Lost City of the Sun

3

THE FLIGHT FROM Macas, Ecuador to Cuiaba, Brazil would have been about four hours in a modern commercial airliner. But in Lucille, it was a grueling all-day marathon with no less than three refueling stops. With its corrugated aluminum skin that added strength but increased drag, wide wings and big tires, the Trimotor was more of an overgrown bush plane, built for adventure rather than speed. Flying out of Macas in the predawn darkness, Skip made Iquitos, Peru in time for breakfast and Rio Branco, Brazil by lunchtime. For the current leg, Rio Branco to Vilhena, Brazil, he took a break by trading seats with Zane and having his pilot-to-be son handle the controls. That didn't mean that Skip was completely off duty, however.

With his hands and feet hovering lightly over the auxiliary controls, he coached Zane through the pre-flight checks and the startup procedure for the three-engined antique aircraft. In the back of his mind, Skip was glad the airport was eleven miles out of town, surrounded by fields and forest. If anything went wrong, they would likely be the only casualties.

Hurtling down the runway, he kept one eye ahead and the other on the gauges, watching the speed and rpms. He hummed the Indiana Jones theme to himself as the motors revved up to takeoff at 2,600 revolutions per minute, sounding like a horde of demonic mosquitoes, quickly drowning out his nervous humming.

"Okay ... now!"

Zane pulled back on the yoke, lifting the nose and those wide wings into the wind. As the land fell away beneath them, father, son, and Nusiri in the seat behind all let out breaths of relief.

Zane spoke up. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We will be cruising today at an altitude of ten thousand feet, en route to our next stop, Vilhena. We've picked up a tailwind, so we should be landing approximately fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. At this time, feel free to move about the cabin. Relax, and enjoy the flight."

"Get your head out of the clouds, Mijo," teased Nusiri with a laugh.

For the next several hours they soared over the Brazilian states of Acre and Rondonia toward their destination in Matto Grosso, skirting the northern corner of Bolivia along the way. Percy Fawcett country, thought Skip, as they crossed the silt-laden Madre de Dios River at Riberalta, Bolivia. He noted how much of the land had been cleared for lumber and farming. Though pockets of forest remained as islands, this was no longer the unbroken, untamed jungle wilderness it was in Fawcett's day. Though Zane was their official photographer, he was busy at the moment, so Skip used his phone to capture some good aerial shots that might be useful for his article.

On approach to Vilhena, Skip coached Zane through his landing.

"Okay now, bring it down a bit lower. Flaps. Nose up. Throttle back. Line up with the centerline. Easy now. Just let her drop nice and easy onto the tarmac."

Lucille came down with a bump. Not too jarring, but it produced a short hop. Another small bump, and then they were rolling down the pavement.

"Okay, we're down. Throttles all the way back. Brakes. Brakes! A bit harder. There, that's it. Great. Now taxi in to that main building over there so we can check in. Great. Good job. Now pull that Johnny brake."

As the plane came to a stop, Zane reached over and pulled the long Johnson bar that operated the parking brake.

After refueling, stretching their legs and a rest of no more than a half hour, they were on their way again, on the final leg of the day. Skip once again took command of the airplane, making Cuiaba just before sunset.

Known as the southern gateway to the Amazon, Cuiaba is the state capital of Matto Grosso, founded during the 1719 gold rush. Close to the geographical center of South America, it was once so isolated that it was used as a place of exile for political troublemakers, even in Fawcett's time. From the 1930s onward, roads and aviation have opened the region up, and today the city boasts a population of over half a million.

Cuiaba was also the jumping-off point for Percy Fawcett's expeditions into the Matto Grosso in search of his Lost City of Z, much as Riberalta had been a base years earlier during his surveys and explorations of the Bolivia/Brazil borderlands. In 1925, Fawcett had made his way from Cuiaba to his last known whereabouts, Dead Horse Camp, never to be heard from again.

And so Cuiaba would serve as Skip's base to check out Dead Horse Camp and for explorations beyond. He had known all along there would probably not be anything of note at Dead Horse Camp. Too many other expeditions over the years had been there, the place having long since been combed clean of any evidence that might aid in a search. Still, because this is where the trail went cold, this is where Skip's article had to start. No matter; he now had a promising lead on where to go next.

After picking up the rental SUV he had arranged, they drove across the street and down to the end of the block to the Hotel Amazon. A quick dinner and a long night's rest would do them good. Tomorrow's drive would be another marathon day.

∆ ∆ ∆

"And so, the adventure begins," said Skip, as they headed north out of Cuiaba on Highway 400, leaving the city behind, driving now past small towns, fields, industrial sites, and patches of tropical forest. "Did you know it took Percy Fawcett, his son Jack, and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell over a month to hike and hack their way from Cuiaba to Dead Horse Camp? We're going to drive it in a day."

"Why did they call it Dead Horse Camp?" asked Zane.

"They had used that camp on previous expeditions. They'd lost a horse there five years before. When they got there in 1925, all that was left was bleached bones."

"Eww. Cool! Do you think they'll still be there?"

"I'd highly doubt it. But you never know what you might find out here."

"So, what do you think we'll find?"

"Around here? Not much besides a good contrast of the way things are now compared to a hundred years ago, before the rubber boom and the farming and the roads and settlements. See those trees over there? This whole area used to be like that. Now much of the rainforest is relegated to pockets. A lot of the rest of it, you might as well be driving through Nebraska. But that's one of the things I want to show with my article."

He took one hand off the wheel and waved an arm toward the distant beyond. A smile settled over his face. "But out there, further down the Xingu River, in the indigenous preserves where nature still prevails, somewhere out there where that second set of compass coordinates lie, we'll find adventure, boy. And that's the other thing I'm trying to show. Heck, in the backcountry of Brazil, even a family road trip can be a grand adventure."

"Oh, some of our road trips have been adventures all right," said Nusiri. "Like the time you drove us to Mexico, all the way to Guadalajara, in that old VW camper van."

"Yeah, I didn't plan on blowing a head gasket coming over those mountains."

"But we got lucky when that truck driver came along and towed us down to Los Mochis."

"Yeah, following a one-ton stakebed loaded with tomatoes, towed by an old manila rope, at dusk, and noticing that the truck didn't have working brake lights."

"Or how about when we were coming back from cross country skiing at Aspen Vista," said Zane, "and the weather closed in and you drove that mountain road in whiteout conditions. Real fun."

"See, even a local day trip can be an adventure."

Still, Skip was looking forward to the next phase of their journey, when they'd be getting into places that were still unspoiled, into what remained of "the wilds," the kind of exotic stuff he used to do in his younger days. That's where the real adventure was to be found. Or so he thought.