied that it was "chicha de mais" (translation: corn drink). She then insisted that I taste it, which I dutifully did. I could not imagine anything as nasty to make a drink out of as corn. It was truly awful! It tasted dreadfully sour and the little corn kernels got stuck in my teeth. I gathered all my fortitude, smiled, and said, "It is wonderful Augustina, and I love it, simply delicious." As Augustina walked off toward town with the knowledge that she had pleased the Gringo with her gift, I handed the jug of chicha to Diego and told him to get rid of it.
A few weeks went by and one morning when Augustina came across the river she stopped to talk, rather than simply call out. She asked me how I liked the chicha de mais, and, of course I told her how much I had enjoyed drinking it. At that moment Diego burst out of the house with the jug, it was bone dry. He handed it to Augustina and said that Gary loved it, and wanted her to make some more. Diego got a very dirty look from me. She took the empty jug and contentedly paddled back home. I was confused at first but said nothing.
A few weeks later the entire scene repeated itself. Augustina came across with the jug of the chicha de mais and made me take a drink. The second batch tasted more sour and rancid than the first one. Again I told her it was wonderful, and again I passed the jug onto Diego to get rid of. The first time this was amusing, but after the second time I got upset with Diego. I never really knew what was going on at the time, but I told Diego that if I ever had to taste that rancid drink again that I would get very angry.
Months later I was up one of the smaller rivers visiting with the Chocó Indians. The men worked in the communal fields during the day while the women and children stayed in the village. I came into this village around mid day, and had sent word in advance that I would be coming with another Indian who was traveling to that village a couple of days before us. All the men came back into town from their farms for the meeting. Their houses were raised on long log poles and the floor of the house was about 8 - 10 feet off the ground. This was because of the flooding that constantly occurred, as well as for protection against wild animals. The houses had thatched roofs and no side walls.
When I first came to Panama I spoke very little Spanish. I learned to speak Spanish by living down there, and having to try to speak the language in order to survive. The Chocó Indians have no written language, and their spoken language is nothing like Spanish. Most of the Chocó men spoke some Spanish, and many were fluent in the language. I learned some Chocó words while I lived in Darien, but spoke exclusively Spanish in meetings with the Chocó men. My Spanish is strictly verbal, with a lot of street vernacular and slang as opposed to a more educated version, as I learned it by having to speak the language to be able to survive living in the Darien. I finally realized that I was fluent in the Spanish language when I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that I had been dreaming in Spanish.
We were all seated in an oversized community house in a large circle; there must have been at least 20 men seated on the floor with me. I spoke with them about what we wanted to do with the animals, and specifically the birds and the snakes. They were always interested in how much money they could make for the different kinds of animals. But, the talks always came around to their fascination with snakes. It was important to educate everyone on how to identify a poisonous snake. I stressed leaving them alone, as well as the basic steps of what to do in the case of a poisonous snake bite.
While I was speaking with this group of Chocó men I became aware of a five gallon white plastic bucket that had been set in the center of our large circle. One Indian, with a small cup, would dip the cup in the bucket and take the cup and hand it to one of the Indians seated in the circle. They would take a drink and then hand him back the cup. The Indian would then go back to the bucket, refill the cup, and take it to the next Indian sitting next to the one that had just drunk. Little by little, as I spoke to the group, the cup made its way around the circle and was finally handed to me.
Who knows where the water came from, or if it was safe to drink. But given the circumstances, you don't ask questions, you drink, so drink I did! The sip nearly knocked me on my back. I had just sampled a stout liquor. I asked what the drink was called and they told me, 'chicha fuerte' (which translates literally as: 'strong drink'). I did, however notice a strangely familiar after taste to the drink. I asked if the drink went by any other name. They told me yes, when the drink is new, and not ready to drink, they call it 'chicha de mais.'
In that moment seated over a days' journey from our house in El Real with twenty Chocó Indians, I realized that I had been had by Diego. I drank the nasty 'chicha de mais' to please Augustina, and Diego partied weeks later with the ‘chicha fuerte’ after it had a chance to ferment!

