sometimes they would forget them. but then once you escape, where do you go? we didn t have provisions on us. then we really would have been on our own. frankly, we didn t have a lot of our own survival skills. then that evening another group of soldiers arrived. you recognize those men? they were the soldiers that went into panama. they had heavier mortars, russian squad machine guns. the commander that originally took victor reassures us that victor is going to be coming along any minute, and they demand all of our electronic equipment. they took our media, our passports, everything we had. the level of anxiety, it s gradually building. rapido. it was like grab your bag, get your stuff. we need to leave. as we are climbing out of this ridge line, robert and i began
he told me he didn t trust them and he didn t know them, that he was worried. at that point i was really confused. victor didn t know who they were. they claimed they were farc, but they were making up stories about shooting in the jungle. they hadn t killed us. that s good. but it was another story now. how were we going to get out of this? .
all going together? i said yeah. let s do it. we got in the boat, and there we were, headed into the darien. i didn t think there would be any real severe consequences. anything that i was going get into, i felt that i could get out of. i think we all felt that way. it would take all day to travel three or four miles. but we were definitely on our way. robert had a gps. but the gps was tough in that part of the world. we tried to get our maps to gel with the gps. we couldn t get the map to coordinate. it became very clear that this type of journey was impossible without a guide. we went up river all day, and we arrived at a native village, capati. at that time we met victor.
please. they sit us right down in an office. and they are just all ears. so we need to go through all the details of your trip. they want to know everything. all the details that you can remember. at that point, the cracks are starting. i was starting to feel burn out. i want to know more about your guide. there were a lot of questions about victor. where did you meet him? there were questions about what we had met him, what he had done in certain situations. is he okay? you haven t heard what happened? it was then that we got the full story of what had happened after victor left with the paramilitaries. they got victor to lead them back into panama. and when they got to paille, there was kind of a celebration underway. for whatever reason, they didn t like the cooperation they were getting. the chief was killed by the paramilitaries. his son was left for dead.
ever had tigre. victor said yeah, yeah, it s very rich, very rich. and they said yeah, yeah, we really like tigers. tigers eat tigers. you know, predators eat predators. from there they went on the say that they had just seen a tiger. in fact, they had shot at one in the jungle. and they kind of hinted at whether or not we heard the gunfire. no, no, no. no. we said no. we all had the good sense to keep our mouth shut. after about an hour waiting around, another group of soldiers arrived. now there was maybe 30 or 40 soldiers, like right where we were. we don t know what the hell is going on. they separate us from victor. victor was nervous from the beginning, and i could kind of see it on his face.