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Chapter 17

 

 

It was still hard to believe that out of the nine of us who’d begun this adventure, only four of us remained. After surviving the initial plane crash, we were so full of optimism about being rescued, but now we felt a growing sense of despair. If Jordan could die like that, what were the chances of the rest of us making it? Poor Jordan, I still couldn’t believe he was dead. I couldn’t believe that I, of all people, had been the one to try and dig out those foul looking maggoty bot flies. I’d never seen anything as fucking awful in my life. I still shuddered at the thought of it.

As much as it pained us to do so, we left Jordan’s lifeless body in the cave, covered in rocks, and set off on our way again. We tried not to think of the predators which would inevitably find him there and consoled ourselves with the thought that he was beyond feeling any pain now.

 

~*~

 

The birds were singing, the jungle was alive with noise and it was a beautiful day; but we hardly noticed the beauty of it as we trekked on, slashing a path through the foliage with our machetes.

Our supplies were running dangerously low and we knew that from now on, if we wanted a full stomach, we’d have to hunt for our own food. I just hoped we’d be lucky enough to find another wild boar, or something equally as delicious. AJ had proved himself a good hunter once; I just hoped it hadn’t been a fluke and he could do it again.

After walking for a couple of hours, little sweat rivulets were running down my chest, my hair was stuck to my head and I had to keep wiping my face on my t-shirt to stop the sweat getting in my eyes. I wasn’t the only one though; we were all sweat drenched as we stopped for a rest and a drink of water.

“Hey, look at that frog, what an unusual colour” AJ said pointing towards a yellow spotted frog which was sitting on a branch near us, it’s throat puffing out as it sat there contentedly.

“Don’t touch it! Whatever you do, don’t let it get near you, it’s poisonous” I said “that tiny little frog has enough poison in it to kill the lot of us, in fact it could probably kill a room full of people”

“Really?” Howie asked, completely stunned “and since when did you become a frog expert?”

All eyes turned to me expectantly.

“Yeah, really” I replied “I watch TV, I’ve seen those on the Discovery Channel and believe me, we do not want to get close to it. Now come on, let’s keep moving”.

I couldn’t believe the amount of helpful tips I’d picked up from watching TV. I could laugh in the faces of those people who scoffed and argued that TV wasn’t educational, as far as I was concerned; I’d learned a hell of a lot!

It’s funny how you don’t notice things at first in the jungle, but now we were getting used to the place and were beginning to notice more and more weird and wonderful things. Like some of the plants. I’d never seen plants like them before, some of them had leaves bigger than me! And weird looking flowers too, shapes I’d never seen before (not that I knew anything about flowers of course). We came across all kinds of mushrooms, some of them huge and brightly coloured in jades and oranges, but we didn’t know which were edible and which weren’t, so we left them well alone. And berries, we found hundreds of kinds of berries, but again we were unsure. I seemed to remember watching a nature programme on TV which said to steer clear of white and yellow berries, but then again, maybe it had been that white and yellow were the edible ones. We just didn’t have a clue, so left them alone.

What we did come across though were bananas. They didn’t look exactly the same as the supermarket variety, but Howie assured us they were fine. He’d seen some like them previously and told us they were sweeter than the variety we were all familiar with. So we filled our bags with them and also some of the large banana leaves, Howie said that the leaves would come in handy for cooking. I don’t know how leaves would work for cooking, but Howie obviously knew what he was talking about.

As the day wore on, the heat became more intense, it was as if the storm last night had warmed things up. We could all feel ourselves burning under the penetrating rays of the sun, even though we had plenty of tree cover, the sun still got through.

“I hear flowing water” Brian called out “sounds like a waterfall”

“Think you’re right Bri” I said and we carried on, suddenly feeling a burst of energy at the thought of a nice cool dip in the water. After about ten minutes we saw it, a huge powerful looking waterfall. We practically ran to get to it. The waterfall fell into a wide river and it looked so inviting, so refreshing and so beautiful.

“Yeehaaaa” AJ shouted as he stripped off his clothes and jumped straight in “oh man, this is fucking awesome”

We all stripped down to our underwear and jumped in, immediately feeling better; it was so good to cool down. It kind of freaked me out though when I emerged from under the surface with a huge black water spider on my face. I don’t normally scream like a girl, but I have to admit, I did. Spiders are not something I’m too fond of, especially big ones. I decided I’d had enough of the water and got out.

“Hey guys, check this out” said AJ walking from the river, a huge fish in his hands.

“Fuck me, how do you do it?” I asked, looking at the fish and trying to determine what kind it was, not that I knew much about fish.

“I just stood still while they swam all around me. It was hard as hell to catch, but I acted fast and grabbed it” he said and slammed it down onto his bag so that it wouldn’t get all dirty.

We decided we may as well stay there for the evening as sunset was fast approaching, so I gathered some wood for the fire and got it started. Howie wrapped the fish in banana leaves and threw it on the fire, tonight we’d be dining on fish and bananas, an interesting combination.

“That was delicious” I said after finishing the fish and banana concoction.

“Yeah, it was pretty good” Brian said, licking every last bit off his fingers.

“Told you those banana leaves would come in handy” Howie grinned a big satisfied smile. Poor guy, I knew he felt like a burden at times, but that wasn’t the case.

“Oh man, I wish I had a cigarette” AJ sighed. He’d finished the last of them whilst the fish was cooking.

“Think of it this way…this may be the push you need to finally quit that filthy habit!” Brian teased him.

 

 

Chapter End Notes:

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