The House

The Darien is purported to have one of the highest incidences of earthquakes in the world. It is here that the North and South American plates converge, as well as the Atlantic and Pacific plates. The movement from the four plates causes regular seismic activity. We had noticeable quakes about once a month, and every few months something would hit us that was like a land wave. The earthquakes from my childhood in Southern California were nothing like this. This was an actual visible wave going across the land. You could see it coming from a distance, and when it hit, it was like being hit by a wave, a large jolt and loud boom, and then you would watch as it would head off in the opposite direction that it came from. It was especially noticeable when the wave moved across a river as you could see the water rolling as it was being pushed by the earth.
We cleared out a good-sized area (approximately an acre) and built a main house out of wood about five feet off the ground on stilts. The house had a screened front porch which overlooked the river. Built into the far side of the porch was a wooden picnic bench-style table. From the porch you walked into the living room which had the kitchen off to the left side. A small bathroom, with only a toilet, came off the living room on the side opposite from the kitchen. There was no shower or sink, as we had no running water. We flushed the toilet with a bucket of river water poured directly into the toilet bowl. All waste flowed into a septic tank we had dug and enclosed in cement. A hallway ran from the living room to the back door, and on both sides of the hallway were bedrooms. The beds were all single beds and had mosquito nets draped over them. All of the interior walls were built from peeled cana blanca (white cane). The structure was built for its practical functionality, not for elegance.
About 15 feet behind the main house was the animal house, also raised about 5 feet. This structure was built with cana blanca walls, and had a thatched roof. Inside were large flight cages for birds and a small front room for wooden reptile cages. The floors of the flight cages were made from wire mesh. The bird droppings would fall right through to the ground below. We never had to clean up after them because the mess would be washed away with the high tides. A wooden bridge ran the fifteen feet from the back door of the main house to the front door of the animal house.
After we got Juan on board we let him choose who else would be hired to build the house. He also directed all of the construction and arranged for the purchase of the construction materials. Politically, this assured that we were connected with the right people in the El Real area, and that we were spending our money at the right places.
We also hired on Diego, a light skinned Colombian from Cali, who lived at the house and took care of the animals. He also taught us the ropes, and helped us to learn the correct way to do things in the Darien. He had lived in El Real a good portion of his adult life, but I must stress that his knowledge only extended to the etiquette involved in living with the Mestizos. Like the majority of the Mestizo inhabitants of the Darien he did not know much about the lives of the Chocó, nor did he care to learn anything about the Chocó as a people or their culture.
We were young and inexperienced and really were making everything up as we went along. For example, the materials we used to construct the animal house seemed like a good idea. They were lightweight, sturdy, allowed good ventilation, and cheap. There was only one minor problem; we found out the hard way that birds "eat" cana blanca! This problem reared its head when most of the first load of our birds escaped by eating through the cane.
The early days were difficult, as we had no running water and bathed in the muddy waters of the Rio Tuira. Even though we were well inland the river was still tidal. The river water rose and fell about eight feet each day in front of our house. On the Pacific Ocean, the tides can have up to a 17 foot difference from high tide to low tide. At low tide you could see sand bars, rocks and old tree stumps emerge in various places in the river. At high tide the water would come almost up to the base of the main house. At high tide during the rainy season, the water came up under the house and you tied the dugout canoe right up to the front porch.
There were two kinds of "good eating" fish that we would catch in the river in front of the house. The first were large catfish, and the second (my favorite) were fresh-water sharks. The shark meat was more like a steak than a filet, and was soft and flaky and had no "fishy" smell or taste.
Bathing in the river was always an adventure in itself. The water was so muddy with tidal silt that you couldn't see your hand when you held it just under the surface of the water. The river had many other animals in it besides us. When two of my sisters visited, and bathed in the river, a local boy pulled a small alligator out of the river right near where they were bathing. One of my sisters told me that when she got back to a "real hotel" in Panama City after visiting the Darien, the first thing she did when she went into her hotel room, was to go into the bathroom and kiss the sink!
There are two seasons in the Darien, the rainy season and the dry season. The difference between the two is that during the dry season (December to April) it rained almost every afternoon for a couple of hours. During the rainy season it rained all the time. During the rainy season there was so much moisture in the air that nothing ever seemed to heal. Cuts and minor abrasions never quite seemed to form a solid scab. We ended up getting a special ointment that promoted the drying up and healing process.
The rain would fall in sheets, and the sound in the main house, with the tin roof, would be so deafening that you could not be heard by a person sitting next to you. Then, the rain would stop as suddenly as it had appeared, and when you went outside it was if life had been renewed. Everything was fresh; the air, the trees and the birds singing all around you.
The rivers were easier to navigate during the rainy season because they always had a lot of water and were more easily passable. You didn't have the problems with logs, rocks and sand banks that you had in the dry season. There were smaller side rivers that you couldn't pass in the dry season, but were easily passable in the rainy season.
We had no electrical power at the house. Think about that! No air conditioning in the middle of a very hot and humid jungle, no refrigeration, no lights, no television, etc. When I recount the story to people this is where they find it all so hard to relate.
I became accustomed to a way of life where these modern conveniences were of no necessity. I went to bed every night shortly after the sun went down to a soft, quiet symphony with the background sounds of insects and night birds. I woke up every morning as the sun cast its first rays, to the music of parrots, softly cackling while they fed in the platano fields across the river, a woodpecker working on a close by tree, and the smaller birds chirping and singing; all welcoming the new morning.

