Danny met me at Bogota Airport and was beside himself with excitement about the coming trip. Although he had been living in Colombia for over 20 years now, he had never been to the places where we would be going. He was adamant that no one had ever done this story before, to go down into the jungle and photograph and report on a working cocaine factory.
Perhaps that should have told me something. Either that it was too impractical or too dangerous. However, I was committed now, I had taken ‘Front’s’ money and accepted the assignment. I would have to follow through no matter what.
The first disappointment was Jorge. He was a pleasant, roly-poly sort of guy in his late thirties, who lived with his girlfriend, a much larger lady of a similar age, in her small but clean flat just a stones throw from the Presidential Palace. I guessed that the armed guard on the gate of the unpretentious block had more to do with the level of local crime than it did to its proximity to the Presidential Palace.
The disappointment was that Jorge wasn’t really a photographer. He had been a TV cameraman for a national network until he had been laid off over two years ago. He was very polite, eager and willing, and you could tell that he desperately needed the money. However, even from my limited knowledge of photography, it was a profession quite distinct from that of cameraman. Anyway, it was too late to look for someone else and both Dan and I had cameras and yards of film. So if, between the three of us, we took several hundred photos, at least a couple should turn out okay.
We were due to travel to the town of Barranca to meet Edgar. It was a jungle town insofar as every place outside the plateau city of Bogota was down in the jungle. Travel would be by plane, as most of the jungle roads were often impassable. Further, absolutely none of them were policed, except by the local guerillas or militias, and they were a law unto themselves so anything could happen.
The following afternoon the three of us presented ourselves at Bogota Airport for our flight to Barranca. If I had been surprised that internal Colombian flights were so cheap then I soon found out why. The battered, twin-engined, twenty-eight-seater Fokker had obviously seen long service. All the passengers turned to look at Danny and myself as we boarded, the only two Europeans on the flight.
I suppose the 180 mile flight to the north of Bogota was uneventful, unless you count the roller-coaster ups and downs of the light plane being buffeted by the warm, jungle updrafts. The smoothness of international flight doesn’t prepare you at all for flight in a twin-engined Fokker.
Edgar was waiting for us as we arrived. A tall, well-built, handsome guy in his late thirties, he had the impeccable manners of most Colombians that we had met. He quickly ushered us into a taxi, remarking that you had to be very careful with taxis as some of them were operated by criminals who would kidnap and rob you.
The ‘El Pilaton’ was a decent enough hotel. We booked two double rooms then went to a nearby restaurant where Edgar filled us in on some background details. Then came the second disappointment. It seemed that Edgar wasn’t really a journalist. He said that he had worked as a journalist for 15 years, but for the last two years he had worked as a bouncer in a local nightclub. Now I knew that journalism was by no means an exclusive profession, I was living proof of that. But the transition from scribe to bouncer threw a lot of doubt on exactly what type of journalist he had been in the first place.
Seeing the look on my face as Danny translated, Edgar hastened to reassure me that the story could be done and that, in fact, he had been wanting to do this current story for 15 years, but the circumstances had never been right and he had never found anyone who wanted to do it. I pondered the implication that no one had been stupid enough to try.
Further details about our current location were something less than reassuring too. Edgar informed us that Barranca, a town of 370,000 souls, was claimed as home turf by all the parties to the conflict. At different times FARC, ELN, the Paramilitaries and the Colombian Army had all held sway here for a while. At the moment no one group enjoyed absolute power, but all were fighting to do so. Last year there had been 700 murders and 1,000 disappearances. Now the authorities didn’t bother to report massacres involving less than ten people.
In any other set of circumstances one could only have concluded that Edgar was joking. But his delivery was deadpan and absolutely matter-of-fact. As we got up to make our way back to the hotel he added, almost as an afterthought, that it was best that we stay close together as very few Europeans ever came to Barranca and there was a very real chance of being kidnapped. As a throw away line it really took the prize. Laying in my hotel room I couldn’t help thinking, if that was what he was willing to tell us, what had he held back?
Disappointments were coming thick and fast now. The next arrived with breakfast. As I sat opposite Danny in the hotel dining room you could tell something was obviously very wrong. The normal boisterousness was gone and his complexion was the same hue as the milk he was pouring on his cornflakes. “I’m scared, Norm”, he suddenly blurted out. “I know this country and things are very dangerous here right now. The boatman who Edgar had hired to take us upriver has pulled out because FARC and ELN are fighting in that area.”
