We stood one the edge of the island and looked at the boat barely floating with our entire luggage and the chicken in it. I carefully trod into it, slipped and rocked it, water coming dangerously close to lapping over the side. The fever had come down on me again with the weight of a hammer. Passing out a little earlier had prompted the move to get back as soon as possible. I could feel the edginess in Lukas having someone with him who was so ill. Mark refused to swim back this time having discovered that there were crocodiles lurking beneath the calm exterior of the lake. We rowed slowly out into the lake with the water just millimetres beneath the top of the boat. The jungle mist flowed through the trees and across the lake. The warmth from the mist rose up in miniature spirals and the calm of the jungle in the break of day soaked into us. None of us said a word; everyone was upset to be leaving so soon. A strange feeling of not wanting to leave and yet desperately wanting to get out came over me. We edged round into the marsh and snapped out of our reverie. The boat was unloaded and Lukas took my pack.
Turning around, the quicksand and elephant grass confronted me. Dreams during the night had contained these images and they still haunted me. Walking through quicksand, losing my vision intermittently, and potentially passing-out, filled me with dread. I could feel the fever getting worse again as the air began to heat up around us. Lukas headed off through the undergrowth and I followed him using my stick to test the safety of the ground. I could feel paranoia beginning to creep in, as I double and triple checked ground that I knew was solid. Edging my way as close to the elephant grass as possible, I jumped onto a solid patch and slipped, gaining my balance I put my left foot down and it started to disappear. I grabbed Lukas’s arm in front of me and steadied myself. My foot was disappearing and the suction pulling it down was incredible. I used all my effort to pull it out and the marsh let it go only with considerable reluctance. My vision was starting to blur again, and I decided that cuts would be better than falling into the marsh again. I started walking in the elephant grass as much as possible, ignoring the paper-like cuts that I received from it. It took about forty minutes before the fallen tree, that indicated the beginning of the jungle, appeared and a smile spread across my face. By then the sun was beating down on us relentlessly and I was already beginning to feel tired.
My energy renewed as we left the marsh behind for the jungle. I assumed that it was going to take us longer to walk out than going in as I wasn’t well. During the morning I had resolved that however I felt I would walk out. The emergency device hadn’t worked and the only help that was coming was from me and my companions.
During the trek I kept thinking to myself that it would be alright if I could get back to Palenque as they had an airport. The walk seemed to go on for hours. Whenever I asked Lukas how long was left the reply was always the same – he would say ‘About an hour’. My vision kept coming and going and the heat combined with my fever made it unbearably oppressive. The scenery that had been so beautiful on the way in, now seemed to be like a never changing nightmare where you constantly hope the end is around the next corner, and you are constantly disappointed, turning to see more yet more jungle stretching never endingly ahead of you.
We made numerous stops along the way to catch our breath and, on the final stop, Juan had disappeared. Lukas went back to find him. He was getting tired. Having expected a few days away with his dad, he was now being marched back after only one day in the jungle. I could feel myself beginning to fade, and I told Mark that I either I must walk ahead quickly, while I still could, or I was going to have to stop for a long rest. Lukas and I headed off and Mark came on behind at a more leisurely pace with Juan. We would meet up at the village.
An hour later, as my will was beginning to fade, I saw sunlight streaming in through the side of the jungle’s canopy and my spirits were lifted. We walked out of the jungle into the open park area surrounding it, and the feeling of freedom was magnified as the joy welled inside me. We rested on a bench provided for the more sensible, and slightly less adventurous, travellers who had made it this far but did not want to go into the jungle proper. Although there was still a forty minute walk into the village I was happy to have got out of the gloom of the forest.
The streaming sunlight was like fresh air to me. I concentrated on my feet knowing that there was still a little way to go. Looking up, I just caught sight of Lukas disappearing back into the jungle again. His head popped back out and he beckoned me to follow him. My heart sunk as, really too tried to walk a step further, reluctantly and somehow, I followed him back in.
It turned out that this route back through the jungle would shorten the walk to the village by about twenty minutes. We jumped into a stream and started to walk down through it, the icy water flowing around our legs. The stream made a curve to the right; we jumped out and began walking through fields of waist high grass. On any other day I would have enjoyed this walk through a hidden part of the village. Today was not any other day though, and I could feel the desperate need to sit down and get some water inside me, when Lukas’s home came into view. I made it the last few steps and collapsed in a plastic chair under the shading of the village bar, trying all the while to stop myself from throwing up.
Mark and Juan arrived shortly after. There was nothing to do now except wait for a car that might happen to randomly drive past. The car would take us down to the next village where we would need to wait for another car to drive us the four hour journey back to Palenque. The wait seemed interminable. Having trekked for nearly ten hours to get out of the jungle, I could feel my will beginning to slip away. The heat seemed stifling and was suffocating me from all sides. The now familiar feeling of rising panic began to well inside me and it was all I could do to keep at bay.
A taxi pulled up – how entirely random can things get I wondered. We got in and the driver said he could only take us down the road to the next village, but that we should be able to get another taxi from there back to Palenque. As we began to pull away a big 4X4 drove up and a policeman got out. Mark went to check that it wasn’t to do with the emergency device and lucky he did, as it was. Although we thought nothing had happened, it turned out that we couldn’t have been more wrong. There were 28 military men and 3 paramedics spread across three teams walking through the jungle to the last location of my Spot messenger. They also had patrols all around the edge of the jungle where we had entered. If we had left just a few minutes earlier then we would have missed the patrol as well, and been left thinking that the device was useless.
Now that we were in the capable hands of the local policeman, who lived in his one room station down at the next village, things began to move. On arriving in the next village I passed out. The next thing I knew was that we were back in the 4X4 heading towards a military base where they had a medic. The only paramedics in the area had gone into the jungle, none of them wanting to miss the excitement I learned later, which meant there was no local medical help if we got out without meeting up with them! What was important was that I was on the way to people who would be able to help.
Over the next few days we drove from military base, to local hospital, to the Palenque hospital, each one not being able to discover what the problem was with me. Eventually I ended up back in Mexico City where they nursed me to a partial recovery before sending me home. I had not caught anything tropical apparently, but numerous infections including kidney, intestine and faryngitis. The cause of all these infections is still a mystery, but finally my local doctor in London is sending me for further tests, all at a startling slow pace. At every hospital that we visited in Mexico the doctors invited us back to stay with them, and they said that they would help us get back into the jungle and finish our trip. Will I go back? Of course, but don’t tell my mum! I think, however, that I will give more thought to the emergency planning next time than just relying on a Spot Device!
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