Pink Boots and a Machete by Mireya Mayor Read Free Book Online Page A

out KFC’s door and past the guesthouse. Suddenly, I began to think of how I could tell my coach that this was all a big mistake and beg her to take me back. But I knew it was too late. Tryouts had passed, and a new blonde had surely filled my place and was now the sole proprietor of my pom-poms. I also missed my mom terribly. But I decided to make the best of a dreadful situation.
    One day I wandered into the market to stock up on supplies. It teemed with the sort of energy you feel in Times Square on a Friday night. I browsed the colorful stalls and purchased nonperishables like peanut butter and sardines. I even bought some reeking dry fish, though I refrained from putting them in my backpack. Fortunately, because Guyana is a former British colony, everyone speaks English. The produce seemed brighterand bigger than I had ever seen in American supermarkets. But it was the reaction to one purchase that really threw me. At a stall I asked, “How much for the Kool-Aid?” and got a very startled look. I found the reaction odd and only later learned that Kool-Aid was synonymous with group suicide in Guyana after the infamous Jim Jones had poisoned more than 900 people with cyanide mixed with it in 1978—this would be the first of many faux pas during the expedition. I picked up a few fruits and vegetables, even though they’d been sitting out in the sun with hundreds of hovering flies. More than ever, I longed for Miami and take-out sushi.
    It was time to sort out the permits, and I was glad to have packed a nice pantsuit and pumps to wear at my meeting with the forest ministry officials. When they invited me to join them for dinner later that week, I knew the little black dress would also come in handy. In all it took—or rather wasted, given my dwindling funds—two full weeks of meetings with government officials and University of Guyana authorities to finally get approval to conduct research in the jungle. It was frustrating how many people’s hands each paper had to pass through and with what precision each and every stamp was applied. But in the end, we were legit. We had successfully convinced the authorities that we weren’t there to steal their saki monkeys.
    Now we could head to the jungle. Dr. Handsome and I and our team would leave early the next morning. As I helped load things into the car, I noted that my backpack weighed more than the others and that my never-broken-in hiking boots were already giving me blisters. Other than that, I was feeling prettygood. Shortly after, one of the scientists, a well-seasoned botanist, succumbed to malaria and had to stay back at the house. A harsh reality, I thought, of life in the wild.
    We spent one day driving dusty, potholed roads, two days on a small riverboat, and three days hiking. It was a grueling trek, as I’d been warned; at night we’d sleep in hammocks attached to trees. We were in pure wilderness, with few amenities to ease the way. This area was called the Land of Many Rivers, and to cross them we had to throw ourselves in waist deep. The worst was that the rivers were infested with piranhas, which are known to bite their victims once, ripping out a chunk of flesh and leaving a round, crater-shaped wound. Stories of people being attacked and eaten by ferocious schools of piranhas quickly came to mind, despite reports that there is little scientific evidence for such behavior. The same reports said that at least three of the people supposedly killed that way actually died from heart failure or drowning and were feasted on only later. Suddenly, my enthusiasm for venturing farther into the wild was replaced by fears of the unknown, of not being able to keep up, and of being attacked and eaten by fish, whether before or after drowning. We were almost at our destination, and I was wishing I were dead. Just not because of piranhas.
    We arrived at an Amerindian village on the jungle outskirts, and I showed the villagers our