I knew that we were going to have to make the rest of the journey by boat, because roads just didn’t run through the jungle. The hotel was situated on the bank of the river. The dirty brown water flowed swiftly past the dining room window where we sat. As I gazed into the middle distance I cursed Hollywood for making us all live filmic-ly now. I couldn’t help thinking about ‘Apocalypse Now’ and Martin Sheen’s boat trip into the ‘heart of darkness’.
Danny suddenly brought me out of my reverie. “Edgar has managed to get us another boatman, Norm, but he say’s its very dangerous and that’s why I’m scared.”
I wouldn’t have described my own state of mind as ‘scared’, rather as ‘concerned but committed’. If I set my mind on doing something I tended to accept the dangers and just focused on achieving it. But the way Dan was going on, my state of mind could soon change to ‘scared’. “Look Dan, I’m scared too, mate, but I’ve taken ‘Fronts’ money now and I’m committed to go through with it.”
Danny’s reaction was characteristic. Suddenly he burst out laughing. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going, Norm. I’m just saying that I’m fucking scared.” That made me laugh too. Danny was brave enough. He had run with West Ham’s ‘Inter City Firm’ for a while and you can’t be a faint heart and cope with that level of football violence. He had the loyalty that went with it too and the more I got to know him, the more I liked him.
The atmosphere changed somewhat as Edgar joined us at the breakfast table. For the worse. Over his toast he presented me with his scale of charges. It would be $300 to take us to our first stop, a jungle village about 80 miles upriver. Then it would be another $200 for the next leg to another village. He was just in the process of detailing the amount for the next leg, all pointed out on a little map he had spread out on the breakfast table, when I stopped him abruptly.
Anger flared as I waved my hand to silence him as internationally as I knew how. “Danny, you tell this prick that I’m not some kind of fucking idiot.” The anger was clear in my voice now, and in my expression too. Edgar sat back abruptly. “I want one price for the whole trip, start to finish. I can see what’s going to happen. We’ll get to the last stage and it will be some sort of $1,000 to get to the prize. By then I’ll be in for several hundred dollars anyway, so I won’t have much choice. Tell him, one price for the whole trip, or we call it quits now.”
You could tell that Edgar was impressed. He had been nodding in agreement through my tirade without ever understanding one word I said. But he didn’t have to. No doubt he was a sharp cookie and knew all the moves. Now he knew that I knew them too. Apart from anything else, it was essential that I establish some sort of understanding with him right from the start. Now, at least, he knew that I wasn’t a mug.
We agreed on the round sum of $1,000, an absolute fortune by Colombian standards. But, as he so rightly argued, he was risking his life for us. By now Jorge had joined us at the table. As he heard the final stages of the agreement his glum look perfectly matched the one Danny currently had on his face. I was paying them both $700 each. However, my irate state was enough to preclude any negotiations for an increase in their pay.
Edgar was all smiles now. He leant across the table and shook my hand and I thought I saw a new respect there. I was frantically using all my prison-learned skills of summing a man up. I was reasonably sure he wasn’t an evil bastard. If I had got an inkling of that I would have had to watch him very closely indeed. There was always the possibility of his luring us somewhere and killing the lot of us for all the money.
In this new spirit of camaraderie, Edgar suddenly pulled a small box out of his pocket and offered the contents around. They were small pills of two distinct types. He explained that one was an anti-malaria tablet and that we should take it because the river was infested with mosquitoes. The other was a muscle-relaxant. It seemed that the constant battering of the boat by the river over the four-hour trip could seriously bruise your back. The experienced river traveler always took a muscle-relaxant.
We collected our bags from our rooms and, with Edgar leading, trudged down the muddy bank to the boat, or to give it its correct name, the canoe. The term ‘boat’ smacked of something substantial and there was little substantial about this craft. Basically, it was a 15-feet long, flat-bottomed punt, with an outboard motor at the back. That it regularly functioned as a punt was evidenced by the long pole held in the hands of the boatman as he welcomed us aboard.
The latter, an elderly black guy, was all smiles as he steadied the boat with the pole whilst we settled into our seats. Or rather, benches, for these were bare, wooden boards without a trace of cushioning. Muscle-relaxants or no muscle-relaxants, I could still see my getting out at the other end with a sore bum.
As we settled in, the boatman’s assistant, a teenaged boy, scurried about helping to stow our bags. With an absolute minimum of fuss the boatman pushed the boat away from the shore with his pole and started the outboard motor. Soon we were speeding along at about 30 miles an hour.
Now I was starting to enjoy myself. This was the start of the adventure proper. I reminded myself that, whatever the outcome of the assignment, this would be the experience of a lifetime. Barely two years previously I had been sitting in a prison cell. Now I was speeding into the heart of the Colombian rainforest in pursuit of a cocaine factory.......
to be continued