Walking the Americas

by Levison Wood

  ‘This is where we leave you,’ said Ernesto, shaking our hands.

  ‘Now you’re in the hands of the Kuna,’ said Leo. ‘They will look after you, as long as you tip them well.’

  It was advice as well as a hint. We paid our Embera guides and the porters, and tipped them well, too. They’d done us proud, and although we hadn’t quite crossed the Darién Gap yet, we’d got further than we ever imagined possible and it was down in no small part to their help.

  We waved goodbye to the hardy men. Now that they’d shed their loads, and us, they said they’d be able to make the homeward journey in only three days. But for now, they wanted to share a moment of friendship with the Kuna – something that hadn’t happened in years. Rodrigo and the youngsters played football with their Kuna counterparts, while Leo and Ernesto went off to get drunk.

  The Kuna elder stayed with us. ‘Colombia is still three or four days’ walk from here. But before we can let you carry on, you will need to speak with the chief.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said, more than used to the formality of introductions to chieftains and tribal elders by now. ‘Where is he?’ Silas looked out to sea.

  ‘Caledonia.’

  The word sounded strangely familiar. Of course. Now I remembered. We were just a few miles distant from the exact same spot where the Scottish made landfall all those years ago. I checked my map. There was nothing to suggest that there was any settlement there now – not even a name. I asked Silas.

  ‘Puerto Escosés,’ he said. ‘Yes, it’s the next bay along.’

  Puerto Escosés. That was Spanish for ‘Scottish port’. It made sense.

  The old man pointed to a headland along the beach.

  ‘But why do you want to go there? There’s nothing there.’

  I was going to launch into a history lesson, but thought better of it. Alberto gave the short answer instead.

  ‘He wants to see the place where his people came to live.’

  That would do, I thought.

  Then Silas nodded. ‘Well, you still have to go to Caledonia first. It’s an island. We can arrange a boat for some money.’

  It seemed there was no choice. We needed to get to the Colombian border, but the Kuna were notoriously bureaucratic, and if we needed to meet the chief then that’s what we’d have to do, even if it meant a little boat detour. And in any case, we couldn’t come this close and not see New Edinburgh.

  So we paid up and got on a little motorised canoe that bounced over the waves of the Caribbean. We sped around the headland and out to sea towards a little island about a mile offshore. The sky was clear and the water warm as it splashed against the keel and into our faces. Suddenly a shoal of dolphins crested the surface and ploughed alongside us in a graceful welcome. I looked back at the shoreline. The wild jungle extended for miles along the coast and the mountains of the Darién loomed like vast spectres. I couldn’t quite believe we’d walked over them.

  Ahead, Caledonia came into view. It felt strange to think that it was still called Caledonia after all these years. Shacks rose from the island and little huts on stilts poked out of the sea. Not a single square inch was left untamed, it seemed. Rickety jetties protruded from the coral and rocks that had been piled up in an effort to reclaim some land from the water. Smoke spiralled from the village houses and skinny dogs barked as we approached.

  ‘We’re here,’ said the boatman. ‘I’ll wait while you meet the chiefs.’

  We disembarked and immediately we were surrounded, as we had been in Carreto, by the curious villagers. Similarly all the ladies were resplendent in their traditional dress. Some wore a familiar pattern in their skirts, which bore a startling resemblance to tartan. I remember hearing a legend that these people were trading with the Scottish, and though the dates don’t quite work out, you never know.

  We were led by some youngsters to the island long house: a hut bigger than all the others, with an enormous thatched roof, which was filled with long benches like church pews, and yet there were hammocks dangling from the rafters, too. It served as a church, a community gathering place and a wedding venue, as well, it seems, as the place where the old men liked to hang out.

  All the Silases were horizontal, lounging in the hammocks. They didn’t bat an eyelid as Alberto and I were escorted in and told to sit down. For the umpteenth time, I recounted our journey and told the elders that we wanted to walk through their lands for the final leg of the expedition, to reach the Colombian border. It would take us along the coast and through a last bit of the Darién’s jungle to a place called La Miel. From there, it was one final hill to get to the border post.

