We arrived in Buenos Aires with a bottle of wine, a few cigars, some cheese, cloths, maps, a little bit of money, an empty journal and a racing imagination. The first couple of days would be spent touring around the city, visiting sights, eating the local food and preparing for our journey into the jungle. Buenos Aires was a gigantic sprawling city with neon buildings touching the sky in every direction, people everywhere in the latest fashions, beautiful women, strong coffee, traffic like downtown Manhattan on a Friday afternoon, and was a beautiful city with everything to do that a typical city has to offer. There was Florida street and Avenida de Mayo and Cafe Tabuca and the National Orchestra and a slew of museums many of which I pursued. I arrived in Buenos Aires on a sunny, chilly afternoon and took a taxi to my sisters apartment. The plan was that we would take a bus across the Argentine - Brazilian border from Argentina into the Brazilian jungle which I imagined would be sweltering, crawling with snakes, giant spiders the size of running shoes, uninhibited indians wielding spears and other misadventure, but what we encountered was something I truly didn't expect.
After spending some great days in Buenos Aires wandering through the streets absorbing everything it was time to board an old rickety, rusty bus for the trip into the jungle. My sister, her friend and myself were the only Americans on board when the doors closed and the bus began rumbling out of the city. Leaving the city behind I felt a strange pang of nostalgia. It reminded me of when I left New York behind and moved out to California so many years ago. I had left a place that was home for so long, the Yankees, the MET, the pizza, the hustle and bustle, Times Square, feeding the pigeons, walks along the Hudson, the Circle Line, Rockefeller Center, the long Subway rides to my home in the Bronx, WRCM radio, it's hard to leave your home behind to go some place new. Buenos Aires wasn't and had never been my home, but being in the city was familiar to me and now I was going into the unknown and I wasn't so sure about that decision even though it was exciting. The ride was long and the scenery which at first was interesting and beautiful became routine and my began to grow anxious and jittery. My sister and her friend had fallen asleep by the time we reached the Brazilian border. The road was a narrow two lane highway and as we pulled up to the border crossing I glanced out the window and noticed a small cement building, a bungalow just off the road. The vegetation was thick and tropical despite the fact that the weather was considerably chilly. It wasn't the type of jungle I had been anticipating and I didn't bring the proper cold weather clothing on the trip. I knew Buenos Aires would be cold but I figured a sweater and a skully would do the job.
We reached the border crossing and the bus stopped and the bus driver opened the doors. My sister and her friend were woken by the commotion of armed soldiers bordering the bus and barking out orders in Portuguese. The bus driver began pointing and for a second I thought he was pointing at us. Then the soldier approached us and motioned for us to stand. I stood and then he indicated to my sister and her friend that they had to stand as well. He then motioned for us to follow him and we did. We followed him off the bus and across the road and it is then I realized that we were the only ones who were being forced to exit the bus. I suddenly wasn't feeling so great about the situation. What was this all about? Three other soldiers appeared and they were all armed with automatic weapons and pistols on their belts. They were wearing green fatigues and steel helmets as if ready to head out on a patrol into a war zone. My felt my pulse rise and wondered if this was it, this is how we were going to go. I was waiting to hear the bus engine VROOM back to life and leave us behind in the jungle with the soldiers to be mysteriously executed and buried in shallow graves in the jungle. The soldiers took us into the cement building that consisted of a couple of rooms. We were brought into one room that had a table and about four chairs. We were told to sit and place our carry on bags on the table. Our suitcases were retrieved from the bowel of the bus and a couple of soldiers were rifling through them. An older soldier entered and took our passports and began scrutinizing them. He didn't say anything but kept looking from one to the other and then examining us to see if we were truly the people on the passports. Obviously we were but he was taking it to an extreme and ridiculous level. Our bags were ravaged and everything we'd packed so carefully was ripped apart, turned upside down, tossed about like a green salad and then stuffed back into the bag. The soldiers talked with each other for a period of time, probably only about two minutes though it felt like 30. As they talked I stared at the windows of the building and realized that they had bars on them. It was pretty terrifying and while I was wondering what was to become of our fate I decided that I wasn't going to just allow them to get away with this. If they tried to get cute I was going to fight back. I would try and disarm one of the soldiers and make a fight out of it before being gunned down in cold blood in some remote outpost of the Brazilian jungle. Thankfully it didn't come to that and we were escorted back to the bus. Nothing was ever explained to us but our bags were returned to the belly of the bus and soon we were back in our seats, sweat pouring down our faces and the engine of the bus rumbling back to life.
"Oh thank goodness," I heard my sister's friend mutter.
"I thought we were goners," I said.
"So did I," my sister said. I could hear the raw fear in her voice. Nobody would have ever known what had become of us. We were on our way to some exotic waterfalls out in the middle of the jungle when we disappeared.
We arrived at our destination after a period of time passed on the bus, though I couldn't tell you how much time actually elapsed because I was too distracted by the encounter with the Brazilian military to focus on anything as ordinary as the passage of time. We exited the bus and began walking along a dirt road into a small town. It was here that we would begin our search for our own Dr. Livingston, participating in our own sole search so far from home, so far from what we view as familiar. We found a cheap hotel and rented a room for the night. As the sun was beginning to set the chilly temperature became down right frosty. The room consisted of two metal beds with thin mattresses and itchy, uncomfortable blankets, no heat in the room, a tiny bathroom with a toilet that had difficulty flushing and gurgled like it was dying each time it was used and a door with a lock that didn't even work. Thankfully it had a chain link lock that would at least alert us if someone was trying to get in but it wouldn't keep a determined criminal out. It would only allow me a second to get out of bed and try to defend us. We had one bottle of wine remaining which I was surprised was still in my suitcase. I figured the soldiers had ripped it off and were getting lit up back at the border crossing. We cracked the wine and began to split it amongst ourselves. Not only did we all need a drink to calm our nerves but we figured maybe it would keep us somewhat warm. Bundled up under the itchy blankets and skinny sheets we drank and shivered until one by one we each fell asleep from the sheer exhaustion of the travel. Unfortunately I had an awful sleep and kept waking up nearly every hour on the hour. The tile floor was so cold that I had to sleep in socks which I rarely did and found it uncomfortable. When the sun finally decided to rise the next morning we ate bread and cheese for breakfast washed down with the remaining wine and set out for the falls. They were miraculous with thunderous falling water, rainbows everywhere, beautiful parrots and squawking monkeys in the trees. The weather was still cold but at least we had survived the night without freezing to death or being robbed and out there deep in the jungle standing beside a waterfall so powerful it could probably light up half the Bronx I wondered if any of the rainbows had a pot of gold at the end of them or was that just a story made up by some grandfather to tell to his young grandchild. I didn't find Dr. Livingston that trip, nor did I find him in Paris two years later, but I learned that the zest for life is a good enough reason to keep beating down the overgrown paths of life if only just to see where it leads.
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