Organizing El Real

     I'll never forget my first trip into El Real. My business partner was named George Mahoney. I had met him a couple of years before in Michigan through a mutual friend and when the idea came up to establish a facility in Central America, he didn't hesitate to get involved. He came down to Darien for several weeks at a time over the first couple of years to help get things going. George and I faced a dilemma; neither of us spoke much Spanish. We found a Peruvian student in Panama City named Jamie, whom we coerced into accompanying us to act as a translator.
     The three of us arrived in El Real about mid-day. After settling into the hotel, and having a great meal at Mama's, we went out to talk to the men of the town. Although there was one of almost every basic business in El Real, there were three cantinas. This is where you would almost always find the men. Their main drink is called Seco Herrerano (hereafter referred to as Seco). They say it is a kind of rum but I suspect it is really recycled paint remover. Believe it or not you can eventually develop a taste for something like that, especially when there is little else to drink. They always drank it straight, no ice (there was never any ice), and no mixers. They occasionally had Panamanian beer of which there are two kinds -- Panama and Balboa -- though it is more accurate to call them 'near' beer; I think the alcohol content was about 2.7%, and it was never cold.
     The cantinas were the social and political meeting place for the men of the villages. You rarely ever saw women there. The cantinas were of wooden construction and you would sit on wooden benches or old wooden chairs around small wooden tables. There was always one of the old-style, record-playing, juke boxes blaring salsa music. Most of the salsa we listened to was from Colombia. They played it so loud that you would have to almost scream to be heard. Most of the men had the salsa music flowing through their veins, and when they got to a certain level of inebriation they would stand up and salsa dance right beside where they were seated. The bars were an escape from the everyday life and an integral part of the daily life of the men.
     We arranged to have a meeting with all of the men of El Real that evening after dinner. The meeting was held outside in front of the hotel, which faced on the center town square. All the men in town were there. As the meeting drew on, the men seemed to be getting more and more agitated. We didn't really understand what was going on as Jamie was translating everything in both directions. We were trying to explain to them that we wanted to move down here, hire a crew, and build a house and an animal quarantine facility.
     The townspeople were skeptical because we were telling them that we were going to ‘buy’ birds and reptiles. The Mestizos were terrified of snakes. Up until our arrival the only thing they ever did when they encountered a snake was to machete it into little pieces. The whole idea that we would be ‘buying’ snakes immediately classified us as “Crazy Gringos” in their minds. If we never accomplished another thing in our years in Darien, at least we instilled in everyone that all animal life (even snakes) had a value, and that no animal should ever be killed indiscriminately.
     Jamie said they were getting upset because other 'Gringos' had come in the past, made a lot of promises, and ended up doing nothing of any benefit for any of them. It was starting to get dark and there seemed to be a lot of shouting and yelling going on. It was when several of the townspeople drew their machetes and started waving them in the air over their heads that we decided the meeting was over.
     The three of us slept with one eye open that night. You had to anyway to be able to dodge 10" cockroaches (no exaggeration!) and rats the size of small dogs (a little exaggerated). We left the next morning on the plane, a little shaken up over the experience and happy to have gotten out in one piece.
Once out of El Real the plane made another stop that day in La Palma. La Palma is set near the Pacific Ocean, and is just inland from the Gulf of San Miguel. It sits on a large bay. La Palma is the capitol of Darien, and has a population about half again bigger than El Real. The La Palma air strip is much nicer than El Real. It is a dirt field right next to the city -- no cows or trees to dodge and no long walk to get to the city.
     The pilot came up to us and said we would not be able to go back to Panama City because the landing gear was broken. We looked down at the wheel on one side of the plane and it was just hanging there; it had almost fallen off during the landing. We watched a man with a roll of a heavy wire twine wrapping the crippled wheel, to try and somehow hold it onto the metal piece that came down from the plane. He wrapped the wire around and around and around the wheel brace piece. He must have made 30 loops. He went over that with duct tape and finally declared "That ought to hold it."
     George ran for his camera excitedly exclaiming, "I have to get a picture of this." The pilot immediately became upset saying that if anyone took any pictures we would not take off. He was afraid that he might get in trouble. George put his camera away. The last thing we wanted was to spend another night down here.
     We got onto the plane and started down the dirt runway to take off. George was sitting on the side with the bad wheel and I was sitting beside him.
     As the plane began to get up speed down the runway to take off, I kept bugging him asking, "How is the wheel holding?"
     We got half way down the runway and he turned away from staring out the window at the wheel, and looked directly at me. His face had turned a ghostly pale white color; he was gasping for air, unable to speak, and pointing out the window.
     I leaned over him and looked to watch the twine breaking, one strand after another, ping, and ping, ping!
     When the plane finally lifted off there were exactly two strands of twine left holding on our wheel.
We sweated it out all the way back to the city, with the anxiety building every moment we thought of landing on a wheel that was not secured to the plane. Amazingly, as soon as the pilot hit the runway to land he slammed on the brakes, coming to a complete stop within a few feet of where we had first touched down. We all quickly climbed out of the plane, leaving it right there in the middle of the runway.
     Our second trip back to El Real went much better. The first failure at establishing a business in the Darien did not deter us. Once back in Panama City we discussed our first experience at length and actually devised a plan for the second trip. During the first trip we had met Juan, the town elder statesman and a well respected slightly built man in his sixties, whose principle trade was that of a carpenter. On our second trip we arrived in town, walked into the main cantina, immediately hired Juan as the construction crew chief, and bought a round of Seco for everyone. Now we had friends. When the people realized that we were serious about coming to live in Darien, hiring the local people, paying a fair wage, and building the quarantine facility, their attitude toward us changed.

El Real

     El Real had a population of 500 Mestizos, or fewer, and it sits directly in the center of the Province, about a half mile inland from the mouth of the two major Darien rivers, the Tuira and the Chucunaque (called the 'Boca' - translation: mouth). The city is less than an hour walk to the base of Mount Pirre.
I have seen it written that the first permanent settlement in the New World was Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien. It was established in 1510; only 18 scant years after Columbus first discovered the Americas. I believe that this settlement may have been El Real. The true name of the city is El Real de Santa Maria Del Darien, named after the patron saint of the city. Its central location made it an ideal spot to create a first settlement.
     The crumbling brick foundation remains of an old Spanish fort can be seen near the dock where you tie up your dugout. El Real was a Spanish stronghold in the 1500's and 1600's, used as a holding location for gold coming from the mines at Cana. When they had amassed a sufficient quantity, they would then take the gold by boat to Panama City for eventual transport to Spain.
     El Real has one general store: “Rico's Place” where we could get the bare necessities, one restaurant which we affectionately named “Mama's Place,” and one hotel, a vacant old wooden house where, for a small fee, they would let us crash on the floor for the night. Mama's Place was just what you would expect, one large table that seated about ten people in the front room of Mama's house. Whatever Mama cooked was what you were eating that day; there was no such thing as a menu. The food was palatable only because one of the table staples was hot sauce (picante). Once you acquired a taste for the hot sauce you could either disguise, or add flavor to, almost any kind of food.
      The village had been formed in the old Spanish style with a central courtyard in front of the old block traditional Spanish church. In the middle of the grassy courtyard was a Spanish cannon, a memorial to the ghosts of the conquistadors who once controlled this region. The houses were of wooden construction. About half the roofs were made of tin and about half were thatched using palm fronds. This style of construction was typical to all three Mestizo cities; El Real, La Palma and Yaviza.