  They listened quietly.

  I was expecting the worst, given all that I’d heard about this tribe. Maybe they would refuse permission and send us back across the Darién Gap. Just as bad, they might tell us to get on the boat and we’d have to go by sea to Colombia and we’d fail in the mission. Or even worse, they would confiscate all our equipment and money and leave us stranded on a beach somewhere.

  But none of that happened. We merely paid a small ‘registration fee’ and they said we were free to go. We could visit Puerto Escocés on the way if we wanted. ‘But there’s nothing there to see,’ said the chief. ‘You can have one hour there, no more. And take Andres with you. He knows the place.’

  Andres Ortega was the village drunk. He stumbled into the hut holding a can of beer and introduced himself.

  ‘I am the best guide in the whole of Kuna Yala,’ he announced, dead serious. ‘There is nowhere I don’t know on this coast. Tomorrow I will take you to see the Scottish port.’

  So we spent the night on the floor of a hut, waiting for our new guide to sober up. Our boatman had lost his patience and gone back to Carreto, so we ended up having to pay for another boat. It reminded me of Egypt, where the entire tourism industry is based around the concept of keeping you there for as long as possible until your money runs out.

  The next morning Andres arrived, albeit an hour later than we’d planned, and together we walked back down to the jetty where the new boat was waiting. But as we walked past the village school – the only breeze-block building on the whole island – I heard some strange music emanating from inside. I recognised it as familiar, but couldn’t immediately put my finger on it. It was so out of place that I’d almost forgotten my own national anthem.

  ‘God Save the Queen’ was pumped out of the school radio, and all the kids were singing along in unison. The language was different though, the words were Kuna, not English or Spanish, so neither of us could understand. Quite what the British national anthem was doing being played out in a tribal village in one of the most remote parts of the world, I don’t think I’ll ever know. But I have to say it did make me chuckle and I felt a little warm glow inside. I was almost home.

  Andres got onto the boat. I could smell booze on his breath. He was clearly still half-cut, but we didn’t have any other options so we thought we’d give him a chance. At least he wasn’t driving it. As we set off, though, it turned out he was actually quite a good tour guide and the inebriation didn’t stop him recounting some history.

  ‘When did you last go to Puerto Escosés?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve been three or four times,’ he replied. ‘I went there first in 1993 with another Englishman.’

  ‘Oh really?’ I was surprised. ‘What was his name?’

  Andres squinted his eyes, deep in thought.

  ‘Hmmm, he was in the Army. What was his name …?’ He scratched his head, and then it came to him. ‘Basfordsmell.’

  Basfordsmell? No, surely it wasn’t. But of course, who else would it be?

  ‘You mean Colonel John Blashford-Snell?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Blashford-Snell. We did an archaeological dig and we found lots of things. Pots and smoking pipes and some old coins. But he was very strict – he wouldn’t let us take anything away. He said it was important that it stayed in Panama.’

  The boat trailed parallel with the
wild shoreline.

  ‘Look at that beach,’ said Andres. ‘It’s where Balboa was executed.’ Balboa was the first Spaniard to cross the Darién in a bid to reach the Pacific. He managed to trek right across the coast and return alive, only to be beheaded by a jealous Spanish rival who wanted all the glory of the exploration for himself. This remote stretch of coast had certainly seen its fair share of world-changing events, although to look at it now, it was hard to believe humans had even contemplated living here.

  ‘You know when people talk about the Darién Gap nowadays, it’s because it is the only break in the Pan-American Highway, right?’

  ‘I knew that, yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s not what it originally meant. Before, the Darién was seen as the easy bit of Central America to cross, because it’s so narrow.’

  ‘Trust me, it wasn’t easy,’ said Alberto, scowling.

