« Scuba Diving | Main | A Re-Introduction To Mexico »

March 20, 2008

Stalked In The Jungle

The only way to start this story is at the end.

"No one will believe us. We can never tell this story because no one will believe us." That's what Brent and I kept repeating to one another, sitting side by side in our rented Jeep Wrangler on the drive back from Cobá, where we had been exploring the ancient Mayan ruins, nestled in the heart of the Yucatan Jungle.

About an hour earlier, we had been wandering the Cobá ruins, surrounded by tourists from all over the world. There were no guide maps, no trail markers, just long dirt paths leading through the jungle with little yellow bicycle rickshaws racing past every couple minutes, carrying people who were willing to pay the $9 not to walk. Brent and I were venturing through Cobá on foot, trying to have a real adventure... and we did.

Off the main trail are narrow, unmarked archaeologist trails leading straight out into the jungle. Cobá is estimated to have 6,500 different structures, with only a few having been uncovered from the jungle that swallowed them up, so it is still called an "archeology site" and is not just a tourist destination. Brent and I followed a number of the archaeologist trails to see what they would lead to. They led to a lake, a large clearing, some smaller and completely deserted ruins, and sometimes they just led straight into the jungle and stopped. It was hard to tell when the trail ended and the jungle began because these "trails" were merely paths where enough people had walked to trample some of the vegetation. Brent and I followed many of these until we were entirely wrapped up in jungle vegetation and had to turn back.

We got to the end of a completely deserted tourist trail, wondering why it was, well, completely deserted. An American couple was walking towards us from the end of the trail and told us to turn back, we were heading for a dead end. "Don't waste your time, it's nothing but jungle trails leading off into nothing," the man said. If only he hadn't made it sound so enticing! Brent and I were up for adventure and the idea of a deserted jungle trail sounded fantastic. We could only imagine what kinds of jungle creatures we might encounter. Earlier, on another jungle trail, we had encountered an iguana and an anteater and we were eager to see more.

As we reached the entrance to the the jungle trail, we saw an abandoned, yellow rickshaw:

Near it were five or six empty water bottles, a navy blue t-shirt, and a black garbage bag. I turned back to Brent and jokingly said, "I bet some homeless guy lives here!" Going to college in Hartford, we've met a number of homeless people, always accompanied by garbage bags filled with empty bottles and shopping carts, so seeing the rickshaw, the empty bottles, and the garbage bag made me laugh, thinking of how absurd it would be to find a homeless man collecting bottles in the middle of the jungle. That's when I noticed the palms.

I hadn't seen it at first because it was so beautifully camouflaged in the jungle, but there was a blanket of palm fronds lying on the ground on the other side of the path from the rickshaw. "Do you think they're trying to hid something under there?" I asked Brent, gesturing to the mound of palms. Brent, being a guy, didn't answer. A lot of the time I think he just lets me talk and tunes me out. I snapped a photo of the palm blanket, hoping to examine it more carefully later to determine if it was man-made or just an unusual pattern of fallen palm fronds from a nearby tree:

Brent and I walked into the jungle, along that narrow path, hoping to find something fantastic at the end. No one was anywhere in sight and we hadn't seen any other tourists (other than the American couple) anywhere within about a mile of the opening to that jungle path. Even the over-eager rickshaw drivers seemed to be keeping away, instead flocking to the other ruin sites in the dozens.

We followed the path, carefully watching where we stepped, having heard that many of the trees and plants in the jungle are poisonous. We were about to turn back when I saw a beautiful yellow butterfly that I desperately wanted a picture of. It seemed to be flying away, following the path exactly as it wound in never-ending s-curves through the jungle. Finally, about three miles into the jungle, Brent and I stopped, just about ready to give up. Something thorny had gotten into my shoe and Brent was on his knees trying to help me delicately pick it off my heel when I heard a rustling in the jungle.

I was facing the direction we had just come from and I saw it, coming right at us. It was the blanket of palm, moving quickly along the path, curving towards us, about 40 feet away. "Oh my God, it's here!" I whispered to Brent, who looked up and jumped immediately to his feet. I couldn't call it a he or a she or a they because from where I was standing, all it was was a mass of palm, crawling across the path. "What do we do?" I was nearly crying already, hyperventilating, my heart pounding in my chest.

"I don't know!" was Brent's panicked response. I reached into my purse, grabbed my iPhone, and started frantically dialing home. In my panic, I imagined telling my parents what was happening and them sending the National Guard into the jungle by helicopter to rescue us within the next two minutes. "You won't get service in the jungle!" Brent exclaimed, still in a whisper. He was right, my call failed immediately. Brent was thinking more practically and picked up a large, sharp rock and got a good grip on it. The palms stopped, having noticed us, and quickly shuffled in the opposite direction, running away now that we had caught it following us.

All that was going through my mind at that moment was that a jungle monster was stalking us and how do you fight a jungle monster? I said we should run, keep going down the trail to get as far away as possible, but Brent pointed out that we didn't know where we were and we were already about an hour's walk into the jungle so continuing deeper in would be a terrible idea. I knew he was right and all we could do was try to quickly head back towards the entrance to the trail, the very direction the palm blanket was racing towards.

