Into the heart of darkness
Ben Mallalieu should have packed a torch
It wasn’t a good journey; it was never going to be a good journey, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time – as most bad ideas do, particularly when stuck in an uncongenial office and wanting to be somewhere else, anywhere else. I had pitched an idea for a travel article about seeing how far I could get into the wilds and be back at my desk seven days later, all bright and eager, refreshed by the excitement of travel. I should have known better.
As my final jumping-off place into the heart of darkness I had chosen Rurrenabaque in the Bolivian rainforest for no better reason than it is one of those wonderfully romantic place names like Zanzibar or Timbuktu and it was also the starting point for some of the better journeys of the Edwardian explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett; he memorably described it as ‘a dismal heap on the way into the jungle, and a metropolis on the way out’. From there, I could take a dug-out canoe upriver.
But Fawcett is not a good role model, not someone in whose footsteps it is wise to tread if you intend to get back in one piece (he ‘disappeared’ in Brazil in 1925). Furthermore, I had left planning my journey much too late, and even getting to the Bolivian capital of La Paz required zig-zagging between a disturbingly large number of South American airports, all identical except for being in a different time zone.
‘Two officials rushed out to flag down an ancient turbo-prop plane taxiing on the runway’
Eventually I arrived in La Paz at 4,000 metres above sea level in the middle of a hot, humid and very black night. Fawcett was a traveller of the old school, never happier than when reduced to eating his own boots or when one false step would spell certain ruin and he hardly had a day’s illness in his life, but he did warn about altitude sickness in La Paz. As well as causing almost total debility, altitude sickness has all the disadvantages of being drunk with none of the benefits — headache, nausea, disorientation...
In the morning, I got up too early. I had booked a taxi for 6am but failed to realise that my watch was still on Buenos Aires time. My hotel was impenetrably dark, I couldn’t find any light switches and in my hurry to pack before leaving England I had forgotten to include a torch. Outside there was no sign of my taxi and it was getting dangerously late (or would have been had the time on my watch been correct), so I waved down the first taxi that came. Unfortunately the driver had no English but when I showed him my airline ticket (probably the wrong one) he seemed to understand.
The airport he took me to was not the one I had arrived at the day before – it was much smaller and practically deserted. None of the officials spoke any English but my taxi driver explained the situation (I think); there was sudden panic and two of the officials rushed out to flag down an ancient turbo-prop military plane taxiing on the runway ready to
depart, and I was bundled on board without having my ticket checked. An ageing air force officer offered me some cotton wool to put in my ears, and a mug of industrial-strength coffee. We dipped and swerved between the mountains over cold, beautiful valleys where planes like that have a history of finding their final resting place, the kind of plane where the next meal often comprises your fellow passengers, and it doesn’t come in a foil-wrapped carton.
An hour later, we landed on a bumpy grass airstrip surrounded by jungle, a very long way from Heathrow but only a brief truck ride into town. Rurrenabaque had hardly changed from the photograph in Fawcett’s book, only one paved road and just a few brick buildings among the old shacks. A dump yes, but dismal no – I felt very relieved to be there. I also enjoyed the trip upriver but I did not like the rainforest, too ‘in your face’, in your hair, in your clothes and under your skin. And I didn’t have a torch. It was a relief three days later to get back to Rurrenabaque where the bright lights dazzled, just like a metropolis. At the Jungle Bar Moskkito people almost outnumbered the insects.
My flight back to La Paz was better than I feared, arriving in the early hours at another deserted airport where the first person I saw was my original taxi driver. He seemed almost as pleased to see me as I was to see him, but what he was doing there I never discovered – as he didn’t speak any English.