HE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

Essentially, when in the Andes, anything down and east is the Amazons Jungle. The most usual jumping off point for explorers is the Cotopaxi–Quito area. Quito is frequently called the jewel of South America and I can make no argument to dispute the title. It is, by almost any measure, one of the world’s most pleasant cities in which to spend time—or to live. It serves up some especially good coffee too. Even though it’s on the equator, Quito’s altitude (3 km) counters the tropics affording its residents splendid temperatures all year.

The Turtle’s Head Canadian pub--which seems modeled after Japan’s British pubs more than those in Montreal or Toronto—may be the best place to bend an elbow and trade stories, in English, before descending into the steaming green drapery of the jungle. In fact, the use of English is strongly encouraged over either of the local languages. And as usual in Ecuador, the food was good.

I was there one day chasing down a lead about Juan Ponce’s search for the legendary Fountain of Youth--a secret place where the water was truly revered and imbued with magical restorative properties. A contact of mine insisted there were remote places where water, such as that for which Leon had searched, could be found. And he knew roughly where. I did not believe it, but came for a story for my magazine.

What logic gone wrong and insatiable greed compelled Spaniard, Leon to search for this water throughout the New World, we shall never know. Wading through the black waters of endless Florida swamps, his followers panicked as alligators took them down in the darkness. He survived the alligators—somehow--but took a Seminole arrow to the stomach. That was the end of his search—and, dying in Cuba soon thereafter, his life.

I followed my lead down the steep and jagged mountains, on the jungle’s edge. Here the apex predator on land is the mighty jaguar. (In the water, it’s the giant anaconda.) It needs no flashlight to see at night as we do, and it knows every smell and what it means. Jaguars here, faster and stronger than any man, are not to be dismissed lightly.

Whenever the fire got low, the Jaguar came a little nearer, and when the Indian renewed it, he retired abruptly; sometimes he would come within 20 yards, and then we had a view of him, sitting on his hind legs [as] a dog; sometimes he moved slowly to and fro, and at other times we could hear him mend his pace, as if impatient. (Waterton 123 Wanderings in South America, Gutenberg)

I camped with Napay, my hired Indian guide. He was local, knew the territory, and knew the jungle. Normally, particularly in rocky higher altitude jungles, knee-high snake boots must be worn. Snakes generally, and the bushmaster in particular, like to strike at a part of their victim above ground level. My trick is to wear my pants outside the boots. Woven cotton pants are best for humid climates. With the end of the pants folded under, an elastic cord or leather strap holds the end closed (preventing wasps from coming up the leg). So the pants end, say a foot or so above the ground.

In theory, if a strike occurs, it will hit the pants just above the visible boot. Since the boot continues under the pants to the knee, the wearer may not be harmed. Of course, there is no protection for a strike from a tree branch or other raised position. In that case, it means a most agonizing death. Or, if help can be somehow arranged, death might be averted with antitoxin, although the bitten limb, digested from inside by the toxic venom, may, quite painfully, fall off. Meanwhile, because these protective boots are so tall, they should be set at night such that the opening of one is fitted into the opening of the other. Otherwise the very boots designed to protect from snakes, ironically, may become home to one during the night. That could make for a very bad start to the day.

I had not the special boots on this trip, just ordinary hiking boots. They are more comfortable, but can be a sweaty affair nonetheless. Each night the socks must be washed to remove the sweat and hanged proximate to the fire to dry. (In the humidity, they might not dry at all without the fire’s radiant heat.) Failure to wash them results in them becoming stiff if the sweat dries, and if re-worn, they become a science experiment of mold and fungus which, if it starts to split the skin, makes walking impossible. If a man cannot walk in the jungle, he dies. There are some, however few, who claim that such precautions are overkill. The fact, however, that I stand here today, while some of them speak not at all, as they are dead, attests to my caution more supportively than to other’s mercurial scoffing.

I was most happy to learn of Napay’s special weapon against the mighty jaguar. Rather than having to lose our sleep to keep the fire at a roaring pace, he melted into the black-green of the jungle and was gone a bit more than an hour. As dusk approached I began to wonder if he’d deserted me, but he returned wearing a wily, crooked smile. With him trolled a small (baby?) wild pig which we imprisoned in a quickly-built stick enclosure a few meters from my tent. (Napay slept in a hammock strung between trees.) If the jaguar should come for us in the night, it would demolish the enclosure and take the noisy pig, its favorite food. We would thus be spared.

I hoped the plan also might also help against large snakes such as the much feared, deadly bushmaster which prowls the undergrowth unseen. Still, as thoughts pass through the mind just before sleep, I couldn’t help wondering: What if two Jaguars should come, and one runs off with the piglet? What would the other one eat? Such were my thoughts as I awaited sleep separated from the jungle’s wrath by a single layer of nylon. I never learned what those of jungle Indian, Napay might be.

