Page 77 of Chasing Paradise

“How long would it take to cross the whole rainforest?”

Yeah, that wasn’t going to be a morale-boosting answer. But I wasn’t going to lie to her either.

“From one side of the Amazon River to the other… over two years. Two years, four months, I think. Give or take, depending on speed.”

“So, keeping that in mind, should we be concerned that this is getting so much more dense all of a sudden?” she asked, gesturing around.

“No,” I assured her. “We are walking west. Ecuador is as west as you can get. We will get out eventually.”

So long as we didn’t get chased in the wrong direction again and need to course-correct, we would reach civilization eventually. We just had to stay the course.

“I think the river we… crossed,” I said, getting a wince from Violet, “was the Caquetá-Japurá, given how big it was and those cliffs.”

“Is that a… good thing? Is it at the edge of the rainforest?”

“Not exactly,” I admitted. That particular river went from the edge of the rainforest to pretty deep inside, where it met the Amazon River. “But it tells us where we are. Roundabout.”

“I guess any insight is better than nothing. And we—“

“Sh,” I said, holding up a hand. “Hear that?”

“The men?” she whispered, turning in a circle.

“Water,” I said, the relief palpable. “Over that way.”

We’d both clearly been suffering in silence with our dehydration. Because as soon as we heard water, we both fucking ran.

“Don’t drink it,” I warned when we came up to a white-water river, the current creating racket that drowned out the usual animal sounds all around.

“I can just rinse, right?” she asked, leaning down at the water’s edge.

“Yeah, of course. Just try not to get it in your mouth.”

I set my pack down, digging around until I found the bag with the filter, thankful I’d decided to fully pack the bag, even though I’d only planned on a short trip. With a guide.

I filled the bag as Violet scrubbed fresh water up her arms, over her chest, around the back of her neck.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked as she moved flat on her back to hang her head over the water.

“Listen, your hair is short; you don’t get it.”

Then she dipped her hair back into the current and reached up to scrub at her scalp. “Honestly, better than any shower head I’ve ever come across,” she said as she sat back up after squeezing out her hair. “I feel almost human again. Though it would be nice to getinthe water.”

“That water would rip you away in a heartbeat,” I warned her as I handed her an empty water bottle so I could squeeze filtered water into it.

It was a slow process to fill the bottles, only to have us both guzzle down two each before starting the process over again, so we were stocked up.

“Isn’t that going to be heavy?” Violet asked as I filled up the filter bag again, then worked on fitting it into my pack.

“Yeah, but it will be worth it if we don’t have to try to seek out another water source if we run through the bottles.”

With that, we started walking again, this time with a little more speed—bodies hydrated, stomachs somewhat full of fruit.

It was impossible to tell how much ground we covered, and this part of the forest was thick as hell, making progress likely a little slower, despite the quicker pace.

We’d even lucked into another small rain shower that kept the sweating at bay as we went.

My rough estimate was it was close to dusk when we stopped near a banana plant.

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