Mancha

 One day I was in a small Indian village named Lahablanca. It is upriver on the Chucunaque about two hours north of Yaviza, near the point where the Tupisa River flows into the Chucunaque. Manene is the first of three Chocó villages on the Tupisa. As I stood with the tourists talking with the Chocó women, a commotion arose in the direction of the edge of the village. One of the men, who had just arrived back to the village, had killed a jaguar while hunting. When he reached the animal it was still alive and breathing and he noticed a movement in the stomach. He cut her open with his machete and pulled out a cub that was about to be born.
     The Indian came into town and stuck this newborn animal in my arms; the cub was less than two hours old and still wet from the birth.
     That is how I acquired my jaguar, Mancha (the name sounds like a beautiful romantic name for such a majestic animal. Translation: Spot). Mancha lived with us for several years, until the time that I left Panama. Of all of our exotic pets she was by far the best. What an attraction: a tame jaguar that a tourist could pet while having their photograph taken.
     When I had Lil' Critters in Michigan I traded a Macaw to a zoo for a seven day old female African Lion (I named her Tasha). I have always had an affinity for large cats, and grew up in a house where our pet Siamese cat 'Ming Toy' had well over 100 kittens during my childhood, eight to ten at a time. Tasha lived with me for over two years in the basement of the farm house on North Territorial Road, during which time she grew to become a 350 pound African Lion. She made a great pet, and needless to say, you don't own a lion for two years during college and not have some stories to tell about the experience.
     I found the lion to be very predictable, and in all the time I had her she never scratched, or bit, or drew blood from anyone, even though Tasha was around people all the time. The lion ate 18 pounds of food a day, a mixture of Science Diet and Zu-Preem, with vitamins and minerals mixed in. She grew from a baby cub into a 350 pound lion over the span of a couple of years. This created a hefty food bill for a college kid to have to pay each week to be able to care for this large cat. So, I would rent Tasha out for corporate promotions at a rate of $250.00 per half hour. Because of this Tasha became accustomed to being around large groups of people.
     The Jaguar was much more unpredictable, very much of a one owner kind of animal (actually two owners, Diego and me). I am sure that a large part of the jaguar's attitude was that she was still essentially living in her own native environment, while the lion lived in a farm house far away from her natural habitat. Because of this we did not allow anyone around her unless either Diego or I were present.
     Both of these large cats were very young when I got them, and they both went through that playful kitten stage that a normal house cat goes through. Even though the lion was much larger she never used her claws or teeth while playing. The Jaguar played as well, but much rougher, and it was not uncommon to come out of a play session with her with a few scratches and some teeth marks. I never felt that her attitude was malicious or that Mancha ever intended to hurt us, but rather she did not know her own strength in relation to us. The lion had a much better sense as to just how rough it could get with us while playing.
     Initially Mancha drank milk from a baby bottle, but as she grew her feeding became a real challenge. The resources didn’t exist in the Darien that I had available to me for Tasha in Ann Arbor. We brought canned dog food from the Canal Zone Commissary, and would also buy up all of the meat scraps whenever they slaughtered a cow in the Mercadeo, for the sale of beef in El Real. She also ate small fish that Diego would fish out of the river in front of our house.
     Security for Mancha was very important, not only protecting her from other people, but also protecting other people and animals (especially small dogs) from her. The Jaguar had a thick collar, attached to a long chain link leash, that was attached to a sliding ring and then to a stout metal cable that ran from a large tree beside the main house, to the front edge of the animal house. The total distance of the run was about fifty feet. We then fenced in this entire area with a low wooden fence. It gave her the freedom to move about over a large area, but still provided some security for her, as well as protected other small animals and children that might have happened by. I feel that we were very fortunate that in the years we had her we never had an incident.

