The Future of Petén

The jungle of Mirador spit us out on Sunday. One hundred miles swelling up our feet, we stumbled into Carmelita and drank ourselves a Famosa and inhaled some PBJ sandwiches while watching las mulas swat away flies from their behinds. Small curious childen watched us as we sprawled on plastic lawn chairs y Doña Pati told us the latest gossip. We didn’t care, we were back in civilization and all 1,000 inhabitants of Carmelita were more people than we could imagine after being in that purgatory of bajos, flies, mosquitos, and mula dung. Rubber boots, hiking boots, gaiters, all caked in layers of mud. It wasn’t that there was stuff growing on us, but stuff growing in the stuff growing on us and in every crevice of our bodies it was dirt and bug repellant that continually stung and rolled down into our eyes. Cancer, max, cancer. My Indiana Andrade hat wet from walking in the rain for two days, was the only thing standing up straight on me. I had recently aquired a Maya pyramid and my name written in Maya gliphos engraved in the fine sharpie ink by a said Paco archeoleogist. I felt quite invincible at the front of the pack and dreamed of knighthood atop of my mule.

It was glorious I tell you and to come from that to Flores has been a little bit of a shock.

Flores is a sleepy waterside town whose entirety you can walk in less than 15 minutes. It has become a sort of headquarters for us as we venture out into the outlying communities to get their side of the story on concessions, logging and deforestation.

It is slow going, but today we did our first interview and had a one and half-hour group huddle that generated more that a 15 story ideas., enough for an entire newsroom..

Less is more and so tomorrow, the blood starts pumping again and we fall in our new stride.