Jenkins wore rubber knee boots, shorts, and a tank top: the local miner uniform. Vargas splashed upstream in his town clothes, minus the cowboy boots. He looked overdressed for wading to the waist and climbing hand-over-hand up rock walls slick with algae and mud.

Basilisks—Jesus Christ lizards—ran on the water in front of us when disturbed. Their sensational sprints reminded me of Roman at thirteen on our second trip to Corcovado, when he’d learned how to catch the miraculous creatures. First, he would chase a young basilisk across the water to the far side of a creek. Clinging to a rock, the animal would eye Roman warily until he waded too close and the reptile dove into the cool water to hide in bottom debris. Roman then reached into the mass of sticks and leaves, braving what else might lurk there, and grabbed the little lizard. Pleased with himself, he would pull it out like a trophy, inspect its dinosaur-like crest and oversized hind feet, warm it in his hands, then release it to run across the surface of the pool like some sort of windup water toy.

I tried to ignore the lizards—the memory upset me—but simply couldn’t. I watched every one dash over the stream.

Our pace accelerated. I was eager both to look for clues where Roman had last been seen and to establish that Thai and I could handle ourselves here, unlike tourist gringos. We passed miners’ camps as the creek threaded a series of flats and canyons. We scrambled up faint trails to rock rims above canyon slots too narrow or steep to traverse at water level. We pushed aside broad leaves adapted to deep shade and familiar as house plants in homes and offices back home.

After an hour or so Jenkins pointed out the boundary of the park. It was illegal to continue. We would face stiff penalties if the authorities caught us. “You can go back, Jenkins, but I need to go on,” I said, willing to take my chances with only Jenkins’s sketch map in my notebook as a guide to Zeledón. “If they find me, what can the park service say?” I asked. “I’m looking for my son. How heartless can they be? I’ll take any blame.” Urged on, the others agreed to continue.

Vargas and Jenkins expressed an honest parental empathy. Vargas was willing to risk his town clothes and flip phone wrapped in plastic. Both were willing to risk arrest to help, to take me where I needed to go. The young miner and the old poacher were fit and strong and knew the jungle well.

El Tigre opened up from its narrow canyons. We walked in sunshine below abrupt mountainsides cloaked in heliconia plants from creek side to ridgeline. A giant herb with wide green leaves, the heliconia displays its sturdy inflorescence of bright red and orange flowers to attract equally colorful hummingbirds. The birds in turn attract their predators: venomous eyelash vipers suspended in wait by their prehensile tails.

It’s not uncommon to miss an eyelash viper with its rich camouflage. While unaggressive, the petite vipers don’t hesitate to strike, and because of their arboreal habits, they often bite unsuspecting humans on the face or neck. Roman knew this and would stay clear of heliconia thickets without first clearing a path with his machete.

Piles of rocks and beds of sediment indicated active gold mining. We passed the occasional cache of hand tools—shovels and short sluice boxes—used by the Osa’s miners to sift gold from streambeds. An hour into the park, and two hours from the road, Jenkins pointed out a short cliff that parted the green vegetation: “Here we must leave the Tigre on a hidden miner’s trail.”

We spaced out for the hundred-foot climb up a broken, slimy limestone wall with sharp hand and footholds. It led to a faint trail, choked with vines. We climbed to the rim of a deep canyon, impassable at water level, Jenkins said. Up here, a huge tree had recently fallen and buried the trail. By now it was well over eighty degrees and 99 percent humidity. We were as soaked from sweat as we would be from rain.

Jenkins unsheathed his machete and hacked a path through the claustrophobic crown of the tree fall. Each whack—and it takes many to cut through even small tropical hardwood limbs—stirs up swarms of small insects. Some bite, others sting, all leave rashes. Jenkins carved us a tunnel leading fifty yards to the twin trunks of the fallen tree. We scrambled onto its slippery surface, spooking a slender six-foot snake that slithered into the undergrowth.

Seeing me recoil, Jenkins said, “It is not dangerous.” Still, I watched carefully for vipers in the foliage. The more immediate hazard was negotiating the four-foot-diameter log perched on the edge of a hundred-and-fifty-foot overhanging cliff. We balanced nervously where the log spanned a vertical gully that dropped into the precipice, then jumped off one by one, relieved to reach the narrow footpath’s solid ground.

“This fallen tree is new,” Jenkins said as he looked back at the log across the drop. “We have another trail that goes by my rancho. I do not come this way often.”

We left the canyon rim, following a small tributary into the forest. The whole jungle was dark and dank, wet with creeks running everywhere and seeps dripping from exposed rock. The air was cool and smelled of moss, ferns, and fungi. The trail went up a shallow gully that cut into the ridgeline. In an impressive display of hand labor, miners had dug a miniature gorge ten feet deep and lined with rounded stones. It was just wide enough for us to pass, our feet splashing through ankle-deep water.

The gully opened up and we arrived at a nondescript place where the walls relaxed into slopes a person could walk up or down. Jenkins came to a stop and looked around. Filtered sunlight dappled brown leaves and black rocks. The fronds of short, waist-high palm trees swung back and forth as if in a wind, but there was no breeze. All around us katydids grated and cicadas shrieked without pause. But the two noisiest creatures of the forest could tell me nothing that I needed to know.

“This is Zeledón Creek,” Jenkins announced.

Chapter 28

Cruz Roja

Cruz Roja and MINAE leadership, July 31, 2014.

Courtesy of the author

“Here.” Jenkins pointed to a pile of three rocks. “It’s a little bit different now. But on that day, we were walking up this trail, just as we have been now, and sitting on this biggest rock was a guy eating his breakfast. It was in the morning before it gets too hot, maybe at eight or nine, and we had left my rancho, which is down the ridge behind us. It was me and Arley and Luiz. Coco was still back at the rancho. We were going to the mine and some tunnels we have been working. It was impossible not to pass him closely.”

Indeed. There were only about four feet of level ground along the creek bottom to walk and much of that was taken up by the braids of the little creek as it spilled among the rocks.

I could feel Roman’s presence here, where it was easy to see him sitting alone, enjoying the coolness of the morning, the best part of the day, pondering a line of termites on a nearby log or the curve of a tree’s buttress on the hillside above while he waited for his water to boil and his food to cool. I studied the slopes and the rocks and the vegetation closely, looking for clues and wondering: Where did you camp? Where did you descend? And most of all, Where did you go from here?

Cupping my hands, I called out, “Roman! Roooo-mann! Rooo-ooo-mann!” But there was no answer beyond the unrelenting peeps, whistles, and buzzes of the noonday jungle.

Jenkins toured us around his mine located above the south branch of El Tigre, a creek that he called Negritos. He showed us the charred remains of the rancho that MINAE had burned to the ground, then led us down other hidden trails he and his partners used. At every turn, I studied the forest floor looking for sign of Roman: the mark of his shoes, a food wrapper, anything that might move us forward. The trails looped back to the base of the ridge at the edge of the Negritos branch of El Tigre. There we headed downstream, hiking out faster than we had hiked in, familiar now with the route.

It had been stirring to visit where Roman had last been seen. I anticipated returning soon to Zeledón. Roman was near, I could feel it. I hoped he was okay—I prayed he was alive.

AT THE CAR, I slipped money to Jenkins, who looked surprised and hesitant. He turned it down. “I have children, too. I don’t need to be paid.”

“Please, take it. And thank you, Jenkins,” I said. “I know this was a risk for you.” He turned to divide it with Vargas and Jefe sitting next to him.

“No. That’s all for you, Jenkins. I’ll pay them, too.”

I handed Vargas an equal sum. He smiled and accepted the money in both hands, graciously.