Oh Cool, I’m Not Dying

The fine mesh of the mosquito netting shrouds the world in a sort of heavy film, and I’m uncertain how much of this haze is due to the net and how much I can write off to the fever currently making me shiver like we’re in the Russian Arctic instead of the bowels of the Peruvian Amazon. The world settles a bit deeper into the gloom and, oddly content, I stare up at the fabric and the wooden ceiling beyond, and come to the conclusion that life, indeed, is weird.

I’m two weeks into an attempt at a stand-up paddleboard first descent of the Madre de Dios, a headwater tributary of the Amazon. The river originates high in the cloud forest, up in the easternmost range of the Andes called the Cordillera de Carabaya, then meanders eastward toward the river town of Puerto Maldonado and before passing into Bolivia, where it joins the Beni River after a journey of more than 700 miles. Eventually both dump into the Amazon itself.

We’re a motley team; thirteen guys—mostly Peruvian whitewater athletes—and one gringa (hola, soy yo), floating down jungle rivers on paddleboards and support rafts, sleeping rough, eating our meals on the go in the boats, and seeing what we could make of the attempt. We’d started off rolling through Class III and IV whitewater in the Andes, before working our way down into proper jungle, where cool, foggy mornings had been replaced by high humidity and hot, unforgiving days. 

We’ve also, apparently, traded in our “good luck” health status for the alternative “uh-oh, esto no es bueno.” Currently we’re bunked up at a local outpost which serves as a sort of restocking camp for our team, who has welcomed the concrete bunker floors with pallet wooden walls separating each bunk. The toilet is a long, hand-dug ditch out back, but it’s easier to access than our facilities while camping by the riverside with the alternating guard duty we’d been juggling the past few weeks.

It’s hard to gauge how well you’re feeling in the jungle. Is that sweat and unsteadiness a fever, or just heat and humidity? Is that a chill, or merely cooler air from a step into the shadows? Vertigo, or is just a bit of dehydration? Turns out, it was all of the above. 

Blessedly it’s a layover day, so while the guys scout the river ahead I’m instructed to lie under a mosquito net, down water, and watch freakishly large yellow-legged centipedes race each other across the ceiling. I figure their length must be an illusion and blame the fever; it’s only when the fever drops the next day that I discover the length is entirely accurate… the creepy-crawlies range from a couple inches all the way up to eight or ten. Suitable nightmare fuel, somehow, for a fever-dream day.

I write in my little Moleskine, venturing between the cot and the ditch which serves as a bathroom, miserable and yet oddly clearheaded. I eye the fine weave of the mosquito netting and then the centipedes, finally coming to the decision that there’s no way they could fit through the weave, and grateful I’d learned years ago how to do a proper netting tuck under my pallet.

Time blurs, and I wonder, “Was this how the great African explorers of old felt, when they took ill and lay under their own mosquito netting, watching shadows crawl across the ceiling and feeling their bodies fight whatever it was inside them that was making them sick?”

Did they have friends to bring them bananas? I did, a fact for which I was infinitely grateful. One of the Peruvians grabbed a hand (I’ve learned that yes, that’s the proper term for a bunch of bananas; the single is a “finger”) of small bananas on the scouting hike, and I savor the first solid food I’m able to keep down in two days.

I’m not the only one who is down and out. By early afternoon, another team member is relegated to his own mosquito-net cocoon, facing the same symptoms I am. 

When you’re miserable and hallucinating and watching pencil-size centipedes stage races over your head, pragmatism wins out. I figure that despite some pretty shitty odds at times in the past, I’d lived through everything up ‘til this point. So those odds might hold a little longer. Turns out that rest and bananas are a good cure; the next morning, I’m functioning enough to get back in the boats and on the river, continuing our float downward. I’m not well, per se, but I am on my feet. And that’s a win—I didn’t want to be the reason the team was held back.

In the end, it takes more than two weeks, but we complete our objective: making the first stand-up paddleboard descent of the Madre de Dios River. In our final days, the river broadens, flattening and morphing from clear mountain water to muddy jungle water, and we begin to be passed by long motorized canoes supplying the many illegal gold mining camps in the region. I judiciously hide my camera every time they drift by, and we never have any trouble. Smoke smudges the sky, marking the camps in the dense jungle—a poignant reminder that we’re not alone in this part of our journey. 

Nearly a week later, when I board my flight in Cusco, I feel just about human again. Though it’s only when I get back to the States and find out I’d weathered my first bout of dengue while in the jungle that I feel a bit less like a wuss. A bit. 

Every time I climb underneath mosquito netting now, whether I’m in Alaska or the jungles of Bolivia, I think back to that sick day, and think that perhaps it was just a tiny taste of what many people on the edge of the world have felt over the years, sick and hallucinating and far away from home. I can only hope they had racing centipedes to keep them entertained, and friends bearing bananas.

About the Author: 

Jess McGlothlin sees her mission as a simple one: tell stories. Working as a freelance photographer and writer, she’s learned how to throw spears at coconuts in French Polynesia, dodge saltwater crocodiles in Cuba, stand-up paddleboard down Peruvian Amazon tributaries and eat all manner of unidentifiable food.