Sussing out the tangle of footpaths and old ATV trails with his compass and newly sketched map, Roman left trail-blazes for the Russian as he hiked. That night, his sixth since leaving Lou’s place in El Ramate, he set up camp under fragrant lemon and grapefruit trees next to a large aguada. An exquisitely excavated Mayan wall stood nearby, sculpted in angel-like wings and other human and nonhuman forms. The dry season is terrible for ticks and chiggers in Central America, and Roman spent an hour that night picking off parasites. The itchy rash on his feet, he realized, was not a rash at all, but dozens of tiny ticks, each raising an angry little welt. And they weren’t just on his feet. They were everywhere: ankles, arms, crotch, armpits, belly. “I took a small bath in DEET,” a potent insect repellent developed by the military, “which killed them. They were easy to scratch off.”

Up at six to boil water for the day, he pondered his situation. If he was camping at La Muralla, halfway from Naachtun, he would reach Nakbe by noon. But he couldn’t be sure he had been on the right trail and considered the risks that he faced. “Worst case scenario I got bit by a snake and died slowly. Not much I could do about that. Second worst was wandering too deep into the forest, got lost, and couldn’t find water.”

He noted that by staying on the “cleanest trails and leaving blazes, and never venturing more than two days from an aguada” he could avoid getting lost and not running out of water. He also recognized there were wild fruits, like the sweet chicozapote, and plenty of snakes and lizards. “I think I could have foraged a meal every day just walking, if I didn’t mind skinny grilled lizards.”

He also worried that he had misled the Russian behind him. He left two quarts of boiled water for the paunchy painter, then pushed on, arriving at Nakbe in time for lunch. He shared his fresh limes and grapefruits with the rangers. They were astonished with his trek, but wouldn’t have done what he’d done, not alone: too dangerous, they said. His story of the Russian intrigued and humored them, but worried them, too. They decided to head back to La Muralla to find him.

During his few hours at Nakbe, Roman toured the ruins. From the top of its major temple, he could see the partially cleared pyramid of El Mirador rising 250 feet above the flat expanse of jungle that reached to the horizon. It looked distant, but in little more than two hours of fast walking he’d be there.

One of the rangers, Miguel, needed to make a supply run to El Mirador and invited Roman along. The ranger, who carried only an empty pack, was pleased with their rapid time and surprised that Roman—carrying a big pack—had kept up. Miguel’s pace left Roman dehydrated and hot, with big blisters on his toes and heels. “Oh well,” he wrote in his journal. “Only one more day.”

At El Mirador, Miguel shared Roman’s story with a cook who offered him a dinner of “beans, tortillas, and some delicious scrambled egg dish. I gave her the rest of my limes. The rangers at El Mirador were also interested to hear about the Russian, and had a laugh.”

It was good to see that Roman interacted with the people at every stop along the way and even better to find that he shared what he could with them: he exercised good wilderness etiquette. I was delighted that he cared for the Russian, too, whom he didn’t know, but realized needed his help.

On his last day, with a late start at eight, he took off to cover the final thirty miles to Carmelita. Half an hour out, a helicopter flew overhead carrying Richard Hansen, the famed researcher who’d put El Mirador on the map in the eighties. “It would have been cool to meet him. Maybe I should have stayed another day. But who knows? He’s probably sick of tourists. He had all semester to be asked stupid questions by undergrads.”

Roman felt the effects of the previous day’s race pace. The hours dragged on. His feet hurt and his chigger bites itched as he pounded the hard-packed trail. To ease his tender feet, he took softer, parallel paths. By nightfall he was out of water, thirsty and spent. Worse—because time and distance stretch in the dark and he hadn’t yet reached Carmelita—hobbling on sore feet through the night he worried he had taken a wrong turn in the dark.

While he was sure he was nearing Carmelita, he heard only what he described as “the primordial hoots and howls of the New World tropics.” Just as he was considering the prospect of a dry camp and calling it a very long day, he heard people. He followed their voices to a house and asked where Carmelita was. They laughed: he was in Carmelita. The husband led Roman to a tourist hotel where he quenched his thirst with bottles of soda, water, and Gatorade, and bought a bar of soap. “I took my last DEET bath, a mondi, then slept for the first time in 9 days without being cold. It rained that night, hard. I was glad I hadn’t stayed another night out. My tent would be miserable in a rainstorm, and the trail an abominable mud pit. I did worry a little about my Russian, though.”

