Balance Point: Searching for a Spiritual Missing Link by Joseph Jenkins

Author:Joseph Jenkins [Jenkins, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joseph Jenkins Inc.
Published: 2016-12-21T17:00:00+00:00

22

Anaconda Neck Tie

We had to be up, bags packed, and out of the hotel at five the next morning in order to catch our flight from Lima to Puerto Maldenado. Thanks to the miniature alarm clock Sarah had packed, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and meet the taxi Nellie had arranged for us. It was dark and quiet in the streets of Lima when we threw our bags into the trunk of the aging black sedan, but we were thankful that the cab was there waiting in front of the hotel at such an ungodly hour. Nellie was obviously looking out for us, and for this we were immensely grateful.

By dawn, we were on a small jet flying east over the snow covered Peruvian Andes toward the steamy jungle at its distant foothills. The mountains underneath us stretched endlessly into the distance and were formidable in their rugged barrenness. Climbing to peaks of over 20,000 feet, it seemed like the belly of the jet almost scraped on their icy tops. As I looked down at the jagged, snow-covered terrain, I remembered the story of the soccer team whose plane had crashed in these very mountains. Incredibly, most of the passengers on the plane survived, a miracle in itself, I thought, as I scanned the impossibly vertical landscape. Yet, despite this miracle, their downed plane could not be located by the search and rescue teams, and the survivors had to stay alive by eating dead passengers. As I considered these things, I fervently hoped that Aeroperu had kept up the maintenance schedule on the jet we now occupied.

After a couple hours, the towering mountains gave way to hills, and the sterile white abruptly blended into a fecund green. The Amazon basin stretched out before us to the distant horizon as we began our descent. We landed at an airport that was little more than a patch of concrete carved out of a jungle clearing, with a small cinder block terminal building off to one side. Emerging from the plane into a wall of damp heat, we were greeted with the humid smell of rain and vegetation, which hung heavily in the air. Threatening black clouds sagged low in the sky, and puddles dotted the tarmac.

Outside the terminal building, a dark-skinned Peruvian teenager with Incan features, in a white tee shirt, leaned against the passenger side of a rusty old truck, holding up a sign with “Jenkins” crudely printed in thick black marker. This was apparently the guide Rosa had arranged for us. When he spotted us, he pointed to the wood-sided flatbed, and motioned for us to get onto the back of the truck with our luggage. The four of us looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and climbed in. The young man wandered around the parking lot and enlisted additional passengers until the truck was crammed with people standing shoulder to shoulder. Being the first ones on, we were crunched right up front, near the cab.

The

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