The Wonder Trail

by Steve Hely

  Owner of La Tortuga Verde, I was mad that you called TV writing pablum for the masses. But I loved being at your place, it was very special.

  Thanks to Brent Forrester, who gave me a lot of experience and ideas and enthusiasm about these countries.

  Captain Rich of Panama Canal Fishing. Awesome man.

  The captain of the Jaqueline. Two captains in a row who seemed really competent and admirable.

  The A-Team. I mean, goddamn guys, just keep it up. Special thanks to Veronica for the kidnapping story and answering many tedious questions.

  Lena of Tilberg, what a good person you are.

  Popayán guys, thank you for the good times. Please review the evidence on 9/11.

  Pat Hobby and his wife.

  Mick and Maddie.

  Walter Saxer of Casa Fitzcarraldo in Iquitos, who told me many good stories I can’t put in this book.

  Amy Smozols and Alan Tang. Times.

  Juan of San Pedro. Not his real name.

  Fabrizio Copano and Isadora, what a great day, I’ll have that forever. Thank you.

  The Chilean dudes in Puerto Natales, you were very welcoming when I was probably at the end of my tether.

  The man at the bar at Lomit’s in Punta Arenas.

  Guides (Books)

  Books are made out of other books. I don’t think I would’ve done any of this if I hadn’t read 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann (2005). I can’t say enough about this book. Every page is so interesting. Charles C. Mann is so good at learning everything and then sharing it with you in the best way. This book is what got Tenochtitlán, the Maya, the Inca, the Amazon, and the whole world of Central and South America so deep into my head that finally I was like, I better go have a look at this.

  To sort out how to get where I wanted to go, and also where I wanted to go, the number one helpful source was anonymous people in the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forums and on Wikitravel. So, thanks everybody.

  The other incredibly important start was all the Lonely Planet books I used. Everyone who travels knows these books; they are amazing! You probably know the founders’ story, too, how Maureen and Tony Wheeler drove across Asia in a van and then published a pamphlet called Across Asia on the Cheap: A Complete Guide to Making the Overland Trip. (Now, there’s an example for us all!)

  Now the company is owned by an American billionaire, which can’t be good. Anyway, these guides are indispensable, these are the ones I used and who wrote them: Mexico (John Noble, Kate Armstrong, Ray Bartlett, Greg Benchwick, Tim Bewer, Beth Kohn, Tom Masters, Kevin Raub, Michael Read, Josephine Quintero, Daniel C. Schechter, Adam Skolnick, César G. Soriano, Ellee Thalheimer); Guatemala (Lucas Vidgen, Daniel C. Schechter); Nicaragua (Alex Egerton, Greg Benchwick); Costa Rica (Nate Cavalieri, Adam Skolnick); Panama (Carolyn McCarthy); Colombia (Kevin Raub, Alex Egerton, Mike Power); Peru (Carolyn McCarthy, Carolina A. Miranda, Kevin Raub, Brendan Sainsbury, Luke Waterson); South America on a Shoestring (Regis St. Louis, Sandra Bao, Greg Benchwick, Celeste Brash, Gregor Clark, Alex Egerton, Bridget Gleeson, Beth Kohn, Carolyn McCarthy, Kevin Raub, Paul Smith, Lucas Vidgen); Chile & Easter Island (Carolyn McCarthy, Jean-Bernard Carillet, Bridget Gleeson, Anja Mutić, Kevin Raub). I mean, Celeste Brash? These people have the coolest names.

  The third-most important book I read has to be Breaking the Maya Code by Michael D. Coe. Just a terrific fun read packed with information that fired up my whole brain.

  Oh, but maybe that book is tied with The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz. One of the most incredible books I’ve ever read, no joke. I read the translation by John M. Cohen, who must be great at his job.

  Here Are More Books That Were Important to Me:

  True Histories by Lucian, translated by Keith Sidwell. It’s pretty clear that Lucian was hilarious, but how do you translate that from the ancient Greek? Admirable job by Sidwell.

  The Travels of Ibn Battuta edited by Tim Mackintosh-Smith. What a boss.

  2666, The Savage Detectives, and By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño. All fiction, but hugely enriched my understanding and helped me build a picture of the Mexican border, Mexico City, and recent history in Chile.

  Letters of Cortés, translated by Francis Augustus MacNutt. This guy. I will say, I believe Cortés was genuinely obsessed with spreading Catholicism and wiping out the pagan religions he found. Whether that makes him better or worse I don’t know.

  The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction by Matthew Restall and Felipe Fernández-Armesto. Great book, really helps you understand these guys and where they were coming from.

  Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall. Super-interesting work that shows how complex what happened was, how it can’t be chalked up to simple causes and easy stories.