The Darien

      The Pan American Highway begins in Alaska, travels south through the Americas across great plains, rivers, swamps and jungles to its end at Tierra del Fuego on the bottom tip of Chile in South America. The only wilderness that has been too savage to be conquered by the highway, and man, is a 200 kilometer stretch through the virgin jungles of Darien; it is called the Darien Gap. Here you will find the greatest variety of ecosystems anywhere in tropical America. There are 56 species of animals that live in the Darien that are endangered everywhere else in the Americas. If you want to take your car to South America you have to ship it from Panama to Colombia because there is no through road.
The northern 100 kilometers of the Gap is the Darien Jungle of Southern Panama, some say the wildest jungles in the Americas. The southern 100 kilometers of the Gap is the Orinoco Swamps of Northern Colombia. It is said that you can submerge a twenty story office building into the swamps and it would disappear.
     Construction of the road to bridge the Gap is highly controversial. The Gap has served as an impassable geographical boundary to keep diseases (like hoof and mouth which affects cattle and pigs) in South America, and out of Central and North America. I don't think there is anyone who wants to see the road built, with the exception of possibly the Colombian government. They believe that the completion of the road will help open new markets for Colombian products, and that they will be able to get goods to the north faster. There have been several ecological studies done on how the road will affect the animal life of the Darien, as well as the Chocó Indians. I know the Panamanian government was not too keen on the construction of the road because of the initial cost as well as the expense of the ongoing maintenance of the highway.
     As a result of pressure from the Colombian and United States governments, the Panamanian government tried to build the road from Panama City to Yaviza, Darien while I was there. I think the Panamanian government also thought that a road through to Yaviza could possibly help develop the primitive Darien, one third of the land mass of the entire country, which supported only about one percent of the population of the country. This was a brilliant effort on the part of the Panamanian government. They divided the road into three segments, and contracted out the first two segments that were the closest to Panama City.
     The company that had segment number two completed their section of the road.
     The company that had segment number one (the segment that abutted Panama City) went bankrupt.
     So they had this beautifully manicured gravel road cut through the dense jungle that went “from nowhere to nowhere!”
     When I went back and saw the road several years later, the jungle had already come back to reclaim its own. There were many parts of that second segment of road that were virtually impassable due to the growth of dense foliage.
     When my doctor heard that I was going into the Panamanian jungles he told me that I would need a 'few' shots. I think that it took about a month of weekly visits to the clinic to receive all of the 'few' shots he spoke about, before leaving Michigan. I think that he inoculated me against everything known to mankind. I was sick for several weeks following the barrage of needles.
     One of the first stops in the preparation process was at an Army Surplus store. We purchased rain ponchos, hammocks that were enclosed with mosquito screen, a portable gas stove, and so many more supplies that we thought we would be needing for the adventure. Five years later the rain ponchos and the hammocks were still godsends in helping us to survive the rugged conditions of the Darien jungle.
     When I left Michigan I was determined to stay healthy, so I brought malaria pills, and a powder that we would dissolve in your drinking water to make it safe to drink. That attitude lasted only about a month. The malaria pills gave me nausea, and the powder made the water virtually undrinkable. I finally resolved that if I were going to live in the jungle, I would take life as it came. Caution had never been a strong suit of mine, and if I were going to truly enjoy this unique experience this was certainly not the time to start being cautious. Besides, if it was good enough for the indigenous people to eat and drink, I figured that it was certainly good enough for me.
     There is only one flight into and out of the Darien a day. If you miss it, good luck until tomorrow. The planes are called Islanders, seat eight people including the pilot, and have a small storage space in back for the luggage. The planes were very rustic and it was not unusual to have a live chicken under your seat during one of these flights. These planes fly out of a small airstrip about five miles outside of Panama City called Patilla Airport. The plane generally flies into El Real and La Palma, two of the three biggest cities in the Darien. The third largest city is Yaviza, but there doesn't seem to be much air travel there, as stops there are infrequent, and the tall primary growth jungle canopy trees at the end of the runway make landing and taking off a little scary. The flight takes about an hour, barring any unforeseen difficulties.
     The bush pilots who fly these planes have incredible flying skills. I remember one time we were flying into El Real and the cloud cover was so thick that you couldn't see ground anywhere. I happened to be seated in the front seat beside the pilot, Valderama, who I grew to know very well. As we circled near where he thought the airport was, we both saw it at the same time - a small patch of the clouds had momentarily parted and you could see a tiny patch of what looked like brown river water through the small hole in the clouds.
     Valderama put the plane immediately into a nosedive; we went through the hole in the clouds and came up about five feet above the surface of the river water. If there had been a Banana Boat coming down the river we would have flown right into it.
     The plane wound its way up the river, just above the surface of the water and just below the low cloud cover. We came to the Boca, the mouth of two major rivers, the Tuira and the Chucunaque, which is very close to the entrance to El Real. Here the pilot hopped the plane back up into clouds just over the tops of the trees of the jungle canopy. Flying through dense cloud cover from memory he put the plane right back down out of the clouds and onto the airstrip at El Real.
     The airstrip at El Real was always an adventure. It was a grass field carved out of the secondary growth rain forest. On one side it butted up against an area that was used for grazing cows. Once in a while you could not land until they cleared the cows off of the strip. There was a small shelter at the field, a block house with a thatched roof to protect passengers from the rain while they were waiting for the plane. There were always children waiting at the strip in El Real when the plane landed. For a quarter they would carry anything the half mile walk to city of El Real. You didn't wait for a taxi to come by to pick you up.
     If the airstrip in El Real was an adventure, the strip in Yaviza was an example of a disaster waiting to happen. At one end of the strip there were many very tall (approximately 100+ feet) trees of the jungle canopy, and the other end of the strip butted up to the river embankment of the Chucunaque River. While coming in for a landing the wheels of the plane would clear the tops of the tall trees by only a few feet. As soon as we were clear of the canopy trees the pilot would stall the plane and it would drop almost straight down. Your heart would plummet into your shoes. At what seemed like the last moment before we flew into the ground, the pilot would level out and then slam on the brakes, hoping that the plane would stop before it went over the embankment and into the muddy waters of the Chucunaque.
     The take off was the same heart attack in reverse. You would back up to the edge of the tall trees, rev the engine up to maximum, and hope you got up enough speed to be able to lift off before you went over the cliff and into the Chucunaque River at the far end of the runway.
     The population of the Tuira/Chucunaque Basin of the Darien is split roughly in thirds. There are approximately equal numbers of Panamanian, Colombian, and Chocó Indian. The racial mixtures are interesting. You could almost tell where someone came from by the way they looked. The Colombians from the south of Colombia (like Cali) were very light skinned. The Colombians from the north (like Bogota) were dark skinned. The Panamanians had more of the Spanish and Indian influence in their backgrounds and had a light chocolate-colored skin. There were many Panamanians of direct Spanish decent who also had very light skin.
     The Colombians and Panamanians were referred to as Mestizos (mixed), and their towns were separate from the Choco, void of any Indian inhabitants. The Mestizos looked down on the Indians and called them “Cholos and Cholas.” These words were spoken as a derogatory term to belittle the Chocó. The Chocó did not like to be referred to in this manner, and preferred to be described as “Chocó.” I have, however, heard the term “Cholita” used in an endearing fashion. So, it seems to depend some on the usage as to the exact meaning. In any case, a caring person would never use any of these terms around the Chocó Indians. After learning the true Darien meaning of these words, I became very sensitive to them, and forbade my employees from using them in my presence.
     I realized very early on that the key to getting the cooperation of the Choco Indians was “showing respect.” I went out of my way to treat all Choco with respect whether male or female, and demanded the same from all of my Mestizo employees. When visiting a Choco village, I always paid a visit to the house of the elder of the village, simply to say “hi” and show my respect and thank him for allowing us to come into his village.
     The Mestizos, on the other hand, seemed to have no racial, cultural or class barriers among themselves. All Mestizos were thought of as equals with all other Mestizos, regardless of where they came from or their racial or cultural background. The Darien is definitely split into these two distinctly different class groups; Mestizos and Chocó.
     The main cities in Darien are La Palma, El Real and Yaviza, and they are populated by the Panamanians and Columbians. The Chocó Indians live in small villages, based around their family lineages, located on the banks of the various Darien Rivers. Each Chocó village is a walk of several hours to the next village or about an hour and a half to two hours by piragua, a motorized dugout canoe.
The city of Yaviza is about a little over an hour ride from El Real, up the Chucunaque River from the Boca. The Chucunaque basin begins at Yaviza and continues upriver with three smaller rivers branching from the main Chucunaque. The first branches off a short distance upriver from Yaviza and is called the Rio Chico. The other two small river branches are the Tuquesa and the Tupisa, with the mouth of the Tupisa about three hours upriver from Yaviza by piragua. Each of these three smaller rivers has three Chocó Indian villages on them.
     Probably the most remote Chocó village that I saw while in Darien was the third, and last, village up the Rio Tupisa. The village was very small, approximately 10 huts, and set against a picturesque backdrop of the Serrania Del Darien. If we left our house at the crack of dawn, we would arrive at this village in darkness. By the reaction of the children in this village to us, I believe that they had never been exposed to a “Gringo” before. Seeing how the children were either afraid of us, or wanted to come up to us and touch our skin or hair, I imagined how the original Europeans, encountering these people for the first time, must have felt.