  ‘Yes, but back in the old days, think how remote and impossible it would have been to travel through the jungle in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. That’s why nobody lived there. They were the real problems. Now they are tame and this is the only wilderness left.’

  He was certainly right about that much.

  As we got closer to the rocky headland, Puerto Escosés, or Nuevo Scotia, came into view. There it was, New Scotland. Now, nothing left but an empty bay a mile across and a jungle-clad hill, where the fort of St Andrews stood for a couple of years from 1698 until it was abandoned.

  ‘Where do you want to land?’ said Andres.

  I looked at the bay. I couldn’t understand why the Scots had chosen to make this the site of their new colony. I’m no sailor, but it felt pretty obvious that Carreto, with its wide, sandy beach and natural harbour, would have been a far better choice. Here there were rocks and shallows and lethal sandbanks everywhere. There were no real beaches to land on and the coast was all mangrove swamps. What on earth were they thinking? I could only put it down to the fact that, if they’d been sailing from the north where the bays were all worse, this must have seemed like the best option. If only they had carried on another five miles, perhaps the world might have been a very different place.

  ‘Over there.’ I pointed to a narrow stretch of sand just ten metres across. It was the only place I could imagine that anyone would have been able to moor up. Behind it was the one bit of flat land that the pioneers would have been able to build a settlement on, and it was in the shadow of the hill on which I reckoned the fort must have been placed.

  The captain steered us into the shallows, where we jumped into the clear water up to our knees and waded ashore.

  ‘Yes, yes, this is where we came with Mr Bashfordsmell,’ said Andres.

  ‘Blashford-Snell.’

  ‘Over there we found many things.’

  We walked up the beach, which was littered with driftwood and weeds and bits of rubbish that must have washed ashore having drifted from the Kuna Islands. The place was hot and the air stale. There was no breeze this side of the bay. We walked into the scrub and found ourselves picking our way through mangrove roots, palms and banana trees. These must have been planted by the Scots, I thought. Coconuts were strewn in the undergrowth, which was thick with thorn bushes. It was hard to imagine that anyone had ever lived here. Nature ruled supreme now and there was no trace left of any settlement.

  In my mind, I was going to unearth a Claymore sword, or find some buried gold, or at least discover the remains of the graves of the poor Highlanders. But there was nothing here. Nothing at all. Whatever treasures might have been left behind, they were all gone now.

  ‘A ship came eight years ago. Foreigners who paid the Silases five hundred dollars so they could loot with their magic sticks.’

  ‘Magic sticks?’ said Alberto, who was clearly unimpressed by the grisly patch of swamp that I’d led him to.

  ‘I think he probably means metal detectors,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, they came and took everything away. They even found a big cannon.’

  ‘Let’s climb the hill,’ I suggested, thinking that if nothing else we might find something of the old fort.

  So we hauled ourselves up the slope, grabbing at the vines and the branches, sweating in the staid atmosphere of the tropical jungle for forty-five minutes, until at last we reached the top.

  We stood amid the gnarled branches of a ceiba tree, its roots snaking through the uneven hilltop. There was no sign whatsoever of the fort, not even some stones or bits of wood. In the gaps of the foliage we could look out across the Caribbean and back down towards the bay. This was St. Andrews and I tried to imagine the captain of the Caledonia as he stood in the same spot, surveying his new empire. I suppose for him, and the hundreds of Scottish colonists, there must have been some inkling of hope that their new life was going to be better than the one they had left behind. Driven by a desire to escape the poverty of seventeenth-century Scotland, and spurred on by tales of glory, wealth and the dream of a tropical paradise, maybe this little mosquito-ridden peninsula was in some way betterment.

  Stubbornness and dogged determination had got them this far, but it was also their downfall. As the settlers tried to tame this inhospitable wilderness, they exhausted all their energy and within a matter of months, almost all had perished. I wondered where they lay now. Somewhere down there were the remains of almost two thousand men, women and children, who had left the hills of Scotland to find a new and better life in the New World, only to discover nothing but disease, hunger and ultimately death.