  History of the Conquest of Mexico and History of the Conquest of Peru by William H. Prescott. Prescott, so far as I know, never went to Mexico or Peru. He wrote these books in Boston. Also he was blind in one eye from getting in a food fight when he was at Harvard. Yet when the books came out in the 1840s, they were considered towering achievements of history. At the time of the war with Mexico, a copy of Prescott’s book was on every US Navy ship, and many army officers were said to have taken it along for inspiration during their march to Mexico City.

  The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico by Miguel León-Portilla. Translations of Nahuatl versions of the baffling events that had just befallen them.

  The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction by David Carrasco. Coulda been shorter.

  The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle by Francisco Goldman. A good but sad essay by a writer living and exploring and grieving in Mexico City.

  Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 by Inga Clendinnen. A dense, complex picture is revealed but in a way that’s graspable and clear.

  Yucatan Before and After the Conquest by Friar Diego de Landa, edited and translated by William Gates. Hey, man, de Landa’s got a lot to answer for, since he burned so many Mayan books, but this book is fascinating.

  Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan and Incidents of Travel in Yucatan by John L. Stephens, engravings by Frederick Catherwood. If these guys were still alive I would want them to be my friends.

  The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak (The William and Bettye Nowlin Series in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere) by Mary Miller and Claudia Brittenham. The leading scholar on Bonampak, a tremendous achievement, the passion is contagious, but it does seem like they kinda focus more on rapturous odes to the beauty and not the torturing.

  Popul Vuh by unknown sixteenth-century Mayan writer(s). I read the version translated by Dennis Tedlock. Just a Mayan romp through the underworld with talking gourds and so on.

  The Aztec Treasure House: New and Selected Essays by Evan S. Connell. Fantastic book by a great American writer, who muses and considers the lost worlds of Mesoamerica.

  Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala, 1870s–1950s by Deborah J. Yashar. And thanks to Marika for recommending it.

  Mandate for Change 1953–1956: The White House Years by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dug up this book to find what Ike thought about the Guatemala coup. Man, read those pages, and you see it: how the foreign policy establishment in the White House bossed around and toyed with Central America like a crummy branch office.

  Salvador by Joan Didion. Damn, this lady can write about a body dump without once breaking her cool.

  The Columbus Conspiracy: An Investigation Into the Secret History of Christopher Columbus by Michael Bradley. My man Miah recommended this on the beach in El Salvador. Conspiracy that has it all: the Cathars, the Holy Grail, mysterious African sailors, treasure pits, FDR and the New Deal, the Masons—it’s great.

  Columbus and
the Quest for Jerusalem: How Religion Drove the Voyages That Led to America by Carol Delaney. Not beach reading, exactly, but paints a really fascinating picture of Columbus as a true religious fanatic driven more by bizarre visions of reaching Jerusalem than by money or gold or exploring or whatever.

  The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion into Central America by Jason M. Colby. I mean, he walks you through the whole story, but it’s pretty much what you’d expect.

  Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914 by J. R. McNeill. Okay, you don’t have to read this whole book, but do yourself a favor and read the first paragraph of the preface where J. R. McNeil talks about being poor and lonely and sad as a young researcher in Seville, thankful that at least he didn’t have to get eaten up by mosquitoes.

  Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Sidney W. Mintz. I’m told by my friend Professor James McHugh this is a classic in the field.

  Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America by Walter LaFeber. Good book on all the messes we made and how we either didn’t clean them up or in cleaning them up made worse messes.

  The War in Nicaragua by William Walker. I gotta say, I liked the guy more after I read his book than I did before. You get why Walker got acquitted at his trial after his first effort to invade Mexico: He makes a powerful case for himself.

  Walker: The True Story of the First American Invasion of Nicaragua by Rudy Wurlitzer. Deeply weird compilation of materials apparently released in connection with the movie.

  Tycoon’s War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America’s Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins. The one flaw here, I think, is that Dando-Collins is sometimes so excited about his story, which is admittedly amazing, that he moves faster than we can keep up with.

  The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870–1914 by David McCullough. This man is a complete boss and this book is astoundingly great. Something amazing on every page. I stole facts from it up to the exact level where it’d be criminal.

  Crossing the Darien Gap by Andrew Niall Egan. This guy is a great writer and a brave and calm explorer. Not just saying that ’cause he wrote a five-star Amazon review of my last book.

  Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. Not that relevant to my book but a great read.

  Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign by Stephan Talty. Most readable book about Morgan I know of.

  Blood and Silver: A History of Piracy in the Caribbean and Central America by Kris E. Lane. Kinda stiff for a book about pirates, but maybe that’s the point.

  Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean by B. R. Burg. I can’t tell if this guy is joking or not.

  Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race, and Honor in Colonial Cartagena de Indias by Nicole von Germeten. Okay, this book didn’t inform my book too much, but whatever, it’s full of amazing and sexy stories.

  Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden. A specific story about a specific moment and maybe a pulpy way in, but the fact is this book really helped me start to sort out Colombian history.

  One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest by Wade Davis. Crazily compelling story by the world’s most badass ethnobotanist/journalist.

  DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences by Rick Strassman. Sometimes bogged down by Strassman’s lengthy explanations of the regulatory difficulties he faced when he tried to do research on DMT.

  The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie. Terrific, readable, exciting historical storytelling.

  The First New Chronicle and Good Government by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. For me, the illustrations were better than the text. You can see those online at the website of the Royal Library of Denmark. I had the paper edition translated and abridged by David Frye, too.

  Narrative of the Incas by Juan de Betanzos, translated by Roland Hamilton and Dana Buchanan. Kinda meh.

  History of the Incas by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Gamboa’s assignment was to make the Incas look bad. Somehow, it’s still one of the best sources we have.

  Wildlife of the Galápagos by Julian Fitter, Daniel Fitter, and David Hosking. How you gonna tell your boobies apart without this book?

  The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Just a guy on a ship falling in love with crazy animals and science.

  The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner. A must-read for anyone curious about what it’s like to live with your wife on a remote island for twenty years measuring finch beaks.

  Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail by Rusty Young and Thomas McFadden. Amazing, entertaining, recommended.

  Memoirs of Simon Bolivar and of His Principal Generals by Henri Louis Ducoudray Holstein. This guy wasn’t shy about sharing his opinion, but I don’t know enough to tell you how much he’s lying or not.

  Simón Bolívar: Essays on the Life and Legacy of the Liberator, edited by David Bushnell and Lester D. Langley. Not for the casual reader, but these guys are serious about their stuff.

  The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto Che Guevara. It’s interesting how honest Che is about his diarrhea. I used the 2003 translation published by Ocean Press and the Che Guevara Studies Center.

  Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson. What a huge accomplishment to write this book, on top of being one of the most badass reporters ever. Jon Lee Anderson knew more about Central and South America before I was born than I ever will.

  The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara by Ernesto Che Guevara, edited by Mary-Alice Waters. In my opinion, by this point Guevara had fallen in love not with lifting people out of poverty but with violent revolution itself. The means he used became so destructive that he set back the goals he fought for. Che’s crime, if he has one, was that for decades young men and women who wanted change followed his example and picked as their tool guerrilla warfare.

  In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. Way better writer than me, went farther out, wrote a better book. But: I didn’t make anything up.

  Bruce Chatwin by Nicholas Shakespeare. The man’s true story is almost better than his writing.

  I also read a lot of articles and websites and newspapers and pamphlets. I really tried not to get anything wrong, but if I did please let me know at helphely@gmail.com.

  By the way, I should note here that I made up that Ponce de León quote at the beginning of this book. I’m not even sure if Ponce de León was literate. Just seemed like a good quote the world could use.

  About the Author

  Steve Hely was a writer for The Office, 30 Rock, Late Show with David Letterman, and the acclaimed animated comedy American Dad! He also wrote the Thurber-winning novel How I Became a Famous Novelist and coauthored the comic travelogue The Ridiculous Race.

  Looking for more?

  Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.

  Discover your next great read!

  *Just assuming seeds from wildfire ash grow fast, don’t really know, not gonna look it up.

  *Not making this up. See The General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America, Commonly Call’d the West-Indies, from the First Discovery Thereof: with the Best Accounts the People Could Give of Their Antiquities, written by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. I’m reading the English translation by John Stevens.

  *See “Mexican Rebel Leader Subcomandante Marcos Retires, Changes Name” by Dudley Althaus in The Wall Street Journal,
May 27, 2014, which quotes a statement allegedly from the subcomandante himself: “Those who loved and hated Subcomandante Marcos now know that they hated and loved a hologram.”

  *I am no relation to this superfluously voweled man.

  *That’s from The Economist, “Crime in El Salvador: The Broken-Truce Theory,” January 31, 2015.

  *“Gang Linked to Honduras Massacre,” BBC News, December 24, 2004.

  *If you’re wondering what ours is in the United States, it’s $53,042. We’re tenth in the world, getting smoked by Luxembourg with $110,664.80. When you compare that to dead-last Malawi ($226.50), can you not be a little 1) relieved, 2) grateful, 3) disgusted, 4) embarrassed?

  *He wrote a five-star Amazon review of my last book.

  *I believe this netting on a catamaran is technically called the trampoline, but captains don’t really lean in to calling it that so you don’t get the wrong idea about jumping up and down on it.

  *George Washington’s brother Lawrence (was he ever called Larry? Larry Washington?) was there with Admiral Vernon. He admired him so much he called the family farm Mount Vernon.

  *This from an interview with Davis by Paul Luke in The Province newspaper of British Columbia, March 14, 2014.

  *I have used a fake name so the real “Alan Tang” can deny these stories about himself if he so chooses. I don’t know why he would, though—if it’s not clear, I think he’s a tremendous human. His actual name is Alan Yang.

  *Charles Mann uses the spelling Inka, perhaps in part to jolt the reader to think of this culture in a whole new way.