The Choco Indians

     The Chocó Indians live in small villages of 10 to 20 houses along the banks of rivers. Each village was about a half day's walk of several hours to the next village. As you get close to a village the jungle topography on the shores begins to change and you start to see less jungle and more platano fields. The villages are built on a small rise, set approximately 100 feet in from the river. The hill leading down to the river from the village is hard packed with smooth reddish dirt. There are large rocks in the river by the banks, and you can see young, naked children playing on the shore and in the shallows as the dugout canoe pulls up to the banks. The houses of the village are set atop the rise and stand out as they are raised on poles and have tall thatched roofs. If you arrive by motorized dugout it is a big event, as they can hear the motor coming from a distance and it seems that everyone has to walk to the top of the rise to see who is arriving to their village.
     The Chocó are a matriarchal society and live in family units based around defining lineage through the mother's side of the family. They are a very mellow and easy-going people and are always very nice, accommodating and polite. They are a short people who generally never grow much taller than five feet. The men are muscular and stocky. The women have long, thick, beautiful jet black hair. I found out that the Chocó have no other hair growing on their bodies except on their head. I don't think I ever met a Chocó Indian over five and half feet tall.
     The Cacique (chief) of the Chocó lived in the largest village, and capitol of the Chocó Nation, named Union Chocó. The city was on the banks of the same Rio Tuira that we lived on, and the trip there by dugout canoe was only about two hours up river from our house. The Chocó are by far the most passive people that I have ever met. A good indication of the kind of people the Chocó were was when a person shook the Cacique’s leathery, calloused, rough hands, his limp grip made it feel like shaking hands with a damp spaghetti noodle. Actually all the Chocó were that way, very easy-going, never in a hurry, and nothing was so important that it had to be done right away. They take life slowly, at a leisurely pace, and have hearts as big as all of nature itself. Every time I was in one of their villages they seemed to not be able to do enough for me. What was theirs was mine, even if food was scarce and hard to come by, the guests always got fed first.
     Over the years I lived in the Darien I became very good friends with the Cacique. We hired his sister to be in charge of the Chocó that worked at the hotel. The other hotel workers were more distant family of the Cacique.
     The Chocó women who worked at the hotel were around us most of the time, yet rarely spoke unless they were spoken to. Actually, they rarely spoke with each other as well. They kept quietly to themselves and methodically went about their daily duties. They were always very respectful and considerate to the tourists as well as each other.
     The Chocó had their own form of government, and lived by their own set of laws. It seemed that they had little or no contact with the Guardia Nacional or the Panamanian government. Regardless, they tended to ignore any governmental rules or regulations, and the Guardia left them alone. They had never been assimilated into Panamanian society, and I never saw a Chocó Indian that held a civic position or one that was a member of the Guardia.
     I have read reports of the Chocó intermarrying with the Panamanians and Columbians, but do not believe this to be true. In all the years I was in Darien I never heard of a mixed marriage and never witnessed a mixed couple. The Chocó always kept to themselves, and showed indifference toward their Panamanian and Columbian neighbors, an indifference that was likewise shared in return by the Mestizos.
     Their houses were raised off the ground about eight feet. Each house stood on several large logs, and had a thatched roof made from large palm leaves. All the joints were tied together using vines. There were no walls to the house. Hanging from the supporting log beams were baskets, pots, bows and arrows and other items that had been hand fashioned for fishing or hunting. The floor was made of split cana blanca (the same materials we used on the animal and tourist houses), and at one end was the kitchen. This consisted of a clay platform that was about three feet square; on top of this base they set the logs for the fire, supporting the cooking pot over the fire by using a tripod of sturdy sticks. The Chocó would climb up to the house on a log that had notches in it to serve as a ladder. They would turn the notches facing down at night so wild animals could not climb up into the house while they slept.
     The local 'K-Mart' kitchen supply store was called the calabash tree. They scooped out the gourds from this tree and used them for both eating and drinking. They would then fashion spoons out of pieces of these same gourds.
     The villages were always full of women and children when we arrived, as some of the men worked inland on the farms, and others hunted during the day. The women took care of the children, cooked, and washed clothes, etc. while the men were in the fields. They also made the baskets that they sold to the tourists. They wove these baskets from palm fibers using a very tight weave. They would make dyes from mashed berries and color the fibers before weaving. A typical basket would take a Chocó woman a couple of weeks to make.
     I would school the tourists on treating the Chocó with respect when they were in the villages and interacting with the women. An example of this was the etiquette behind the taking of pictures. You would always ask first, because there were some Chocó that did not want their picture taken. After taking the picture you would always give the person something; and if you had no trade items (which they preferred) the price that we established was a dollar.
     Everything was communal. The land is community owned and community farmed. Everyone in the village, including women and children, pitch in to help out at harvest time. If someone killed a Puerco de Monte while hunting during the day, and brought it back to town, everybody in the village ate Puerco de Monte that night. They even shared the fruits of the hunt with the tourists if it happened to be a village where we were staying the night.
     When I encountered the Chocó they were living very much like they had hundreds of years ago when Pizzaro and Balboa first met them. The men wear loin cloths, the women wear brightly colored materials wrapped at the waist, which looked like skirts. Both the men and the woman had long straight black hair, and wore no clothing from the waist up. No, I am sorry, this does not qualify for a 'Girls Gone Wild Video;' a National Geographic pictorial would be more appropriate. The Chocó Indian women had breasts that had never known a bra. After a Chocó woman passed 30 her breasts became triangular shaped, pointing straight toward the ground as gravity, and daily hard work, had taken its toll over the years. Constant exposure to the Chocó meant being around these women with unattractive bare breasts. After a little time I just accepted it as natural and didn't even pay attention to it. The little kids just went naked most of the time, and no one wore shoes.
     They liked to paint their bodies with a dye made from the berry of the genip tree. They would completely coat their bodies with the black dye, and told me they did this to keep the bugs off them at night. But I noticed that on special occasions, they would use this same dye and paint their bodies in intricate geometric patterns, it was a way the women had to adorn themselves. The women also wore silver necklaces and silver earrings on these special occasions; many of the necklaces were made with old silver dollars, and silver half dollars. They would punch a hole in the coin and run a silver chain through the holes. Many of the coins you saw on these necklaces dated back into the 1800's, and had been passed down from mother to daughter.
     When I moved back to the States I brought with me many Indian artifacts. One piece is made from a hard dark wood called mahogany (the hardest and strongest wood available), and has a flat wide paddle on one end and a handle on the other end. The density of the wood makes it feel much heavier than it appears. The paddle is about nine inches long, four inches wide, and about an inch thick, and the handle is round and about six inches long. The piece I brought back is ornate and has two alligators carved on the top for decoration, which signify the spirit of the woman who used the tool.
     The hand that wielded the knife that carved the alligators on top of the piece was both thoughtful and skillful. Although the piece is for a practical use, the artist was showing respect to the woman who received the paddle by working her spirit into the mahogany. Primitive, ethnographic art shows the basic skills of the artist. One gator is lying flat, while the other is in movement from a side view. Both are moving in the direction of the handle and the user. This painstaking process is slow, tedious, and takes hours of cautious, careful work.
     When I show the piece to people at home, or in the talks I give about Panama, I always ask if anyone can guess what it is used for. Most people guess, because of the shape of the handle, that the piece may have some kind of erotic use (oh, the dirty minds). Only one person has guessed its use without the clue.
     The clue is: "A Chocó Indian woman would use this tool almost every day."
     The answer is: "It is used to wash clothes. They go down to the river where there are large rocks, and they use it to beat the clothes against the rocks to get them clean.
     Based on my background and upbringing, the Chocó were about as alien as a culture could possibly be to me. When the tourists encountered the Chocó, during our tours up the rivers, they, too, were always shocked by the simple way that the Indians lived.
     "How could they live like this, in such poverty?" tourists would inquire.
     We tend to impose our own values and lifestyle on other people whom we meet if they are not like us. I believe that the goal of life should be 'happiness.' Therefore, I pose this question to you: Who is 'happier,' the Chocó Indians who have what they need provided to them by God, the earth and the jungle, or the family who lives in the big house in California, with two cars in the garage and all of the modern conveniences? The father is under tremendous stress at work, the wife is having an affair and taking anti-depressants, their teenage kids are disobedient and on drugs, and everyone is seeing the psychiatrist.
     The Chocó could be characterized as “primitive and poor”; but in reality their lives were richer than any of our lives because they understood what true happiness in life is. To them the goal in life was not accumulation of wealth as it is in our lives, yet they became wealthy in understanding reaping riches of leisure, inner peace and happiness. They were aware of what it meant to live as one with nature, as well as what it meant to live in a conflict free environment with their fellow man. I never knew a Chocó Indian that was unhappy or was not satisfied. They didn't want for more (a bigger this, a better or newer that) and were always happy and contented with what they had in life. In fact they were the first to share what they had with someone else. That is why I always took care of the Chocó when they came down river. My house was open for anyone to stay the night, and I always provided the night meal. I also responded immediately to requests by the Cacique, and his family, when they were in times of need.

