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her for both the food and her work. Don Jorge was amenable.

‘So now you’ve got a hotel with full board,’ Karl teased us.

We prayed for good weather because Karl kept reminding us that he had to be back in La Paz by the beginning of December in order to pick up his uncle’s truck. He planned on our spending about a week on the Tuichi, so we had to start out as soon as possible.

‘Maybe,’ Karl added, ‘If we got to Rurrenabaque soon enough, we’ll be able to visit my uncle’s ranch. It’s not far from there. We could stay for a day or two.’

We all liked the idea. Kevin and Marcus both wanted to fly home before Christmas. I was in no hurry to go anywhere.

How good it was to sleep on a luxurious straw mat that night. How peaceful the village was. The villagers were all fast asleep. The horses grazed among the mud huts, casting long shadows over the dewy grass. The sheep dozed under the papaya trees. The pigs wallowed in their mud, looking like they were dreaming, wiggling restlessly in their sleep. The dogs were too lazy to bark.

Karl went out at dawn to help the villagers search for balsa trees. That afternoon he came back to the hut to find the rest of us lying on our mats. Kevin and Marcus were reading. I was doing nothing. He told us that they had already selected seven thick trees, and Don Jorge and his friends