We stared at each other for a few seconds, reconsidering our options, and then began to run. We were running back towards the entrance to the trail, towards civilization. I was tempted to start screaming for help, but knew no one could possibly hear me three or four miles away, where all the rest of the people were.

Brent and I whispered back and forth to each other, "What was that thing?" "Did it follow us?" "Was it behind us all along?" "What do we do?" "What was it?" None of our questions had answers. As we sprinted down the trail, we caught another glimpse of the shuffling palms, making its way around a corner about 60 feet ahead of us. This is when I decided to turn my camera's video-mode on to capture what was happening. I wasn't even thinking of needing proof for our story, I was thinking that whoever found my camera, abandoned in the jungle, might piece together what was going on and find Brent and me, dead or alive.

I was running as fast as I could, camera hanging around my neck, recording everything. I tried to use Brent's name as much as possible so that someone might be able to identify us when they found the camera. "Brent, do you have that rock still? Brent, what should we do? Brent, it was that palm thing we saw at the beginning of the trail and it followed us!" If "Two young travelers, Brent and Lauren, lost in the Yucatan Peninsula" was soon going to be broadcast all over the news when we didn't make it home the next day, I thought someone would put two and two together and maybe find us.

We were in a strange pattern of sprinting, then tiptoeing, then sprinting again down this jungle trail. We were simultaneously very eager to be out of the jungle, and completely terrified that this thing would be lurking right around the bend, hidden perfectly in the trees on the side of the trail, ready to leap forth and snatch us.

We were out of breath and dripping sweat when we reached the beginning of the trail again. We froze in our tracks when we heard the rustling once more and saw the palms moving up ahead, right where they had been when we first entered the trail. Had we imagined the whole thing? Were we hallucinating? The rustling stopped and we saw a man standing at the mouth of the trail, holding a long, black, leather whip. The whip was coiled around in this man's hand, poised and ready to be released if we made one wrong move.

Brent went ahead of me, still holding a large rock in his right hand (caught on video from my camera, which I then paused to get still shots):

The man was average-height with a dirty, unbuttoned white shirt, black pants, and a bag of some sort, looped across his chest. He grinned, menacingly, baring four or five gold teeth. He said something to us that I didn't recognize as Spanish and can only imagine was Mayan, given that there are dozens of Mayan villages near Cobá (despite how friendly he looks in these pictures, he was actually terrifying):

Brent and I didn't know what to do, so we smiled, nervously, and nodded along, quickly passing the Mayan man, who held on tightly to his whip and stared at us:

I turned my camera back towards him, standing next to his palm camouflage, as Brent and I walked briskly away:

We turned back before the next bend to see the Mayan standing there, staring at us. We broke out into a full sprint and ran the rest of the mile or so it took us to get back to the main trail. Right as we stumbled onto the trail, the American couple we had seen earlier was driving past in a rickshaw and waved at us. We saw them again as we were leaving Cobá. "Did you go down that trail? We turned back because we got attacked. You know, by all those geckos," the man said.

"Geckos?" Brent asked, making a face that puzzled the other American couple, who walked away confused and perhaps a little offended. At least we made it out alive.

I don't know if you believe me, you probably don't, but I do swear that I told this story exactly how it happened, no embellishments and no exaggerations. Brent and I both agreed that we have never been so afraid before in our entire lives. In the time we were running through the trees, straight towards our faceless stalker who had followed us for an hour, three miles into the jungle, hunting us with a whip, we both actually thought we were going to die. People throw around phrases like, "I was scared to death," and "I thought I was going to die!" too much because unless you have ever been in a situation like ours, you really don't have any idea.

I'm sure most of you think I have an overactive imagination, that I'm ripping off some horror movie I've seen, that it was completely safe and a huge misunderstanding that I've somehow blown up in my mind, but you weren't there, stranded, hopeless in the jungle, being stalked by a man with a whip, hiding under a blanket of palm fronds.

If you ever choose to travel to Cobá, stick to the main trails. Trust me.

-Lauren

UPDATE:

My mom just noticed that in the last picture, where the Mayan man is turning around to watch us walk away, you can see three stripes of something red on his cheek, probably wiped off from his fingers (which are also red in the pictures). Blood maybe? I bet he was off in the jungle killing things, like unsuspecting tourists. Brent and I wonder if when we noticed him and he lost his element of surprise (which he did a really good job of maintaining for an hour!), he backed off, especially after seeing Brent grab a sharp rock, ready to attack if necessary.

Posted by lauren at March 20, 2008 12:09 AM

Comments

Posted by: Jocelyn at March 20, 2008 10:41 AM

Posted by: G at March 20, 2008 01:33 PM

Posted by: M (not your mom) at March 20, 2008 02:43 PM

Posted by: brent at March 20, 2008 05:46 PM

Posted by: Libby at March 25, 2008 03:50 AM

Posted by: Lauren at March 25, 2008 03:56 AM