The Great Snake Hunt

     The main character in the story is Mark. He came down to visit on a couple of occasions. He had been collecting snakes since he was about eight years old, and had milked poisonous snakes (extracted venom) on numerous occasions. Mark was short and stocky and had long blond hair. He was in very good condition and had great reflexes.
     Mark and I were alone sitting at the house, late at night, with a bottle of Seco. When it was done Mark came up with a bright idea. "Let's go out into the jungle and look for snakes." Mark had hunted snakes in the States, but I had never been on a snake hunt before in my life, and certainly it seemed crazy for me to try this in the jungle at night while half crocked.
     However, enabled by the Seco, somehow it seemed like a very reasonable idea at the time.
     We pulled on our specially made knee-high boots that a snake fang could not penetrate. I don't know what kind of guarantee the manufacturer had, but I hear they claim that a pair had never been returned. Not too comforting when we consider that if the boots didn't work they would be hard to return – dead.
Next there was my beautiful set of golf clubs. Before I left Michigan Mark got a hold of them and sent them out to be 'adjusted.' When they came back all the heads were gone from the clubs and they had been replaced with flexible metal 'u' shaped hooks. They ended up being a key tool in trying to capture live snakes.
     We also had a big bag on a loop at the end of a long pole. When we pulled a string at the top of the bag it would collapse and close tightly around the loop, securing anything that had been captured inside the bag. We also had battery-operated lights that fit onto our foreheads, leaving our hands free.
Once prepared with all of our equipment we set off across the river to hunt snakes. It was very dark outside with the only light coming from the stars. We docked directly across from the house at Neddy and Augustina's place and walked through their platano field, eventually coming to the edge of the jungle.

     At night, as you walk through a platano field, the edge of the jungle looms like a giant solid black wall in front of you. Once you walk in you are in. You can be ten miles in or ten feet in, it is all the same, thick, primary growth jungle. The whole environment changes immediately. You can feel the jungle all around you, as if it was a living, breathing entity of its own. It was as if the jungle had a pulse and a heartbeat. The air was humidly thick and full of moisture, and held a symphony of sounds. The most apparent was the sound of millions of insects buzzing all around you, forming an audible backdrop which was a constant buzz. This hum of the insects was offset by the intermittent loud bird chirping for a mate. Against that backdrop you can hear another large bird screeching, or the roar of a distant jaguar. Because of the jungle canopy none of the starlight made it to the floor (I have heard that only two percent of the sunlight makes it to the jungle floor during the day), and it was always pitch black with our lights serving as the only means of orientation. The ground is thick with generations of dead leaves, and as you walk you sink down a couple of inches with each step. 