  It occurred to me then that the situation had not been all that different for the modern migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and violence in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, in their bid to find the American dream. The grass, it seems, is not always greener.

  24

  Colombia

  We left New Scotland behind and walked east towards the Colombian border, keeping the lapping waves of the Caribbean within earshot. There was a little trail that followed the coastline, weaving its way through the palm trees and sandy beaches and occasionally over rocky headlands. The remoteness and isolation of this shore gave me the feeling that we were somehow nearing the edge of the world. It was raw, beautiful and menacing, all at once.

  We passed by the village of Puerto Obaldía, a little outpost of Afro-Caribbeans – Garifuna – who’d inhabited this place for longer even than the Kuna. One of the local men, Maximillian, offered to guide us the ten miles remaining to the border post.

  ‘It’s still hot out there, man, you don’t want to do it alone,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean, hot?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s got bandits and coyotes and irregulars. It’s the way the immigrants come,’ he said, shaking his head.

  With only a few miles left to push, I didn’t want to take any chances. We agreed to have him along and so off we went. Maximillian led the way, firstly through the banana groves and then up a steep jungle climb. There was a trail, but it was muddy and covered in litter. Our guide pointed out the discarded plastic bottles, rags and clothes.

  There were jackets and shirts strewn around the bushes. Some had been tied to trees deliberately.

  ‘So they don’t get lost,’ Max said. I thought back to the two thousand Congolese that were still stuck in the refugee camp in Costa Rica. They must have passed by this way on their route.

  Then there was underwear; bras and knickers just abandoned at the side of the trail. Max explained, ‘They come at night when the army ain’t patrolling and bad shit happens. Some get robbed and their stuff gets stolen. People even die here.’

  It was a shocking thought and I remembered the confessions of Tony in Nicaragua. We followed the trail of garments as it led us over a series of ridges and valleys. This was the final push through the Darién Gap. We were almost there. Despite knowing that we might bump into a gang of people smugglers at any moment, we were now fixated on getting to the border as fast as we could, so we ploughed on through the steamy heat of the forest.

  The path descend
ed a hill and emerged onto a beach that backed up against a meadow of sparse palm trees, beautiful pools and wildflowers. It was like a little Garden of Eden. We went to cross a small stream that was flowing out of the woodland, when suddenly I noticed a group of men ahead. From afar they looked dark-skinned, but not like the Garifuna that lived along the coast. One of them approached me. He looked nervous and fidgety.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, do you speak English?’ he said, taking me aback with his perfect command of my language. He clearly wasn’t a local.

  ‘Yes, I am English,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, wonderful,’ he said. ‘My name is Javed. Just come for five minutes. Not far, we have a camp very close.’

  I followed the man, intrigued, as he led us fifty metres through the palm trees to where three others were standing by a makeshift shelter. They were all remarkably smart, in clean polo shirts and pressed trousers. One of them, the oldest, had a long beard and wore a brown shirt. He looked like a mullah.

  ‘My name is Amaar,’ said another of the men. ‘We are from Pakistan.’

  I looked around to see if there was any danger. There were four of them and they seemed harmless. They were clearly more worried about being here than we were.

  ‘Can you help us sir?’ Amaar said.

  He explained that the group had crossed from Colombia into Panama illegally after undertaking the same journey that the Congolese we’d met had taken. Their route was through Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and now they’d found themselves here on the edge of the Darién Gap.

  ‘We are waiting for our agent,’ he said, as if talking about Thomas Cook.

  ‘You mean your coyote?’ said Alberto.

  He looked over his shoulder, as if someone might be listening.

  ‘Yes. He’s meant to be taking us on a ship around the mountain, because that’s the easiest way.’

  I told him that he needn’t fear us. That we were going on the opposite journey, trying to get to Colombia.

  ‘Can you tell us how far it is to the next village?’ he said. ‘If you’ve come that way.’