At four the next morning, even after the marathon efforts of the last two days, he caught the “chicken bus,” one of the colorful local transports packed with people, arriving at Santa Elena six hours later. He spent the day washing clothes, limping, eating, and writing the story of his journey.

Few people have done El Petén’s M route. Fewer still have done it alone. Roman had proved himself in Central America’s biggest wilderness. I was impressed—also relieved.

After Guatemala, Roman visited Belize. “The only people I’ve talked to that liked Belize were the young European women that like everything, especially poor people, or white girls who smoke too much and don’t take care of their hair.” I chuckled at Roman’s distaste for “hippies,” whom he saw doing little more than drugs while lounging around their hostels. He headed south to Utila, Honduras. There, he paid $289 for an advanced diver certification, a lot of money, he said, but worth it. He was the only student in a course that included accommodation, gear, and seven dives on which he swam with whale sharks and made night dives.

A month after El Petén, Roman emailed plans and a map of eastern Honduras. Again, he lamented leaving his packraft behind. He envisioned a three-hundred-mile river trip down the Patuca River through the heart of La Moskitia, second only to El Petén as Central America’s biggest roadless area. The Patuca itself ends at the famed Mosquito Coast, shared by Honduras and Nicaragua.

Roman described his planned trip to his college friend Brad as “400 miles of jungle swamp without good maps through North America’s cocaine hub in the murder capital of the world.” He hadn’t shared that reputation with me. He wrote me that he was headed to El Salvador to look for a canoe for his river trip through La Moskitia, which I knew only for its biodiversity values, not its lawlessness.

If he had told me, I would have likely written him that lawless humans are more dangerous, more unpredictable than wilderness. Once a criminal breaks one law—like smuggling drugs—it’s easier to break another—like robbery or even murder. Risk management of mountain, river, and wild animal hazards is more straightforward than planning for outlaws. But after his El Petén trek, it was clear he could take care of himself. It sounded like he was ready for another full-bodied adventure and I looked forward to the stories he’d tell.

Chapter 18

South to Costa Rica

Scuba diving the Bay Islands, Honduras, May 2014.

Courtesy of the author

While in El Salvador looking for a canoe, Roman met Jeremy, a Canadian who was also interested in La Moskitia. Because they had found only sit-on-top kayaks, unsuited for their trip, the two decided they would rely on local transport instead. They headed for Palestina on the banks of the Patuca River in Honduras and boarded a sixty-foot cargo canoe, loaded with hundred-pound bags of rice, cases of soda, and leaky fifty-gallon barrels of gas. “All the necessities of village life,” Roman noted.

The boatman did his best to steer the canoe down the low, dry-season river, but the current pinned the overloaded craft on the rocks of a shallow rapid. The captain ordered the fuel drums jettisoned and the boat slipped off the rocks and headed downstream, where Jeremy and Roman helped retrieve the barrels.

Unlike the rest of Honduras, La Moskitia is indigenous, not Latino, and as they headed deeper into the region fewer people spoke Spanish. Eventually they heard only Moskito. At each passing village the big dugout canoe dropped off cargo and occasionally picked up new passengers. Stopped at a gold miner’s camp one night, Roman loaned his bug-net tent and tarp to a young Moskito couple. This earned him the respect of the boat owner, who later invited him and Jeremy to sleep at his house. Days later and downstream, the pair found lodging with an evangelical Moskito preacher whose amplified nighttime hymns and sermons drained the power from his little chapel’s lights. They had to wait for several days until a boat headed out; a gasoline shortage had stopped all river traffic.

From the start, Jeremy and Roman marveled at the display of weaponry along the Patuca. The teenage kid in the bow of the cargo boat had protected his .50-caliber Desert Eagle from a tropical downpour by stashing the hard-hitting piece in his backpack. Cowboys in tall hats tucked pistols in their waistbands. Honduran soldiers in jackboots and stocking caps brandished submachine guns, assault rifles, and side arms. In one village, Roman watched a shirtless man with an automatic pistol sandwiched between his brown belly flesh and pants trade gold flakes for Doritos and Pepsi.