     We tried insect repellent, but it seemed that it had no effect, and that the mosquitoes enjoyed its taste. So we did what the locals did, and smeared diesel over our exposed areas. We would be hot and sticky and the air felt so humid that it was like breathing steam, and the smell of the diesel was always present in the air. 

      When blazing a new trail in primary growth jungle we had to be careful of large spiders. They would spin a web between two trees that looked like a large net. The giant spider (about three or four inches in length) would sit and wait, conspicuously, in the middle of this giant web for whatever happened to get caught. When walking on an established jungle trail it was very common to see these giant spiders and webs spun between the trees along the sides of the trail.

     There was no trail where we were, so we made our way through the brush and around the base of the large trees of the canopy. We eventually found what we thought was an animal trail. Since the jungle floor is a solid, thick bed of leaves, you could discern the animal trail by looking carefully. The trail was a small indentation that ran in a straight line through the leaves. Mark explained to me that it was not uncommon to find snakes lying in wait along these makeshift rodent highways. As we made our way down the trail, I was leading the way. Mark was watching the trees up ahead and on the sides, and my light was trained on the ground, trying to follow the animal path. Suddenly, I saw it lying right in the middle of the trail. The mottled brown back exactly matched the colors of the leaves and the look of the trail perfectly. If I had continued walking and had not spotted a little flash of yellow coming from just under it, I would have stepped right on top of this snake. 

     Coiled in the middle of the trail was an eight foot long Fer de Lance, the second largest poisonous snake in the Americas. The longest is the Bushmaster, which is known to also live in Panama, but I never saw one. The snake we came upon the Panamanians call 'barba amarilla' (translation: yellow beard). It got this name because it has a streak of yellow under its chin (snakes have chins?). It was this yellow that I spotted, and it was the only thing about the snake that did not match the jungle floor. 

Breathless and unable to speak, I managed an excited gasp in Mark's direction. When Mark saw the Fer de Lance he got very excited. He grabbed the bag on the pole and one of the golf club snake hooks. I immediately moved about 15 feet away, on the other side of the small open area. I was happy to hold the light for Mark, but that would be the extent of my voluntary participation. The only way this snake was getting to me was if it could outrun me, and I had a 15 foot head start. 

     We were standing in a 30 foot square clearing with the animal trail running through the middle. One side had a few large bushes and small trees and the other side had a single giant mangrove tree. The mangrove had a large network of above ground roots called buttresses. They cascaded down from the sides of the tree and completely enclosed about 20 feet along one side of the small clearing beside the animal trail. 

     Mark opened the collapsible bag that was attached to the pole and then took the snake hook and, ever so gently, started easing the snake into the bag, inch by inch, foot by foot. The snake was coiled and lying peacefully on the trail. Although Mark was moving it a little at a time into the bag, the snake did not appear to be aware of what was happening to it.

     Suddenly the snake became alert, raised its head and spit out a loud hiss from its now open mouth, bearing its two inch fangs to try to intimidate us. Then it darted away from the bag and directly into the root system of the Mangrove Tree. 

     Mark dropped the bag and the snake hook and dove for the snake, landed onto his belly, and grabbed only the end of its tail.

The snake immediately made a u-turn and headed in a straight line right back at Mark, and then........ everything stopped! 

It was as if time stood still.

The snake had wrapped itself around one of the roots of the mangrove tree while coming back to attack Mark. 

Mark, motionless on his belly, with a stranglehold grip on the snake's tail, slowly looked up at me and whispered (like he did not want the snake to hear), "Gary." 

"Yeah Mark," I whispered back.

"Where's the head?"

The snake had come up about six inches short in its quest to come back and attack this monster who had grabbed hold of its tail.

"Mark, it is about six inches above your right shoulder."

     Mark ever so slowly turned and looked up and spotted the snake’s head while he still had a firm grip on the tail. The snake’s mouth was wide open bearing its two gigantic, deadly fangs. It was groping about desperately in the air, trying to bite onto something.

     In one move Mark let go of the tail with the one hand and whirled around and grabbed just behind the snake's head with the other. It is a move that requires great skill and dexterity, but securing the head is the only way you can completely control a large snake like this one. The snake immediately went nuts -- squirming, wiggling, thrashing, twisting, trying anything it could possibly do to break free. Once he had this enormous snake in his hands he was screaming for the bag. The snake was wildly angry, and the snake was much bigger than Mark! He could barely stand trying to hold onto this monster with his hands, while wobbling from side to side under the weight of the beast. I quickly opened the bag and we slowly eased the entire body of the snake into the bag, while Mark still held onto the head. 

     Then Mark said, "I am going to count to three, let go of the head and throw this snake into the bag. You pull the cord securing the bag."

"Okay, here we go, one .... two .... three."

Mark threw the snake into the bag --

and I pulled the string closing the bag tight --

with Mark's hand locked inside the bag! 

Mark shrieked, as the snake was thrashing madly in the bottom of the bag. Now, completely loose in the bag, it was trying everything it could to get out. We finally got Mark's hand free, and headed back to the house. We kept the snake in the bag at the end of the large pole as we walked back. A snake can sense your body heat through the bag, and they have been known to inflict deadly bites through the cloth material on people who are holding directly onto a bag.

     The snake we had caught had about 40 baby 'barba amarilla' about one week later. They are born alive and the babies have poison from birth that is just as deadly, drop for drop, as that of the adults.  

The acquisition of 40 unexpected baby Fer de Lance made the adventure in the jungle financially worthwhile. But, what was truly of value this night was not the snakes, it was the story! I learned to act out this story, and recounted it numerous times, much to the entertainment of visitors to the Darien.