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big hit at the blackjack tables, that was nothing compared with the restaurant.

You can rest assured, my friends, that I’ll be back very soon . . .

In the late afternoon I was surprised by another river cutting across my path. It was quite wide – one hundred feet at least – but most of it was a desiccated riverbed. Down in a relatively narrow channel a placid flow of water ran into the Tuichi. The Tuichi itself looked treacherous. Its waters were black with the mud it churned up. Logs, branches, and uprooted bushes were carried along by the current, which was extremely swift. I wouldn’t have liked to have fallen into those waters.

I stood there frightened, staring helplessly at the two rivers. I was certain that the map hadn’t indicated another river emptying into the Tuichi on this bank before San José. I knew the map by heart, and according to it, the next river on the right-hand bank was far beyond San José. Could I have passed the village without realising it? San José was located up in the hills and was not visible from the Tuichi. I was supposed to have spotted it by the wide path and the balsa rafts on the shore. I might not have noticed and passed it when I was walking in the jungle, not along the bank.

Perhaps this river simply wasn’t charted on the map. But how was that possible? The Ipurama and the Turliamos were marked, and they were no