Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

The Press Conference

5 days later

Felipe Altamirano Alvarez Espadachín

Lovers of money are some of the most unreliable people in one's life. I found it surprising that during the four days we spent trekking through the forest, Chayo Esteban never abandoned us. He was a faithful guide, to my surprise. We had to push our way through branches during most of our journey to the camp. Esteban was leading Pablo, I and a group of five police officers who were with me. Those officers were just recent graduates from the Police Academy's branch in Potosi, a major city southwest of Sucre - Bolivia's second capital. Those officers were very excited on the first day of hiking, but from the second day onwards, they wanted to go back. The forest always frightens the faint of heart; The beasts that lingered among the trees, the insects that would either suck your blood or lay their eggs inside injuries on your body and the worms that would climb up to your neck would certainly give anyone scares. Even though those officers were well-armed, carrying M-16 battle-grade assault rifles, they were whimpering in fear like a bunch of whelps. We would have climbed up and descended from a lot of hills. Esteban suggested that if we climbed the hills on our way to Sergio's camp, we could get to the camp faster. The climbs were daunting because the hills were very steep: some of the steepest that I've ever seen in the jungle. I think that what made our journey long were the trees that impeded our progress. If the forest was just a plain grassland, we would have reached Sergio's camp in just a day and a half. Occasionally in our path through the forest, we had to climb over a fallen log to get to the other side. Many times, we were bitten by fiery ants when we placed our hands on the bark of the trees, failing notice the ants on them.

We never stopped during that journey except for brief 30-minute stops that we took for breakfast and dinner. We never had lunch - only heavy breakfasts and heavy dinners. One of the graduate police officers carried a bag with food and bottled potable water in it.

That day, we stopped for some rest on top of a hill. We sipped some soup and just stared at the forest, during one of our brief periods of rest.

"How long do you think it would take for us to reach Sergio's camp from this point on?" I asked Esteban when we all got up to resume our journey after our rest period ended. The graduate officers were grumbling and getting restless. After talking with Esteban, I went to them and told them, "Guys we are just about six hours away from the camp, come on!"

We walked for those six tiring hours, motivated by the fact that we were nearing the camp. We could only navigate using stars, sun, and the map because the forest was so misshapen by the storm that usual landmarks such as oddly shaped tree couldn't help us.

We came to one final tree on our journey when Esteban said, "Here's the camp! There!" He was pointing to a river.

"What?" I asked. "Where?"

"There!" He still pointed to the river!

Claire Dakota

Three days had passed, since the day Captain Felipe told me he was going to the jungle to find the kids. Miss. Longhorn called me earlier that morning telling me how worried she was about our kids. She was more worried about Catherine Newcastle, who sleepwalks. She was afraid that Catherine would have meandered through the jungle and got killed by a predator. I assured her that Catherine and all the kids would be safe and alive in the camp where they were.

That evening, I ordered some iced coffee from the café. The government guesthouse in Santa Cruz De La Sierra was well serviced. With my fingers wrapped around the ice-cold paper cup, I searched through the desk beside the computer for the T.V remote, with my free hand.