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Max Besana
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 11:36 - Edited by: Max Besana
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Hello Everyone!
This is specially written for: Scarlet, Ritzel, Geert Geenen and Martijn de Rijk who commented on the picture and wondered what happened.
A couple of days ago I uploaded a picture I took almost ten years ago in Peru. At that time I was travelling as a backpacker, by myself, through Peru (and it eventually got extended towards other lands...). here's the pic:
I titlle it, " Kids who actually saved my life, Peru, 1997"...
I recieved some comments asking to explain what happend :P !
So here it goes...
... After a couple of month travelling around Peruvian Andes, I was once more in Cuzco, the "belly button" of the Inca Empire and also, at that moment, of my trip. I met a couple of Peruvian guys, from Lima, with who I hang around this beautifull city for a while. After some days, we came up with a special plan, as we wanted to go deep into the jungle, and we were not sure how to. To make the story short... We got really deep into the jungle and lost our way towards Puerto Maldonado, our destination. We had to build up a raft and went down the Urubamba river for 15 days in this raft (wich was made by us with some balsa logs and vines). Some insectes bite my face so bad that when we got closed to some native communities, nobody wanted to look at my in the face ;(... Most of this villages where of 15 families and a chief. But this one,(where the llittle girls are from) had a mision in it, some catholic priests (from Spain). We thought, " we are saved!", as we were sleeping by the river side at nights, eating some mandioc and pasta cooked in river water (obviously no salt)... But they denied their helped, arguieng that they mission was with the indians and not us, and suggested to ask the villagers if we could use their "porches" to sleep. This ladies came to our helped, played with us to cheer us up and convinced their parents to let us use their fire to cook and their porche to sleep. And thanks to them I could figure out why I had black spots all over my face :P... They also explained us where were other friendly comunities down the river, where to spect rough rafts and other stuff. It was reassuring as we where abandoned, tricked and robbed. And was worst, we had no idea how to move on.
Here's our boat, Millennium Hawk, we called it :P!
I know you might think this is not real, but I happened, and lasted three weeks, down the river with the raft, sleeping by the side of the river or in this small communities of Kishari people. Our intention was to go to Puerto Maldonado, but we took a wrong "turn" and end up way further. We "hire" a boat to go further towards a city with communication equipments and a bank, and after half a day they took our money and dumped us by the riverside. In the middle of nowhere (well, actually in the middle of the Peruvian jungle)...
At the end we found a Military base and a small village around it, called Sepahua. the militaries helped us, feed us and also convinced a cargo plane to take us out of there into somewhere where we could get hold of money and a telephone. So they took us to Atalaya, where other militaries where waiting to take us into town, telephone centre and others. At that point, the pilots where moved and offer to take us back to Lima. !!!!! Yes!!!!! And they also gave us money to take a taxi home.(in my case, to my firends home, as I'm Argentinian)
I made a lot of pictures that trip, and after that, my camera started deteriorating.
I have the negatives, as the copies are a bit crap to be scanned, and I hope to have them all digitally scanned, as I want to put them all together and write the whole story, one day... I still have the diaries I wrote, but i lost contact with the guys...
I hope to satisfy your curiosities, and I'm sorry I can't tell the whole story as I'm still half way the writing myself :)...
Thanks a lot for your interested and comments are also welcome!! Even better, Tell your story!!!
Greets,
Max Besana
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de stilte
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 11:45
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wow, very impressive story Max........glad you survived it to tell your story behind.....
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ortho158
Member
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 11:56
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Many thanks for that story, Max.
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Akbar
Member
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 11:57
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I love adventure but I'm very glad this never happened to me. What a story. Glad you survived.
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nonkel duvel
Member
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 11:59
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hmmm, impressive, very impressive !! Are there some other pictures about this adventure ? It's a good script for a movie !
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Matthias Petzold
Member
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 12:44
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thank you very much for this exciting story !!
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Martin de Rijk
Member
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 15:35
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Max, thanks for the quick response. An impressive story as Nonkel said. The entire story with the pictures could make a nice travel book.
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soyoban
Member
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 16:04
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Amazing story, curious to see the other pictures...
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scarlet
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 16:16
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Max, Thank you SO MUCH for responding with this amazing real life adventure story. I am so glad you shared it (and that you made it!) I wonder if you have ever seen the Werner Herzog documentary about the woman whose commercial airplane crashed in the jungle (I think it was Peru) and she made her way out on foot--she was the only survivor. It can be difficult to find, this film but I think that you would really be able to relate to it!
I'm sure others have had big adventures. Share them. I'm staying home !! :)
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sercas72
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 19:53
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Great topic Max....i want to share with you this history.....
When I was resting in Kashgar's bazaar suddenly I saw a child playing in an alley, I surprised to see since he was enjoying touching a wall with her face and with his hands, I believe that her tactile sensation was great because he was barefooted and seminude, simultaneously that was moving to the edge of the sidewalk, after so much observing it, he discover me and I explode in smiles a moment that always I will remind.
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Timon
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# Posted: 3 Sep 06 23:13
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Wow, how a story gives a picture more depth! Very interesting and happy you live to tell us today Max. I would like to see the whole series of this story one day too.
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Max Besana
Member
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# Posted: 4 Sep 06 08:35
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Hi!!
Thank you all, for such warm comments, your worries and encouragement, I feel honoured to have share this story with such a great community.
I love adventures and I seem to have a magnet for "weird" situations. I like to look at them with humour... :)
@ Scarlet, I will definitely search for that movie, it sounds great!
@ Sercas72, Gracias por compartir tu historia con nosotros, tus fotos muestran la ternura que tus palabras reflejan! (in english would be something like...: Thanks for sharing your story with us, your pic shows the "tenderness" hat your words are reflecting)
I'm going on a holiday this week (YEAHHH!!!!), I will leave the negatives to be scanned and hopefully I will post more pictures of the Urubamba river.
Thanks again, you are really a "cool bunch" :)!
greets,
Max
PS: Sorry for the spelling mistakes, spelling software not good, and my mother language is spanish .
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Max Besana
Member
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# Posted: 4 Sep 06 08:45
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BTW, I corrected some mistakes I made with spelling and writting... and I guess I did not mention that, although I live in the Netherlands, I'm from Argentina, which made things a little easier... (no language problems...)
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scarlet
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# Posted: 4 Sep 06 16:33
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Max, I went back and looked up the name of the film:
Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel (in English it was known as Wings of Hope)
There is info about it on his official site: http://www.wernerherzog.com
I think it was originally on German TV. I love Werner Herzog but this film is special.
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suzan
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# Posted: 2 Oct 06 16:47
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Hi Max,
Only now I read your incredible story. Thinks like that are only hoped to happen in a nightmare. Indeed a good script for a short movie, maybe something for National Geographic.
I hope you get your negatives scanned.
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klaus.w
Member
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# Posted: 18 Dec 06 16:59
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Puhh! Fascinating but also horrifying story... Have been in Puerto Maldonado and seen the jungle there. Dont wanna imagine how it has to be to find a way out / or just a way to somewhere in this nowhere. Respect!
Klaus
p.s. The story reminds me a little bit at the book "Keep the river on your right" written by Tobias Schneebaum. It also takes place in the peruvian jungle and happened in the 60ies. This book is up to now a very controversial issue within anthropologists, so I don't wanna comment it further. But there is a documentary about Tobias Schneebaum from 2000. Same titel - watch it and have a mind of your own. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206187/
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