Off the Grid Survival
Survival is the Best Revenge

Written by Juan Carlos Palomino Berndt & Kenneth Milsaps
Translation Edited by Robert Leffew
Photography by Kenneth Milsaps & Robert Leffew
May 2018,

Amazon Rainforest, Peru

Chapter 1: Green Hell Camp The seaplane skimmed black water and touched down at the mouth of the Yanayacu River, twenty-five minutes out of Iquitos. Dark clouds pressed low; the little plane had no instruments, only the pilot’s gut. We climbed into a thatch-roof wooden boat and motored upstream for an hour and a half until the river narrowed into Chingana Creek. There the Amazon Refuge Lodge rose like Orion in the trees—mahogany, rosewood, ironwood—built by Kukama hands on land they had granted for conservation. From the lodge we switched to dugout canoes and paddled six hours and twenty minutes through flooded forest. Three-toed sloths hung overhead; capuchins and squirrel monkeys crashed through vines; caimans slid off logs with heavy splashes. We beached at a patch of high ground and named it Green Hell Camp. A nine-foot whip snake greeted us, coiled in the leaf litter. Christian lunged with a stick; the snake vanished. Night was falling. We hung hammocks, split into three teams:
1. Firewood.
2. Forage—heart of palm, mushrooms, grubs.
3. Fire starter and water boil.
By 8:30 p.m. flames crackled. We armed ourselves—spears, harpoon, machetes—and set the rule: take only what we will eat, leave endangered species alone. Fifteen feet apart, no heroes. Two hours later we returned with an eel, bullfrogs, jungle rats, two birds. We cleaned, smoked, slept. Howler monkeys woke us at 5:00 a.m. Breakfast: yesterday’s catch. Then we hunted the trees we needed—light balsa for flotation, strong capirona for frame. At 1:00 p.m. we broke for jungle rat and crackers. My satellite weather page warned of a storm at 4:00 p.m.; instead we got thunder and a single flash of lightning. We hunted again at dusk, banked the fire, turned in at ten. At 2:00 a.m. the real storm hit—wind, horizontal rain, branches crashing like artillery. Some men slept standing, too exhausted to lie down. By six the rain still sheeted. Sebastian and Anders looked ready to quit. I said nothing about quitting; I said, “No raft, no way out.” We ate wet yucca and tuna, stomachs cramping. In the downpour we dragged the last log, lashed it with lianas, drank from cat’s-claw vines. The raft was finished. We poled through swamp until dusk, swapped raft for dugouts, and reached the trail to Yarina Lake at 1:00 p.m. the next day. Everyone dreamed of smoked caiman.

Chapter 2:
Back at the lodge they collapsed into warm beds and hot food. The next morning, I said, “One last walk.” I led them through waist-deep quicksand and thickets of spiny palms. When we staggered out, scratched and filthy, they roared in unison: “We are not fucking tourists—we are explorers.”

All photographs and original expedition notes archived at noisybeach.com