The next day—with the still-alive pig in tow—we prodded on through the humidity to my goal—a small Indian village. We were treading a narrow path through the endless green, but the fast-growing foliage had wantonly reclaimed it in places. A long machete or stick is essential to push the stuff aside. Just pushing through with arms or the body is a hopelessly bad idea. In the jungle, besides thorns, one never knows what abominations of nature lie in wait—unseen—ready to bite.

Before we could see it we smelled rice shucks burning. Upon arrival, a number of people, mostly excited smiling children, came up to meet us. There were, I presumed, not many visitors in this neck of the woods. Napay made introductions and I handed out small gifts. We gave the pig to the village “mayor.” We were given chicha to drink and I was eventually led to meet a particular old woman.

The old Indio woman spoke slowly and fried bananas she called plantanos. She laughed away most of my questions; they were irrelevant to her. Kipling's famous "twain shall never meet" observation could just as well be applied here. She cared not that that I was a foreigner, that I had come so far. Perhaps it was only for my weak grasp of Spanish or the Quechua slang I failed to sprinkle in. But when I mentioned "El Agua"  [special water], she stopped stirring the bananas, the gaiety of her face drained away, and her wrinkles contorted as if she'd seen a ghost.

She rushed to pick up a string of beads and mumbled a series of prayers in her own language. Finally, she took the iron pan off the fire and looked me in the eyes. Reverting to Spanish, she paused, and then began slowly to tell a long, winding history of her ancestors.

An old medicine man and philosopher had brought water plucked from sacred Lake Titicaca by a young Inca god-prince. For her people's hospitality and altruist care of his [untranslatable] injury, he poured the sacred water into the mouth of a looming volcano marking the edge of the deep forest.

"You too shall have the gift of long life as do I," he stated, then traveled on.

Legends have long been the seed of fascination about central and northern South America. And many proved true. Cuzco indeed was a golden city. Machu Picchu indeed sat above the clouds. Tikal indeed was an earth-covered city of pyramids. 

Not far from here, Francisco de Orellana [pronounced in Spain and North America as or-ey-yana, but in Ecuador as or-ey-jana] followed Chotan rains over the continental divide as they became 4,000 miles of rushing river. Along his journey he occasioned to encounter a fierce clan of woman warriors who so paralleled Greek myth (Thesius had abducted an Amazon woman warrior to be his concubine) that he named them Las Amazonas. 

We've yet to find any of these Amazon warriors or the golden city of El Dorado for which Orellana searched. Or at least no explorer who found either of them ever returned to say so. Yet with so many spectacular discoveries shaking imaginations in the 1500s, we can suppose Juan Ponce de Leon's belief in a magical fountain of youth.

The old woman announced that she'd stopped counting her years at 100. It was pointless, she insisted, to count them further. I knew my grandmother until she left us at 93, so I was only mildly surprised by this woman's long years. What came next, however, really took my notice. 

The sound of someone walking entered our ears. The old Indio woman muttered something and left the room. She returned with another old woman wearing what reminded me of a burlap sack, and together we ate rice and fried green bananas.

"Please meet my grandmother, Naha," she said in Creole Spanish. "She has just come from where El Agua leaks out from the mountain." 

It took much persuasion and a wrist, one watch lighter, but I was invited to return the next morning. I suppose she really liked me. I was to be permitted to view the water from a distance.

We walked through a mosquito-filled forest area following a long path over a rugged hill. The whole place smelled of orchids, although none could be seen. We didn’t talk much and so I passed some of the time walking trying to calculate the odds of dengue fever or malaria striking me from the mosquito bites. I supposed if I did fall sick, the special water would fix me up nicely.

We stopped at a cliff across from a canyon reaching up to a quiet volcano. Water slowly leaked out of the rocks and fell silently into a shimmering pool. The pool overflowed and a small stream disappeared into the rocks far below. In the distance we could see three women filling a jar from the pool. 

How old must have been this old woman's grandmother! Here in easternmost Ecuador, where the Andes meet the Amazons jungle, rumors about magical water have circulated for centuries. Might this land of people known as Los Colorados (the red-faced people) be the land for which Ponce longed--and died? 

His quest took him west from San Juan along the southern leg of the Bermuda Triangle. Had he ventured farther south, he might have encountered the Amazons River’s mouth, some 200 miles across, or even this place. It is well known that the Indians traded across great distances. Perhaps the Caribbean Indians, upon whom Ponce relied, may have repeated rumors from South American sea traders. 

Unfortunately the mystery's truths are lost to the mists of time and perhaps the secrets of these gentle Colorados. Or maybe the key to longevity isn't the water at all--but those fried green bananas.


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